ERA Real Estate Launches Agent Coaching Program
ERA® Real Estate announced the launch of its ERA Coaching Program. This robust program, which is designed for all ERA-affiliated agents – whether new or seasoned – is offered at no cost to participants. With this announcement, ERA Real Estate has created a program for agents to develop interpersonal relationships and sales practices, helping them refocus on building their book of business amidst a complex market backdrop.
The ERA Coaching Program will gather agents in their brokerage's office to attend the program via watch parties. The program consists of seven, two-hour live, virtual sessions which will cover topics such as mindset, building a database and pipeline, sphere of influence engagement, building relationships and creating outside sources of business.
Most notably, the course will be led by President of ERA Real Estate, Alex Vidal and the brand's Vice President of Learning, Gino Caropreso. Vidal has personally coached more than 20,000 real estate agents throughout his career in brokerage leadership. Continuing that role as president of a global brand is part of his distinctive "boots on the ground" leadership style. This year alone, Vidal has led an in-person agent mastermind at ERA Real Estate's annual business conference and two all-network virtual sales rallies intended for the ERA® network's more than 43,000 affiliated brokers and agents.
While the agent coaching program will be led by Vidal, local ERA® brand brokers and designated proctors will play an integral role in the initiative's success. The coaching sessions will take place on Mondays, with brokers and proctors receiving class outlines the day before and taking part in a brief update call with Vidal on Monday mornings. Agents will be assigned homework at the end of each Monday session and brokers/proctors will meet with all course participants each Friday for accountability meetings to ensure pull through of the material.
"Coaching agents has long been a passion for me, and I am so excited to bring the ERA Coaching Program to our highly engaged network," said Vidal. "This is a perfect example of a program that will succeed because of the brand's uniquely collaborative nature: content will be delivered from the brand level, and brokers and their designated proctors will ensure that agents optimize the coaching program with personal accountability sessions and local pull through. This is not a 'one and done' type of coaching course. We have established a strong lattice of support extending from the national brand to the local office that will engage agents in bringing their business to the next level. At the end of the day, that's why I'm here: to help our ERA affiliated agents be more successful and live a better life."
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[Podcast] The Benefits and Pitfalls of Agent Coaching with Kathy Schmidt
In this episode of Million Dollar Question, host Billy Ekofo interviews Kathy Schmidt, a seasoned professional with extensive experience in the Edmonton real estate market.
Billy and Kathy discuss the significance of mentorship in real estate, the qualities of effective mentors, and the importance of setting healthy boundaries. The discussion also touches on the dynamic nature of the real estate sector, highlighting the need for two-way communication and humility in mentorship relationships.
Connect with Kathy:
Website: schmidtrealtygroup.com
Listen to this podcast on:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
RadioPublic
Visit the episode homepage for show notes and more detail.
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Why You Need an Open-Door Policy Right Now
In their latest round of funding, OpenDoor scored $325 million in funding. Late last year, SoftBank invested $450 million into Compass. VC money is alive and well, and it's found a home in real estate tech, pouring into the industry. And as we all saw at Inman Connect this month, the competition is as hot as five-star Thai food. It literally hurts to digest.
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3 Ways to Create Top Talent for Your Team
The more sales your agents make, the stronger your business becomes. Because of this, it's natural to want to attract and work with experienced, proven agents. Still, there's something to be said for helping your current agents grow into that role. Agents who haven't yet made it big may be more flexible and open to learning new techniques. And with the right atmosphere, planning, and support, any agent can become a top producer.
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Lost a Listing? Never Again with These Proven Secrets of Top Agents (10/19)
Wednesday, October 19, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT
Have you ever lost a listing to another agent that you felt you had in the bag when you left the seller's house? Find out what that winning agent most likely did and said during his or her presentation in this step by step webinar that hyper focuses on the listing appointment. Pat Hiban has interviewed over 400 top Real Estate agents on his podcast and hand selected 8 of the best to sit down with and give him their listing presentation exactly how they give it to a prospective seller. What he found was there were 6 crucial steps that almost all of them used consistently.
