September 1st, 2010
How strong are your relationships?
I have to laugh because I was at a Starbucks coffee shop the other day over hearing two 20 somethings talking about all the friends they each had on facebook. It was almost like a competition between the two of them. Not that having 3000 friends is a bad thing but really whats the point. What came to mind was how Real Estate isn’t just about buying and selling homes, it has far more to do with great relationships that are cultivated on a daily basis.
Today the mode of interactions is always changing and as I’m out in the field teaching how Social Media helps us to better connect I still see sceptics that use the 4000 friends, 20 something as the bench mark to dismiss this amazing world of Social Media.
If you think about it however it is pretty simple. Albeit Social Media may be the forum in which we interact the most, it is really just what I call word of mouth via Social Media in 2010. You also have to remember that no matter how often you interact it has to do with quality vs quantity. It would be very difficult to have 3000 meaningful relationships on a daily basis. That said we live in a world where word of mouth and recommendations are key to the decisions we each make every day about the services and products we choose to use. The richer the relationship the more weight I put on that friends recommendation.
Recently I saw this video from Seth Godin that really spells out what Social Media AKA (relationships) should be about and I would throw in the caveat that this doesn’t apply to just Social Media for business but also Social Media for personal sphere. Just because the connection has moved to the digital world doesn’t mean that it should be any less sincere. The idea is to show that you care, and that you listen and you add value. Relationships weather they are face to face or digital they have to add value to both parties or they are just what Seth says they are “worthless.”
I know your reading this thinking how does this relate to me the buyer or seller? From the perspective of Windermere we don’t want to have thousands of worthless connections but rather fewer great satisfied individuals living in our communities we server that add value. We want to connect and better understand our customer via or Brokers in the field. We would love know how your real estate agent connects with you?
“While having plenty of friends is nice, how do you choose who to keep in your network?”
“Tell us some of your social media relationship success stories?”
August 24th, 2010
Being factual today is more important than ever.
Seems that today everyone and their mother are walking around with hand held smart phones and they have them in quick draw mode. More so than ever you need to make sure you know what your talking about these days.
My father is a great example of this. In his day when you told a story it was always ok to make some things a bit bigger for the sake of a good story, and if you didn’t know the exact answer then you just made something up. Heck I still do that to this day but what I’m finding out is that your BS can be easily discovered in a matter of minuets. My son who is 7 asked his grandfather one day, “why the Ocean is salty?” The answer that was given, although not correct none the less, was amusing and my 7 year old took it hook line and sinker. But standing behind my father was my 18 yr old Nephew. The one person that if your facts aren’t in line then get ready because with 3 quick flicks of the finger on the I phone and “Ba Boom!” He has the correct information.
So take the same scenario but instead of a 7 year it’s a customer at your open house and your being asked questions from a potential buyer or seller. You reply with some facts that may or may not be exact. It only takes the savvy customer about 5 minuets to do some fact checking on their smart phone to verify what you have told them to be true.
I’m a strong believer that first impressions are key to a good start to a good relationship. So if this is the case you need to arm yourself with tools and applications that enable you to answer questions accurately. Here are my suggestions.
1. Have a smart phone, my recommendation would be the Driod Google phone or an I phone
2. If you really want to look impressive the I pad is a neat tool with the 3G and wireless connections
3. A simple laptop computer with a aircard from you cell services provider will do the trick.
4. There are many useful Applications on the smart phone to help you access data faster. Here is the Android market place and the I phone app store.
Last but not least remember it is also perfectly ok to say “I don’t know but I can get that answere for you rather quickly.”
If you know of any useful apps I would love for you to share them with our readers.
July 27th, 2010
Real Estate Scam from China.
Last week, one of our agents was contacted via email from a man wanting to buy this agent’s listing (Condo). This man claims he is about to retire from China and move to the USA. He wants to pay cash and wants the agent to write up the transaction and Docusign it to him. The agent was a bit suspicious and told this man he would need to send a check for the entire purchase price and deposit it with escrow immediately. Of course the man said he wouldn’t do that but he would send the agent a copy of his bank statement showing he had sufficient funds to close. The man sends a copy of his passport and a copy of his bank statement showing plenty of money to close. The agent still a bit hesitant sends the P & S via Docusign and can see that the buyer did open the file and said he needed to have his attorney review it. The agent called the number on the bank statement for the bank to verify the funds, but the buyer had blacked out the account number and the bank said they needed the account number to verify.
The agent then told someone else about this and they did a little detective work and found out this guy has done this many times. He sends escrow the earnest money check and then wants out of the deal and wants the earnest money back right away. Problem is, the check he sends is no good to begin with.
This is a huge waste of our agents time and all agents need to know this guy is doing this a lot per a website that we found:
Click here to see the comments on this scam
Agents always be aware, this stuff happens from time to time and you need to be on guard.
