Category: Marketing (page 34 of 191)

February 28, 2011

My goal for March? Satisfied clients and a satisfied mind.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I changed the back of my business card. This is the new copy:

I agree with Jeff that giving good service while failing to achieve the main objective is a useless vanity. The Bawldguy champions results, but I would offer the further caveat that the goal of any business should be to achieve full customer satisfaction. That’s something that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, but I’ve been kind of tied up with, you know, actually doing it — and getting better at it, I hope.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is the first day of the last month of the first quarter of 2011. If your numbers so far are not all you’d hoped for, here is a March calendar to help you get started tracking your goals.

February 8, 2011

Farewell to Fannie and Freddie? Hold your breath…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

The Obamanation plans to offer up three proposals to eliminate FannieMae and FreddieMac from the secondary mortgage marketplace. Expect to hear much mournful keening, in coming weeks, from the country’s best enemy of private property, the National Association of Realtors.

From the Wall Street Journal:

More than two years after the government seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Obama administration will recommend phasing out the housing-finance giants and gradually reducing the government’s footprint in the mortgage market, according to people familiar with the matter.

The administration is expected to include three options for a post-Fannie and Freddie world when it releases a long-awaited proposal for the future of the nation’s $10.6 trillion mortgage market, which could come as soon as Friday. Together with federal agencies, Fannie and Freddie have accounted for nine of 10 new loan originations in the past year.

The White House’s “white paper” will begin what promises to be a prolonged and fiery debate about the future of how homes are financed across the U.S. Any wind-down of Fannie and Freddie would happen gradually to avoid roiling markets, and the central, unanswered question is what kind of federal function, if any, the administration and Congress will invent to take their place.

Steps to reduce the government role in the mortgage market likely would raise borrowing costs for home buyers, adding pressure on the still-fragile U.S. housing markets. Consequently, analysts believe any transition could take years and would be driven by the pace of the housing market’s recovery.

The fight over how to restructure the housing-finance system has roiled Washington, and yet both parties have been hesitant to propose detailed legislation.

For conservatives, Fannie and Freddie played a starring role in the financial crisis, and any solution that is viewed as replicating their function could face fierce opposition from some Republicans. But more moderate Republicans may resist such an approach and could join Democrats who have said a federal role is necessary to ensure broad access to home ownership.

While advancing one detailed plan risks providing fodder for partisan battles, offering multiple proposals may help the administration force those views into the open, said Michael Barr, Read more

February 7, 2011

“If government doesn’t steer capital into housing, the capital doesn’t disappear; it could fund other job-creating businesses.”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

The Washington Post:

Advertised as a way to stabilize the housing market, government-backed mortgage securitization ended up distorting and destabilizing it. The resulting misallocation of resources – evident not only in today’s massive bailout of Fannie and Freddie but also in the vast quantities of land, water and energy wasted on suburban sprawl from Las Vegas to Fort Lauderdale – is a true American tragedy. Today’s housing crisis is an opportunity to make sure nothing like it ever happens again.

Damn straight. This is the Post, so the solution proposed is still WelfareLite, but any movement away from Rotarian Socialism is a move in the right direction.

January 7, 2011

Do You Know How To Network?

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

I used to hate networking meetings because they seemed like business card collecting contests. I always feel cheapened by the “Wham. Bam! Thank you, Ma’am” Chamber of Commerce meetings, where the person of the moment looks over your shoulder, for someone more interesting, while you compliment her on the color of her blazer. I usually have two too many drinks at these and wake up with a fistful of business cards and a craving for aspirin. Often, when I call said peach-color blazered Amway rep, to follow up, she doesn’t remember me at all.

I’ll be damned if I’m not…memorable !

I still like meeting people so I started my own gig, a few years ago. It’s been mostly successful because I’ve been at the center of the group and have blanket permission to call or email everyone who attends. More importantly, they remember me when I call.

