November 6th, 2009
Embrace change and succeed in business.
In the world of Real Estate, especially today we are in a state of flux. The economy has taken a big toll on our business, relationship building and marketing are going digital, and the banking industry is causing real estate deals to fall out of escrow on a daily basis. All that said it really boils down to change. In any business you have to always be open minded to new ways of doing business and thinking out of the box.
Many real estate professionals today suffer from trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Never befor have we seen such change in a short period of time. So as you look at your business think about these three thing that were said best by Don Price
1. Embrace change and the challenge that goes along with it. Develop the confidence in yourself to survive whatever comes your way. Try new and unexplored ways of marketing to grow your business.
2. Increase your flexibility. Take a serious inventory of your rigid routines and thinking patterns. Then make some deliberate changes in the way you think and operate. Having difficulty in forcing the changes? Look in the mirror; remind yourself that the price of being inflexible results in stifled growth, and being left behind.
3. Stop being content with the same predictable activities every day. Most new ventures, marketing ideas and activities carry an unfamiliar ring and a fear of failure, but these negative emotions are usually short lived.
Not my words but good words to think about as we approach the end of 09 and look to 2010. I would challenge you to think outside the box with your business. Remember that the Real Estate business is a relationship business and always will be. How are you creating stronger relationships with your customers? Are you adding value, are your listening, and are you engaging them on a frequent basis. Are you providing them with something they aren’t getting elsewhere? Think about transparency and being a real person and not a sales person. Also if you have some good ideas on this topic I would love to get your feedback.
Thanks for taking the time.
October 21st, 2009
Not my general topic but inportant.
Hi Neighbors,
I don’t normally campaign or solicit letters, but the new school boundary proposed by the Seattle School District impacts us all. As you are likely aware, the North East cluster has a real issue with over-crowding in elementary, middle and high school. There has been much time and consideration spent addressing the issue and the proposed new plan involves resetting boundaries (map). We personally support this goal. However, the new boundaries do not promote diversity, safety or walk ability –three of the six criteria considered for the plan. Why should you care? The new boundaries could impact you –even if you don’t have a child attending public schools!
We are asking for you to consider the following, and if compelled, send mail by October 30th asking the Seattle School board to REJECT the proposed boundaries.
Our family strongly supports the over-arching goals laid out by the Seattle Superintendent. However there are several issues we believe need addressing before the School Board should elect this proposal. The current plan includes the reopening of Sand Point Elementary school (the little elementary school tucked behind Pagaliacci pizza on Sand Point Way). The school board insists that equality, safety and walk ability were three of the six criteria for school assignment. However the proposed boundaries for Sand Point Elementary would suggest otherwise:
1. Safety –all children in Hawthorne Hills will be assigned to Sandpoint Elementary, requiring children as young as five to cross Sand Point Way –a four lane, 40 mph road. Children from Windermere will NOT be a part of the Sand Point school population. Even though this community is on the east side of Sand Point Way, lowering potential hazards for kids walking to school. In fact, the Laurelhurst elementary boundaries remained untouched in this proposal.
2. Diversity — Sand Point Elementary will draw a majority of its students from the UW student apartments near Magnuson Park & low income/transitional housing. It is projected that approx. 33% of the school will be on the free lunch program, (for comparison, View Ridge, Laurelhurst & Bryant have less than 10% on free lunch). Many are projecting lower parent involvement and incremental funds for Sand Point compared to the other schools in the area. This puts Sand Point at a disadvantage
3. Walk ability/access –Asking families on the west side of Sand Point Way to cross a major thorough fare means walking will be unlikely. Making matters worse, there is little infrastructure to allow for parents to drive and drop off children. The district is asking for the city to update roads to allow better access. This means additional dollars spent on new roads, etc.
If equality, safety and walk ability don’t pique your interest, consider that Sand Point as a reference school will potentially lower home resale values in Hawthorne Hills as it makes our area less than ideal to families looking to purchase homes associated with a strong school. Even though you aren’t directly impacted by the changes, you may see an indirect effect in the way of property value.
We encourage you to take a moment and review the proposed changes. There is ample information available on the following web sites:
· Keep Our Kids Together (site committed to grandfathering siblings during the transition phase)
· Seattle School Board “Excellence for all” Plan
If you agree this plan needs more consideration, PLEASE TAKE ACTION by October 30th. Email each of the board members and ask them to:
1. Reject the current boundaries. Ask them to consider pulling Sand Point Elementary population from Windermere and other neighborhoods to the South East of Sand Point Elementary
2. Consider grandfathering siblings during the five-year transition. The Seattle School Board should consider the needs of current families as well as future families. Early sample data shows that grandfathering siblings to the older child’s elementary school will have little impact on enrollment over the next five years.
