Have you ever really looked to see how others see you?  Take a look at your image.  By image I mean your photo and marketing look.  Would you want to purchase a home from the person in your picture?  Do they look trustworthy?  Does your photo look professional?  Does your listing have good pictures and do you have a polished look?

As I surf through Active Rain and my local MLS, I can’t help but wonder what some people were thinking when they posted their photos.  I see blurry photos, unprofessional locations and overall unappealing photos.  Now let’s be clear, I am not Mr. GQ but I did take the time and effort to have a professional photo taken.  Why?  Because I know that is the first impression my marketing will make.  I also know that in my listings, I need to present my properties in the best possible light.  Do you see magazine ads with blurry and dark photos?  As for image, do you think being on the phone makes you look “cool”.  I wish you could see what people are saying behind your back.  How many times have you skipped a listing because the home photos were dark or blurry or in some cases non existent?

Image means in lot in our business.  We are hired to market homes and sell them.  If you want to attract better buyers and sellers, you might want to start with your image and marketing look.  Ask yourself, does my marketing and image attract the right buyer?  Would I hire myself to make my property look attractive to buyers?  What IS my image to others?  May I make a suggestion?  Ask others around you to look at one of your listings online and evaluate it. Compare it to others around you.  Do you stand up to your competition?  If you don’t, take the time to make it right and watch your business change.

On a side note, I hesitated to post photos of other agents from Activerain to make my point, but I stopped.  Did you know you can go to just about any department store and get a professional photo for about 20 bucks?  What message do you send when you put out low quality marketing?  I can tell you what the message is.  The message is “I don’t care and I won’t spend money to market your home”.  Result?  Customers and business lost! 

Well, that’s me piece for today.  Hope I did not offend, I just thought I would say what I know a lot of us are thinking as we read posts from our fellow agents!  Now please, take a look at your image and make it great!  You will be glad you did!

Branding You as a Unique Real Estate Professional
It’s time to say good-bye to ‘same old stuff’ marketing

by Tim Wilcox ~ APOGEE Communications

There’s nothing mono-dimensional about being a Realtor®. It’s a multifaceted occupation. You’re an adviser, a guide, a counselor, a cheerleader. You’re an expert in home design and maintenance, key aspects of finance, transaction documents, property-related legal issues, area information and more. Of course, you’re a sales professional as well. That’s a basic role.

So what’s the most important “commodity” you sell? You may already be in perfect tune with the following observations. Still, they’re worth repeating.

• The primary commodity you have to sell is not a single-family home, condo, townhouse or any other property.
• The primary commodity you have to sell is not your real estate résumé, including those hard-earned designations.
• The primary commodity you have to sell is not your integrity-based, above-and-beyond service, however important that might be.
• The primary commodity you have to sell is YOU!

And that means you as an individual, a unique person—not you as a fully certified Realtor® with all of the appropriate credentials. That’s just too predictable—a marketing message that’s been delivered innumerable times by millions of agents. It’s the same old stuff, and “SOS” won’t get it done.

A real person

What’s honestly intriguing and eminently marketable is the personal you—your life story, your family, your favorite pastimes. Only when you’re a real person with a real history and real interests will people—and, most importantly, potential clients—care about what you have to offer as a real estate professional.

For many if not most people, selling or buying a home is emotional first and rational second. So at the beginning of any prospective transaction, who you are as a person is typically more important than who you are as a professional. Quite candidly, feeling tends to be more important than thinking when individuals, couples and families identify their Realtor® of choice. But you know that already.

The secret to significant success as a real estate professional is to make sure that you’re no secret. That’s what personal branding is all about.

But how do you make it truly effective? As a launch point, it’s essential to have a neatly crafted and carefully focused story. Where are you from? How did growing up there (or in several places) shape who you are today? What about educational highlights (awards, degrees and the like)? Do you have a family? (If so, share some details.) What are your favorite pastimes? Are any of them authentic passions? What led you to become a real estate professional? What do you enjoy most about your career and also find most satisfying?

The answers can be woven together into a friendly, unpretentious narrative. How long should it be? We recommend three or paragraphs at most and, if possible, no more than 300 words. That’s a challenge, but it’s worth tackling.

