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3. Here's a Great New Marketing Service for Your Business

1. Teleseminar on Competing with the Discount Brokers

I'll be hosting an exciting telephone seminar this Wednesday evening, March 16th, at 8:00 p.m. EST. My featured guest for the teleseminar will be Michael Krisa, Vice President of Broker Agent News. Michael is an expert on the evolving trend towards discounted commissions and "fee for service" companies in residential real estate brokerage, and the title of our teleseminar is:

"How to Make Great Money in a Discount Commission World"

If you feel that your real estate business is definitely being impacted by this trend in our industry, and you'd like to learn more about how you can better respond and compete with it, click on the following link for more information on our teleseminar:

http://www.RealEstateSalesCoach.com/MichaelKrisa.htm  

When you enroll in this teleseminar, you'll also receive a CD recording of it sent to you in the mail. So if you're wondering whether you'll be able to be on the live teleseminar call with 100% certainty...relax! You'll be able to listen to a CD recording of it whenever it's convenient for you when you move forward and enroll in the teleseminar.

I look forward to having you join us on the call!

Jim

Click here for downloadable E-books and live audio interviews with top-producing real estate agents. These interviews are with industry experts who show you exactly what they do to continually make hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year.

2. Are You Really a Top Agent, or Just a Commodity?

I've always been intrigued at the differences between how real estate agents and attorneys are often perceived, based upon the prices they charge for their services. With attorneys, there is often the perception that the higher their hourly rate is, the better they'll be at getting the job done for their clients. For example, if you told someone you know of an attorney who will get whatever the person needs done for only $40.00 an hour, what immediate perception do you think the other person might have about the attorney's abilities when you tell them this?

Now contrast this with telling someone you know of a real estate agent who will sell their property for only a 1-2% commission. Do you think the other person's response might be a little different here? The chances are that the person will at least ask you one or more follow-up questions to first determine if this is an agent they should be interested in working with.

Which leads me into talking about how you really want to position yourself as a real estate agent in your marketplace. Quite frankly, you probably want to position yourself as an agent who's worth every penny of a full commission. But this is really a far cry from how many agents seem to be positioning themselves nowadays...

Oftentimes owners, when choosing between different agents to list their properties with, grind these agents down on commission before listing with them. The owners' perception in these situations is often something similar to, "They're all going to provide me with the same service anyway, so I just need to find the one agent who will charge me the least amount of money for it."

So in effect, if you're one of the agents that the owners feel this way about, you've become simply a commodity who's perceived as being virtually identical to many of the other agents in your marketplace. And in a way, it can be similar to how someone feels about shopping for the exact same brand and model of sunglasses...

The sunglasses themselves will be exactly the same no matter which store they're purchased in, so the goal of the buyer is often to find the one store that will sell them the sunglasses for the cheapest price. And as an agent, you don't want to risk being perceived as being no different than all the other agents you're competing with. If you're perceived this way, it's going to cost you a lot of money. Because in this situation the only way you can differentiate yourself in the owners' minds is in the price you will be charging them to list and sell their property.

Unless you're already specializing in providing brokerage services at a discounted rate to your clients and prospects, working off of a business model that you feel brings you more income by doing this, you'll ideally want to position yourself as being the most prestigious, high-end agent in your area. That's right, the one who commands the utmost respect from your clients because of who you are, your reputation, the way you present yourself, how you have your clients and prospects feel in your presence, and how effectively you communicate the benefits of what they'll receive when they pay you a full commission.

And if you're wondering if this is really possible for you in your business, let me say this...One of my coaching clients has become so good at this, that he's now listing properties for 8-10% commissions. So not only is it possible for you to present yourself in a way that will have you get listings at full commission rates, you may actually be able to do even better!

As an example of this, when gasoline first began getting more expensive in the 1970s, the auto industry started manufacturing many more economy cars, and people began purchasing them in very large numbers. These people were looking to save money on their overall cost of gasoline throughout the year, but Mercedes Benz, Rolls Royce, and Cadillac didn't go out of business because of this. That's because in almost any market, regardless of the price competition at the lowest levels of pricing, there will always be people who want the best product or service no matter what, and they'll  be willing to pay you handsomely to receive it.

