Marketing

5 moments when silence is always the best option

July 22, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

There’s a time for words and a time for silence

Words can be powerful. They can influence and they can persuade. But in the same way the space between notes create rhythm, silence between words and sentences give people a place to pause, reflect and respond.

So, when are the best moments to be silent.

1. After you’ve asked for the order

The mark of a great sales person is how comfortable they are with the silence that inevitably occurs during a sales call. The tension is particularly evident immediately after the sales person has asked for the order. New sales people often mistake that silence for disagreement but the best option is always more silence. Avoid the temptation to fill in the silence with more words. It rarely works. Instead, sit still and quietly and listen. More often than not the answer will be yes.

2. When you start a speech

Nervous speakers hit the podium and start talking right away. The best option, though, is to pause. Look out over the audience. Make eye contact – then start speaking. That deliberate pause is the most powerful ways of getting attention at your disposal.

3. When you’re listening

Nothing says you care more than active listening. That means eye contact and it means nodding. But it also means attentive silence. Your friends, your family and your customers will thank you for your willingness to be silent.

4. When the people you’re trying to sell to are debating the purchase

Purchase decisions – especially for those who aren’t experienced negotiators – can be stressful. That stress can cause couples and buying groups to argue amongst themselves. When that happens it’s almost always unwise to say anything. Instead, stand back, listen and let them talk. Don’t interrupt. Often arguments are a way for people to slow the decision making process down. And the reason they want to slow things down is they love what you’re selling. But the more they debate the closer they are to a decision. Right now silence is your best friend.

5. When emotions are running high

When emotions are running high words are rarely helpful. On the other hand silence soaks up anger like a sponge and it gives sadness the space it needs to transform into joy.

What moments have I missed?

Photo: Alias 0591 on Flickr

How to make your email marketing work way better than you ever imagined

June 9, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Send something with monotonous regularity

One of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is to mail something at the same day and time every single week. We do this at Residential Settlements and in nearly every course I run someone will say how much they look forward to receiving the email every week. Make no mistake, sending a weekly email is hard work. My colleague Emily Murphy spends hours researching and interviewing and making sure of her facts before pressing the Send button. But every Tuesday morning at 10am the email is sent and every week a crop of new deals come in as a result.

Apply the rule of Ten Feet

The Rule of Ten Feet is simple: if you’re within ten feet of someone you should be asking if they’d like to join your email list. Applying this rule gives home opens, door-knocking and telephone canvassing a whole new level of intensity. The purpose of both of these activities should be to build a database of people who are keen to hear about what you have to say.

Have something worthwhile to say

Sadly, most agents equate email marketing with sending out their latest listings to an unsuspecting public. Don’t get me wrong, that has its place. In fact, if that’s the only thing you have to offer then go for it – but do it smarter. But there’s a better way to build credibility and relationship and that’s by writing some informed, insightful market commentary. In the short term target sending a monthly local market wrap. People who own property in your area will love your deeply nuanced understanding of what’s happening in your area.

The difficulty most agents have with sending a monthly market wrap is the time it takes but it’s an easy problem to solve. The answer? Think of the FAQs you get at your home opens or from your friends at a a barbecue. You know how you handle the “how’s the market?” question so now you just need to capture your thoughts and words on paper (or in a Word document). It will take you literally no more than 30 minutes to sit down and write your response and now you have something to send to your database.

And forget trying to sell. Focus instead on answering those FAQs. Imagine writing to your favourite customer. Give it all you’ve got. Pretty soon you’ll have something amazing to say. Keep sending this out to people in your local area and you’ll start building some serious credibility as THE person to know in the area.

Forget cold calling and start prompted calling

Many agents I know get their new people to tele-canvas. If there’s one job that’ll break a new kids heart and fill their day full of meaningless activity it’s this!

There’s a much better way.

Most good email marketing software provide lots of stats about the performance of an email campaign. These stats include the number of people that opened the email and the number of people who clicked on links contained within the email. These stats are just gold. So, if you’re sending out a weekly email your tele-canvasing activity should come from following up people who have opened or clicked the most. Choose the top 10 or 20 (or whatever number you want) and make a a follow up call. Use a simple script such as “Hi, it’s Sally Jones from Sally Jones Property. I sent you an email earlier today and I just wanted to quickly follow up to see if you had any questions.” No need for hard sell just give people the opportunity to tell you if they have an interest in what you sent them in the email.

My experience is that people will open up to you if they’re interested.

Your car – the best CRM you’ll ever own

May 21, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Most real estate agents have at least some form of CRM (customer relationship management) system. It might be as simple as their contacts in their mobile phone address or as sophisticated as Salesforce or Infusionsoft but most CRMs have a built in problem – they encourage agents to stay in their office and hide behind action plans and emails and segmentation.

