Everyone on the panel has at least 50 percent of their sales from short sales and foreclosures.
Whitehead says she’s traditional Help-U-Sell Real Estate. She rarely places homes on the MLS. She encourages sellers to show their own houses, as well. She tells them, “you’re saving $16,000 [by showing your home yourself],” says Whitehead of Help-U-Sell Riverside Realty. “Let’s try this for 30 days.”
Zelena shared some marketing tips. “You have to have a lot of patience,” says Zelena. “You have to be nice.” She also does charity work, including selling candles as a fundraiser, and turns her ETMs into JPEGs to post on Facebook.
Powell says, “Do a set fee. Give your sellers a lot of signs for their open houses.” Taber says foreclosures bring in a lot of leads. He’s a one-man show, but he’s looking to hire an agent. He wants to split his time between REOs and short sales.
“I make sure at least once a week I give an update on each REO,” Taber says. “Treat the bank like any other seller.”
After we showed off our new banners from last month’s California REALTOR Expo, we heard requests from our brokers for similar banners aimed toward buyers and sellers. We’ve designed the two banners, one focused on buyers and the other sellers, for you to use at trade shows, events or even in your office.
Banners for Help-U-Sell brokers
We’re also working on business cards and two letterhead options, which we’ll get your vote on at next month’s Success Summit. Have you registered to attend yet? If not, go to our Seminars page, scroll down to the registration form, fill it out and select “Help-U-Sell Broker Success Summit” from the drop-down menu. We want to see you in Anaheim!
While other real estate agents are hibernating until spring, at Help-U-Sell we’re planning to stay warm by heating up the marketing efforts. That’s why we’ve initiated a contest to challenge our brokers and their agents to keep momentum going into 2012.
The Help-U-Sell Winter Warm-Up Contest kicks off Nov. 1, 2011.
The Winter Warm-Up is an 18-week contest, which will start Nov. 1, 2011, and wrap up Feb. 29, 2012. Help-U-Sell offices will earn points for each new listing, each closed buyer side and each closed seller side. The top three offices at the end of the contest win prizes in the form of admin fees, Help-U-Sell shirts and, of course, bragging rights.
Each new listing = 5 points
Each closed buyer side = 3 points
Each closed seller side = 2 points
There will also be prizes for the top finishers in three categories: Most listings taken, most closed listing sides and most closed buyer sides. Overall winners will not be eligible for these categories, so there will be six winning offices in total.
Winners will be announced during the March 7 Roundtable call, but we will be sending email updates throughout the contest on the 15th and the last day of each month during the contest.
We encourage you to organize a sales contest among your agents and kick up your marketing efforts in clever and resourceful ways.
The fine print: Relists and renewals don’t count. Neither does your personal property. The date the listing is entered into the OMS is the date that will be counted for this contest. First place overall wins a Help-U-Sell shirt and four months of admin fees. Second place overall receives a shirt and two months of admin fees. Third place gets a shirt and one month of admin fees. Each category winner earns a shirt and one month of admin fees.
An advocate of technology and social media, Meena Gujral connects with current and potential clients by blogging, responding to questions on real estate forums and posting links to articles on Facebook. She has worked in real estate for 25 years, with Coldwell Banker for 18 of those years, and for the past seven years she has owned Help-U-Sell Achievers Realty in Fremont, Calif.
She explains how technology has changed how she works, for the better.
“I remember the days when we used to find listings from a big thick book that was so difficult to carry around, the days when we had to map out every house, write down directions before taking the buyers in the car,” Gujral says. “The Internet and the GPS (technology) have made things much easier, saving time and energy so we can spend more time doing things we are good at, like building client relations and paying more attention to their needs. My goal has always been to help my buyers achieve their real estate goals.”
One way she uses technology to build client relations is through Trulia. She markets her listings and advertises open houses on the site, but what she uses Trulia the most for is to answer questions from buyers, sellers and agents.
“It is a platform where I get the most visibility. I get at least two to three leads every week from clients who have read my post and consider me the expert in that field or neighborhood,” Gujral says. “I have listed a few properties as a direct result from my Trulia answers. It is very easy to create a profile and get started to show up as the expert in your neighborhood.”
She suggests that Zillow.com is another site where you can set up a profile and start answering questions and advertise your listings and open houses.
Gujral also is active on other social media sites, including LinkedIn and Facebook. She explains that even though she has a separate Facebook page for her Help-U-Sell Real Estate office, she shares a lot of real estate articles and open house information on her personal Facebook page.
“I want all my friends to know me as an agent also, not just a friend,” she says. “I have actually had three friends contact me from my Facebook page and I am currently working on showing two of them homes, and the third one is a seller whose property I recently listed as a short sale.”
In addition to responding to questions on Trulia and posting to Facebook, Gujral also blogs. “I have five different blogging sites,” she says. “I used to blog twice a week, but I have to admit, I don’t do it as much now. I have had many clients tell me they saw my blog on a certain topic and that is why they called me. I just wish I had more time to blog since I do consider it good exposure.”
Another effective outreach technique for Gujral is drip email campaigns, which she has created for buyers and sellers. A drip email campaign sends pre-written messages to leads over a predetermined period of time. Clients have called her a year later after receiving her drip emails. “I am very excited that the Help-U-Sell Real Estate website will also have the drip email feature soon. It really works.”
[Note: Help-U-Sell Real Estate’s email campaign functionality will be live by early 2012.]
Gujral’s commitment to being considered a local expert extends to the new website her son is designing for her. The site offers community-level detail, where she can demonstrate and impart her hyperlocal knowledge, and the site also targets keywords that people searching for real estate in her immediate area would likely use, such as “Fremont Realtor” and “Pleasanton homes.”
“The bottom line is to make a site that both Google loves and customers love,” Gujral says. “We did this by targeting our content specific city-level keywords that we know buyers/sellers are looking for online.”
For new Help-U-Sell Real Estate brokers, she offers the following tips.
I would advise all new agents to get out there with technology, social media and get your name across to as many people as you can. You are fortunate to be in real estate in this technology boom time where you can get so much more exposure without spending too much money at all.
Make sure you ask for referrals from your past clients if you have been in real estate before coming to Help-U-Sell Real Estate.
Get your clients to see you as the expert in the real estate field.
How are you using social media to get the word out about your brokerage?
Anyone who has driven through Chino Hills, Calif., probably recognizes Patrick Wood’s name. He’s known for his ubiquitous signage.
“The technique that brought me huge success in my core market was to start branding my name with the Help-U-Sell Office,” says Wood, who has owned Help-U-Sell Prestige Properties since 2003.
All of his staff members have magnets on their cars that have his name and the Help-U-Sell Real Estate name, and his main work vehicle has a wrap that stands out. “The real estate signs and open house signs [also] have resulted in huge recognition, and the community has responded amazingly well,” he adds. “I constantly hear how people see my signs everywhere.”
Of course, there is more to his success than signage. Wood, whose office has closed 54 sides so far this year, emphasizes the importance of offering full service and commission savings in attracting clients. “I found this to be necessary as other agents were trying to compete with my office by suggesting the clients would have to do all the work,” he says. “The full service leaves the client satisfied, which results in referrals, so it has been beneficial.”
For new Help-U-Sell Brokers, he recommends continuing the full-service concept through to the office setup. “[In our office] a team concept has been put in place, and it provides clients with access to licensed assistants seven days a week,” he says. “Service is big, constant contact is big, working together is huge. This is a crazy, intense field and having the support of a team makes it much easier and productive.”
