Thread: Salesman or Marketing?

Hi ABQAnthony,

I'm thinking the reason why you're so successful in your business is because it almost seem to come naturally to you. People see the passion you have in the business that you run, you don't have to tell them, they just sense it and they want to work with you.

Real estate has now become not just a sales business but also a marketing business as well. Personally, I find myself on the computer a lot interracting with clients or prospects. I have to sell myself first before I can even get them to give me a call. It's just the way this market turned out to be...at least from my perspective.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy that prospects will come to you specifically because they need help buying or selling a home. The market is saturated with real estate agents, you really have to do some extra shining to stand out and get some calls or inquiry. Again, it's just the nature of the beast.

Kudos to you for being so successful in this economy where giants are falling...I'd love to know your secret.

Good luck and take care.

Originally Posted by cfbinc

Hi ABQAnthony,

I'm thinking the reason why you're so successful in your business is because it almost seem to come naturally to you. People see the passion you have in the business that you run, you don't have to tell them, they just sense it and they want to work with you.

Real estate has now become not just a sales business but also a marketing business as well. Personally, I find myself on the computer a lot interracting with clients or prospects. I have to sell myself first before I can even get them to give me a call. It's just the way this market turned out to be...at least from my perspective.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy that prospects will come to you specifically because they need help buying or selling a home. The market is saturated with real estate agents, you really have to do some extra shining to stand out and get some calls or inquiry. Again, it's just the nature of the beast.

Kudos to you for being so successful in this economy where giants are falling...I'd love to know your secret.

Good luck and take care.

Thanks for the reply. I do understand that people want to feel confident in the agents ability to represent them. Just wasn't sure how the vetting process worked. From what i've seen the person who educates the buyer to where the buyer understands the process is the one who gets the 'listing' or the exclusive agreement.

What I meant by people coming to me is not that they beat a path to my door to do business with me just because.... But, when we implemented direct mail campaigns, and educational based marketing it turned the process from hitting the pavement, doing cold calls, and traditional advertising, where the customer called and cared only about price --- to people calling and asking when we could start, price was usually not an object at this point.

One thing i've seen in the local MLS is while looking through listings (in process of buying house as well) I see the same 40-50 agents over and over again on listings.

It seems like my local area has 3,500 registered agents but only a fraction seem to be active. Many don't have websites and many don't answer their phones....is this common place? I've heard that "20% of the agents do 80% of the work"...?

Im so glad that you are successful in your business. I'm just curious what secret you used to be a successful businessman. In my opinion the Marketing helps a lot in selling product than the salesman but the sales man can also help selling product.

I was in the house building business for years and used the services of many Realtors. For the last 15 years of my building spec houses days I used a lady that was on the ball.

This is why I used her:

- Came to the property, took photos and collected accurate information about the property and listing.

- Kept in touch every couple of weeks, even if there was no action on the house.

- When she made appointments to view the property she was on time and if she wasn't going to be on time, she would call.

- When she showed the property she would follow up to let me know how it went. She always offered feedback and I made the adjustments she suggested.

- She had her thumb on the real estate pulse in our area. I had a big house and couldn't sell it. A year went by without much interest. One day I saw her on the street and we chatted. For some reason I mentioned I would be willing to take a condo on trade. She replied "that's interesting". A couple hours later she called and said she had someone that might be interested in a trade.

A couple of weeks later I had a condo which she had already found a buyer. I took a little hit, but you can't win them all.

I noticed working with her over the years she didn't sell. She just used her head. She was a business person. She had the magic ingredient "commonsense" plus she knew how to close the offer.

I have have my property in Costa Rica for sale. A country of about 4 million people, half of which sell real estate and not one Realtor among them. I miss that lady a lot and wish she was here now.

I don't think you have to sell at all. Just be on the ball, learn how to close and use a little commonsense. Do this and the listings will come to you by way of word of mouth.

A great SEO'd website, #1 in Google, Bing and Yahoo ranking. Have a #1 Google Places Page, put the leather on the ground and you'll blow your competition away fast.

Good luck if you go for it.

Originally Posted by arnelsmith

Im so glad that you are successful in your business. I'm just curious what secret you used to be a successful businessman. In my opinion the Marketing helps a lot in selling product than the salesman but the sales man can also help selling product.

We've done everything different than our competitors. Where our competitors focus on 'brand awareness' we focus on knowing who are prospects are. They focus on door to door, cold call, and other 'quick closes' we focus on relationship building which makes the 'selling' a lot easier. My existing business is NOT real estate so I can't say that this will work in RE, Just wondering what kind of process people in RE implement.

I don't think there is any 'secret'. We make it clear that we offer value for dollars, that we're not the cheapest in town, and that we want to do business with them. We offer valuable information for free such as consumer awareness guides, service evaluations, and other 'non-junk' giveaways.

Once they're educated about the service we're offering the choice becomes pretty easy for them. The referral systems in place have worked very well without compensating the referring person.

Don't confuse me, i'm not saying I'm a master at sales or marketing, and really couldn't tell any "secret" I'm just saying what we've done has worked very well in our industry and I want to try it in Real Estate.

To condense and clarify my question:

Do you --- Wait for leads, or purchase them then try to connect.

OR

Do you -- create leads through marketing..

Originally Posted by EveryoneLovesReba

I was in the house building business for years and used the services of many Realtors. For the last 15 years of my building spec houses days I used a lady that was on the ball.

This is why I used her:

- Came to the property, took photos and collected accurate information about the property and listing.

- Kept in touch every couple of weeks, even if there was no action on the house.

- When she made appointments to view the property she was on time and if she wasn't going to be on time, she would call.

- When she showed the property she would follow up to let me know how it went. She always offered feedback and I made the adjustments she suggested.

- She had her thumb on the real estate pulse in our area. I had a big house and couldn't sell it. A year went by without much interest. One day I saw her on the street and we chatted. For some reason I mentioned I would be willing to take a condo on trade. She replied "that's interesting". A couple hours later she called and said she had someone that might be interested in a trade.

A couple of weeks later I had a condo which she had already found a buyer. I took a little hit, but you can't win them all.

I noticed working with her over the years she didn't sell. She just used her head. She was a business person. She had the magic ingredient "commonsense" plus she knew how to close the offer.

I have have my property in Costa Rica for sale. A country of about 4 million people, half of which sell real estate and not one Realtor among them. I miss that lady a lot and wish she was here now.

I don't think you have to sell at all. Just be on the ball, learn how to close and use a little commonsense. Do this and the listings will come to you by way of word of mouth.

A great SEO'd website, #1 in Google, Bing and Yahoo ranking. Have a #1 Google Places Page, put the leather on the ground and you'll blow your competition away fast.

Good luck if you go for it.

A lot of great information here. Thank you for the insight!