As many of you have already heard, we’re hosting the 2011 Help-U-Sell Success Summit from November 14-16, immediately following the NAR Annual Convention. The summit will be held at the Hotel Menage in Anaheim, Calif. You can find the details about the hotel and booking a room on our Set Fee Blog. The room rate is a great deal, and the summit itself is free.
As for the summit’s content, we thank all of you who contributed your ideas via our recent survey. The top two topics were:
Technology
Creative Financing
We also received a lot of write-in topics as a result of the survey. In order to accommodate as many of these as possible, we plan to hold many roundtable-type discussions simultaneously. Participants will be able to hop from one table to the next and soak up as much knowledge (and impart as much knowledge) as they can.
By broker request, we have added an option to require visitors to register with your site. The default state does not require registration. If you would like your visitors to be forced to sign up with your site, follow the steps below.
Click on “website” under the Setup tab.
You will see the new dropdown menu titled “Search login requirement.”
You can choose from “none” (this is the default), “three searches” and “listing details.”
The “three searches” option will redirect a fourth search attempt to your registration page. The “listing details” option means that any visitor who clicks to see a property’s details will be sent to the registration page first.
Often, forced registration can significantly increase leads. Try out one of the options for a week or two and monitor your level of response. You can always switch to the other registration requirement or revert to allowing unlimited searches and listing detail views.
Experiment with the options and let us know what works best for your site.
We’re starting a new series that profiles successful Help-U-Sell brokers. The goal is to honor these brokers while at the same time offering insight and advice for all of our brokers and agents.
An almost 10-year real estate veteran, Karen started out as a part-time licensed assistant with a Help-U-Sell office while learning the ropes of real estate. In March 2005, she opened up her own Help-U-Sell office.
Her office has closed 56 sides so far this year. She attributes some of this success to advertising on the radio and old-fashioned meet-and-greets. “I believe networking with community organizations, churches, local chambers and our local Realtor association is the most cost effective marketing tool in this market,” Karen says. “It doesn’t require an outlay of money, but gets us as agents interacting with the community.”
Another tactic she has used, based on what she’s noticed in her market, is properly pricing a home at the beginning of the listing, “right along with that, making sure your listing outshines the competition in ‘showability.’” She has also observed buyers take more time looking at the inventory of homes available prior to making an offer on a property.
Karen has a love for real estate, which shows in her work. “I believe real estate has to be a passion that you have inside of you,” she says.
For new brokers, she offers great advice.
• For those that got into real estate at the height of the market, this current market is a real adjustment. Start small. You don’t need a lot of agents, but the ones you have make sure they have the drive and stamina to succeed.
• Focus on your clients, as they will be your best advertising! I found testimonials were a great tool.
• Current and past clients always seem to know someone who is in need of buying or selling a home, so don’t be afraid to ask for referrals.
If you have more advice to share, please comment below.
We have some exciting developments to report. Those of you who participated in the Tech Time Tuesday meetings the past two weeks already know about these new tools. For those who have not been able to attend the meetings, here is a recap.
QR Codes
By popular demand, we’ve created a system to generate a QR code for every listing in the OMS. To access a listing’s QR code, open the listing and then click the “Reports” tab. You’ll see the listing’s QR code on the right-hand side. If you want to add the code to your printed brochure, select that option from the drop-down menu. The QR code will direct users to the mobile version of the listing.
You can save the code for use on printed materials by right-clicking on the image and choosing to save it. Some suggestions for use of the QR code are stickers and sign riders. One of our preferred vendors, Oakley Signs & Graphics, can print stickers for use on your existing signs and print the codes directly on new signs.
A sample QR code
For more about QR codes, read our previous post on the subject.
Leads Management Module
The first phase of our Leads Management Module is complete. You can see your new web leads in OMS under the new Leads Management tab. Leads are color-coded based on their age. Red means the lead is more than two weeks old. Orange indicates between two weeks and five days, and green is younger than five days. Click on a lead to read the comment and to either delete or assign the lead to an agent. Once you “claim” the lead, it moves from the “New web leads” area to the “Leads” area.
On next week’s call, we’ll preview the next phase. It will allow you to add leads to the “Leads” area and you can sort them into types, such as “buyer,” “seller,” “walk-in” and “call.” Once the leads are converted into buyers or sellers, they will move to the “Contacts” area.
Congratulations to Help-U-Sell Real Estate’s Top Producers for May 2011! We have a record number of offices in our top 3 for last month, including some newcomers.
1) Detwiler Realty, with two offices in Pennsylvania, closed lucky number 13 sides, including 8 on May 31.
2) Perennial top-3 producer Galleria Realty, Tucson, Ariz., finished second for May with 12 sides.
2) Another office frequently on the list, Prestige Properties in Chino Hills, Calif., tied for the #2 spot.
3) Part of a four-way tie for third place, Homequity Consultants, Apple Valley, Minn., had 7 closed sides in May.
3) A newcomer to the top-producers list, Honolulu Properties also had 7 closed sides.
3) Select Services is located in Fort Myers, Fla.
3) Rounding out the #3 spot, another office debuts on the list, Triad Realty out of High Point, N.C.