I’ve branched out on Meetup and started attending new networking mixers. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up, which has increased my efficacy, and helped me develop more genuine connections with strangers:

I don’t try to meet everyone. In fact, I often ask people where the real estate agents, attorneys, accountants, and wealth advisers are.
When I do meet someone, I use Michael Peak’s strategy of asking “What are you working on?” and then asking “How can I help?” Those two questions reveal more about anyone’s business than the traditional “What do you do?” and “Who’s your best target client?” Asking those two questions has opened some doors for me. Ironically, although I reject the Chamber crowds, I met Michael at one of them. It’s plain to see why he made an impression on me.
I set a goal of meeting three people and ask for permission to call or visit with them.

That’s my trick. I know who I want to meet when I attend, ask those two questions, and try to make three new friends at each gig. I reject the card collecting and try to go deeper with the conversations. Oh, I almost forgot; I relax and have fun, too.

So…what are YOU working on?

December 26, 2010

The Ten Commandments of Buyer Side Representation

by Mark Green

Database Marketing Expert

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa… Festivus… all that stuff. Lovely… now let’s get down to business. I’m buying a house. Along the journey, I’ve paid close attention to how the average Real Estate Agent operates. I’m sharing these thoughts with my fellow Bloodhounds at the risk of offending some – or perhaps all – of you. But it all comes from the right place and I hope you enjoy…

Commandment #10: Have a freaking take.

Are you the type of Real Estate Agent who likes to open doors for clients and then stand silently with a pleased expression as they walk through the home? If so, I suggest you consider a new profession. Look, I want to know what YOU think about a home too… that’s one of the reasons I hired you. I might agree with you, I might not. But when you have a take, you engage in critical dialogue with your clients. In my case, I’d trust you more if you tell me what you don’t like about something. It would make me feel like you’re looking out for me.

Commandment #9: Don’t tell me you’re a Top Producer.

Because if you are, I probably know that already and all it sounds like is bragging (which most of the time… it is). Just let your work do the talking for you. Oh, and here’s just a bit of a peeve… if you’re in the “Million Dollar Club” is that really something worth crowing about anymore? What is that… 3, 4, maybe 5 houses a year?

Commandment #8: Avoid this question: “So what do you want to do?”

This commandment is closely associated with #10 above. One agent I was working with loved to interrupt me with that magical question and eventually I told her what I wanted to do: fire her. Instead of asking what your client wants to do (which, by the way, they could easily figure out without your counsel)… you ought to continue tossing ideas/suggestions at them. And if you REALLY want to impress your clients, give them the upside and downside with every suggestion you make. Then listen. Simple.

Commandment #7: Read more

December 3, 2010

Zillow says, “If you will send us your clients as web traffic, we’ll be pleased to sell them back to you, again and again, from now on.”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Q: What do you do when your massive Realty.bot web site, target-marketed to equity-rich home-sellers, finds itself in a real estate market where most sellers are upside down and do not give a rat’s ass what their homes might sell for?

A: Punt.

This is an eyeball play, up front, just pure traffic-baiting. But the genius of it is that it turns into FUD for the agents in the long run: A million necks, one noose.

These sites are just noise, by now, just more “media” — uninformed opinions from people who make their living doing something other than selling real estate. Delivering your clients to them strikes me as a poor idea.

November 17, 2010

A warning to loudmouths everywhere: Cathy’s into pain compliance . . .

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

[Kicking this back to the top. Cathleen is trying to get the very willful Ophelia to walk to her heel, and that put me in mind of this song, which I wrote almost four years ago. –GSS]

So: This is a long way in…

First, Ophelia, our newly-adopted Redbone Coonhound, gets all over the nerves of Desdemona, our English Coonhound. A deafening racket ensues. Fortuitously, Odysseus the TV Spokemodel Bloodhound, who is in fact the loudest dog on Earth, doesn’t add much to the cacophony.

But: We were running out of seconds of silence in which to place hurried phone calls. This is not the ideal way to run a real estate business.

I try not to be one of those guys who pretends to have three testicles, but, nevertheless, it usually falls to me to be the bad guy. When there’s constabulary work to be done, the constable’s lot is a terrible one.