In this webinar Pat will explain the six step process and go into detail as to what is said and done during these steps and why. Discussed will be rapport building, commission improvement techniques, objection handling and more. As a bonus Pat will give all webinar attendees access to several videos included in course he created from these agent interviews for free plus a discount coupon for the entire course should they wish to investigate these agents techniques further
Register now!
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How to Get the Most from Your Real Estate Team
You have a team of real estate agents that give you their all. How do you give them your all, too?
Brokerages are built on your real estate team. The more effective each member, the more effective the team as a whole. The folks at Happy Grasshopper share our commitment to teamwork, and they have some thoughts on how brokers can get them the most of their team that we wanted to share here, too.
Engage them
Before we continue, we want you to think about something: What does your team know about your strategy? If we were to gather your team in a room, would they be able to tell us anything about your strategy? If that answer is no, you're not doing it right.
Keeping your team 'in the know' regarding company decisions, milestones, and expectations will not only keep them informed moving forward, but also make them feel as though they are directly responsible for the direction of the team – which, of course, they are!
Treat them as individuals
Find out everything you can about your team, meeting with them individually to find out what makes them tick. This is a great way to identify what their strengths are and how they may be better utilized. It's amazing how something as simple as chatting over coffee can provide a perspective you had never noticed before.
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How to Triple Your Business by Using the Power of 3! (8/24)
Wednesday, August 24, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT
Learn how to take more listings, on your terms by knowing:
The 3 Criteria to Accept a Client
The 3 Markets and How to Price Accordingly
The 3 Market Outcomes
The 3 Ingredients for a PERFECT Marketing Plan
The 3 Myths that will cost You Money
The 3 Things You Should Know About the Coming Shift
Register now!
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Coach Your Agents to Success
The real estate industry is highly competitive. Every broker-owner wants his brokerage to be successful. Running a successful brokerage is like baking; every ingredient is important and has to be whisked in at the right time! One of the main ingredients in this mixture is agents. Very few are born with a flair for selling real estate, but many have the grit and passion for it. You can easily coach these agents to be successful in what they do – selling real estate.
REALTOR®Mag came out with its 30 successful agents under 30 years of age for 2016. These are the 30 brightest agents out there. But nothing is stopping your agents from being just as good. Here are some key takeaways and practices that make these 30 agents exceptional!
Commit to a physical activity to keep your mind clear and body healthy
Read and stay up to date with the latest trends in your market
Own what you sell, take ownership and think of it as your business
Pay extra attention to relationship-building and personal attention
See your clients as real people and not as $$ signs
Be tech savvy and create a dynamic website
Be meticulous with your tasks. It is great to have attention for detail
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How to Become, Stay and Feel Successful: The Final Secret (6/22)
Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at 10:00 AM PDT
Opportunity is knocking on your door. Don't complain about the noise... open it! During this 90 minutes with Hall of Fame speaker Floyd Wickman you will learn and be inspired to fulfill your full potential with the opportunities you have now. You will learn how to:
Implement the formula that will drive up your production
Keep yourself positive and focused
The number one tool to balance your family and business time
6 production secret of all top producers
Register now!
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Sell a Home in Less than a Week
Worried that your new listing won’t sell as quickly as you’d like?
Watch as John Cochran closes the deal on a home and gets it sold again within a week! Want to learn how to do it?
Here are the 15 steps to selling a home more quickly. The seventh step is crucial!
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What Keeps Your Agents Motivated? [Infographic]
Our team at BoomTown has the pleasure of hosting and attending real estate mastermind events on a regular basis. A frequent topic that we come back to is recruitment and team management. Many of the real estate brokers and team leaders that we work with have a different approach to real estate sales from the typical single agent business model. They are developing teams with specialized roles for Inside Sales, Listing Specialists, Buyer Specialists, Showing Agents, Marketing Managers, Closing Coordinators, etc. Team members are often independent contractors and not employees--however, the challenges are the same. How do we truly motivate our team members in today's work environment?
