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June 4, 2010

Took a Poll – What Do Clients Prefer 10-0 Over ‘World Class’ Service?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

The oft used phrase, World Class Service, has become as meaningful as the word ‘great’ used in virtually any sports context. As in, “Yeah Jerry, that was a great catch by a great center fielder.” How worthless is the awarding of greatness upon sports figures nowadays? The same ‘experts’ who rightly called Mohammed Ali one of the greatest fighters, if not THE greatest of all time, called Mike Tyson ‘great’. How can the steaks at both Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Denny’s be great?

The point is that words mean things, or we’re all screwed. The concept of ‘winning in real estate brokerage through world class service’ has a fatally flawed premise. Do you know what it is? Your client sure does, which is why he’s with someone else now, regardless of your superior service.

Fact is, he didn’t come to you for service, though many consumers out there make that mistake, falling on the petard created by the same false premise. Ironically, the #1 criterion used in choosing their agent/broker was definitely not service. I know, cuz new clients tell me this all the time. One newish client put it the best way I’ve heard in quite awhile:

“I learned the hard way that much of the time, getting the best service possible meant I got everything I wanted from the relationship, except for the achievement of my primary reason for hiring the agent in the first place.”

BawldGuy Axiom: Surveys show conclusively that my stellar results trump your ‘vastly superior’ service every time.

The false premise assumed by both agents/brokers and consumers is that superb service automatically means equally superb results.

Let’s don’t just do a drive-by with that statement. Let’s look at an example, someone we all know. Let’s pick Greg Swann.

There is much on which Greg and I don’t agree. He insists on doing everything himself. I prefer to ‘call the guy’. He’s crazy knowledgeable AND effective when it comes to applying technology to his real estate practice. I’m a TechTard. He works (though he’d surely say ‘plays’) 5,000 hours yearly. Though I rarely log less than 2,000 myself, it’s Read more

June 4, 2010

Is exposing your own weakness a good power play?

by

Mortgage Systems Samurai

Author website

lessons learned from a difficult home buying experienceI’m am not entirely sure what made me think that this would be a good idea, but now that i’ve taken the leap I received exactly the response that I anticipated by telling this unflattering story to my database of over 9,000 consumers.

Let me back up for just a second here and shape the battlefield for you.

Business has been absolutely crazy this past month with a surge of files from buyers trying to get in under the wire for the $8,000 federal tax credit.

Our staff is pushing maximum capacity and to top it all off, the rates have significantly dipped in the past couple of weeks.

Now, let me set up this particular situation, share with you how I dealt with it (publicly), then I would like to get your feedback.

Close of escrow is scheduled for May 29th.  The borrower is using a CalSTR 80/17 purchase money loan which allows for a free float down if the rates drop during first 45 days of the lock.

Rates dropped and we combed through our pipeline looking for opportunities to “knock the socks off” buyers by making the “I know we’re closing next week and I can lower your rate today” phone call that everyone loves to make.

We had a mix-up, a miscommunication between the loan officer and the processor (processor processess float down) – the result was that we accidentally floated down the rate of a buyer before we called them to communicate the option and the opportunity.

As it turns out – that was a fatal error in the buyer’s mind.  The $27 a month savings paled to his concerns about closing his escrow early or on time.

This miscommunication compounded by a plethora of other miscommunications and mistakes by escrow quickly snow balled into a series of emails from the buyer, expressing exactly how he felt about the situation he was thrust into.

These emails were directed to me as the branch manager and “homeownership educator” of the office.  I thought long and hard about how to make this a positive experience because it got kind of ugly, which you will see for yourself.

I decided to Read more

June 3, 2010

Bubba cools out in the cold

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

News is not my thing, but sometimes it falls into your lap.

That’s what Bubba did — literally.

He was half in the bag and he stumbled and tripped and landed his sloppy self right on me.

For a while he just laid half across my lap, grinning stupidly at the sky, his arms flailing, directing traffic for the stars. He looked at me and his smile weakened. He said, “Ain’t this the shits?” Then he belched. The smell was… unforgettable.

