Referrals are almost a thing of the past…

I was talking with a real estate friend of mine a couple of days ago & we were discussing how referrals seem to be almost non-existent between agents nowadays.

Since all the disclosure laws were brought in, getting a potential seller to sign a form to agree that the agent will receive a 20% referral fee has not only made it more difficult to refer a client, but because of the tall poppy syndrome, people will actually go to a different agent just so the referring agent doesn’t receive any commission. This means that both agents normally lose out.

It’s destroyed the whole referral system.

The disclosure of referral fees between real estate agents has also had a detrimental effect within a lot of the franchise groups.

But like with everything, it’s important not to dwell on the past but find a way to embrace these changes & make it work for you.

Real estate agents can easily list & sell a property outside of their service area & receive the whole commission, rather than the worrying about disclosure laws & only receiving a 20% referral fee.

For instance I’ve heard of one agent who sold 9 properties this month that are outside of their normal service area.

The internet now provides the tools that will enable you to list & sell properties outside your area.

The ‘Six Step Strategy’ for listing a property outside your area.

Step 1. Go into the agent admin part of realestate.com.au & domain.com.au and get a quote on how much an e-brochure would cost & how many people you could send the listing out to.

I’m not suggesting you spend any money, just get a quote on an e-brochure, because this will provide you with an estimate of exactly how many people you can email the listing details to within that target area, without even having an office located within that neighbourhood.

This will remove any issues about having no local buyers in your database.

Via these major portals you could demonstrate that you have hundreds of potential buyers for the property that you will be in contact with as soon as the property goes on the market.

The beauty with this strategy, is that you don’t have to go to the expense of using the e-brochure initially because these potential buyers will be receiving the initial email alert from the major portals once you’ve uploaded the listing anyway.

If you want to, you can always send an e-brochure further into the campaign, maybe after a substantial price reduction.

Step 2. Set up an Open Home schedule & explain that buyers rarely meet agents at the real estate offices anymore.

It may also help to explain that once buyers have checked out more detail about a property online they normally select the homes they want to inspect, contact the agent & arrange to meet the agents at the home to do an inspection.

Step 3. Explain the benefits of doing a Long Copy promotion. A long copy advertisement basically means that lots of information is provided about the property online & any person who visits their home online will have seen almost enough to have basically done their first inspection of the home, but instead it takes place online. This can be done by having lots of images& heaps of detail within the description.

That way when the physical inspection takes place it will be as if the buyer is doing a second inspection on the home just for verification. PLUS you as the agent should receive better qualified enquiries on the home.

Step 4. Offer the sellers a Website for their Home. This will provide you with an edge over your competition.

You can even create a Free Demo Website right before the client’s eyes.

A sample of an individual property website provider for Australian & NZ agents can be found at http://www.888AnySt.com

The user friendly software enables agents to ask specific involvement questions & close for the listing within approx. 5-10 minutes.

Step 5. Even though you’re from out of the area, you can still advertise the property in their local paper if you want to.

Plus, if you use an individual property website you can save money on print media.

By creating a Website for their Home & emphasising the web address for the property (eg. 888AnySt.com) in the advertisement, you can afford to cut your ad down by anywhere from 50 – 80% and generate the same traffic, if not more, directly to your listing.

This will save you or your potential vendor a fortune in expensive, ineffective print media campaigns.

The daily website statistics tracks visitors to the individual property website, which enables you to make an educated decision on whether to change the advertisement or change the asking price before wasting any more money on ineffective print media marketing campaigns.

Step 6. Do Price Comparisons – Use RP Data, Red Square, Price Finder, etc for pricing the home.

PS. Remember to look after your buyers because you might just find that they have to sell before they buy & you could end up with a few more listings that you can easily sell from outside of your immediate service area.

Also, you can always use this Six Step Strategy to secure listings in your existing service area too.

This week I had the sad news that a friend of mine working within the real estate industry decided to take his own life.

I know that this is a delicate issue to discuss & I understand that my mate made his decision, but I can’t help but think that he may still be here if only he could have had a longer view on life.

Everybody goes through some tough times. Now, with the economy changing & financial stresses happening, it’s really important to embrace the good things that you have right now & also look forward to all the wonderful things in life that are ahead of you.

So this week, I thought I’d share some personal thoughts on how to look forward to a long & happy life.

Whilst I have short term goals & love living life in the moment with my family & friends, I also have a number of older friends who now have grandchildren and the joy that the grandchildren have brought into their lives is something that I look forward to experiencing in my life too.

This won’t be happening for quite a while yet, it’s a long term goal.

In fact, my long term goal is to be able to dance at all of my grandchildrens’ weddings & live long enough to be a great grandfather.

Firstly to achieve this goal I have to live a long life and secondly, I’ll need to be fit enough to dance. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to wrap dance or river dance, but I’ll be doing some sort of dancing.

In life it’s important to not only have short term & long term goals but you should also spend a little bit of time reflecting.

One thing I always get a great kick out of is going through some of our family photo albums & re-living some of the great times we’ve already had.

It’s not only great fun to look back on these good times, but it’s also very inspiring because there’s one thing I’ve noticed about the photos people keep in their photo albums – all the photos seem to be of happy times.

I hope others will consider setting a similar long term goal & this weeks message may help agents to take a broader look on life. If you’re ever going through a rough patch, please remember these four words:-
‘This Too Shall Pass’

I thought I’d share a powerful message from Anthony Robbins about The Power of Clarity & Purpose to help you stay focussed & inspire you to achieve real estate success.

In this video Anthony uncovers one of the greatest secrets to success…

“Life Will Pay Whatever Price You Ask Of It…”

I’ve been reading the book ‘The Millionaire Real Estate Agent’ by Gary Keller and in one section he talks about the 3 L’s of real estate.

1. Leads
2. Listings
3. Leverage

1. Lead generation is absolutely fundamental to the level of success you will achieve in your Real Estate Career, simply because without Leads you’ll never get the opportunity to do a Listing Presentation.

With no Listing Leads it would be just like an actor performing without an audience…it doesn’t matter how good the performance was, it’s no good if there’s no audience (customers).

2. Listings are what a real estate agent receives if they do a good performance & they will normally secure more listings if they know their scripts & dialogues.

Two of the most important parts of the Listing presentation now are getting the pricing right & setting it up to sell.

When the market was booming it was normal for agents to start the asking price a bit above the market because the prices were trending upwards.

But now the initial pricing of a property is vitally important, because within the first few days of being listed the property is normally uploaded onto the real estate portals & these major portals email the new listings out to hundreds of potential buyers.

If your pricing is way off the mark at this point you’ve missed a golden opportunity to secure a sale through these email alerts.

3. Leverage is the only way that you can ultimately enjoy long term real estate success & enjoy a balanced life.

Leverage is the ability to re-distribute what you’ve learnt and promote that across a broader audience. It’s a bit like the difference between a stage show & a movie. Unlike in a stage presentation, a movie the performance is recorded & then can be shown over & over again across the world.

Leverage for a real estate agent revolves around recruiting personnel & using technology to enable you to expand your audience & duplicate your success.

Within the real estate industry there are now a number of online marketing products that have been developed to help real estate agents leverage their time & skills, but unfortunately a lot of the time agents won’t implement them the way they should.

The ones that have are now starting to race ahead of their competition…

If you are looking to Generate More Leads & Leverage Your Time, there’s a number of simple concepts that I’ll be sharing with you that are designed specifically for real estate agents.