Income is still a leading factor as everyone needs to support themselves and their families. However, we're finding in the mastermind sessions that money is not everything. Recognition and engagement win out over all other factors. The following infographic from our friends at Rypple does a fantastic job of illustrating the top motivators for today's employees or as we like to call them, team members.
The key takeaways = Coaching, Relationships, and Dialogue. Start implementing weekly team huddles and regular one-on-ones with your agents. And always celebrate the successes!
Click through to the next page to view the infographic.
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Real Estate Technology: Taking Care of Our Peyton Mannings
Okay, so that’s a funny title to give a real estate blog post, huh? I’ve been watching the Peyton Manning drama unfold with great awe. As a San Diego Charger fan (yes, my heart stays forever broken) – it causes me great pause to see him find his way to the Denver Broncos. But what really fascinates me is the media feeding frenzy surrounding his every move. I guess that happens when you’re a four-time MVP, eleven-time Pro Bowler, and vie for nearly every passing record in the books. What’s quite interesting is how teams competed for him – the most talented free agent arguably ever. They rolled out red carpets, dispatched team planes, served up finest brandies, and lit up their fattest Cuban cigars. That’s what you do for the best talent out there. Those owners know Peyton Manning is worth tens of millions of dollars in new gate receipts, merchandise sales, and team value appreciation. It’s a tiny investment for the payoff he’ll certainly bring.
The observation translates to attracting (or keeping) the best agents out there. In my neighborhood of Scripps Ranch, I see the same guy’s name up on almost every sign. He sells the entire area. Over the past decade or so, he has become the Peyton Manning of my little suburban town. I can only imagine what his brokerage does to keep him. His glass is probably never empty. He probably gets the very best support and technology investment the brokerage offers. And, if he doesn’t, then someone else is going to lure him with it.
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Real Estate Marketing: Broker Branding Help Desk
Brokers of all sizes struggle with brand consistency—especially if agent support of the broker’s brand is a desire and not required and/or supported by the broker’s marketing department. It is also the nature of our industry that many agents believe that because a few “rock stars” have built great agent brands, everyone can do it. That would be great, but I’m afraid this simply isn’t true.
Big brokers have marketing teams that support managing the broker brand. The branded materials they create are consistent and communicate effectively. But it can still be a challenge to make sure agents consistently support the broker’s brand. In fact, small brokers typically do not have marketing teams; so worst case, they send the company logo to their agents and hope for the best.
Today, brokers of all sizes need a branding help desk.
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Floor Calls - The Most Wasted Lead Generation Tool Available to Agents
Mitch Ribak shares the following on his blog . . .
According to what I have read, the national average of floor calls converted to customers is a whopping 2%. You ready that right, 2% of the consumers who call a Real Estate office are converted to a customer.
When I first got into Real Estate I was told not to waste my time doing floor time. I was told that they never turn into a customer and that you could be out marketing yourself versus sitting in the office waiting for the phone to ring. That's what I was taught by Realtors who had been in the business for 20 years or more. Of course when I heard that, I realized there was probably a great opportunity to gain business by their lack of abilities.
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Discover How Video Creates More Opportunities, Friendships and Income
If fact when your video tells a story (and all Good Video tells a story) you can create opportunities, which create friendships which lead to income.
In this video interview David Bell of Teldon Marketing and I share our story of how we connected at a Real Estate Mastery Event in Denver CO and how from that meeting we were able to forge a friendship that has subsequently opened up avenues of opportunity and friendships for both of us.
This is a True Story and the video footage I use goes from Denver – NAR Conference in New Orleans – Century 21 Convention Toronto Canada – Century 21 Convention Las Vegas and ends with us doing this video the Real Estate Masters Guild Event Savannah GA!