And that’s why it’s often better to get your fingers off the keyboard and onto your steering wheel. Get out and go for a drive. And as you drive be aware of who you know in a street. If you see a home that you’ve sold, stop. Get out of the car, knock on the door and say hi. Don’t try to sell anything, just say hi. Then drive some more. See that house with the skip bin on the front lawn? It’s probably being prepared for sale. Get out of your car, knock on the door and ask if there’s anything you can do to help. If they’re adding an extension or renovating tell them congratulations and wish them all the best. But chances are the house is being prepared for sale. You’re now in the front door.

Do that for a couple of hours and I guarantee you’ll produce something. Even if you don’t come home with a listing you’ll know your area better. You’ll know who’s got what listings and you’ll be able to talk with far greater authority about what’s happening in your patch.

This kind of prospecting is exactly what I did today. While someone was working on my computer I grabbed one of my colleagues and hit the road. We stopped in at one office thinking we were there to meet someone I knew but soon found out that they were in another office. No matter, we were invited in where we got to chat to the licensee and some of the reps and had a guided tour of the office. It was well worth the hour out of the office.

But if you’re going to do this sort of marketing have a stock of brochures and business cards. Make sure you’ve got marketing collateral you can hand out so that people remember your visit.

So, just for a moment, forget the CRM and use your car instead.

Six tips that will get you called in to do more market appraisals

April 3, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

For agents to be successful they need to turn up the volume on their marketing. Image: Tavis Ford https://www.flickr.com/photos/itzafineday/121392395/

Each month I host a meetup for agents who are comfortable sharing what they’re doing to help create more leads and convert more business. Tonight’s meeting generated some great ideas including these 6 tips that will help you get called in on more market appraisals.

#1 – Work your database of buyers and sellers

This may seem obvious but it’s not to the hundreds of agents who ignore buyer leads. Often, these leads aren’t ready to buy just yet. Smart agents stay in touch so that they’re the first person that’s called when they are ready to buy – or sell. The key to a consistent follow-up programme is CRM software that allows you to automate a mix of communication and follow-up reminders.

#2 – Network with your supporters and suppliers

The best, most profitable business you’ll ever do is with people who are in your network. Successful agents invest a lot of time cultivating relationships and do that with a combination of online, print, and face-to-face communication. All high-performing agents can recount stories of earning tens of thousands in commissions through repeat and referral business from people they know. Make networking a high priority but do it with intention.

#3 – Give to get (without expectation)

Every farmer knows they must plant a crop before it can be harvested, and that’s the attitude of the best agents. They invest time and resources into projects they’re passionate about knowing that they’ll be reap a future reward. Often, community and sporting groups need someone who has some marketing savvy on their team. And that’s where real estate agents can help. By helping the club generate membership leads they make themselves an essential part of the club. Often, the club’s appreciation comes in the form of referral business.

#4 – Have your own website

A great listing presentation should start well before you walk through the front door. The best way to do that is a website that’s updated regularly, contains lots of stats and how-tos and communicates the agent’s knowledge and experience. Websites with lots of content that’s specific to a local area attract search engine traffic and help agents build a database fast. If you don’t have one, get one!

#5 – Think big

When I started in real estate, agents did tell-20s on their new listings and sales. Today agents are doing tell-1500s. That’s 1500 neighbours who are being informed about an agent’s latest listing. The same people are informed when the property is sold. That’s a massive difference. But the top agents don’t stop there. Most are letterbox dropping their area weekly or fortnightly plus sending out email blasts to thousands of people on their database.

#6 – Don’t wait to get it right

I’ve been guilty of waiting on pressing the go button until I get something perfect. But that strategy has it’s costs. In most cases I’ve been proud of the marketing I’ve published but while I’ve been finessing fonts my competitors have published 5 bursts of not-so-perfect marketing. As one of the attendees said, “I don’t care so much what my marketing looks like. What I do care about is that I’ve got the volume and frequency.”

If you’re interested in attending one of our real estate agent meetups please send me a message and I’ll add you to the invite list.

Want more website traffic? Post more to Facebook!

March 24, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

If you want more traffic to your site start posting more to Facebook. Image: USFWS Mountain Prairie http://www.flickr.com/photos/51986662@N05/8704165589/

Here are a few of my website traffic stats and four lessons they can teach you.

37.25% comes from m.facebook.com
31.54% comes from Google
12.7% comes from facebook.com
3.38% comes from Twitter

Here’s the takeaway.