Your branding story should be immediately accessible on your website, with unambiguous navigation and perhaps a short lead-in paragraph to direct visitors’ eyes there immediately. The story also can be the basis of an attention-grabbing  brochure, with a tightly composed, single-paragraph summary featured on supporting materials such as postcards and fliers. Appealing photos of you in personal and professional settings, eye-catching graphic design, and a custom logo with branding slogan are the primary campaign complements.

The branding engine

Here’s what’s most important. It’s something we call a “Unique Marketing Paradigm,” or UMP. We believe this element is the engine of any successful branding campaign. It supplies the focus, the energy, the punch.

The UMP develops from and is emphatically supported by your story. It can be a personal attribute such as a lifelong desire to help others, a high level of energy leading to success in many areas, an aptitude for getting all the details right, a singular determination to achieve important goals, a priority commitment to family values. These are just a few examples.

The UMP can also evolve out of a favorite pastime—for instance, various sports. Then it reflects high levels of achievement, determination, energy or precision. Perhaps you’re an accomplished marksman (or woman), consistently able to hit the target. Or you’re an adroit sailor with a gift for charting the optimum course. Or you have a passion for gardening and knack for nurturing plants to full growth. Or you excel at golf, skiing, running, swimming or some other pursuit, aiming for ever-higher levels of performance. Simply more examples. . .

Some UMPs spotlight one’s knowledge of and love for a particular city or region. If you’ve lived all, most or much of your life in a certain area, then you know it exceptionally well. You’re an obvious “area expert.” You also can be cast as someone who’s perfectly in tune with an area’s marvelous lifestyle and, because of that affinity, perfectly suited to serving home sellers and buyers in that particular place.

While most UMPs emerge from personal aspects of your story, they’re especially potent because they translate readily and productively to who you are and what you stand for as a real estate professional. That all-important “UMP shift” is the ignition point of a powerful campaign that brands you for weeks, months and even years of results-oriented marketing.

There’s more to be said, of course, about discerning and developing the perfect UMP for a potent branding campaign. Also more to be expressed about how crucial it is to build your brand with consistent and frequent impressions. My hope at this point is that you have an enhanced awareness of the possibilities and a clear sense that it’s completely unnecessary to rely on the “same old stuff.”

There is no quicker way to disaster than to lose site of an internal compass.   If your business is based on simply generating revenue and you are driven solely by the next deal you are a wreck (and lawsuit) waiting to happen. 
 

If I were to look at your business, how you operate, what you market with , or even interview your clients, what would they say about you?  Is there a central theme?  If so, what is it?  And more importantly, is it what you want it to be?  Does it reflect your core values and convictions?

I see this more often than not with people who claim that their faith is the number one value in their life.  They claim (often with great sincerity) that it is the basis of who they are and what their business is founded on.  Yet, when you look at their business, talk to their clients it isn’t even mentioned.  Why?

We’ve been taught to stay away from anything that polarizes and may offend.  In this Politically Correct society we have lost our internal compass because it may upset someone.  Even ff that is the case, do you really think that the person that was offended by your most basic and core value and conviction is going to be your ideal client?  I’m not advocating being discriminatory, that’s wrong.  But I am talking about being yourself and letting who you are shine through to attract those that will really truly appreciate you and your business.

 Carpe diem,

Do you know what you really need to know to market your business effectively?  If you’re like most women in business, you started your business because you are in love with an idea or a product, and are firmly convinced that everybody else in the world will be just as enamored of the product or service as you are. 

After all, most of us believe that we are savvy buyers, and if we like something, then we believe that every other rational person in the world would like it, too.

Not so fast, Oprah.  That’s not how it works.

Women desiring more than ‘sales’ status, let’s call them: REALTOR® Entrepreneurs – do have some natural advantages in the real estate business.  First of all, real estate is a WOMAN FRIENDLY business.  More REALTORS® are women and most of the homes buying decisions are made by women.

Very often, you are excellent at the soft skills such as communication, connection, empathy, and persuasion.  Those skills are why many women are so successful in sales positions.  But those skills often aren’t enough make a business work in the long term (or even to get it off the ground).

As a marketing coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of women entrepreneurs, and I see the same mistakes being made over and over again by smart capable women who were very successful while working in the corporate world. 