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If a Technology Solution Isn't Simple, Is It Really a Solution?
Adopting new technology solutions for your business is never an easy decision. With so many choices, weighing the pros and cons is essential to get the best return on investment.
Many companies offering technology solutions are in direct competition with one another, therefore have many similar features with minor variances. Some offer basic packages at little or no cost, while upgrades usually require a monthly payment of some sort.
When deciding on a new solution, it’s important to remember what best serves the individual or the company. A recent article by WAV Group suggests that a successful technology solution should have a clearly defined purpose while being simple to use.
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3 Tips For Making Your Website More Readable
Guest contributor Elan from Ifbyphone says:
Ifbyphone is a voice based marketing automation company. We help businesses manage, measure, and automate voice communications. For example, you can use Ifbyphone's software to measure which marketing efforts generate the most phone leads, manage how you distribute "hot leads" to sales reps, and automate follow-up communications.
We are now on at least the 7th iteration of our website since 2005. Getting better at explaining our value proposition on our website has helped us grow to over 50 employees, earn the trust of thousands of customers, and raise millions of dollars from investors.
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Foreclosure Clean-Out Generates Additional Income
Elaine Zimmermann is the nationally known author of "How to Retire with a Million Dollars - A Levelheaded Guide To Real Estate Investing". She has appeared on numerous national TV business shows. Her endorsements include The New York Times, MONEY Magazine and many others
Guest Contributor Elaine Zimmerman says on the topic of Foreclosure:
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Make Someone's Day!
I made someone`s day last week. How do I know? She told me.
I had a bit of time to kill before an appointment and I was starving, so I stopped off at a nearby deli for a quick bite to eat. I had my notebook with me and started to think about the content for the leadership course that I am coaching in a few weeks. I was looking for words to describe leadership skills. Coming up a bit short, I asked a waitress who was wandering around the following question: "What makes your boss a good leader?" She thought for a moment, and then proceeded to give me a list, which I wrote down.
After my meal, I bumped into the owner of the deli (the waitress's boss) and I shared my findings with her. She was absolutely dumbfounded and delighted. She wanted to know why I asked the question and who I was. She wanted to know what I do for a living and asked for my card.
It was a haphazard encounter, but it was one that was immensely rewarding and insightful for me. Events like this trigger epiphanies, and slowly they formulate strategies that turn into implemented ideas.
So what does all this have to do with everyday life? Everything.
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Do You See What I See?
So many agents are WOW'ed in a sales presentation of the things a product can do and like that the sales person says, "Everything will be set up for you." So agents buy the product, put it in place and wait for results.
This can be very dangerous. Most real estate products are set up with default content to show how you can personalize it. So your client might be getting a message that says: "This is where you add your personal message." Some marketing material may be set up geographically to where the product is produced so your clients may get an email on how to deal with freezing pipes this winter or the ocean surf report.
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Want to Start Effectively Prospecting?
What’s the world coming to? Doesn’t it seem that most businesses today actually are looking for ways to avoid talking to customers? The airlines are a classic example. Want to make an airline reservation by telephone? Good luck! Just to accomplish this means spending several minutes going through an elaborate push-button menu. Then you are on hold for who-knows-how long. Really, the airlines would rather you go online, make your own reservation, get an e-ticket and print out your own itinerary and receipt.
I don’t think companies intend to avoid customers. I think they want to use technology to its fullest extent to serve customers better and in the most cost-efficient way. But they have been overrun by technology.
Some real estate agents are doing the same thing, especially when it comes to prospecting. They are searching for a technique, tool, software or system that will eliminate the task of prospecting, when in fact it will only eliminate prospects. It’s time to get back in touch with some real, fundamental principles about the reality of prospecting.