July 20th, 2010
Things I learned from the Inman Connect in San Fransisco.
July 13th to the 15th I attended Inamn Connect in San Fransisco. I had a great time seeing a lot of new things. Also some not so new things, and then some things that didn’t impress me at all. The 3 things I came away with were..
1. The Real Estate Industry as a whole needs to work on our Customer Services. Today the customer demands a lot. Not that they haven’t in the past but their attention is being pulled in many different ways, and their options are many. As Brokers we live in an independent contractor world so keeping customer services consistent can be a challenge at times.
Brokers I would take a close look at your client surveys and even a closer look at your agent’s as to what level of customer services they perceive they are providing and compare it to what the customer’s feels they are getting. Also what is the customer services level your agents feel they get from you. Yes I’m in the hot seat as well, what level of customer services do owners feel they get from their franchiser? We all need to make sure we are exceeding expectations.
2.Local, Local, Local! The information we are providing today to our customers needs to be hyper local, and packed with great content. The days of a static listing search websites are becoming a thing of the past. Social Networking and Twitter are taking front staged backed by a content rich very local company blog. Here is good example of an office doing just that. Whidbey Island Windermere
3. Mobile! Mobile! Mobile! and yes Geo location. Sites like foursquare, pegshot, Fwix, and others are really pushing the Global position concept. I-Pad is popular, and according to a Morgan Stanley report smart phone sales will surpass PC’s and laptops by 2012. 
It was great to listen to speakers from inside and outside our industry, not sure why we keep having Craig Newmark talk. He is a bright guy and very interesting but every year he pretty much says the same thing. Would be nice to get some fresh perspectives next year. Love what you do Craig but it’s time for new material.
Great stuff from Microsoft Live Labs. Pivot, Seadragon, and Photsynth. Lots of new vendors with some very interesting concepts. Peep.ly is something worth taking a look at. If you attended please share what you got out of it.
June 29th, 2010
A different spin on Social Media.
So today I had to de-friend someone. Why you ask?
Because they were so focused on being a Real Estate agent that they no longer added value to my wall, but rather filled it up with listing noise that I wasn’t interested in hearing about.
Lets remember that Social media is about being social. If we wanted to be sold to then it would be called Sold Media. I think too many people are way to focused on one particular topic and they try to push that topic everyday to their social media world. After awhile we become numb to it. If all you ever do is talk about your new listings, and your open houses, and I’m not in the market to buy or sell a house you become white noise.I don’t see it any longer and I don’t hear it.
But if you instead try to be real and post items of value that veer off topic but are interesting. Or you provide a useful resources and keep it fresh, then you are going to hold my interest. A recent article I read on socialmediatoday.com was called “Engagement or RElevancy: What is More Important in Social Media?”
It really drove the point home for me. Especially the comment from Katie Urbain where she says.
“ if business x is constantly and excessively talking about it’s product, it’s prices, it’s news, and it’s specials I am going to quit paying any attention if I am not currently in “buying mode”. This will result in a “boy who cried wolf” scenario. So when the said company posts something relevant to me I might miss it as I scan over their avatar in my feed, or I might have quit following them if it is too excessive.”
Bottom line, remember that the people you are talking to in Social Media are your friends. What if every day you ran up to my front door and rang my doorbell and handed me all the new flyer’s of your listings. The first few times I’m going to open my door but about the third time I would just ignore you and stop answering. If all your doing in your Social Media world is promoting your services and products then stop and think about what your doing to your audience that isn’t interested right now?
Would love to hear your feedback!
June 24th, 2010
Whats the deal with business cards?
So I was looking at my desk the other day and noticed a stack of business cards that I have collected over the past few months.
You know how it goes, you go to a business meeting and we all exchange business cards. While in the meeting if I look around the room I also notice that everyone has a Iphone, or a Blackberry or Driod. Why are we handing each other a business card? I look at your card to see your title then it goes in my folder, then on my desk, then in the garbage. If you really left an impression then just maybe I’ll take the time to put your info into my data base. Most of the time I wait for you to e-mail me, then I get your info from your e-mail signature. Don’t even get me started on people that don’t use an e-mail signature!
So this article I was reading from Mashable called,”Why your next card may be virtual” had some great points to be made as to why we should stop using business cards all together. I don’t think it is going to happen over night, mainly because people still like to be creative and use the card to help them stand out, but at the same time it is rare that I keep business cards around for very long. I do however keep data and contact information for ever in many cases.
A digital business card has a great chance of making it into my data base, where handing me a business card may not. Take a look at this new technology, called Bump. Granted you both need to have the app on your phone but that is even becoming more common today. I think as more and more people are trying to go paperless it makes since, last time I looked business cards are made out of paper! Just trying to think out of the box.