He sat up and slouched on the bench on his own weight, throwing his arm across my shoulder like an old friend. His bouffant gray hair was a mess, finger-raked into deep furrows. The skin of his face was a greenish white and it hung on him like an old sheet. Like the last time I saw him, he was wearing a pink chenille bathrobe embroidered with the initials ‘HRC’. His pockets were stuffed with paper tissues and Big Mac wrappers.

I had been watching him for a while. It was a cold night and I was bundled up on a bench in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. There were news crews camped out over there, of course, and Bubba had been wandering from crew to crew, trying to get someone to pay attention to him. He had gone through the Mood Cycle of the Mentally Adrift: Bravado, self-effacement, supplication, disturbingly plaintive supplication, anger, rage, distressingly uncontrolled rage, resignation and finally a good-humored kind of drunken aplomb. It was in this frame of mind — fatalism amused by its own futility — that he landed in my lap.

“Gotta laugh, don’tcha’?” He hiccoughed.

I shrugged.

“Sure you do! You can run, but you can’t hide! My ol’ granddaddy usta say that. O’ sinner man, where you gonna run to? They made me sing that ol’ hymn ever’ Sunday, and I usta just smile behind my hymnal. I thought I knew better. Right up to the bitter end, I thought I knew better.”

I said nothing. I really, really wanted Bubba to take his arm off of my shoulder.

So of course he pulled me Read more

June 2, 2010

Mary Canary on her way to feed the pigeons

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“I married myself a quiet man. He told me so himself, many times. When he was drunk, he’d shout it to the world.”

Mary Canary said that. She says stuff like that just to make sure no one’s listening. And no one on the bus was, no one except me.

And Mary Canary is not her real name. It’s Maria Carnase, and I had to work on her quite a while to get that out of her. She’s not quite homeless, not quite penniless, not quite elderly and only mildly odorous. She’s bone thin and desiccated, and her flowered tent dress fit her like a tent. Her hair is not quite white and she wears it under a net. She had on cheap sneakers and compression hose bunched up at the ankles; seemingly, there was no flesh on her legs for the hose to compress. She has a bus pass and a mission. The bus pass is paid for by the taxpayers, but the mission is all her own.

“I like the sound of a pedal steel guitar. It makes me think of a cat curling up for an ear-scratching.”

A college girl with a black ponytail stared hard at her paperback book. An office geek whistled softly through his teeth and looked every which way except at Mary Canary.

“When it gets too quiet, I can barely hear. I can’t hear myself sigh for the roar of the silence.”

A very tall, very thin black man got up and walked to the front of the bus. He stood hanging from a pole as if he were about to get off, but he didn’t.

“If I look behind my eyes, I can see the naked face of god.”

A portly little man who had gained a pound or two since he’d bought his suit adjusted and adjusted and adjusted his necktie.

And Mary Canary said, “I think you’re noticing me.” She said that to me, of course.

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not supposed to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody does.”

I shook my head and smiled a gentle smile. “Everybody does. And you know it.”

She shook her head, too, but it Read more

June 2, 2010

Calorie-free Purple Cows

by

Mapping Technology Entrepreneur

Author website

I am speaking at BuzzRE in Portland tomorrow. Why? I’m not exactly sure: unlike nearly every company at the conference, we don’t sell anything to real estate agents.

The subject of my talk is Seven Ways to Convert Online Leads Better… And to Be a Better Agent. I hate the word lead – it commoditizes people in a way that is only detrimental to customer service – but I’m using it in the talk because I want to talk about service as marketing.

The talk is a response to myriad win-lose or win-neutral lead conversion talks that I see pitched at conferences like these (the consumer is on the neutral- or lose-side of the equation). I’ll describe seven things I think agents can do to actually work with more clients while providing better service. I want to create a win-win.

We’ve posted a preview of the underlying theme for the talk on the Estately Blog. In an industry where service should be king, the industry’s focus on a shallow interpretation of the purple cow allegory is a waste of energy and resources. Agents should primarily focus on beating the competition through superior service.

June 1, 2010

Dear National Association of Realtors: How about you fetid, rotting pusswads do something patriotic and get off the taxpayer’s tit…?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

To say the truth, I’m kindasorta liking the Tea Party movement — as far as it goes. I don’t think we’re at a turning of the tides — although I can at least hope that we might be before too long. Any sort of discussion of individual rights is a good thing, but it doesn’t do, I don’t think, to expect too much philosophically from these folks just yet.