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Top Recruiting Strategies for 2011
Since the beginning of time in the real estate industry, there has been a focus on the need to recruit. As you begin the new decade of 2010, what are your plans for recruiting solid, producing agents into your brokerage? Are you doing the same things that you have been doing the past 30 years for recruiting? If so, is it working for you? If not, I encourage you to implement one, or more, of the following recruiting strategies.
Create a strong value proposition that you and your team can confidently tell others about. What is unique about your brokerage? How will an experienced real estate professional benefit by joining your firm? What are your key retention tools? Are you talking about them? Is it technology, market share, coaching support? Why do people join your firm and why do they stay?
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QR Code? What is That?
Want to stay on the cutting edge of technology? Here is a cool new technology that has just entered the real estate scene. Imagine the small black and white box to your left could be used to translate your new listing properties details, photos and take homebuyers directly to your website? Meet QR codes. Small and powerful, mobile devices can scan the small code in seconds and get access the information they seek, right from their phones. It is quick and convenient. Techies and Smartphone users are embracing this new technology in droves.
In response to this new technology and the benefits it holds for the real estate industry, here are some interesting things about QR codes.
What is a QR code?
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Google Yourself Now, or Your Referrals Will Die
Real estate agents need to wake up and manage their online reputation. If you don’t think that prospective clients Google you, you are surely mistaken. When you do, you may be amazed at what you find (or don’t find).
What you may find is that your name does not necessarily reflect you. You may share a name with a bunch of people all with the same name. This is a problem that you need to focus on fixing. Having lots of social network accounts and pointing them all to your agent or broker or MLS profile will help with this. Ideally, you would buy the domain name of yourname.com – That works really well.
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Can't Buy Happiness
“The value of a man resides in what he gives not in what he is capable of receiving”- Albert Einstein
“For it is in giving that we receive” – St. Francis of Assisi
Happy Monday! It is hard to believe it is less than a week until New Years! I hope your shopping is done and you are looking forward to short week.
Last week my office took a little time out and volunteered to ring the Salvation Army bell at our local mall for a couple hours. I have to say it was probably a little out of my comfort zone and I had pre- judged what to expect. I stepped further out of my comfort zone by agreeing to take ballroom dancing lessons with my wife but that is a different story. I think I was less concerned about skydiving then I am about ballroom dancing!
Despite the weak economy, I was really surprised how many people stopped at our kettle and at the amounts they donated. If you stopped by thank you! It quite frankly restored my faith in people. However, there were still a ton of people that walked by without donating. It made me start thinking about what makes someone want to give and someone just walk by. As a general observation, the people donating were smiling and friendly. There wasn’t one person that walked by that couldn’t spare a buck so economic reasons don’t come into play. I think the bottom line is it has to do with attitudes towards money on whether you donate or not.
Image: Chris Sharp / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Share and Share Alike: LinkedIn Share Button
The online world just got more social! Facebook and Twitter led the way making share buttons available for inclusion on blogs, websites and online content. By doing so and stacking up “likes” and “retweets” on almost every page on the Internet the popularity and business value of using Facebook and Twitter to saturate social networks has grown exponentially. In the last year a number of social sharing buttons have popped up, but noticeably missing has been LinkedIn.
As of this week, LinkedIn will now have share buttons available to professionals looking to share information with their network. By adding the LinkedIn button, (as seen on the right), content creatorscan invite online readers to share their article, press release, listing, or social profile with their LinkedIn network and more importantly their groups.
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Recruiting Experienced Agents Is a Sales Process
Recruiting new agents is, for some managers, a task that seems to be a hit or miss proposition. They will try and engage the candidate with small talk and then launch into 'why' the agent should join their brokerage. Do this enough times, and the odds are good that someone will say 'yes.' But are we missing something? How do we know if we are really making the most of our opportunity to hire these candidates? What triggers them to say 'yes'? How many are slipping through our fingers because we haven't asked them the right questions...or, for that matter, really listened and paid attention to what they have to say? The answer: too many.
