Peter Fletcher

So Whose Client is That Anyway?

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Stick figures arguing

They were mature women, both well-groomed and articulate, elegant even. By contrast I was fresh-faced, full of dreams and brimming with youthful enthusiasm. Already I was well out of my comfort zone having moved from Kalgoorlie to the hustle and bustle of the big smoke.

And I was about to enter the cauldron of my first sales meeting as a principal. It was a moment I’ll never forget.

Within moments the prima donnas were at it, firing salvo after salvo of insults and allegations. There was hardly a moment to draw breath.

They were arguing over who “owned” a prospective seller. “They’re in MY farming area”, claimed one. “But they came through MY home open”, retorted the other. Back and forth they went, voices getting louder, veins on necks and temples set to burst. Soon they were standing, shouting at one another across the board room table. One shook her fist, lips quivering in anger.

It was sad to see.

What was especially sad was they were arguing over the wrong question: Whose client is this anyway? It’s a question that’s always drawn false battle lines and been resolved using equally false justifications.

The real question is: Who does this client want to do business with? That question recognises that no-one owns a prospect. No-one owns a client. No-one owns a farming area.

For as long as I can remember business owners lay claim to the client based on how much they spend on training, advertising and wages. As Ray Perkins, principal of RealSell in Wanneroo, observes there are a lot of costs that go into training an developing new sales reps that need to be recouped. “This is where an office can feel that work carried out by the rep over this period of time in creating a database of clients belongs to the office”.

But, according to Bunbury RE/MAX agent David Willis, it’s outdated thinking.

back in the dark ages, we relied on the company for leads in a way that doesn’t happen anymore. The argument was that the company paid for the phone to ring, therefore, they own the database that comes from it, and it was a good argument at the time. Most agents are now seen as semi independent, paying for and bringing in business via their own methods rather than waiting to be spoon fed.

And, for many agents, Willis is on the money. Times have changed, they believe, and it’s now a simple, incontestable fact: the sales representative owns the client. It’s a view held by Geoff Baldwin, Regional Owner and outspoken Managing Director of RE/MAX Western Australia. Baldwin asserts that “the relationships belong to the Sales Associate. Any Agent who thinks they can change that is kidding him/herself.”

Others see more nuance in the debate. According to Kylie Atkinson, a Perth based real estate technology trainer, it’s “a very grey area which can be viewed from both sides of the fence.”

But just how do agents separate the black and white from the many shades of grey? For Atkinson and others it’s all about rewarding effort.

She believes that one of the biggest mistakes an agency will ever make is not staying in touch with their database. In her view no-one can lay claim to ownership of a database that’s not being actively worked.

Based on years of industry knowledge she’s developed a solution to reduce friction about database ownership. “Databasing is all about ‘maintaining the contact'”, she says. “No less than 4 communications (verbal/face-to-face) per year and a variety of ‘relevant’ paper/email communication” is the minimum.

By her own admission, though, the reward for effort approach has it’s limitations. “You cant own a person full stop”, she says. It’s an observation shared by veteran Victoria Park agent, Jay Wood. He believes that claims of ownership over clients will always be moot because “the customer will shop where they like”.

It’s a pragmatic point of view, one that’s based on an understanding that no matter what agents say it’s the customer who decides. And with Facebook and Twitter making relationships between agents and their clients more transparent than ever it’s time to throw the idea of ownership out the door completely.

In reality clients would be right to laugh at the absurdity and hubris of agents attempting to claim ownership of their relationship. Regardless of the effort made by the agency or the sales rep no-one owns a client. All agents can ever own is their own actions. And if those actions are sufficiently focussed on building, thickening, extending and improving relationships then the result will be more business.

Image credit: Francis Carnaúba on Flickr

Five cool posts discovered in Google Reader

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Rifos East Victoria Park

Right now you’re like a New York City department store with no windows, a Sushi place without the little plastic food in the window.