October 16th, 2009
The word MARKETING does not exist in SOCIAL NETWORKING!
Ok, this is more of a rant; I’ll admit it.
I just read a great article courtesy of a Facebook post by Rich Jacobsen.
“How to Take Your Social Networking to the next level”
The article was about social networking and had five really great points that we can all benefit from. No where in the article did it say take your listings and post them to your friend’s list and advertise. This really drives me crazy that agents continue to do this. Ask yourself this question: If every time you were invited to a cocktail party you showed up with an A-board, a card table and flyers for all your listings, how many times do you think your friends would invite you back to their party? You know the answer.
We know you are in real estate, and we know that you have homes listed. If we want to see your listings we will go to a real estate website and look at them. Stop putting them on Facebook. There is one exception; if you happen to bring on a great listing that is unique or has something about it that people would find interesting then point that out, but don’t just take your craigslist link or your flyer page and paste it to your wall. Please read the article I referenced above, be engaging, get connected with your network and stop selling.
Thanks for taking the time.
October 7th, 2009
Do you Bing? I do!
Ok so I have to say that I use to be a hard core Google user but lately I find myself going to Bing a lot more. Why you ask? I love the ability to do a visual search. It puts data into these image categories and then it allows you to click on one of the image boxes to start your search. Very creative and a new fresh look at how we search. Remember all you Google people keep you minds open for fresh new ideas Bing is giving Google a run for their money.
October 7th, 2009
Marketing Creativity
So I have to say that Google is pretty creative in that the page they use really doesn’t have anything on it except for the word Google. It is what they do with that word that makes them so creative. I’m curious just how many people go to google just to see what they will do each week with the word google. The one today was great check it out.
October 1st, 2009
One of our own becomes a Trulia Mayor.
So you don’t like to blog, or you wonder if blogging will really help your business. Well, if you ask Carl Medford he will tell you exactly how it’s worked for him.
“Carl Medford (Fremont, CA) – Windermere Agent – TruliaPro
With the motto of, “Helping You Write The Next Chapter In Your Life,”™ Carl is one of the “next generation” of Web-based REALTORS. Carl typically transforms any local coffeehouse into an office; meeting with clients in any location and conducting business while enjoying the best coffee available! Instead of focusing on a specific neighborhood, Carl has earned the distinction of being a “Regional Expert,” tracking trends and critical information in multiple markets, thus bringing the broadest possible expertise and service to his clients. In addition to being a REALTOR, Carl is a licensed general contractor and also owns “The Next Stage,” a fully professional and accredited home staging company. Lastly, Carl has developed “The Ultimate Home Buying Experience,”™. He is featured weekly in “Real Estate Reality” in the Real Estate section of the San Leandro Times and Castro Valley Forum newspapers.
Carl has a gift to deliver a great message through his writing skills. He took the Trulia Voices by the horns and now has become one of the Trulia Mayors on Voices. What does a Mayor get to do you ask?….” From his trulia profile.
The ‘Trulia Mayor’ program is a new initiative that helps strengthen and expand the Trulia Voices community including nearly 400,000 real estate professionals.
Trulia Mayors are great social media role models and innovators, and will represent the opinions of real estate professionals in various Trulia efforts. Mayors frequently attend roundtable meetings, get sneak peeks of upcoming projects and provide their input in content quality matters on Trulia Voices. Additionally, Trulia Mayors participate in various PR and marketing efforts, such as co-hosting local events and co-authoring newsletters and articles, to spread their knowledge and provide expert advice to consumers and professionals alike. Bottom line - it’s pretty cool.
You can identify the Trulia Mayors in the Trulia Voices community by a special Mayor badge. They continue participating on the Trulia Voices community by asking and answering questions and blogging. The Trulia Mayors are available to assist consumers when they have questions or concerns aboutTrulia or the Trulia Voices community, and they are happy to share their experiences and knowledge.
The inaugural Trulia Mayors are five real estate professionals who have led by example within the Trulia Voices community, and we’re thrilled that each of them accepted their volunteer Mayoral appointments! It’s a great start to a program that will eventually include a representative from each state.”
I would encourage to see what Carl has done so you’ll know that there is room for all of us to excel in the world using online social networking tools. The consumer is hungry for the information you have to share.
September 22nd, 2009
What is the hype of the IPhone?
So Redfin just launched a I phone app, John L. Scott just launched a Iphone app, who hasn’t launched a Iphone app? “Windermere that’s who” You may ask “what is all the hype, everyone has an Iphone?” Really? Well I don’t and I don’t intend to get one anytime soon. There are a few reasons why. For starters AT&T can’t seem to provide a services that is better if not the same as Sprint in coverage. They have a data plan that I would have to sell my first born to afford. My blackberry does just fine finding a great place for me to enjoy a nice dinner from time to time.