Recruiting is a consultative sales process
Remembering that recruiting is a consultative sales process, the first step in developing the right atmosphere for hiring. It is essential to focus the meeting where it should be focused—on the agent, not the company—because, as we all know, selling involves, first and foremost, finding out what the prospect wants and needs. Without that information, it is almost impossible to match the right product with the buyer. And that is just as true in recruiting as it is in selling a home.
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Do You Have a Coachable Attitude?
I learn teaching from teachers. I learn golf from golfers. I learn winning from coaches. – Harvey Penick.
Leaders aren’t born, they are made. They are made just like anything else, through hard work. That’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. – Vince Lombardi
Happy Monday! I hope you made the weekend count!
It is late Sunday night and I am sitting in a hotel room in Dallas. I came to Dallas for a seminar with a couple hundred of the top real estate agents in the country that coach with the same guys I do. That’s right coaches. Yeah, I know I am not a professional athlete, so why do I need a coach? The answer is simple, I realized early in my career you don’t know what you don’t know and coaches and mentors are a critical component of success.
When I decided to get serious about my business a few years ago, the first thing I did was hire a coach. I hired the best in the country I could afford. It was one of the absolute best decisions I have made (besides marrying my wife!). I don’t think I am overstating the facts when I say coaches have changed the outcome of my life.
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Are You Armed with Thanks This Season?
“The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.” ~H.U. Westermayer
“Develop an attitude of gratitude, at giving thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” – Brian Tracy
Happy Monday! I hope you look forward to Thanksgiving and making this short week count! It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving and the inevitable Black Friday are already upon us. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, and it generally signifies the start of the holiday season no matter what your beliefs are. Maybe it is just me, but people really seem friendlier around the holidays. I like Thanksgiving because it is a holiday centered on family and friends and appreciating what we have. It is one reason I send Thanksgiving cards not “Happy Holiday” cards.
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How is Your Marketing IQ?
Three recent events brought to the fore the concept there is marketing and there is intelligent marketing. The difference is using business information tools, not available in the past, to become more efficient and intelligent in your marketing efforts. And at no time can we recall how critical and pivotal being more efficient and intelligent is than in today’s market.
The three events were 1) the results of a test program done by California based RealAgile using direct mail to a large audience of homeowner prospects, 2) a revealing statement made by an executive of Broker Metrics at the recent REAL Trends Leadership Institute regarding targeted recruiting and 3) a program launched by Quantum Training Systems in generating prospective new sales professionals from outside the industry. In each case the process of targeting prospects, whether potential sellers for real estate sales professionals or potential new or transfer sales professionals for a brokerage was refined using business information to make the process both more intelligent and efficient.
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The ABC’s of Hiring a Great Manager
Great managers are defined by how they can grow an office’s bottom line—especially in these tougher times. Classifying your existing manager(s) is as easy as ABC—“A” managers grow an office’s net revenue by holding on to the top and mid-level producers, while at the same time recruiting experienced, productive agents that have an immediate impact to the bottom line. “B” managers maintain the status quo and are good at recruiting new agents into the business—all of whom take a great deal of investment to actually find the few who will actually, someday, turn into productive agents. “C” managers do their best to hold onto what they thought they once had and accept new agents that are referred to them.
Prior to 2008, real estate companies could overlook “B” and “C” managers because even their offices were making more money each year, but today, the hard reality is that every company needs “A” managers at the helm of every office if they expect to thrive again. And the “A” manager’s top priority has to be recruiting experienced, productive agents. Managers who are successful will commit 20, 30 and even 40% of their time to their recruiting program, and the rest to managing and mentoring to hold onto their producers.
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Want to Give Your Listing a Professional Touch? Focus on the Angles
When shooting listing photos, or any architecture for that matter, you’ll find yourself dealing with lines, and lots of them. Unlike nature shots, urban structures are filled with perfectly straight horizontal and vertical lines, and understanding these lines is very important when shooting real estate photography.