Hiding your goods from the marketplace. Failing to use their power to engage.

If you’re a brokerage of any size, you have tons of content to play with. You have access to an IDX feed. And, I would imagine, a camera.

There’s no excuse. No, not even MLS rules.

Come on agents, it’s time to get busy!

  • Max Kalehoff provides a short explanation of content delivery networks (CDN’s). They’re used to deliver web content faster. And with Google including page load speed as part of their ranking algorithm it makes sense to look at using one, especially for high traffic sites. According to Max:

A good Web hosting provider with dedicated servers and clean coding are critical to website speed. But so is a content delivery network, especially if your site is subject to visitor spikes and geographically dispersed traffic, and contains large multimedia files (like video). The largest online publishers have already made CDNs part of their online infrastructures.

It’s probably not something I need to look at for this site but I wonder what the portals, franchises and marketing groups are doing.

  • Jay Baer is right; we’ve seen this social media movie before. Where? Email marketing. Opt-in, subscribers, open rate, impressions, CTR: they all mean the same thing only just in a different setting. He concludes:

For more than a decade, the world of email has hoped to send messages of such vigor and verisimilitude that recipients would be compelled to click a “forward to a friend” button to send the message onward to their compatriots, who would surely benefit from its contents. That F2F rate has historically been tracked by email marketers, although it’s accuracy is poor since it’s easier to just click “forward” in your email software, than to click the button within the email itself.

In social media of course, this sharing behavior is the coin of the realm. Retweets, Facebook shares, Diggs, Stumbles, and now Linkedin shares are badges of honor, displayed proudly atop each blog post like family crests of feudal lords.

That’s a lot of similarities. Does anyone else feel like we’ve seen this movie before?

In short it’s time to stop thinking of social media as a special case. It’s not. It’s just a different horse in the same race.

  • On the Geek Estate blog Drew Meyers recommends blogging about local free wi-fi hotspots. It’s a cool idea. He suggests doing more than just grabbing information off the web but actually going to the place (café, library, restaurant) and interviewing the owner or manager. Then he poses the real kicker:

To really maximize your time and effort, don’t just write about wifi options based on what you find on the web — go there, talk to the staff, and write from first hand experience — and send the owners of those establishments the link to your blog post once you’ve written about them. Better yet, use that email as a conversation starter and convince the owners to blog for you on your local blog (that’s the holly grail)!

Great idea, huh? Bet there’s no-one doing that in your patch. Know what that means? You could be the go-to person and carve out a niche for yourself. Much of this post was written at Rifo’s in East Victoria Park. They have excellent free wi-fi and even better coffee. So what are you waiting for?

  • Finally, Kristin Rawski from Excite Media provides an analysis of the Oreo’s Facebook page. She explains that they could be more responsive about the content they share but praises their World’s Fan of the Week contest. That contest encourages fans to upload a photo of themselves in exchange for the chance to be featured on the page avatar. I wonder if they got Facebook’s permission to run that contest.

At what price our secrecy?

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Real estate agents have been trained to hold things back, to keep something up their sleeves.

Take property addresses for example. In years gone by it was customary to leave them off a property ad. That forced people to call the agent to find out the address. It was only after the buyer revealed their name and number that the agent gave out the address. It was a classic case of information imbalance.

Some agents still play this game. Here’s an example and in case the property is sold I’ve included a screenshot below.

Property for sale in Burswood

I don’t know the agent and mean nothing against them. I simply chose the property from a search on a local suburb and picked the first property without an address. As it turns out the agent chose not to advertise the price as well.

It seems clear that the agent wants buyers to call them for the price and address. But buyers route around agents who hide information. It’s easy to do on the net and I wanted to prove it. So, with a few basic web skills I was able to find the address – 1305/2 Oldfield Street, Burswood.

That did’t take long at all.