All kidding aside lets look at the facts. In a recent article in Fortune magazine (Read it) How Blackberry Does it by Jessi Hempel. It really gives you a good idea of the penetration Apple has over RIM. IF Windermere were to invest money in anything we want to make sure we have a good ROI. What is our penetration look like in the Apple real estate app world. This article shows that It isn’t really Apple that is taking the Hand Held world by storm but rather Blackberry.
I get it that it is cool and hip, but remember we are in business and when your in business you have to make sure you do things at the right time and get the biggest impact. Here is a graph showing what has happened from 2006 to 2009 in the handheld world.
Hmmmm! So 11% as of 2009 Q1. Doesn’t sound like a huge number when it comes to making a large impact. That said do we need a handheld real estate application sure we do. Lets let AT&T get out of the Apple contract and see what happens then. I’m pretty sure that number will grow larger but for today word on the street the handheld app form redfin and John L Scott isn’t setting the world on fire from what I can tell.
August 21st, 2009
Understanding good facebook etiquette!
Recently Justin Waskow and I taught an advanced facebook class where we demonstrated how to use facebook to reach out to your sphere in better ways. One of the questions that came in was about putting links to your listings up on wall posts. Both Justin and I agreed that this is not a good idea. I think that with any social networking application there is common etiquette and some real good Do’s and Don’ts.
Just yesterday my good friend Jeanne Hasenmiller sent me over an article from CNN titled The 12 most annoying types of facebookers . This article makes some good points and I would encourage you to not be an annoying facebooker.
August 14th, 2009
I’m not the only one not reading the News Paper!
Interesting times that we live in today. After going through our latest meetings with Windermere Owners about advertising in the world of realtor.com I still am shocked at how the newspaper keeps coming up in our conversations. I just don’t know what aversion we have to limiting how we participate with the news paper. Notice I didn’t say get out of the newspaper but rather how do we still appeal to that very small group that still read the paper and see a return on our investment? I realized that it starts with education.
Here is a great article that can help to explain what is going on with the newspapers both print and online. I think it is fair to say that News Papers are failing today in the print world. What about their online world? Many think they will just put the news on line and move the eyeballs over. This isn’t what is happening however. Subscribers on the whole are just plain leaving the paper both print and online as well. This graph below is from Comscore website. After reading this article you can see that as a company that has to market daily to our customers we need to be looking at different Internet based solutions and understand that as much as we may like our Sunday morning coffee and paper the eyeball isn’t there like it use to be.
As Print Newspapers Decline, How Does Digital Fill the Void?
So why is this happening? There are many reasons but let me just give you a few that show you just how the customer is getting news.
RSS feeds are pretty amazing. Today with handheld devices like blackberrys and I phones you really have access to real time information just a click away. Sites like NPR RSS. or Yahoo News RSS, and Newsgator the I phone app are tools that allow the handheld user access to real time news and lets me the reader choose what news I’m interested in getting. Yes the 3.0 world of News.
CNN just had an article talking about the decline on a national level but also states that
So my concern is that as we move forward in this ever changing world we can’t just be deaf, dumb, and blind to this change. We have to react and work together to figure out how we are going to market in this new age of Social Networking sites and the world of on demand news and advertising. I would love to hear what Ideas you as the reader has, please share.
July 16th, 2009
News Paper Advertising REALLY?
“The last time I read a news paper I was cracking my buggy whip and looking for fresh ground to plant my claim flag.”
All kidding aside, one of the challenges I see today in the world of Real Estate is based on how we market and where we market. I was in a meeting not too long ago where we had Windermere Owners trying to figure out the spend in a local news paper and I asked the question why? The response I got was “The sellers want it, it still helps us get listings.” I understand that thinking on the surface but if we dig deeper why does the seller have this perception that advertising in a news paper helps to sell their home. In my opinion the dollars used for that spend could have such greater impact if used elsewhere.
So what is the solution, it starts with educating the messenger. That would be the Realtor, in this day and age you have to be able to articulate your marketing program and why you do what you do and why your program limits the amount of traditional marketing and focuses more on the Internet and social marketing.
Here are some graphs to better articulate what is happening to the eyeballs in the world of print.
As you can see from the data above the drop in readers and the increase in Internet marketing is making the newspaper a tool of the past. I get it however it is hard to not use the paper if you do not have a good grasp of what your going to replace it with. You may want to read one of my older posts where I explain the power of craigslist and how Windermere is shifting our thinking and doing more with listing syndication and less with print advertising. It is really up to you the agent to use tools that you have today like, Google Analytics, Ubadoo/Listing express reporting tools, to help your clients understand where the best placement of their listing should be. You also will find that your spend will be less but with much greater impact and the traffic is actually trackable.
Also please let me know where we can do a better job of helping you better understand how to use these tools in your business.