Would love to hear your pros and cons for business cards!
June 10th, 2010
How do you get back to the basics when the basics have changed?
Recently I attended the Windermere Owners Retreat in Suncadia Washington. This is where 100+ Windermere Owners got together for 3 days to talk about where this business of Real Estate is going and how we are going to adapt?
We had a key note speaker with us by the name of Michael Staver.
He had a lot of great things to say but the one thing that really stuck out in my mind was the idea that as brokers today we seem to want to keep doing things the same way we always have and not step out of the box. The way he described it was like this.
Everyone is saying we just need to get back to basics and work harder. Well that is great but guess what folks? The basics have changed. The basics are different today. This is still very much a relationship business but how we build relationships have really changed. We always say we want to change but then we don’t.
I read this blog article the other day and it rings true, you have to love what you do.
Many time we fail not because we aren’t working hard enough but we just don’t love what we do. Michael Staver talked about the idea that if you really wanted to do something you would, but many times we get caught up in the excuses about how we can’t do something rather than how we are going to move forward. If you find yourself in this situation then take a min and ask yourself, is what your doing today something your passionate about? If the answer is no then maybe it’s time for a change.
May 25th, 2010
J.J.’s Way, AKA John Jacobi
So I’m at my desk this morning and finding that I have more things to do then hours in the day. You could say there was some frustration, anxiety, and stress. I got up to get a 3rd cup of coffee and just looking up on my bulletin board I saw something that was given to me when I first started working for Windermere 14 years ago. It was something called J.J.’s Way. J.J. is John Jacobi the founder of Windermere Real Estate.
With everything we face today in work, and life I think theses are some great words of advice. So after reading this I was put at ease and back on track. Hope these words help you in the way they helped me?
May 20th, 2010
Starbucks has it figured out.
Recently watched this video form the Social Media Examiner Blog where they interviewed Alex Wheeler who heads up Starbucks social media strategy.
I believe Windermere is similar to Starbucks in that we have overtime created a very strong and successful brand, one agent, one owner, and one office at a time. This didn’t happen over night but happends because we found great people and applied great ideas to a business that on it’s best day wasn’t very professional. When you listen to Alex talk in this video you will hear her say that Starbucks business is still all about relationships and all Social Media allows them to do is have a bigger reach with an already successful brand. Keep in mind your business is about relationships and the question I put out to you would be this. How are you taking your existing relationships and using Social Media to reach out past your friends of friends and have the success that Alex is talking about?
April 19th, 2010
Digital Interaction gets results.
So this is a good example of how sometimes sending an e-mail does help.
Today I received a notice on my American Express account that my payment was late. Normally I’m not a late pay guy and with this particular card I’ve have never had a problem. I have had this card for over 10 years and my record is spotless. So when I saw that my card was assessed a $39.00 late fee I was a bit taken back and very quickly assumed with a simple phone call this issue could be resolved quickly.
WRONG!
I spoke with a very friendly customer services rep who started off the conversation with this ” Hi Mr. Fanning how may I help you today? Making sure you are 100% satisfied with our services is my job!”
Ok so this should be easy. I stated how I was a loyal customer and never had a late pay and therefor could they reverse the late penalty? She put me on hold and came back and said according to the computer screen that was not possible. What? So I asked one more time and got the same answer.
I then asked to speak to a Manager. She placed me on hold then a very nice Manager came on with the same tag line and basically repeated to me what the customer Services Rep said. I was shocked. I think I said “is there someone there I can speak to that understands Customer Services?” She very kindly said that she was the end of the road and very sorry but the charge would stand.
Well I hung up and went to the site and found an e-mail address for customer Services. I very quickly in 30 words or less explained my situation in the e-mail and hit send.
Voila!
This is the mail I got back with in about 30 min.
| Dear Michael Fanning,
I thank you for giving me the opportunity to be of service to you. I am concerned that you have had an unpleasant experience with American Express. I also understand your concern regarding the late fee of $39.00 reflecting on your account. You have been an excellent customer with us and I thank you for making payments on time. As a gesture of respect to your relationship with American Express and our commitment for impeccable customer service, I have credited your Card account in the amount of $39.00 for the late fee that was assessed to your account. This credit will appear on an upcoming statement. I hope my action meets with your approval, and I appreciate the opportunity to be of service. We deeply regret that this experience has caused you to question your relationship with our company. You have been a valued Cardmember, and we appreciate your loyalty to American Express. We hope that you will afford us another opportunity to serve your Card needs. Please do not hesitate to email us again should you require further assistance. We value the relationship built with you since 2004 and we hope that you will continue to allow us to meet your Card needs in the future. Have a nice and smiling day.Sincerely, Sheetal Aneja |
Way to go Sheetal. Thank you for keeping me as a customer.