So what’s keeping these women from being spectacularly successful as entrepreneurs?  As much as I hate to admit it, one very important thing standing between most women business owners and success is the failure to understand who really wants what we’re selling.

While this may come as a shock to some of you ladies, there is no product, service, or idea that has ever been developed for sale that appeals to everybody.

Not everybody wants to be thinner, richer, smarter, blonder, sexier, taller, better hydrated, fresher-smelling, chemically enhanced, or more physically fit than they already are.  Not everybody wants a six-step all-natural skin-care regimen, a five-piece poly-cotton wardrobe that can be packed in your handbag for those spontaneous weekend trips to Hawaii or funky costume jewelry ensembles to match every mood and outfit.  And not everybody wants to take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime-ground-floor opportunities, make money from their down-lines, or cash in on the latest investment trends.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this:  Who really wants what you’ve got, and who is ready, willing and able to pay for it?  And finally, who will be thrilled with it?

Once we can identify who is most likely to buy from us, and who is seeking our solution to a specific problem, then all we have to do is let that person know that we exist.  This is much easier, much cheaper, and much faster than trying to sell ourselves to someone who just plain isn’t already ready or willing to buy what we’re selling.

Now, that’s actually pretty good news!  Because marketing to everybody is time-consuming and expensive, and I have yet to meet a REALTOR® entrepreneur who is willing to spend much more than 15% of their annual revenues on marketing.

Of all the many reasons to focus on a specific target market as your ideal client, the one I like best is that really happy clients become your unpaid marketing department.  Seriously, though, by focusing on a certain type of problem/solution for a specific type of client, you enhance your problem-solving skills and get really familiar with that category of issues (and therefore more valuable in the eyes of that client).

Once you are crystal clear about who your clients really are, the key elements of your marketing plan such as your niche, “‘Sound Bites’” or self-introduction, and the tactics you need to use to reach your clients, become so much easier to identify, which in turn helps you determine what you need to do to market yourself effectively.  And of course, marketing to a smaller pool of prospects is easier, quicker, and less expensive than marketing to a huge pool. 

So unless you have an unlimited marketing budget and nothing but time, money, and energy to spend, my advice as your marketing coach is that you focus on the easiest, quickest, and least expensive sale – your ideal client.  That is how you leverage all your natural assets, and make a spectacular success of your business.

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have the mastery coaching blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate’s elite delivered to your computer,

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via email

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via RSS reader

The magazine, Fast Company, recently declared that Americans are becoming a nation of “free agents”. They described a generation of consultants and professionals, all selling their services for the length of a project or until a problem is solved. That brings tremendous freedom, and new responsibilities to run our careers as businesses! Unfortunately, many “free agents” have never run a profitable business. The following are my list of critical issues in creating a career/business that will remain profitable for years to come.

1. Customer Benefits. You and your customers must clearly understand the benefits that your services provide. What are the 5 benefits of working with you vs. anyone else in your market place? Can you communicate that clearly? Customers buy benefits.
2. Extra Value. Customers must receive more in value than you charge for your services. Most of us don’t want a “fair” exchange; we want a bargain, the sense that we got extra value for our money. Can you communicate the 5 extra your customers get from you?
3. Superb Service. This means attention to detail. Answering the phone on the first ring, providing an 800 number and 24-hour customer service numbers are examples. L.L. Bean has made a fortune with it’s “no questions” guarantee. Do you have a guarantee?
4. Know your Audience. Who are you 5 best customer types.
5. Location. In the old days, this meant the street address of your shop or store. Now it means getting your marketing messages into your customer’s hands when and where they are receptive. Be certain your website is located at the top of the search engines.
6. Convenience. Customers expect to shop at their convenience, to pay by credit card, to call an 800-number, and to have their questions answered correctly the first time. Make it easy to contact you!
7. Innovation. New is good, newer is better. Customers expect the benefits of the most modern technology. At a minimum, they expect the convenience of email, voice mail, and efax. If there is a faster, better, cheaper and more reliable way to do it, adopt cutting edge techniques before your competition does!
8. Reliability. Consumers assume they can rely on your services. If they are purchasing your time and expertise, they rely on your availability, your advice, your attention to detail, and your follow-through. Durability may be less important in a throwaway age, but consumers demand 100% reliability. Be there for them every single time!
9. Planning. Planning takes on strange twists when a computer chip “generation” lasts 6 months and a website may be “old” in 6 weeks. Planning is the ability to monitor, influence, and profit from change. Planning means having a mission statement and the flexibility to respond instantly when new information allows you to fulfill your mission more effectively. Planning means you control your destiny.
10. Communication. This means instant, 2-way communication between every level and every branch of an enterprise. It means communicating with your vendors and competitors, and working with your customers so they become your most important designers, researchers and customer service experts. It means an “open door” policy and flat organizational models. It means listening is more important than speaking. It means ideas rule the world.

