Plug In: 8 Ways to Get More From Your Help-U-Sell Relationship!

As Help-U-Sell team members, we all have an obligation to plug in. It’s on each of our shoulders to take advantage of opportunities to connect with each other, to share ideas and encouragement.  This isn’t always easy.  While there are a handful of metropolitan areas where ‘clumps’ of franchisees are located, many more of our offices are located miles from any other.

We are our own culture. We’re different than any other REALTOR in the marketplace.  We have our own values, our own bull’s-eyes, our own definition of success.  When you are all by yourself and you aren’t taking regular sips of the Help-U-Sell Kool Aid, it’s easy to let the messages of your competitors become your reality – and believe me:  if you’ve done your job well, they don’t like you. When you reconnect with your Help-U-Sell peers, when you remember who you are, it’s like putting on the chain-mail armor and sharpening your sword for another day in the real estate jungle.

In the interest of keeping ourselves and our culture healthy, here are a few recommendations for staying connected:

1. Take advantage of at least one of the national teleconferences held each week. There are three:  Tech Tuesdays, Talk Wednesdays and Train Thursdays.  All of the meetings are held at 11 a.m. Pacific time, 2 p.m. Eastern and each lasts an hour.  Robert Stevens shares the latest news about our growing web capabilities on Tuesdays and then usually opens the call up for questions and discussion.  Ron McCoy anchors the Wednesday Broker Roundtable call, which is one of my favorites.  It’s a time when Help-U-Sell brokers from across the country come together to share ideas, strategize and celebrate successes.  Maurine Grisso conducts training every Thursday and it is excellent, topical stuff.  Almost single handedly, she’s taught the entire organization how to survive and thrive in a Short Sale Market and how to go after REO business.  (You get reminders and login information about these meetings every week but if you can’t find them and want to join in, just call me or anyone at corporate.  We’ll be happy to send you the link.)
2. Any time there is a Help-U-Sell meeting within a couple hours of your location, get there.  It’s worth a day out of the office to recharge your batteries and reconnect.  And, by the way:  in most areas, discount air carriers make travelling a little further easy.  A $125 roundtrip plane ticket that gets you to the meeting in the morning, recharged and out again in the evening is well worth the expense.  (Get ready for the big Sarasota/Las Vegas meetings in March!)
3. Pay attention!  I know:  we send you a lot of email and much of it looks and reads the same:  reminders of this and that.  Still, you owe it to yourself to read through your Help-U-Sell email.  It’s our primary communication tool and, by the way:  when we distribute website leads, that’s how we do it!
4. Join the Help-U-Sell Facebook page and those of your fellow brokers.  Once a day check in and see what’s going on and participate:  post and comment.
5. Read the set fee real estate blog and comment. I promise to keep each post short enough to be read in 10 minutes or less and I promise to focus them on items of interest to Help-U-Sell family members.  Your comments keep the blog interactive and also provide great fodder for the search engines (that’s a whole topic unto itself – we’ll take it up soon).
6. Connect with Connect!  The Help-U-Sell Newsletter. It comes out once a month and is the best way I know to stay up with what’s going on and where the current focus is.  John usually does a corporate update in video and in addition to the news, we also recognize top performers and people doing unusual or special things well.
7. Pick up the phone. Call me. Call John Powell, Call Robert Stevens and Ron McCoy and Tami Patzer, call anyone at corporate and tell us what’s on your mind.  And don’t hesitate to ask if you don’t know:  everything’s new right now and there are no stupid questions.  Call your fellow brokers, too.  One of the powerful characteristics of the Help-U-Sell team is its willingness to share and brainstorm ideas and, honestly, the best ideas I’ve ever come across were those that bubbled up when two or more Help-U-Sell brokers got together.
8. Get involved in Coaching. John started the coaching program last year and it’s been discovering itself a little every month.  As we head into 2010, the coaching program has become more solid and better defined.  I’ll give a detailed overview in an upcoming post.

One of the reasons we all joined Help-U-Sell was to tap into something exciting, something we could believe in and be passionate about.  It’s very hard to maintain excitement, energy and passion if you are isolated on your own desert island.  Plug in.