So this Monday just past, I decided more or less unilaterally that Desdemona was going to get a shock collar to control her barking. Cathy was all in favor of painless solutions, but we have tried all of these, at considerable expense. I knew that I was going to have to take the blame for inflicting pain on poor Desdemona, but we were all but entirely unable to communicate in our own home.

So: We got the collar. Desdemona moderated her behavior almost immediately. And, biggest surprise of all, my dear sweet tender-hearted Cathleen has become the world’s most vocal champion of pain compliance for dog training. She’s so happy with the results Desdemona is exhibiting that, yesterday, she bought a remote-control training collar for Ophelia.

All this is hugely funny to me, and it all seems to fit so well with with the rest of our insane lives, so I wrote a song about it — up-tempo and loud. And with all that as introduction, here are the lyrics:

Cathy’s into pain compliance

Don’t bark, don’t bite
Don’t growl at night
Don’t post anonymous tripe
Don’t sniff, don’t snivel
And spare us your drivel
You’re hardly the last word in gripes
Attorneys yearn to cluck defiance
But Cathy’s into pain compliance

Don’t spout Read more

November 16, 2010

Looking for a Realtor designation that really means something? How about this? “Too Outspoken For Redfin.”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Redfin.com is in the long, slow process of firing us from their referral partnership program. I’ve known this was going to happen since last Tuesday. It’s what I was writing about in my most influential voice in the on-line world of real estate post:

They piss and moan to each other about me behind my back.
They campaign with each other to try to damage my interests.
They pester contributors here to try get them to abandon BloodhoundBlog.

The actual coup de grâce hasn’t happened yet, but Glenn Kelman placed a sweet call to me last night to apologize to me, as a friend, for not countermanding the bold policy initiatives of his middle managers.

This is nothing to me, for a lot of reasons. I grew up hiding from my poor long-suffering mother, so she wouldn’t have the opportunity to tell me what to do and not do. I spent the first half of my working life hiding from my employers, doing truly remarkable work, like a cobbler’s elf, after the bosses went home. This is why I don’t have a job now, and haven’t had one for decades. I know from experience that if I have anything that looks at all like a job, sooner or later, my fated role will be to serve as the rag doll in someone else’s self-destructive fit. I actually felt that gloomy foreboding twice, on the way into Redfin’s referral plan, so it’s not as if I can claim to have been taken by surprise.

It’s a stupid thing to do, of course, but, while I’ve been fired several times in my life, I’ve never been fired for a good reason. Cathleen and I responded rapidly to every inquiry Redfin sent us, even though many of the referrals they passed along were from loosely motivated, suspicious folks with serious qualification issues. I tried to explain to them that, even though I sell a lot of cheap houses, I’m selling most of them to millionaires, while Cathleen almost always works with very well-heeled homeowners. That entreaty hit a corporate policy wall, with the result that any financially well-qualified buyers Redfin Read more

November 14, 2010

The politics of dancing: Mothertongue and the art of negotiation.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

I could argue that much of what goes on in the social sciences consists of pseudo-scientific “proofs” that the human mind is nothing special. Sure, volitional-conceptuality — the ability to engage in mental self-reference by means of abstraction and the ability to act upon those abstractions as a free moral agent — is unprecedented in the animal kingdom, but this dolphin has learned four of the first five letters of the Roman alphabet, and that chimp can stack three boxes on top of one another to steal a cookie. If that ain’t human, they don’t know what is!

Here’s what’s funny: They don’t know what animals are, either!

Monkeys don’t need to do a charmingly poor job at deploying human tools to survive, and cetaceans are perfectly adept at communicating with each other without a notation system — without what I would call fathertongue.

When I’m showing real estate, I’m careful to teach people, especially children, what a dog is doing with his tail. Up and wagging? Take it slow, but the dog is friendly. Straight down? Proceed with caution. Between the legs? Back off. The tail is a dog’s primary signaling device. That’s why people who want dogs to fight bob their tails.

