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,

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Most of our marketing efforts as an industry have been a series of trial and error decisions, made on a reactionary basis at the hands of a professional salesperson trying to extol the benefits of their wares.  It has had very little root in systematic evaluation or factual data.  We have been sold that “we have to get our name out there” and taken to the cleaners by affiliate industries that have made a fortune by taking advantage of our naivety.

As a master at your craft, you recognize that you need to run your business on fact, not emotion.  It is not only helpful, but absolutely essential to take an honest look at what you are doing, why you are doing it and what you expect at the end of the day.  The days of slinging mud on the wall and seeing what sticks are over, and guessing what will be effective will be reserved for those who represent the 90% of the industry that scrounges for 10% of the business.

What do you do that sets you apart?  What makes you different?  What ROI (return on investment) do you demand or expect from your marketing and advertising programs?  Does every piece of marketing material reinforce your brand?  Does every piece answer a need or offer a solution to a problem that the prospect has?  Do you have a marketing plan or is it piece meal? 

What are you expecting as we turn the corner into this next year?  Expect the best and if you don’t know how to get it by all means have someone, whether it be another agent, your broker or a coach help take some of the guesswork out of this crazy 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,

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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,

These are three of the most helpful words you can read while looking at a large map and unsure of where you are.

Have you ever visited a new city and got turned around while driving?  I can’t be the only one who has felt that very uncomfortable feeling of being in an unfamiliar place and being hopelessly lost only to have the anxiety amplified by the gnawing feeling of dread from already running late for an appointment and watching time click by as you look for any sign to help you get back on the right route.

Based on thousands of conversations with agents over the last couple of years, my guess is that those feelings have been echoed not only in foreign cities but can also apply to your business in uncertain times.  The good news is there is a map to get back on track, even in this economy and crazy times.  But a map is only as good as a point of reference of where to start.  When planning a trip there are several different ways to get where you are going, but the turn by turn directions need a basis from which to start from. You need a “You are Here” marker.

It’s with this in mind that we are launching our completely re-developed business analysis tool (Here’s a Sample Report).   We usually charge $750 for our non-clients to go through this with us and get the report, but we are offering the new Mastery Coaching Business Analysis to the first 100 agents free of charge as we work out any bugs with our web programmers.  To take advantage of this truly remarkable tool and gain some incredibly valuable insight into your real estate business as you plan for 2010 – click here.

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,

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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,

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