Be active on Facebook. Ignore the advice of people who tell you not to post your listings. Most agents don’t list enough to annoy their audience anyway. Besides, the few people you’ll upset will be more than offset by the bounce you’ll get in the traffic to your site and in the resulting property inquiries.
Forget about Twitter. If I was relying on traffic from Twitter I’d go broke. Fast. My audience is on Facebook and I’m betting yours is too. If you’re not sure go check out your Google Analytics referrer stats. London to a brick they’ll tell you that most of your traffic is arriving from either visitors typing the URL directly into their browser (direct) or from Google. The majority of your traffic won’t be from Twitter.
Optimise for mobile. See the stats at the top of the page. They tell the big story of the last 3 years – build for mobile first. The largest referrer of traffic to my site is from users reading my posts on their mobile devices. If it’s a bad experience they won’t come back.
Make it sticky. My bounce rate – that’s the percentage of people who leave the site after a single visit – is over 80%. That means my content and site design isn’t tempting people to stick and visit other pages. I complained about this before and little has changed. Stay tuned.

How does your site stack up? Your homework is to dive into your Analytics dashboard and find out what’s happening.

Why paying for a Facebook audience is a bad, bad investment

March 23, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Building an audience on Facebook is a bad investment. Image: mkhmarketing http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8527429088/

Facebook pages were once the must-have tool in the marketers tool shed.

They’re not anymore!

Marketers need to know three things about a Facebook audience. One, you’ll need to spend money on advertising to build the audience in the first place. Two, you’ll need to spend money on advertising to get your message read by that same audience. Three, Facebook have a long history of obfuscating their intentions so expect to spend money in other ways in the future.

Want some evidence?

According Social@Ogilivy, Facebook pages now have a organic reach of just 6 percent. And they believe that number is headed to 0 percent. Yes, that’s right, zero.

What that means is that exactly zero of the thousands of people who’ve liked your page will see your posts in their newsfeed. Unless, of course, you shell out more money on a Facebook advertising campaign.

Think about that for a minute. For years now Facebook have been telling businesses to develop audiences on Facebook. They’ve been tricking businesses into paying for advertising to build the number of people who like their page. Now they want those same businesses to pay again, this time to get their message read.

That’s like buying a new car, driving off the lot and then finding out you can only buy petrol from the dealer.

And while your thinking, imagine for a moment if every business with a Facebook page decided to advertise. Clearly, Facebook won’t be able to put every page into everyone’s newsfeed so guess what’s going to happen. Yep, there’ll be a bidding war just like realestate.com.au is doing with agents in Australia. The only way to get your message in front of the audience you paid to build will be to spend even more money.

You tell me if you think that’s a smart move.

Want some alternatives?

On Facebook an audience an illusion
When you hit send button to your email list you can pretty much guarantee how many people will open it. Not so on Facebook. According to Time magazine organic reach of page posts have been steadily declining since around 2012. If you want to reach an audience get a website, a CRM system and start building an email list.

On Facebook you have close to zero control the appearance of your page
On a website you have total control over what your site looks like and how it behaves. Not on Facebook where the only substantive thing you can change is the cover pic. Like, wow man! But even that is subject to Facebook’s petty rules about the amount of text and limitations on calls to action. Spend the money you were thinking of wasting on Facebook on improving your website. It’ll be yours forever and no-one can take it away.

Still keen to invest in building a Facebook audience? Share your reasons in the comments below.

6 tips for becoming a more credible market expert

February 23, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

If there’s one way to improve your income it’s to become a credible market expert. People who are seen as credible are sought out for their advice. And because their advice is taken seriously people buy more of what they sell.

So how do you be build credibility?

Here are 6 ways.

Tell, don’t sell. In other words, talk about what you’ve done, not what you want to do. Telling stories about your successes is one of the fastest ways to convince people that you have cred. If you’re new to the game then use the success stories from your company.
Focus on the customer. If you want to sound shrill, talk about yourself. But if you want to sound credible then start thinking on behalf of your customer. Stand in their shoes, show that you clearly understand the issues they face. People love to do business with businesses that truly care for them.
Get it out of your head and onto the web. I tell this to agents all the time. If you know something, share it. Write a blog post. If you don’t have one, build one. If you don’t want to do that use Tumblr or Google Plus. Whatever you choose start sharing your pearls of wisdom. Once you get into the habit you’ll soon have the words to produce an email newsletter or a printed magazine. None of it happens, though, without writing.
Act as a servant to your community. Natalie Hoye does this really well. She’s not only writing, she’s producing a (free) local community resource that lets people in on the secrets to living well in her patch. Flowing from this servant leadership is the fact that she never has to explain to people what she knows about their suburb. It’s already published on the web.
Be vulnerable. Sure, it’s nice not to burden people with your problems but it’s also good to let people know the limits of your knowledge, your skills and your abilities. And if you’re feeling down, don’t be a hero and keep it to yourself. My most successful blog post is one I was almost too scared to publish. I felt exposed, scared and vulnerable but the story resonated with a lot of people.
Use all the resources available to you. My mate David James is already a successful sales coach (he was my first boss in real estate). He doesn’t need more customers but he’s in the process of rebuilding his website and is about to increase his social media presence. For Dave, it’s not about getting more customers, it’s about building his credibility and serving his existing customers better.

If you have a tip to share about building credibility please share it in the comments below.