But the price continued to elude me. It’s the one piece of the puzzle I’d need to find out from the agent. Alternately I could simply compare it with the other properties for sale in the area or order the most recent sales data with a few easy clicks and decide on the price myself.

The agent and the seller now pay the cost of my information search. Why?

For one I’m taken away from their site. The moment I leave their site there’s a good chance I won’t return. That’s what happens on the net.

More importantly, if I was a serious buyer, I’d go into any conversation with the agent carrying a suspicion that the agent was going to play their cards close to their chest and tell me only that which they wanted to tell me. Perhaps the agent isn’t that way at all, perhaps they are open and honest but, as a buyer, I can only work with the information at hand. And the information presented is missing key pieces designed to put the agent in control.

Aside from the price and address, some stunning pictures and well written text, what else could the agent supply on the property profile? What are the things that would make me want to stay on their site for longer and have me believe they knew their stuff.

Here are a few ideas.

  • Links to other properties for sale, even if they were listed by competitors *waits for the cries of heretic*
  • A map
  • A list of the most recent sales in the area, the ones from the agent’s market appraisal
  • The properties WalkScore rating
  • Tweets mentioning the suburb (as I write this tweets mentioning Burswood show there’s a flood fundraising concert coming up this week)
  • Links to local business and restaurants
  • A stamp duty calculator
  • A mortgage repayments calculator

Would it take some extra time to add these to an agent’s site? Sure. Would they increase the level of trust buyers and sellers would have for the agent? You bet. And the more trust a buyer has the more they are likely to want to do business.



My bounce rate is too high and what I’m doing about it

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Bouncing ping-pong ballThis blog has a terrible bounce rate. As I write this it’s 78.57%. That means that 4 out of 5 people who visit my blog read just one page before heading to another site. With that level of bounce it’s no wonder that I’m not converting web traffic to business inquiries. And for someone who makes a living on the web it’s pretty woeful.

Here’s what I’ve done to get things moving in the right direction.

  • Added recent posts and recent comments to the sidebar. It appears this hasn’t worked.
  • Added the Efficient Related Posts plugin. I was hoping that visitors would see these links (they’re the ones at the bottom of this post) and click through to read the story. It appears this hasn’t worked either.

What I plan to do from here is:

  • Get clear on what I’m selling. That will provide a defined pathway to what I want readers to do.
  • Add stronger calls to action. At the moment there’s a lot of soft, fluffy stuff. That needs to change.
  • Provide a Subscribe function.
  • Create better. more compelling headlines. This will give visitors are more compelling reason to click on Related Posts.

The case for advertising the price on for sale signs

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For sale sign

Full disclosure is always welcome

On a Facebook group for real estate agents someone asked the question: “Real Estate agents who put asking prices on their signboards….Is this a sign of agents panicking that their “message” isnt getting out there or have we been spoilt in the past with short DOM’s?”

The consensus of the ensuing conversation was that publishing the property price on the sign is a “ridiculous thing to do”, “just plain dumb” and that’s it’s “just crazy”.

These are all understandable sentiments. For years agents have strategically left crucial pieces of information from their property ads in order to get the phones to ring. If, as happened in a bygone era, a property was advertised without a home open the address was always left off. The goal was to get the punters to call for the address. Only after the caller parted with their phone  number did the agent release the property address.

That’s how not having the price on a sign works. Leave off the key piece of information a buyer wants and make them call. Once they call the price is given, but only after the caller provides their name and phone number.

This type of marketing is generations old. Tom Hopkins created a whole series of videos back in the seventies (Loved his crushed velvet suit and big tie. He was real estate’s version of Austin Powers) based on his book Mastering the Art of Selling Real Estate. His mantra was to never, ever, ever give out the price or the address until the person had parted with their name and phone number.

For years this type of selling worked. It still does. But it’s no longer the most effective way to sell.

Why?

Well it’s this new-fangled invention called the internet where buyers have information at their fingertips. Leave the price off the sign? That’s ok I’ll look it up on the net. Leave the address off a newspaper ad? That’s cool, I’ll find it online.

