Toby Boyce

By Toby Boyce

“What do you think Heather Jones* does?” my mother-in-law inquired as we followed a heavily decorated mini-van through the streets of a north-central Ohio community.

“Well, I think it would be real estate,” I replied. “You can just make out a ‘just listed’ and ‘sold’ in the paintwork beside the license plate.”

“How in the hell was I suppose to figure that out?” she quipped back.

Ahh, Ms. Jones* — name changed to protect the guilty – did you just get the gist of that conversation? Your marketing while stunningly beautiful and definitely eye catching lacked the most important thing – the why factor.

Why.

It is a simple three-letter word that is often the first question children learn. Yet it is often the last question that we tend – or desire – to address as adults. It is a challenging question – nothing like how. How can be explained away, it is a process. “How am I going to sell your house? Well, first I’m going to…” What, Where, and When are just as easy.

But that continues to bring us back to that pesky “why” and just as important “why did I just do that?”

Every successful agent knows their return on investment for various projects that they continue to run. It doesn’t have to be a hard-and-fast number but something that says this is working and this is not. Has anyone ever gotten a deal directly from giving away a pumpkin at Halloween? Odds are low that many have, but yet hundreds of offices around the country continue to draw people into their office for a free pumpkin. Continue reading »