Author: Greg Swann (page 117 of 209)

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

There are 36 entries on the short list this week. That’s a ton, but, even so, it’s less than half of what we started with. Given that it’s a holiday week, there was a lot of great stuff this week. We knew that going in, because both Jeff Kempe and Kris Berg hit home runs at the top of the week. Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you wasn’t warned.

Voting this week will run through to 12 Noon MST Wednesday to leave time between all the Christmas stuff. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Dan Green -- Consumer confidence Showing How Consumer Confidence Surveys Lead Economists Astray”,
“Jeff Brown — Market correction The Truth — ‘They’ Don’t Have A Clue When This Correction Will End“,
“Teri Lussier — Selling vacant How to sell a vacant home this winter: Make like a Boy Scout“,
“Geno Petro — Bumper stickers How do I really feel about that, I wonder?“,
“Kris Berg — Prop 91 I’ve got a proposition for you.“,
“Jeff Brown — Bernanke Bernanke Goes To The Statue of Liberty Play — Bank System Scores“,
“Dan Melson — New Fed rules New Proposed Federal Reserve Rules: Is This Supposed to Be Helpful Regulation?“,
“Chris Lengquist — Credit problems Why We As A Nation Have Credit Problems“,
“Kris Berg — Next time There’s always a next time.“,
“Chris McKeever — Your way Your way, isn’t always the best way…“,
“Mike Farmer — Zillow Zillow — Microcosm of A Bigger Problem“,
“Trevor Smith — New Fed rules The One Law to Rule them All“,
“Morgan Brown — Struggling in quicksand Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem“,
“Doug Quance — Musical chairs Musical Chairs With Brokerage Signs“,
“Glenn Kelman — TV tips Eyewitness “Today” Account + Twelve Live TV Tips“,
“Brian Boero — Redfin The school of Redfin, Part II“,
“Andrew Mattie Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a long-time investor client — he happens to be in town right now — who delivers his most effusive praise by exclaiming, “Outstanding!” I think this is a valuable exhortation of a valuable idea: It denotes appropriate enthusiasm for the most profound kind of excellence. When I selected the short list of Odysseus Medal nominations yesterday, I thought they were all very good. But when I looked them over this morning, there was nothing that made me want to shout, “Outstanding!” In consequence, I’m not awarding the Odysseus Medal this week. The posts are good, unassailably good, but nothing spoke to me of the sublime. Next week we’ll do better, I’m sure.

Gary Elwood wrote a post this week called The 3 Commandments of Online Marketing You Must Obey. I thought it was very good, but I think it was eclipsed by Bill Leider’s What Is A Brand?, winner of this week’s Black Pearl Award:

I believe your Brand is a widely held set of beliefs and expectations about what you deliver and how you deliver it. That applies whether you’re an individual or a multi-national organization. Your Brand is strengthened or weakened by every person in your organization and every function performed that directly or indirectly touches anyone. It embraces things like (and this is not an all-inclusive list):

• Name recognition
• Expectations held by the vast majority of people who will or might do business with you about what they can expect from you.
• The experience(s) that people have when they deal with you. Do those experiences exceed, meet or fall below their expectations.
• The consistency of many experiences.
• How you deal with people after the sale: customer service and how you solve problems.
• How and how well you maintain continuity of relationships with customers and potential customers.
• The perceived value received for the price paid.

Read both posts, though. They reinforce each other.

The People’s Choice Award this week goes to Chris McKeever for A [HAR]d Lesson:

We are in a period where listings are flying everywhere. You post a listing in one place, it appears on several others. Some you may not even realize you Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Some news first:

The first of the BloodhoundBlog Unchained lapel pins sold for $20.50. The second auction closes in about 24 hours.

Todd Carpenter is hosting a contest for the funniest RE.net blog post for 2007. I am badly eclipsed in a contest like this — where’s the award for Exotic Quixotism? — but I expect a number of posts from BloodhoundBlog to make the short list. (Nominate yourselves, y’all; nothing ever makes if off my to-list.)

Now then: The Odysseus Medal nominees: A dozen entries on the short list this week, and, again, a lot of Deep Think stuff. Vote for the People’s Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy.

Ahem: Please don’t spam all your friends to come and vote for you. First, what we’re interested in is what is popular among people who would have been voting anyway. And second, I’ll eliminate you for cheating. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Voting runs through to 12 Noon MST Monday. I’ll announce the winners of this week’s awards soon thereafter.

Here is this week’s short-list of Odysseus Medal nominees:

< ?PHP $AltEntries = array ( "Kevin Boer -- Redfin The Lessons Of Redfin, Part I: The Marketing Value Of The Obvious”,
“Joel Burslem — Scripps Scripps Cracks Open the Door“,
“Kris Berg — Concurrent closings Newton’s Umpteenth Law – Concurrent Closings“,
“Dan Green — Foreclosures Why Healthy Bodies and Healthy Marriages May Be More Relevant To Slowing Foreclosures Than Interest Rate Adjustments“,
“Brian Boero — Blurred vision Blurred vision“,
“Krista Baker — Emotional needs Do You Address Your Clients’ Emotional Needs?“,
“Kris Berg — RESPA What’s my real estate license worth? More than a hundred bucks.“,
“Rhonda Porter — Closing procedures Major Proposed Changes for Residential Closings in 2008“,
“Gary Elwood — Online marketing The 3 Commandments of Online Marketing You Must Obey“,
“Chris McKeever — Listings portals A [HAR]d Lesson“,
“Bill Leider — What is a brand? What Is A Brand?“,
“Brian Brady — Sub-prime oil We’re All Sub-Prime Borrowers (Who Consume Oil)”
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