Consider: The self-anointed “progressives” were committed, knowing Marxists who developed an incremental strategy for razing individualism in the United States and raising collectivism in its place.

By contrast, the Tea Partyites seem to me to be largely unconscious Marxists promoting a grab-bag of unconnected tactics generally aimed at temporarily delaying the “progress” of the “progressives.”

In other words, the true Marxists know what they want and the (sad-to-say) clueless Marxists portend, at least thus far, to be nothing more than a flat tire on the road to mass extermination — the unvarying end-consequence of Marxism.

That could change, but only if the Tea Party folks engage their battle philosophically and not just tactically.

How will we be able to tell when they’ve done this? One quick bellwether would be for them to get their hands out of the public till, to the extent that they can. I do understand that many people have so mismanaged their finances — at the behest of the “progressives” — that they can only remain alive by sucking on the taxpayer’s tit. That’s sad, and I would follow a different course in the same circumstances.

But many of the Tea Partyites accepting government checks could easily do without them. We’ll know they’re serious — are you listening Drs. Ron and Rand Paul? — when they publicly refuse to accept even one penny that has been stolen from innocent taxpayers.

That’s a debate for another day, though. Here’s a little something closer to hand. Today I was spammed by the professional sucktits at the National Association of Realtors entreating me to help them rape the taxpayers — again. Apparently, all human progress will be stopped cold if we do not continue to reward Class-A morons Read more

June 1, 2010

Field of Dreams – We Should Build It….They Will Come

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

Teri’s probably sick to death with sports analogies, and even I openly make fun of sportscasters, especially during NFL season. This, however, is the stuff real estate dreams are made of. This is how I view the Bloodhound way.

This isn’t about technology.  It is about a dream of having such a great team, in such a wondrous setting, with such a foundational underpinning that fans, real estate fans, will travel and watch, listen and learn, return season after season, to a place they knew in their innocence, and think they had lost forever to the bush league players who have stolen the rights and traditions of what we love about real estate, homes, communities and the “family practitioners” who sat with us as true purveyors of that dream.

Imagine with me.

May 31, 2010

A Month With the iPad

by

Raleigh Criminal Lawyer

Author website

I got the iPad – 64gig 3G enabled – about a month ago. Unfortunately – or fortunately given how busy I’ve been – I haven’t had enough time to truly explore the possibilities.

Here’s my set-up. My MacBook laptop has been retired to serve as my home computer. I got an iMac (1 TB, 4 gigs of RAM) two weeks ago to serve as my desktop computer. And I have the iPad for the in-between use. The iPad serves as a light-weight mobile computing device.

Why this set-up? First, I needed to get something that could support Windows since all of the major bankruptcy software runs on Windows. (This software is maddeningly bad and looks like it hasn’t been updated in functionality since 2002.)

My MacBook had only 2 gig of ram, which would not adequately support a virtual machine. So I’m running Fusion’s VMWare on the iMac, which is awesome. With Mac’s Spaces, I can put Windows XP into a different window, and press Command-1 or Command-2 to move from Mac OS to Windows XP.

Second, the MacBook is actually not a very light computer, and not a very durable piece of hardware. The less I have to move it around, the less opportunity for it breaking or falling out of my bag.

The iPad is, of course, very light as a mobile computing device, and, in its case, seemingly durable, though I haven’t put it through a rigorous test. I’ve dropped it twice, and no scratches or defects have emerged.

Since typing on the virtual iPad keyboard is fine for limited tasks, but not fine for writing a document, I got Apple’s smallest, lightest bluetooth keyboard. The pairing works quite well. I’m typing this post on the iPad at the same speed I’d work on a post if I were at a laptop or desktop computer.

What is the iPad really good at?

Reading and presenting documents and other information. With Apple’s MobileMe ($99/year) system, I’m able to sync all of my documents on all three devices. Read more

May 29, 2010

“If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

John Stossel on the phractured physics of “green” energy:

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

“Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be.”

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, “Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they’re within reach of the average family.”