But that wagging tail tells such a tale: “Hi, there!” the dog seems to say. “I am thrilled to make your acquaintance. As you can see by my wagging tail, I’m eager to make new friends. Might I have permission to sniff your anus? Full reciprocity, of course. Really, I’d be put out if you didn’t give mine at least a little sniff, too.”

That’s mothertongue, a complex initiation of negotiations expressed entirely in bodily signaling, with zero conceptual content — with no fathertongue. Animals are perfect the way they are. They are not somehow “better” if they master what are, to them, ontologically-useless parlor tricks. Moreover, human beings are exalted, not diminished, by dancing bears: The vast chasm between emulating human behavior and actually living it is only made more obvious when we see how pitiable that emulation actually is.

The higher animals communicate by mothertongue, and all but one species is Read more

November 14, 2010

The Implied Accusation in real estate: How to win the war on your attitude…

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Kicking this back to the top. I wrote this years ago (urf!), but it’s one of the most important posts I’ve written here. –GSS

I had this as a comment late last night:

Your cockiness and arrogance is only matched by your incompetence

The author is Keith Brand from Housing Panic, writing under one of the half-dozen or so sock-puppet email addresses he uses. Don’t go looking for the comment. I have him blocked completely.

The comment was in response to my post last night, Stopping traffic to sell houses.

The remarks themselves are stupefyingly stupid, of course. Obviously I am arrogant and cocky — I think for good reason, but good reason or bad, I will be the first to lay the charges. “Insufferable bastard” fits me to a tee. “Incompetence” is simply comical in this context. I invented the idea of the custom real estate sign, was grasping for it through two generations of our signs before it was physically possible.

Oh, well. Who besides Keith Brand does not know that Keith Brand is an idiot? It’s very funny that he has chosen me as his poster child for a dumb Realtor, given who I am, given what we’ve done here. You could argue that this is the perfect testament to his stupidity, but there is more to be unearthed in the graveyard that is Keith Brand’s rotting soul.

Consider: Do I know I’m cocky? Do I know I’m arrogant? Do I know I am supremely competent — as a Realtor, as a real estate weblogger, as a real estate marketing innovator? I not only know that all of these things are true, they are among the very many proud facts of my life. So what could Keith Brand hope to achieve by saying,

Your cockiness and arrogance is only matched by your incompetence

Is this supposed to move me to despair? Me?

But: A different remark in a different context with a different person might have that effect. I am impervious to criticism. It’s either true or it isn’t. If it’s true, I am enriched for having learned better. If not, so what? But other people are different, Read more

November 6, 2010

It’s 4:15 pm. Do you know where your Realtor is? A consumer’s guide to using social media to supervise your goof-off employee.

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Your mortgage lender just called. The appraiser is standing outside the home you’re hoping to buy, but there is no key in the lockbox. The lender called you so that you could call your Realtor. Your Realtor in turn can call the listing agent, and then someone can get over to the house — pronto! — to let the appraiser in.

There’s just one problem: You can’t seem to get your Realtor on the phone.

Stuff happens. Your Realtor could be tied up with another client or stuck in traffic in a cell-phone dead zone. Heaven forbid, he might have been in a car accident.

But… There is another possibility…

Do you remember when you first made contact with your Realtor? Do you recall him telling you all about how hi-tech his business is, detailing his presence on all the biggest social media sites?

So: If you’re not getting your calls to your Realtor returned, where might be a good place to look for him?

How about Twitter, for a start? How about Facebook? Foursquare? Tumblr? Posterous? You might have to look in a few places, but there are only two kinds of hi-tech Realtors: The kind who work a lot and the kind who play a lot.

How can you tell if your Realtor is the kind who plays a lot? It’s easy. He’ll be leaving tracks all over the place, Retweeting jokes and commenting on Facebook photos and writing detailed reviews of burger joints and doing — and documenting — just about any activity on the face of the earth — except attending to your real estate transaction.

Here’s the sad part: Even if you’re seeing dozens of Tweets and Facebook comments from your Realtor, you’re probably just seeing the tip of the iceberg. You’re not seeing the direct Twitter posts or the private conversations being carried out on Facebook or in email.

