Pissing people off 101

All the great leaders and business people throughout history have said if your not pissing someone off with your efforts your not working hard enough. I know I am paraphrasing a bit but you get the idea right?

Recently I created a 3-step direct mail campaign specifically for a targeted list of potential sellers. These potential sellers all-own in a particular building and bought at a particular time at a particular price point. The building these potential sellers live in has had a bulk sale of developer units take place within the last couple of months.  This bulk sale could potentially effect the owners of units in this building down the road. Hence the 3-step direct mail campaign.

In each letter I breakdown facts about the building and potential risks that can effect owners units down the line. All in all a great mail out since I did get a listing and several leads. Heck the entire campaign had a 7.5% response rate and a 25% conversion rate. Not to shabby.

Well I guess a couple of people did not take to kindly to my letters and contacted the agent who they used to purchase in the building to express a concern of a massive sell off by other owners due to my letter. Really?

So I got a call from an agent who attempted to act as if she was a potential seller of a unit who got 1 of my letters. As the conversation progressed it became clear this woman was not a seller. The conversation got to a point where a question would be asked to me, I attempt to respond then I would get cut off and told why I was wrong. This back an forth did not last very long since I have no tolerance for this type of behavior.

Finally the truth came out. The Agent came clean as to why she was really calling. Supposedly she called to voice a concern for one of her past clients who she helped buy a unit in the building I was mail to carefully selected potential sellers. This person who the agent was calling for felt that my letters would create a massive sell off from unit owners.

The agent contacting me claimed that my letter was “steering” which it absolutely isn’t in a way shape or form. After we discussed the concerns of this agent’s past client I thought this episode would be in my rear view. Yea right?

About a week after I spoke with the first agent I got another call from a different agent I have had a few run inns in the past with. Just to give you the background on this guy, he was caught posting slandering material online about my wife, he was caught stealing my wife’s CL ad headlines and to top it off he attempted to bully my wife over the phone when she confronted him about his actions.

Now that you understand a little bit about how this second agent conducts himself let me proceed with the story.

Apparently this unscrupulous dude had a past client of his who has the same concerns as the first agents past client I mentioned earlier on. Wow what a coincidence. O I forgot to mention both agents work out of the same office.

Anyways, I let this guy say what he had to say then I told him he was basically full of S#*!. I was gentle in my communication and expression of why I felt he was full of big brown S#*! . Of course staying true to his ways he attempted to over talk and bully me over the phone. That’s something I flat out will not deal with or except.  I ended the call and we went our ways.

The point of this whole story is two fold.

Point #1:

Don’t take BS from anyone. If there are people who don’t like what your doing and feel the need to tell you they don’t like it, listen to them and then politely tell them to go pound sand. If people are not trying to bring you down because of  your efforts then you need to work harder. Plan and simple.

Point #2:

I just got to vent. You all reading this have become my therapist. Thanks J

In all seriousness you need to be able to have thick skin in our business because there is always going to be someone who will try to stop you from progressing or get in the way of your future. How you deal with these situations/people will shape and mold you into the business person you are. Don’t be afraid to be different and don’t be afraid of what others will say or do to you when you are different.

Until next time, stay passionate focused and honest, the world is your’s.

Bullseye!

Have you ever heard that “you can’t be everything to everyone?” Do you understand what this little saying really means? Well by the end of today’s post you’ll understand exactly what it means and how you can use what they mean to increase the amount of business you are currently doing.

Lots of Real Estate Agents, Realtors, Brokers and just about every one else that falls into the RE professional category uses what is commonly know as the shotgun approach. The shotgun approach is an analogy for a wide spread approach to business. The large majority of RE pros take this approach with their businesses, not the wisest choice in my opinion.

Ok let me play devils advocate for a moment. We all know that if you throw enough shit at a wall something is bound to stick right? So when a Agent goes out and uses the shotgun technique they may call, flyer, door knock ect an area regardless of the types of property found in this area. Of course if you spend enough time in an area and get in front of enough people you are bound to come up with something.

Lets switch gears here and look at things from a different prospective. Now lets say you are targeting a certain style property in a specific area of your town. This can be a certain property type in a certain zip code or community. Now that you know who you are going after you can craft your marketing message accordingly to maximize your chances of getting business from these people. This is called target marketing.

Target marketing is nothing new but it is not used as much as it should be especially in RE. Traditionally RE offices and some brokers teach the numbers game, you’ve heard of this right? Knock on X amount of doors and you will get X amount of business or call X amount of people and you will get X amount of to work with you, sound familiar now? This is one way of getting business and in my opinion it is a very labor-intensive way of getting business.

Personally I would rather have a clearly defined target market I am going after that I can then solicit with specific material designed and crafted for their needs. This technique of target marketing allows you to contact less people while being able to get more business with less work. So lets say the area and property type you are going after has 25 people who fit your target market. Now instead of randomly contacting 200 people in hopes of drumming up business you only have to contact 25.

The beauty of this approach is when you are contacting the people in your target market your not saying “hello I am the local Realtor Come do Business with me.” With target marketing  you already know what your markets challenge is and have the solution waiting for them. With this strategy your conversation goes something like this. “Hello Mr/Mrs Smith I understand that blank right now and I can help you out big time by doing blank”.

Give this strategy a shot and see what types of results you are able to achieve. My guess is once you use this strategy in your business you won’t want to go back to your old ways.  Make sure you subscribe comment and rate my blog post and be sure to leave me a Google voice message telling me about your experience with target marketing.

Old v.s New

This is way cool. Sticking with the old verses new theme I want to show you something that in my opinion is freaking awesome. If you have been following this blog for some time you have noticed I added a Google Voice phone number for people to call and leave voicemail testimonials about this blog. So what’s new about a voicemail?

Glad you asked. So everyone is fairly familiar with what a voicemail is right? Ok great. Well the big G commonly referred to as Google, is now entering the communications market by introducing Google Voice. I have to say this new addition to the long line of Google products and services is FREAKING AWESOME.

Basically what Google did was tell the traditional phone companies to F#@$ off. I am serious. You can make local calls totally free and pay pennies for long distance and international calling. I plan on doing a in depth video into what Google Voice has the capability to do for your business. Be on the look out for that soon.

Back to the main point of old verse new. Google voice has a wealth of features people can play around with that allow you to do all kinds of cool things. One cool feature is you can assign specific numbers to have your call forwarded to during certain times of the day. So if you have a team this is a really useful tool to have when dividing the incoming call leads.

Another cool feature is each voicemail is transcribed and emailed to you. This is something that caught my eye and it works well. You can also embed your voicemails just like a youtube video. You can see an example of the embedding below. Currently Google voice is free to use so make sure you get your account opened and number picked out before those boys at Google decide to start charging us for this stuff.

Make sure you subscribe, rate and comment on today’s post before you leave and when you have a chance take the new survey I added to the link list atop this page.

Craigslist Success Fomula

I got another awesome post for you all today. I am sticking with the Craigslist Real Estate lead generation topic as it has proven to be a hot one. Lots of people want to generate leads on Craigslist but don't know where to start.  I pulled this video out of the archives and I think you'll really dig it. I share with you a Craigslist lead generation formula that has taken me over 5 years to put together. This Craigslist lead formula is super easy to understand follow and implement. Sit back relax grab a paper and pen for notes and lets get started. Oh by the way I am going to be doing a craigslist workshop for those of you interested in learning even more about how to generate free Real Estate leads by using Craigslist. Here is the early registration link you can use to sign up for this Craigslist lead generation workshop. Click Here to get on the Early Bird CL workshop list