That was in 1915.

In 1959, The New York Times said, “Electric is the car of the tomorrow.”

In 1979, The Washington Post said, “GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical.”

I’m still waiting.

“The problem is very simple,” Bryce said. “It’s not political will. It’s simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There’s no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It’s a conspiracy of physics.”

Yes, Stossel is pop-science. You can only go so far with him. But this may be the only article you will see that explains why so many of the highly-touted environmentaloid “solutions” are pipe-dreams, based in wishful thinking and a math education that foundered on the shoals of Algebra. Read the whole thing.

May 28, 2010

Carolyn Capalbo – a REALTOR needs our help

by

The Real Estate Group, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake VA

Author website

I have been buried in 18 hour days lately. My frist inclination towards anything that comes my way has been. “I’m buried. Leave me alone.” or “I will get back to you on it.” But this story tugged at me a little. Enough for me to take action.

See, back in the day here on BHB, Brian Brady put up a post about Ashley Dupree, the person who made headlines with Elliot Spitzer, the then governor of New York. It was more of a lark than anything, seeing how much irrelevant traffic could be generated from a post and from Greg’s being in good graces with Google. Brian’s post proved the power of serch marketing pretty handily.

It is wild to see how this story would affect the life of a fellow REALTOR.

Carolyn Capalbo is a fellow REALTOR in Northern Virginia who shares her name with Ashley Dupree’s mom. Can you see where this is going? Online Reputation Management Trainwreck. Let me have her tell it to you in her own words. You can see at the bottom of the post that she is asking for anyone to help her regain her credibility in Google. Every time someone Google’s her name right now in relation to a real estate deal, they get stories about Ashley Dupree…and pictures. Nice.

RealEsetateWebmasters started an Online Reputation Management contest to draw awareness to the issue. I have had my head down working on code and did not see it until an email crossed my desk. I am far more interested in simply doing a good deed for this fellow traveler than worrying about the contest. (Morgan did throw in some huge prizes to get it going – nice work!). I decided to throw in a prize or two of my own for anyone showing up on the top three pages of Google.

so the goal is REALTORS UP – SMUT DOWN. Pretty straighfordward (grin).

I did put together a Carolyn Capalbo post on EricOnSearch. It is sitting right now at #11…I will be working on that. 😉

So now I am seeing more than a few bloggers start to post entries Read more

May 27, 2010

Ubiquitous Bloodhound finally makes his break

by

Realtor, Peripatetic Iconoclast

Author website

All of us, proprietors of this kennel included, have known that Odysseus was destined for the big time. Well, he finally got his break! Look for our pal anywhere a gorgeous face is needed.

It's midnight. Do you know where your Bloodhound is?

True confession: I was hiding in the bushes at a webinar (name withheld to protect the perps) and discovered PhotoFunia while waiting for the inevitable “buy today! Special deal just for our attendees! Super special deal if you get your broker to bring more lambs agents  to the slaughter!”  Well anyway, I found PhotoFunia at this webinar.  It is free and it is fun. There really was a pony in there!  I hope you enjoy.

May 27, 2010

Like bugs trapped in amber, take a close look at Rotarian Socialist cockroaches and the pusillanimous pissants who make them possible.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is from today’s Arizona Republic:

Businesses that send employees door to door through Phoenix neighborhoods have jumped into the discussion over whether the city should require peddlers to be licensed before ringing doorbells.

Phoenix is the only major city in the Valley that does not require some sort of business license for door-to-door solicitors. In the past year, council members have been getting complaints about bad behavior by people who sell door to door.

On Tuesday, about 25 residents and business representatives gathered at the Phoenix Public Library’s main branch for the first of seven public hearings the city will hold on the issue.

Of course we need a new law. Why should fully-grown adults be expected to confront and respond to “bad behavior” without Big Brother to scare away the bad guys and Big Mother to kiss their boo-boos?

But wait. There’s more.

About half of those attending represented areas that are fed up with solicitors. The rest represented businesses that had a range of opinions on regulation.

This is a fact: Business “regulations” are written by and for the businesses putatively being “regulated.” They put the Rotarian in Rotarian Socialism. Hide and watch:

“We are in favor of regulation and monitoring of door-to-door solicitors,” said Magnolia Lee, who described herself as business consultant who represents a small group called Sales, Solicitation and Distribution United.