But: If your Realtor seems to be wasting his entire day on social media sites, there’s a reason for that:

It’s because he’s wasting his entire day on social media sites.

I’ve tried pointing out to Realtors that schmoozing on Twitter or Facebook is bad marketing, so Read more

November 6, 2010

Let’s Be Clear About Social Media

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

I keep thinking I’m going to stop posting here. I keep thinking that I’m going to get sucked into the vortex of rancor that BHB can be. And then we get these gems of conversation from Brian, Jeff, Al & Greg. And I’m drawn right back in. Nothing’s perfect, everybody’s crazy, right? Life goes on, and the closest I will get to a rebuttal of Greg’s impractical rancor is that it’s wallet-foolish to criticize someone that competes for some of the same business you do. Saving my rancor for when it matters has doubled my income. Your milage may vary.

I digress. Circling back to my take on Facebook. I post there often, it’s in my opening tabs as I start my computer. I look around and peruse. I make some money from it, mostly in the form of the zombies.

Zombies? These are the strangers that add me randomly on Facebook. I consider that an “opt in”, so I add them back and put them on a “social media” list in Heap.

And then I send my new pseudo-friends a torrent of spam and calls. They cry uncle with an Amex. They are mostly realtors.

I process my queue about once a month and I wind up with 75-80 “leads”. This generates about $3500 in new business. $50 bucks a friend, y’all can add me all day long.

This is what most Realtors that are hustling do on Facebook. At least there’s effort here, which is more than I can say for those that strive to monetize whatever should flit across their subconscious.

Anyhow, enjoy.

November 5, 2010

I don’t play Farmville and I don’t disagree with Brian Brady!

by Al Lorenz

Realtor, Media Mogul

But I do question whether prospecting using facebook is the most efficient way to prospect. I’m sure everything Brian Brady said is correct, he’s just that kind of a guy! I’m also a one person office and time spent trolling facebook for leads isn’t as quick as calling up expired listings in my area, or working the internet where buyers are looking for homes!

For me, there are just quicker ways of getting calls from interested buyers than slogging through my facebook friends’ friends, tracking down phone numbers and calling them. If there was some clever tool to just get those folks names and numbers (Greg has probably written one), with some sort of a relationship graphic so I have something to chat with them about, count me in on the calling. I don’t mind cold calling. Expired listings are quick to get and easy for me to call. They can be pretty productive too.

I spent some time playing on Ebay’s classifieds today. I’ll tell you how that works out when I know, but being where buyers are looking usually works pretty well for me.

So, I’m not disagreeing with Brian, I’m just wondering, like apparently the Zillow CEO is, if facebook is worth the time. I haven’t found it to be the most productive way to do business prospecting.

“We’ve taken a number of swings at social (networking) that have not paid off. We might have invested less,” said Spencer Rascoff, chief executive of Zillow.com.

His site has some social networking features and some integration with Facebook and Twitter – mostly as a result of following the conventional wisdom that any vertical could benefit from a social emphasis.

What Rascoff discovered, however, was that real estate is one area that truly doesn’t lend itself to social.

“In our category, we have not found it to be a social experience,” he said. “When you’re looking to buy a home, your network is small – it’s you, your spouse, and your real estate agent. You don’t tell your 300 friends, ‘I’m looking at this house.’ And especially in this market, Read more

November 5, 2010

Facebook Works If You Work It. If You Won’t Work It, Just Play Farmville

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Let me restate my case about Facebook; if you’re not using Facebook as a prospecting tool, you are most likely wasting your time and engaging in the ultimate procrastination scheme. I don’t begrudge folks fun and Facebook can provide much joy. You can reconnect with old friends and make interesting new friends there but if you plan to use it for business, you’ll most likely end up wasting hours that could have been better spent standing in front of a supermarket, handing out your business card.

Like this, from Agent Genius:

You don’t need a business page. In fact, a business page is just one more time suck. People rarely go to a business page to learn about real estate on Facebook; look at the metrics offered to prove that. The author’s offered advice is just plain wrong:

You shouldn’t be using your personal profile page to promote business. It is against the guidelines on Facebook and just rude, regardless. I will share with you how you CAN use your profile effectively, but blasting out your market reports and new listings is a big NO-NO on your personal profile.

