Putting All The Pieces Together
In the previous chapters we’ve discussed all the various elements or components of what I believe to be the best listing presentation you’ll find anywhere. I’ve determined not to give you just the listing “pitch”, but rather to give you the entire presentation — from the initial preparations you must make, to the underlying theory, to the preparation required to become the top listing agent, to my actual presentation itself: the actual what-to-say and how-to-say-it.
In this and the final chapter I will help you assemble all the pieces. I admit that I’ve given you a lot to chew on already. Not a day goes by that we don’t get emails from agents asking us to explain some of the mathematics or to discuss how the approach might work in their market. If you’re a bit overwhelmed, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger! I hear those questions a lot. But remember: nothing worth having is easy to get.
If this listing approach were really easy to learn, everyone would be doing it. However, the fact is that it’s not. While the concept itself is the very picture of simplicity, putting it all together takes a commitment from you the agent, probably unlike anything you’ve ever been taught. But again, I promise you that, if you’ll take the time to put it all together, you’ll be listing at a premium every single time. You’ll be the top listing agent in your market — maybe even in the state or country.
My approach really comes down to two parts: the technology element (assembling the right tools) and the human element (having the knowledge and the philosophical base). If you have the technology element and yet lack the knowledge and underlying values, you won’t become a master listing agent.
By the same token, if you have all the education in the world and yet fail to acquire the technology tools critical to compete in this new age of real estate, you can never become the dominant agent in your market, and you may find yourself struggling just to survive. Becoming a master listing agent requires balance.
The Technology Element.
In the earlier chapters, we discussed how the Internet is rapidly becoming the predominant method for home searches today. From only a small percentage of searches a few years ago, as many as 94% of buyers and sellers today are turning to the Internet like never before.
Now more than ever, it’s critical for any agent to develop a comprehensive web-marketing strategy. After all, if the Internet is where the customers are looking for real estate, then the web should be where you focus your marketing efforts. Right? Right.
We already covered how developing a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy, doesn’t require spending a lot of money. Instead, it’s important that you invest in the proper pieces. Many agents adopt a marketing policy of “ready, fire, aim,” rather than “ready, aim, fire.” The result of such a policy is frustration.
Frustration from spending a lot of money and receiving little, if any, return on your investment. Frustration from wasting a lot of time trying to do what all the “experts” advise, only to figure out too late that those so-called experts haven’t got a clue about online marketing. Frustration from making a good-faith investment of time and money, only to be let down again.
For less than the cost of running an ad in a homes magazine for a single month, you can put together a marketing solution that will return as many as 100 new inbound real estate customers! For most agents, that same money spent on a magazine ad will return 8-10 leads.
What’s even better is that, by using technology to capture the leads, not only do you get more information, but you can also get your leads 24 hours a day and not only when you happen to be able to answer your phone.
For the first time ever, instead of having to go to multiple vendors and piece together the tools you need to be successful in today’s real estate climate, you can get it all in one place. Our company has it all in one place.
Our technology called an LCM Gateway® is available as a stand-alone tool through our website http://LCMsuccess.com. For less than the price of your morning coffee each day, you can have state-of-the-art LCM Gateway lead capture technology and best of all, for the first time ever there is no long term contract and no activation fee. It is really a no-brainer, and it pays for itself with the first lead you generate.
But if you have a large team or brokerage and need an enterprise application with all the essential technologies, we have that too. Pipeline-i® — Intelligent Technology — the ultimate Virtual Office technology package for today’s working agent. Check it out.
Now, in one application you’ll get our LCM Gateway®, state-of-the-art lead capture technologies for both web and telephone, our Agent SimpleSite®, a customer-centric personal website, our Client Management software, and our mobile Virtual Assistant® application for your smart phone.
Pipeline-i is the single most powerful Virtual Office real estate platform available today, at any price, and is complete with hundreds of training articles, videos, calculators, business planning modules and much, much more.
And instead of having to piece it together, Pipeline-i gives you a seamless and perfectly integrated Virtual Office, allowing you to operate your real estate practice wherever you have your computer and an Internet connection, whether that’s a coffee shop, your home office, or your car.
Now you can communicate with other team members, share leads, track your progress, write a business plan, generate new customer leads, refer business, log client communications, take online training, and schedule activities for yourself or team members, all from one command center.
Powered by our Pipeline-i Virtual Office technology, you’ll go weeks without ever coming by the office. Why? Because your real estate office is virtual. And that makes you more productive at what you do best — working with clients.
Either way, you really owe it to yourself to check out our technologies. Don’t worry, nobody will try to sell you anything. We don’t even have a sales force. But our technology really is that good, and it could literally change your practice forever! It has for many other agents before you.
There really is no excuse not to have all the customers you can possibly service. You can generate your own fresh, inbound leads for only pennies per lead. No kidding! Here is what I mean:
Our typical agent, nationwide, spends only about $250 for advertising. That’s all! The result is an average of 92 leads, nationwide, for a marketing cost of only $2.71 per lead. And for that tiny investment, our agents not only spend less money on marketing than their competition does, but they generate more business than they can personally handle, allowing them the freedom to grow a team or to refer business to other agents for a fee.
Imagine what it would be like for your own business to have twenty new leads every week — and each for less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks! Would that change your business? Would it take the pressure off? Would it allow you to be a little choosier about which customers you work with? Would it give you enough “breathing room” to begin to expand your business? Could you see how simply having a steady inbound stream of customers would allow you to run your practice more like a business?
If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you truly owe it to yourself to look into getting the right technology. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to have state-of-the-art lead capture and client management technology. And having the right technology will set you up for being the top listing agent in your market because you will have more opportunities than anyone else.
Matt Jones is the founder and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com and nationally syndicated author of LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, The Ultimate Listing Presentation, Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More, Becoming a Mega-Producer, and 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate but Were Afraid to Ask. Jones’ North Carolina-based company has been profiled by major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN’s Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is “changing the way real estate is being done in America.” This content is cross-posted in the following locations: BlogMattBlog.com, RealBlogging.com, NewsGeni.us, TheCommissionCheck.com, and now Amazon Kindle.