The general standard for listing photos, especially interior shots, is to keep your vertical lines straight, while allowing the horizontal lines to create a sense of depth and perspective. Achieving perfectly vertical lines is not difficult if you know how to set up the shot. The trick is to keep your camera perfectly level, and elevated to about half the ceiling height. Here’s a diagram and test shot I performed earlier today:
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When is it Time for Brand Transformation?
If you think of a camel smoking, a tiger eating cereal or a castle sprinkled with fairy dust, what three brands come to mind? Camel, Kelloggs, and Disney: three very resilient brands.
How well does your memory serve you? Do you remember this roadside jingle?
“To kiss a mug that's like a cactustakes more nerve than it does practice."- Burma-Shave
What happened to Burma-Shave? We know that like seasons, popular brands have their own winters and sometimes have to hope for a spring. What keeps your brokerage’s logo from aging into ignominy?
Sally Jenkins, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Symantec presented at WITI’s Women in Technology Summit last week and discussed how to recognize a brand that is at risk, and how to transform it. She and her team diagnosed and resurrected Norton Antivirus by applying the advice she shares below.
She says that there are four main questions to ask yourself about your brand, to discover if anything needs to be done:
What is the hard data telling you? (Website hits, leads generated, etc.)
Are you growing? Who is?
What is the purchase intent? Who’s buying? Do they like your brand?
Are you listening to your customers? Do you respond to their concerns, questions?
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Think Before You Tweet!
We can learn from Mike Wise’s mistake
As we engage in Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and blogging, we have all become journalists. Most of us have never been trained in the “rules” of journalism. We haven’t been trained on the code of ethics for journalism. When we get in to Twitter, it sometimes feel like we’re all by ourselves and nobody really ties our posts back to our “real” lives.
NOT TRUE - just ask Mike Wise, sports reporter from the Washington Post. He created a false post about an athlete in his Twitter Account as an “experiment". He deliberately posted a false story just to see what major news sources would pick it up. His plan was to post the false story, then quickly create another post that would dispel the myth and make the first post a joke. The only problem was Twitter was over capacity and thus the second post never made it to print.
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Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Workplace morale has been sacrificed to the pressure cooker at most companies trying to bounce back from the recession. But at the helm of the iconoclastic company Zappos, CEO Tony Hsieh has sustained enormous growth and created one of today’s most admired corporate cultures by going against the grain of today’s cutthroat tactics. He sums up his more humane yet effective approach to business with one simple word: “happiness.” By creating a radically different corporate culture committed to making employees and customers happier, Tony helped the company debut as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Companies to Work For” list in 2009.
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Journaling with Purpose
If you are looking for a resource to help inspire and motivate your agents to success in business, you may look into journaling and the coaching services of Frame of Mind Coaching. Journaling can be an effective tool if used consistently and honestly.
If you are curious to know how this method of coaching is successful at uncovering and exposing harmful mind sets and professional roadblocks, Frame of Mind Coaching recorded their last teleseminar.
The teleseminar covered the following topics:
The benefits of journaling
The tactics of journaling
How to overcome the "I don't know what to write about" problem
How to journal for the purpose of releasing a blockage that is interfering with your progress
How to journal for the purpose of accelerating growth and development
How to journal as a means to improve your health and well being
How to use the journaling process to affect a change in your relationships
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Learning from Inuit Social Media Faux Pas
We gave the “love” to Quickbooks in our last post, now we will slam them in this post - they have it all wrong when it comes to social networking. In our little real estate industry, we find companies like RPR, Trulia, Zillow and many others have full time social networking people who are managing real engagement on blogs, social networks and twitter. However, there are many companies who are taking the approach of what J.D. Salinger’s famous Holden Caulfield called Phony.
You see, Intuit is facing a major outage today - their massive number of websites and e-commerce solutions went dark last night, and they are still down. Thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of consumers have been impacted (including our own, I might add). OUCH! We have backup plans which rolled into action, thankfully.