“There needs to be some sort of standard for professional and courteous conduct,” she said.

What’s the standard? Me-and-mine, not thee-and-thine. The “regulations” will advantage Lee’s clients by disadvantaging their competitors. This is the objective sought by all “regulation.”

But we’re not done yet:

Marc Scher, government relations director for the Phoenix Association of Realtors, said his group favors licensing people who ring doorbells to sell products but wants any new law to exempt real estate sales people seeking listings.

“Realtors have been going and knocking on doors and introducing themselves to their neighbors,” he said. “There has to be a differentiation between selling a product and a relationship.”

This would the the anti-dog-eat-dog rule, straight out of Atlas Shrugged. Steal the other guy’s dinner, but keep your mitts off mine! Makes you proud to be a Realtor, Read more

May 26, 2010

Using Captcha to Capture Idiotic Real Estate Agents

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

A CAPTCHA is a challenge-response test most often placed within web forms to determine whether the user is human. The purpose of CAPTCHA is to block form submissions by spambots, which are automated scripts that post spam content everywhere they can.

Somebody’s Got to Stop the Stupid

Okay, a bit of a rant.  But I’ll bet you’ll want to jump on the proverbial bandwagon once I’m exhausted, spent and fallen down in subluxed joy after finishing this. The outlet for my frustration came courtesy of a Facebook comment by Mary McKnight. “Thanks, Mary.”

If there’s one theme that Bloodhound blog has perpetuated, promulgated and promoted, it’s excellence. A close second would probably be splendor. Tom Johnson perhaps put his arms around what I’m about to rant a little over tonight, and he did it with this post about a famous Greek historical event.  The Spartans were professional soldiers. They studied their craft. They studied their history. They studied their enemy. They sought fellowship with one another, coupled by a sense of duty to excellence and splendor.

Oh, how I would that my compatriots in the profession of real estate were to embrace the Spartan ethos. And if not, at least an ethos. My encounters of late with real estate agents have left me thinking they lack not only a distinctive character, not only fundamental values, but simply a lack of any character, training or professionalism whatsoever.  In short, I’ve had my fill recently with agents who have no common sense, no commitment to excellence, no knowledge commensurate with their duties, no bleeping right to be called a professional real estate agent, and certainly no right to practice the longstanding legal requirements of agency.

I’ve had agents not call me back.  Then, then don’t call me back.   They tell me to sign contracts that they know have errors in them.  They provide inaccurate information to me about contracts they represent. They cant’ find documents. They can’t find the time to do what needs to be done. They can’t find their own assholes, honest. What they can Read more

May 26, 2010

Capitalist going green: Why the hate during my quest to go paperless?

by

Realtor, Guerilla Technologist

Author website

If you’re an artist or a tree hunger, you may want to read this post and re-tweet or repost this on your left wing blog while you’re probably still living in your parent’s basement trying to help save earth worms and maggots!  Hey artists of the world, after reading you may feel like you should be on the right, instead of the left (wink).  Does anyone every feel like when someone gives you literature or a brochure on products or even a simple appointment reminder slip from the doctor that you try everything in your power to be polite and kindly say, “No thank you, I can save that reminder in my phone” or even ask a sales rep to email you that brochure?

My story is simple.  I am a capitalist who is trying to go paperless.  Why would I need paper when I have a tablet pc and also receive email?  You see what I have been finding is that people in general take offense to the fact that I kindly decline their literature or appointment reminder slip.  Simply put, my life is organized all virtually.  As a matter of fact, I recently purchased a professional scanner the “Xerox documate 152”.  I simply scan all the closing papers to my hard drive and carbonite automatically backups up my hard drive daily.  I’m way more efficient and organized which allows me to close more deals and wow customer and enjoy my life more at the same time.

I do send out snail mail for marketing purposes yes, however, the real question I am trying to pry out of you right is do you see yourself going paperless (or near paperless) anytime soon?  If yes, describe how you think people will react towards if you kindly decline literature, ect, ect and as that is all be emailed to your email address for receive.

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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