Carpe diem,

When people ask me what is the single most important thing they can do to market their businesses successfully, I have what looks like a very simple answer.  I tell them that all they really need to get started is a “Sound Bite”!  Sounds simple?  It is…and it isn’t!

What’s A “Sound Bite”?

A “Sound Bite” is really just a simple phrase (ideally seven to nine words) that distills the essence of your value to a particular customer base.  It is the answer to the question: “What do you do?”

In marketing, we say: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak” and what we mean by that is to sell benefits, not features.  The beauty of this concept is that once you’ve got it, you have probably defined your target market, as well as the features and benefits of your product or service, thus defining the value of what you offer to your customers, which is a huge stumbling block for so many small businesses.

What Makes a “Sound Bite”?

A great “Sound Bite”, self-introduction, or practice statement (whatever you call it) is appropriate, credible, intriguing, specific, and brief (under 3.5 seconds).

1. A great self-introduction establishes your credibility and professionalism, clarifies what you do, with whom you work with, and why those people benefit from working with you.  (Some of this can be implied.)
2. It gets the desired/best possible response to your “Sound Bite”: “Oh, really?  Tell me more.”
3. If “so what” or “and?” responses are implied (or received!), you need to refine your statement.

Need An Example?

We’ll use me as an example.  My “Sound Bite” is: “I help REALTORS® attract more clients.”  This simple seven-word statement tells people with whom I work, what I do, and what the benefit to my clients is.  Let me break it down:

WHAT I do= help…attract

WHOM I serve= REALTORS®

BENEFIT(s) my clients reap= more clients

As a Coach, the truth is that I help people to develop systems and tools for marketing themselves with integrity and ease.  But guess what?  PEOPLE DON’T CARE about the process or tools I offer, they care about the results of our work, which is why when people ask me what I do, I tell them “I help REALTORS® attract more clients.”

My clients “need” marketing because what they “want” are more clients.  That’s a very subtle distinction, yet it speaks perfectly to my target audience because it focuses on their results, rather than my process.

Creating your own “Sound Bite”

Boil it down to the essentials: WHAT you do, WHOM you serve, and the BENEFIT(S) your clients reap.  You’ll notice that I didn’t put “HOW to serve” in that formula.  That’s for a good reason.  Explaining “how” is about process (and you); your customers want to know one thing, and that is what’s in it for them. 

Carpe diem,

I get to look at lots of marketing from real estate agents and companies.  It is astonishing how much of it lacks a direct purpose.  There are only two things that prospects are looking for from a real estate professional.  The first is competence – can you do the job?  The second is character – do you care and will client enjoy the experience?  Any other messages are confusing, diluting and unnecessary.

When you next pick up your marketing material, look at it and ask yourself – “What is the message?”  “What does this make me feel?” and finally “What should I do now?” 

Carpe diem,

Secrets to Successful Branding – The Law of Advertising

If, we, as the real estate community really understood the concept of branding and its importance, we would save a fortune by cutting the misplaced dollars we are spending in the name of “getting their name out there.”

Most of us are re-treads – people who fell into this business and came from some other background. In 15 years of asking, I’ve only found one person who grew up wanting to be a real estate agent (and she is no longer in the business). I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed as a Broker that said the reason they wanted to be an agent was because they liked houses and people. If that is the sole reason they are here my advice to them has been – “Don’t get started in this business because in 6 months you will hate them both.”