It’s now clear the internet has removed a fundamental information imbalance. Agents are no longer privileged holders of information. There’s (almost) nothing about a property a buyer can’t find online. People want information and they’ll go to where they can get it. And if that means routing around an agent who’s holding their cards close to their chest that’s what will happen. Whether it’s via Google or Twitter or Facebook people will find their answers, with or without the agent’s help.

If that’s the case it makes sense to enable and empower buyers by providing them with more information, not less. Rather than withholding the price include it, along with a QR code that links to the property profile, and the URL to a single property web site. And on your web site include as much information as you possibly can. Make these pages the ONLY place a buyer needs to go to get the information they want and need.

All of this makes sense because it puts buyers at ease. Information and transparency gives people confidence, it puts them at ease and helps them make the right decision. And agents who enable that kind of easy decision making make more sales. More sales inevitably lead to happy sellers and more referral business.

And in a funny kind of way, that’s old-fashioned selling. Tom (Austin Powers) Hopkins would be proud.

New law offers greater transparency to vendors, but at what cost to agents? | API Magazine

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Selling agents across Australia are in limbo as the industry watchdog starts to clamp down on single point pricing in real estate transactions as legislated in its Competition and Consumer Act 2010, according to a Canberra-based agent.

The Office of Fair Trading is now stepping in to enforce the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) 2010 legislation which requires all industries to adopt single price points, meaning that the GST (goods and services tax) and all fees and charges are included in a single price for marketing purposes.

With the objective to provide further transparency for consumers, section 48 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 said if agents choose to use component pricing in advertisements, they must also provide consumers with a prominent single total price.

For selling agents it means big changes, but it’s only now starting to roll out on the street, said Erik Tyler of Canberra-based agency LIVEin.

Read the rest of the story:  Australian Property Investor :: New law offers greater transparency to vendors, but at what cost to agents?.

Are you using single property web sites?

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The single property web site at 546 Caves Road, Siesta Park

I heard about single property web sites some time ago. At the time I was skeptical. That skepticism is beginning to fade.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been chatting with Ben Stockdale. He’s the boss of The Home Page and MillionPlus. If you haven’t heard, The Home Page is a free real estate listing portal based in Melbourne. Why every agent in Australia isn’t listing there confounds me. It’s pretty cool. But I digress.

I was introduced to Ben by Tatiana Mijalica who’s always looking for new marketing ideas. She’s a marketing machine. Anyway, Ben was kind enough to help me with an RSS feed that automates a very small part of maintaining a Facebook page I manage. For a guy who’s running a couple of major web properties he’s generous with his time. And he knows his stuff.

After we sorted out my problem Ben suggested I take a look at something they were offering as a value add service. That something was single property web sites.

There’s a couple of compelling reasons for single property web sites. For a start, it’s a great way for an agent to differentiate themselves. Not only is the property going to be listed on a the major portals and the agent’s site it’s also going to have it’s very own address on the web. That address can be included on property brochures and signs.

Another reason single property web sites are cool is they’re indexed by Google. And, because they contain a link to the agent’s web site, they provide SEO benefits that help the agent’s site rank higher in search. That’s a good thing.

The single property web site’s The Home Page offer (via My Property Address) are themed nicely using the color schemes found on the agents web site. For an example check out 546 Caves Road, Siesta Park.

And they’re quick to set up. Once the agent is registered setting up a new single property web site is a two click process. All of the property details are automatically imported from details on The Home Page.

At $99 including GST they’re cheap. Some agents in Melbourne have asked The Home Page to create one automatically for all their new listings. Of course the cost is passed on to the vendor as part of the vendor paid marketing package.

So what do you think? Is there space in your marketing plan for single property web sites?

Location

You can find me at Residential Settlements in Burswood.

5/170 Burswood Road
Burswood WA 6100

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