Huh? I have no idea where the author found the “rule” about doing business on personal pages but can tell you, from a few years experience on Facebook, that telling your audience about your business is not only desirable but effective. Posting listings isn’t rude, it’s your stock-in-trade. If you’re only posting listings on your Facebook page, you’re likely to be branded as boring but listings are real estate porn, designed to slow down the gawkers and encourage a reaction from them. Your “friends” will most likely be gawking at your listings if you’re interesting enough to be in their Facebook stream.

I have what I think is a low key way of occasionally including real estate into my status without it being obvious. I share parts of my day that include real estate in a personal light. For example: last winter I was showing REO property and put as my status update: “Showing Read more

November 2, 2010

Yelp-ing Real Estate Agents: The Online Bus Bench Advertisement?

by Brian Brady

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Todd Carpenter introduced me to Foursquare, last year in San Diego, and I immediately saw how geolocation could change the game for the neighborhood real estate agent. I envisioned agents promoting their listings and open houses on Foursquare. I’m a natural “spammer” so I started using it to “check-in” to my place of business. I figured it was a natural way to promote myself in front of a crowd. The problem with Foursquare is that the crowd was measured in the dozens and most of them were bar-hoppers as opposed to “citizens”.

Geolocation was quickly adapted by Yelp, then Facebook. My rule of social media marketing is to go where the people are. What I like about Facebook (it’s a BIG platform) didn’t quite work for geolocation marketing. Check-ins get lost in a sea of status updates and it’s tough to “piggy-back” on the social proof offered by Yelp.

Yelp is a really good platform if you’re trying to find the “bus bench advertising” approach to neighborhood brand building. It’s pretty simple idea (you write reviews on local businesses) and the geolocation service allows you to ‘check-in” when you’re at a business. There is a little point game associated with check-ins but the hidden gem is, if you have the most check-ins at a business, your picture, and link to your Yelp profile, is prominently displayed (at least on the mobile version). This is the modern day bench bus advertisement (and it costs nothing). Combine your check-ins with reviews and you’re building an online brand as a neighborhood expert.

What Is A “Neighborhood Expert”?

We would like to think that the big hair and Cadillac agent model is dead. It’s not ! How often do you meet recent buyers, who tell you that they used the agent, who advertises in the Pleasantville Courier-Post ? They often describe that agent as “a big shot” or “successful”. They may not comment about that agent’s ethics or service but people like to think they are dealing with the “biggest” (which they sometimes confuse with well-known). This is why so many agents spend money on “brand building”. I prefer Read more

Category: Marketing (page 34 of 191)

My goal for March? Satisfied clients and a satisfied mind.

by Greg Swann

Farewell to Fannie and Freddie? Hold your breath…

by Greg Swann

“If government doesn’t steer capital into housing, the capital doesn’t disappear; it could fund other job-creating businesses.”

by Greg Swann

Do You Know How To Network?

by Brian Brady

The Ten Commandments of Buyer Side Representation

by Mark Green

Zillow says, “If you will send us your clients as web traffic, we’ll be pleased to sell them back to you, again and again, from now on.”

by Greg Swann

A warning to loudmouths everywhere: Cathy’s into pain compliance . . .

by Greg Swann

Looking for a Realtor designation that really means something? How about this? “Too Outspoken For Redfin.”

by Greg Swann

The politics of dancing: Mothertongue and the art of negotiation.

by Greg Swann

The Implied Accusation in real estate: How to win the war on your attitude…

by Greg Swann

It’s 4:15 pm. Do you know where your Realtor is? A consumer’s guide to using social media to supervise your goof-off employee.

by Greg Swann

Let’s Be Clear About Social Media

by Chris Johnson

Facebook Works If You Work It. If You Won’t Work It, Just Play Farmville

by Brian Brady

Yelp-ing Real Estate Agents: The Online Bus Bench Advertisement?

by Brian Brady

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