Those that make it in this industry in today’s world are those that approach it with an amount of business prowess. Unfortunately, that isn’t taught in the “learn everything you need to know to become successful in real estate in two weeks” class. So, we throw the newbies to the vultures (vendors who sell BS products that do nothing but line the pockets of the vendors and serve as filler our nation’s dumps). We let them sling mud on a wall and see what sticks and hope against hope that they will be one of the very few fortunate ones who will survive the first three years.

Over time, those that emerge as mega agents realize that to truly win in this you must realize that it is a business not a career (and there is a major difference) and start learning how to become the “RainMaker.” Although we have dozens of proprietary campaigns to generate more leads, from time to time, we need to strip back to the basics and dive into the philosophy to align ourselves with the right thinking to launch our business to the next level. This week, it’s all about how to brand effectively so that you may maximize your ROI in any marketing or advertising program your engage in. From Al Ries, a master of marketing and branding in the retail sector, we take the lessons and apply the fundamentals to our real estate businesses.

One Secret is the Law of Advertising
Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy. Your advertising budget is like the country’s defenses budget. Those massive advertising dollars don’t buy you anything; they just keep you from losing your market share to your competition. Think 10% of your CGI to dedicate to your overall marketing budget to spend annually with ½ of that going to advertising.

Also, start thinking in terms of advertising as maintenance and marketing as taking new ground. Your individual campaigns will ebb and flow over the years, but your brand will provide the anchor that holds it all together.

Without proper branding, you will be re-creating from scratch every time you launch a new marketing idea. With this in mind, think about how much of a waste picking postcards out of a catalog every month is. No cohesiveness, no building effect, only the hope and prayer that your card will arrive just after the sellers have decided to look into moving (and they don’t have loyalty to another agent or a referral).

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have the mastery coaching blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate’s elite delivered to your computer,

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via email

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via RSS reader

Building a PIPELINE of potential clients these days requires more than just post card that says “I’m Number One!” – you need to establish a personal brand to set yourself apart from the crowded marketplace of other REALTORS® who have the same or similar qualifications.

What is personal branding?  Personal branding is the way you clarify and communicate what is special about you, so that you don’t have to talk so hard (or hope for the right question) to explain exactly why you’re the best choice a buyer or seller could make in choosing a REALTOR®. With branding, you are communicating more information on more than simply a verbal level.

“A BRAND takes the place of an actual personal relationship by making it seem that there is a relationship when in fact, there is none!”  The BRAND is ‘what’ we are remembered for.

Your personal brand is communicated through all visual and verbal communication, voice mail greeting, letters, listing presentations, personal web site, wardrobe choices used in meetings, handshake, contact card, and even your personal interests and behavior.  If any of these are inconsistent with the image you wish to project, your brand is compromised or at least weakened.

When developing your personal brand, ask yourself these questions:

• What do you want people to understand, think, and know when they see you/your marketing/your email?
• What is the essence of your value to an organization?  
• What makes you stand out? Your accomplishments, strengths, personal qualities, or just your hair color, the hat you wear ‘glamour shot’?

There is the story of the character actor who was wrestling with his personal brand because his primary value to directors was that he had a forgettable face.  He is neither handsome nor ugly, tall nor short, and even his hair was a nondescript color.  Although his credits are impressive, new casting directors never remembered him enough to call him back, even when they have been very enthusiastic about his auditions. 

After we did some work with the questions listed above, we decided to brand him as the “red sweater guy.”  Why red?  Because red communicates passion, which is how he feels about acting, and the color stands out and is memorable, even though his face is not.

To every audition, he wore a red sweater.  On his resume attached to his black-and-white head shot, he wrote in red ink under his name, “the guy in the red sweater.”  He began introducing himself as “Chris, the guy in the red sweater,” as well as identifying himself on his phone messages and voice mail as “the guy in the red sweater.” 

The result? The guy with the forgettable face became memorable, and effectively communicated his passion for acting by building a brand around a red sweater.

Correctly branding yourself will make you easier to remember, and will communicate much more than you can ever say in a cover letter or even an interview.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively brand yourself in ways that the consumer will respect and celebrate that are real estate related – check out http://www.parentrelocationcouncil.org/

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have the mastery coaching blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate’s elite delivered to your computer,

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via email

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via RSS reader