Learning What Not to Do From the Average Realtor

As sales trainers, we are challenged by our clients to come up with big ideas. Bryan Neale, Brooke Green and I spend a fair amount of time in ‘creative discussion.’ So, if you hire us, you get all of our eyes, ears and minds to help you solve a problem. We actually have worked quite hard to become creative.

So Here’s a Creative Idea I’ll Give The Real Estate Community

Even if you aren’t a realtor, bare with me on this. I think you’ll learn something.

I know many realtors–as we all do. At last count in Indianapolis, there were over 5000 realtors. But why is it that most of them are awful marketers? When you think about it, that’s ALL they should be doing is marketing/selling.

An Example:

My neighbor recently listed his house with a Century 21 realtor. He was telling me what a great realtor this guy was. Great guy maybe–effective realtor? Doesn’t appear so.If I were selling homes today, I would do one thing that would make me the top producer in an area. I’ve heard of no other realtors do this. (I have other ideas if you realtors want to call me. But don’t call me if you don’t want to rapidly grow your business.)

My Idea (you get for free): I would let everyone in the neighborhood know in advance of the listing/sign, that the house was going up for sale. Think about how insanely valuable this idea is.

Think about how many people we all know–that we’re only an email away from. Tens? Hundreds?I’d say every one of us knows 100-300 people that we could email. So, if he opened the house up for ONE WEEK to all people who were Friends of Neighbors, he could probably sell the damn thing in a week. Plus, he would get both ends of the deal (not just the 1.5% as the listing agent).He would sell the house quicker AND get double the commish.

He should personally call all 50-100 of the closest neighbors and have a two day open-house (Sat and Sun) prior to the list date. He should have champagne, Starbucks Coffee, spend a few dollars on nuts/chips.

But What Does He Typically Do?

Nothing of the sort. His sales strategy is 100 years old. He spends hundreds of dollars of his own money doing worthless advertising, sending out direct mail that no one reads and spending other company resources without results. So why do realtors refuse to change their thinking? Not sure.But those realtors who get sophisticated about marketing, who understand referral systems, who are creative marketers, will make 5-10x the rest of the pack. But most are afraid of stepping outside the traditional realtor thinking.

What can you, the non-realtor, learn from this?

Think differently. Think marketing. Think how to do things easier. Rather than making cold calls, make warm calls. Rather than doing direct mail to a cold audience, find out who else knows the typical prospect you’re going after. Read Seth Godin’s blog. His creativity will break some of your brain cells free.

It seems we were taught early in life to CONFORM–wear the unifom–don’t step out of line–do what everyone else does.Well, you can do that. But that’s not where the enormous growth is. Get out of line. Read and come up with new ideas and say to yourself, “I’m going to test this and see how it works. And if anyone challenges me on it, I’ll just smile and say ‘I know it’s probably stupid, but I’m going to try it anyway.’”

Good luck.

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Tagged as: Bill Caskey, creative ideas, Lead Generation, market sales strategy, real estate training, sales training