So if you haven't already done so, begin carrying and presenting yourself in a way that will have the people who want the best service imaginable line up to pay you the full commission you know you're worth. And if you're not already doing this, it will probably take some work on your end to make it happen. You'll need to make sure to dress like someone who's worth a full commission in all situations, and you also may need to revise both your presentation skills, and your presentation materials, too.

But whatever it takes to make this happen, the end result will certainly beat playing the game where the most important value the owner thinks you bring to the table, is whether or not you'll list their property for a lower commission rate than anyone else will.

Click here if you'd like more information on my one-on-one coaching program to take your real estate productivity to the next level. One-on-one coaching is available for both real estate agents and company management.

3. Here's a Great New Marketing Service for Your Business

As you probably can imagine, I'm constantly approached by people who are launching new products for real estate agents, hoping that I'll like their product and want to tell everybody about it. And please trust me when I tell you that over 90% of these products aren't anything worth talking to you about.

But about a month ago I got a call from Dr. Geri Whaley, a friend of mine for about 20 years now, telling me about a service that I simply had to take a look at. And since Geri's husband Mark is a successful real estate agent himself, I knew that if she was calling me the service would probably be something I'd want to know more about.

Geri represents a company called Send Out Cards, and the system they've put together is one of the more innovative and personalized systems I've seen for prospecting, follow-up with existing and past clients, and for adding that personal touch with the people who are most important to us.

The Send Out Cards system integrates the automation of an E-mail drip marketing campaign along with the personal touch of sending specific, targeted postcards and greeting cards to people. And from the perspective of a real estate agent building his or her own business, here is how I can see the system working extremely effectively for you:

You can upload your databases of prospective sellers, buyers, lessors, and lessees, as well as all the clients you've previously done business with, too. In addition, you can manually add new people to the system one at a time also.

You can then setup individual response campaigns, much like you would with an E-mail drip system, but here your people will be receiving greeting cards and/or postcards from you in the mail instead of E-mail messages. And I don't know about you, but receiving a personal card in the mail from someone who wants my business has a much greater impact on me than an E-mail message does. Especially if the person is sending me something personalized in the mail every month.

Now here's where it gets even better. You can submit a sample of your own printing as well as several different versions of your signature to the company, and they will store these for you in your account. Then, just like with an E-mail drip system, you can design and send personal messages in the cards that will be mail-merged to each person's name, only now it will appear as if you wrote the note on the card by hand and signed it yourself!

Wow!

I can't tell you what an impact this has made on me. Geri has sent me several cards over the past month so I could experience what this feels like to receive them, and I must say that the feeling is pretty amazing! Every card she has sent me has had a personal note from her written in it along with her signature, and I must say that I have to look closely to see that it wasn't written by her own hand with a pen.

So imagine as an agent having multiple follow-up campaigns going on at the same time with different groups of prospects and clients, all receiving your predetermined sequences of cards at specified intervals, and all of the cards looking like you took the time to write a personal note to the recipient addressed to them by hand in their own name. Doesn't that seem like it would beat the heck out of sending them E-mail messages when it comes to the impact it will have on them? Or you could simply utilize this in addition to an E-mail drip campaign, too.

Well by now you're probably wondering about the cost of this service, and in my opinion it's very reasonable. The cost of sending a quality greeting card with a personal note written inside of it, along with your signature, mailed in an envelope with a postage stamp on it, and your name and return address on the outside, is only about $1.50 per card. And I know if I went to the greeting card store myself, the card alone would probably cost me about $3.00! But if you want to send out postcards instead of greeting cards, the same service will cost you only about $.75 per card including postage.

There are thousands of cards for you to choose from in their system, and you can include your own photos when printing the cards if you'd like to also. You can even design your own cards and upload them into the system, which one division of RE/MAX has already done.

If this sounds like something you'd like more information on, and you'd like to take a hands-on tour of the service, contact Dr. Geri Whaley directly at (928) 282-2790. She's in Sedona, Arizona, and you can also E-mail her at geriwhaley@esedona.net. And if you'd like to visit the company's Web site, you can do so at www.SendOutCards.com.

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