Intuit has asked customers to check their small business blog and their twitter page for updates. The blog is down, and the twitter page is being updated every 5 hours. Oddly, the automated twitter posts from their clever twitter bot continue to sling out marketing messages during this tragic period of their company’s life. Check it out.
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A Web Services Lesson from Quickbooks
When it comes to web services, Quickbooks gets it. They understand that the work begins after the sale, not leading up to it.
I recently had the opportunity to attend the RIS Media conference. There was a room full of vendors barking about the promised land that would be achieved magically through the adoption of thier products - generate more leads, track this, engage consumers this way, reduce costs here. In preparation for my panel address to the audience, I asked each booth to talk to me about thier support and training services. What happens after the sale?
The responses were dim - in some cases, dark. Clearly they were not prepared to answer such questions.
Today, as a Quickbooks user, I received my monthly “how to” newsletter. You see Intuit, like most world class web service companies takes a careful look at their call center. They group calls into categories and create a feedback loop to the product managers, developers and other product stakeholders. They use the customer newsletter as a training tool.
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Not In Kansas Anymore - Brokerage Blogsites
Real Estate Tomato, provider of blogsites and blog training, recently featured Beth Butler, a former Broker for EWM Realtors in Miami, FL.
Beth wants to get into the head of real estate brokers around the country. She wants to share her expertise in managing an incredibly successful real estate company blogsite. The playing field has changed, and many need a coach. Beth is that Coach.
Just like in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy tiptoes out of her house to find she is in an altogether different place than she left, so it is with the real estate brokerage business post-market meltdown. As brokers gently lift their collective heads from dealing with the drudgery of the down market, the view out the window is not the same as it was. The business is forever changed. Budget cutbacks wielded.
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7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars
As the global marketplace moves real estate communication and closing transactions online, online seminars create the ability to move a sales or training presenation online. Online seminars are increasingly replacing face-to-face meetings.
In the real estate industry, online seminars are not just for NAR speakers to record their presentations, although that is useful. This technology can be harnessed for the real estate industry. It can be used to provide valuable and engaing information to potential clients or current clients. It can be used for brokerage educational meetings, all online.
Online seminars can also be a profitable and cost-effective alternative to hosting live events.
For those agents, brokers interested in learning how to create powerful seminars, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing recently posted a blog containing seven steps necessary to creating online seminars.
Continue to read John's seven steps...
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Ten Tips for Using Twitter to Drive Traffic!
Real estate professionals are tapping into the marketing resources Twitter facilitates! They know it is more than a vehicle to complain about your coffee spilling in route to work. Agents and brokers know the power Social Media has to drive traffic to their company site, or blog.
Social Media guru Mark Hayward, who writes for Problogger, has learned how to harness Twitter and use it to drive traffic to his blog, which drives traffic to his business. He states that Twitter is not easy to learn. So he recently shared ten tips for using Twitter to drive traffic to a blogsite. These tips, however, are just as valuable for driving traffic to property virtual tour, your single property website, technology business or brokerage.
Using Twitter can take time, but these tips will help you generate traffic by making sure you do things like complete your bio or add branding to your background. Online networking is a science, but it is worth learning.
To read Mark's ten tips for using Twitter, please continue...
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Need Legal or Consulting Services?
Larson/Sobotka is a consulting firm and a law firm specializing in offering services to the real estate industry. Specifically they focus their service offerings on technology vendors to the real estate industry, MLS service providers, Associations of REALTORS® (State, Local, National), and real estate brokers.
Their legal practices focus on a variety of dimensions throughout the real estate industry including ecommerce, databases, Web branding issues, and rule-making for online communities. Larson/Sobotka supported RE Technology in the development of many of its business documents. Legal services also extend to providing copyright, trademark, Internet/computer and technology licensing counsel.
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