Jason O'Neil
By Jason O’Neil
Referrals, referrals, referrals. We all get them and we all want more. We want referrals from our lenders, our title reps, our barbers, our past clients, and we especially want them from other agents. We love referrals because they are easy leads. They are not faceless Internet leads or the sometimes abrupt sign calls; they are real people who are friends of someone.
Referrals are easy to talk to for two primary reasons: One, they are less guarded because you were referred by someone they trust. Two, you have something or someone in common.
Over the past 12 months, 85 percent of my business has come from referrals. I, too, love referrals.
We track our business sources, but do we track our referrals? When I say track our referrals, I mean the why. Why does someone refer you? What is your referability? High, low, middle? Do you have any idea? Why will some clients run to the top of a mountain and scream your name? And why do others, who have worked with you dozens of times, not feel comfortable referring you to their closest friends or relatives?
Sometimes we aren’t referred because referrals are risky. They really are. If I speak up and say you should work with my accountant because he does great work and you end up not liking him, I look bad. If you love my accountant, well, that was to be expected. If I say nothing or don’t refer an accountant, I likely stay unchanged in your mind’s eye. So there really is a downside risk to referrals. But referring people is fulfilling — it makes people feel good to help other people and to give their opinions.
So, why should people refer you? How do you become more referable?
I think it’s simple: Continue reading »
Laura Rubinchuk Schwartz
By Laura Rubinchuk Schwartz
It seems there’s a new hyped technology in real estate every week. Old favorites include Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter, Blogging, YouTube, and LinkedIn. But what about those sites that were so popular so fast and now we never hear about them anymore? Remember Posterous, Postlets, and now Pinterest? Real estate agents tend to kill technology quickly.
With so much to do every day to keep your business going, the biggest of which is lead generation, do you really have time to learn every new platform that suddenly emerges? Probably not. Should you? Probably not. As an agent who built my business on technology, I have a few suggestions for those of you who feel like you’re drowning in new technology and don’t know where to start, or where to find the time:
1. Figure out what works with your schedule: You can’t be the master of all trades, but you can master just a few. Some things take more of a commitment to make it work, ex. Twitter and Facebook are daily commitments for most. Other platforms may just an as-needed thing, like Postlets for advertising listings or Craigslist (if you don’t use Craigslist for lead generation).
2. Don’t waste time learning every new technology. I haven’t spent a single minute on Pinterest. I see Facebook friends posting wedding ideas or baby shower themes on there — don’t kill this by inundating useless real estate information on it. Don’t force a round peg in a square hole just because someone told you to.
3. Learn something so you’re comfortable with it, then use it as part of your lead generation. Continue reading »
Stefanie Hahn
By Stefanie Hahn
The letter X hasn’t fared too well in the dot-com era. Once the mark of secret pirate treasures and “sign here if you would please” contracts, it has been relegated to second-class status ever since Microsoft introduced Windows95 as the letter you looked for when you want to make things go away.
Facebook also selected the X as the “go away” letter. If you are using Facebook for business, this X can be really, really bad.
If you have never seen the X on Facebook, it hides in the upper right corner of every post made by your friends (and the pages you like). You don’t see it unless you hover over the post – it is pretty stealthy.
When you click the X on any Facebook post the system automatically presents you with a few different options:
Hide this post
Hide all from [USER]
Hide all from [APPLICATION] *if it was posted from a third party site like YouTube
I can tell you from personal experience that making the decision between the first two is very hard sometimes. I can think of a few occasions where I clicked the X thinking I was going to just hide a post – and then made a split-second decision to just hide the user instead. If this happens to you, the best social media strategy in the world won’t get you very far.
So why do I hide users? Continue reading »
Subhi J. Gharbieh
By Subhi J. Gharbieh
A week or so ago, I was approached by a long time friend who I have known since elementary school. We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school, and even graduated from the same university. I remember as kids, we would always talk about how successful we wanted to be when we grew up, and how we were going to help each other become successful.
He called and asked me a few real estate related questions. He said that a relative of his had a property in mind that he was ready to move on, and needed some consultation. I thanked him for the referral, and gave his relative a call. We met, discussed the whole buyers representation process, and everything went pretty well.
A day or so later, I received a call from this friend of mine, saying that his relative was going to approach this property representing himself, without a REALTOR®. I respectfully accepted that and didn’t think too much about it. Immediately following that, he calls me again, this time saying he would convince his relative to purchase the property with myself as his REALTOR®, only if I gave him 50 percent off my commission. (The subject property listed at a little over $2 million dollars.)
Just remembering the friendship that this person and I had as kids, this “offer” felt like a slap in the face (I’m 22, it wasn’t that long ago). I explained to him that it might seem like he is dropping a large amount of money in my lap, but the process to acquire a property of this value takes a lot of time, knowledge, negotiation, and liability. He wasn’t convinced. Long story short, I declined to represent the buyer. Continue reading »
Subhi J. Gharbieh
By Subhi J. Gharbieh
Being a REALTOR® for a little more than four years now, I have a good understanding of how to approach my business today. I think it is safe to say that when I got into the business, “cold calling” was pretty much being phased out. With the emergence of federal and state Do Not Call laws, it was becoming very difficult to effectively prospect potential clients over the phone. On the flip side, I feel that these laws have made us resort to more genuine, personal ways of prospecting.
I have found that my most effective prospecting strategy is to simply put yourself in your potential client’s shoes. Would you give the time of day to sit on the phone and listen to what some REALTOR® who you have never met has to say? Especially when they call around dinner time…who enjoys that? I personally would not speak to any telemarketer trying to sell their product/service over the phone, so I am not a big fan of cold calling.
Social media today has really evolved the way we prospect and do business overall. Blogging, tweeting, and sharing your posts with Facebook friends, are easy ways to get your message out to an unlimited number of prospects. Who knows which one of your friends will share your post, exposing it to all of their friends, and on and on… Facebook is also an easy way of gathering an e-mail list of potential clients, if they do not choose to hide their contact information.
So get out there — knock on doors, attend local events, and meet new people! Life is too short to be shy.
Subhi J. Gharbieh is the broker owner of Gharbieh & Associates in Dallas. Connect with him at www.Gharbieh.com or on Twitter @subhig.
Dan Iampieri
By Dan Iampieri
Hi, I’m Dan Iampieri! I love real estate, movies, and tennis. I would love to be your friend on social media websites like Facebook. However, don’t be my friend on Facebook if…
1.) … All you do is play Farmville, or any of the other silly games on Facebook. Seriously, I think I could live without a steady news feed of who fertilized whose crops. I know I can hide you from the news feed, but when I look at your profile and all I see is Mafia Wars being played all day long I get a little worried! Maybe you should consider getting a Nintendo Wii!
2.) You are a fellow REALTOR® and all you are going to do is post information about your listings. Thanks, but no thanks. By the way, this is not interesting to consumers, either — and they may have already hidden you from their news feed. I’ve yet to run into a consumer who has indicated that they would prefer to find listings on Facebook instead of Realtor.com. So, let’s keep the real estate stuff on the real estate sites and the social media stuff on the social media sites. It’s called social media, not real estate media. I certainly hope you don’t go to cocktails parties and talk about your listings the whole time to people you barely know? Of course you don’t, so, if you don’t do it there, don’t do it on Facebook either. Continue reading »
Nobu Hata
By Nobu Hata
It’s amazing how far one SPAMer or MLMer can get just by friending a couple people on Facebook. We Facebook users glance at friend invites blindly accepting those with one or two commonalities, notably a common friend.
There was someone on my friends list who I will call “Kevin.”
Dear Kevin,
We’re “friends” right? – And for that I commend you. It was an annoyance once realized, I hid your posts, ignored your request for me to join your group. I chose to keep you around to study your use of social media mostly to be sure that it was the wrong way to do it. That’s what “friends” are for, right?
But you hit up my wife on FB Kevin, asking how she was affiliated with “Minnesota Real Estate” just because she had become a fan of a real estate page of my peers. Then I found you had managed to befriend an actual friend of mine by scooping him up from my personal fan page. (He has no idea who you are, thought you were a friend of mine!) I fear that you’re doing that to EVERYONE on these pages and that isn’t acceptable to me, nor any of the folks running these pages.
You see, the term “friend” is loosely used nowadays with the widespread use of social media, but just because we have a couple common “friends” doesn’t mean they’re any “friend” of yours. What you did, trolling real estate fan pages and reaching out for some semblance of commonality with fellow “fans” in an effort to convert them to leads for your real estate scheme, is akin to SPAM. And using other practitioners’ legitimate, organically grown fan pages and pilfering their fans as a vehicle for your prospecting without permission is just plain wrong.
So in an effort to steer you back on track, I’ve got some pointers:
Keep in mind that you’re not allowed to sell any thing or services on personal pages, check out Facebook’s policy on personal pages for yourself. Start yourself a fan page to legitimately sell your real estate pyramid scheme. Drive people there through Twitter.
As you’re trolling Facebook looking for – ahem – prospects, please feel free to use other incorrectly used personal pages as a tool. You know which pages I mean: those with the posed-mug-shot as an avatar with the term “Real Estate guru” being used in every other sentence. Those guys will, most likely, have the same social media business practice as you do – ta da! – commonality.
Once you find a page to pilfer, do the decent thing and ask the page’s owner for permission to do so. Permission-based sales extends to other sales people too you know. How novel. Take my fan page for instance: If asked, I would’ve told you to take a long walk off a short pier before I’d ever let you or anyone solicit any of my fans, clients, or in this case family. Most practitioners would agree. You were able to wrangle an actual real-life friend of mine thinking you and I were real-life friends, that’ll end today.
As you find a prospect, take 5 minutes to read their wall. Believe me, those willing to accept your sales approach will say so in the information provided there. Take another 5 minutes to take it in, listening, as it were. That’s what you do in social media. If what they “say” doesn’t jive with your approach, don’t friend that person.
Really, I would ask that you drastically rethink what you’re doing. I don’t want you and I to get involved in any potentially sticky representation issues. Plus practices like this are the reason why many see social media and sales is akin to SPAM and sales, so please stop ruining this for those of us trying to do the former, ok? I would ask you over for a beer to chat about this, but I don’t think we’re that close. Right?
Sincerely,
Nobu
Nobu Hata is a sales associate for Edina Realty in Minneapolis, and a founding member of the Minneapolis YPN group, the YoPros. Visit his Web site at www.nobuhata.com.
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