Agents

The days of the single-office, generalist, residential brokerage may soon be over.  Those who survive this down market will most likely have done so because they will have made the choice between getting bigger or becoming a specialist firm, a boutique.

This is a common theme within any industry facing the kinds of historic challenges that we are.  It’s the choice between growth or specialization.  If there is little differentiation between your firm and the many others in your marketplace, there is little reason for consumers or agents to choose you over another.  Now more than ever you need to either establish a dominant market position or find your niche and own it.

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Social networking becomes less complicated when you break it into simple steps. Last week, I presented this concept at NAR to a predominately broker owner audience. As promised, I am sharing an edited version of the presentation right here.

Click here for a larger version of this slideshow.

The four categories, as we see them are:

Social Media Profiles… or more simply put, personal profiles on the various sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace. Building your profile is the first step.

Text Platforms… blogging, microbloging.  The second step is creating a platform to speak from and collaborate. WordPress and TypePad provide blogging platforms. Twitter is great for microblogging.

Visual and Imagery Platforms… add videos and photos to make your message more engaging. You Tube and Flickr bring your networking and your story to life.

Use Listening and Sharing Tools. Listen to what’s going on and spread the word. RSS, Digg are two of many tools that accomplish this.

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It’s interesting how the simplest ideas are often the most effective. Production charts are very powerful tools in the real estate environment, yet somehow many leaders pass up the opportunity to use them. In the example below, I have chosen to measure specific areas, but you can measure virtually anything that you want to, from actual production to productive activities.

Key factors in constructing production charts

1. The production chart must be highly visual, replete with color coding, numbering and any other strong visual impressions that you can come up with.
2. A production chart should also be portable so that you can bring it to office meetings, display it in the sales manager’s office or another prominent areas.
3. Perhaps draft a form like the one below, but then have a graphics company make larger versions for you to post on an office wall.

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Each year that I attend the National Association of REALTORS® conference, I come away with some new buzz.  The conference is a great way to tune into buzz-worthy people, topics and catch phrases.

Here are my top 5 buzz-worthy take aways from this year’s conference.

Number 5:  www.tinyurl.com will convert long urls into tiny ones. Great for those hosted virtual tours, slide shows or web commercials that have dozens of letters in the url. Just go to this website and change the url to the street address or something else more meaningful. (For example: http://tinyurl.com/NARBuzz)

Number 4:  www.ping.fm will update your status on multiple social networking sites. Talk about one stop shopping!

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Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming Gloor Realty Company to the Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate network. Located in Oak Park, Illinois, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gloor Realty Company is a shining example of everything you hope for in a partner when building a real estate franchise network.

Announcement day is always a mix of anticipation and nervousness. The Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate team waited in a separate room as Rich Gloor Jr. announced to his team that he had made the decision to franchise with our brand. Then he welcomed those of us from the brand to join the group. For me, this moment is always a little unsettling. You can’t help but wonder how the agents at Gloor Realty Company are feeling about the sudden news that they are now a part of a franchise system. You can imagine my relief when I was greeted by a room full of smiling faces.

Rich continued with his presentation explaining why he and his leadership team made the decision to franchise with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. He discussed the marketing advantages that the relationship offered to the local agents, the tools that would allow them to become even more competitive in their market, and the value of the Better Homes and Gardens brand name.

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Last week we kicked off our agent business planning program with part one of Planning for Profit: Getting Started. With the current economic conditions it is more important than ever for agents to develop sound, written business plans. However, it is also more difficult than ever.

The first ingredient in our business plan recipe is to set your production targets for the upcoming year. The uncertainty and concern from the agents was obvious. They asked questions like:

• Given the market, how can I possibly set production targets?
• Should I set my target lower then I actually want?
• Should I set my target higher then I actually want?
• Why bother, I’ve got no control over what is happening in the market. (Most are feeling this sentiment.)

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It’s always amazing to me to read quotes, like the one below, from ancient geniuses like Aristotle and to realize how many ideas remain true throughout all of time. Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle already understood that systems inherently help groups of people to reach their goals more quickly, more easily and with less stress. He wrote:

“Systems are inherently more efficient than non systems” – Aristotle

As a real estate leader, think about all of the systems that you employ on a daily basis.

a.    Recruiting
b.    Interviewing
c.    Retention
d.    Marketing
e.    Finance
f.     Online services
g.    Lead generation
h.    Referrals
i.     Legal
j.     Advertising
k.    Communications
l.     Public relations
m.   Seller services
n.    Buyer services
o.    Coaching

This list goes on forever, so complete it for yourself as it relates to your specific situation.

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This week we launched our Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate Planning for Profit program. This program is focused on providing our agents with a system to develop their personal written real estate business plan — something the majority of agents desperately need, but don’t have.

Keeping in line with the Better Homes and Gardens magazine formula, we’ve created our Planning for Profit: Getting Started program like a recipe. When you are cooking from a recipe, the first thing you do is gather all the necessary ingredients. Then you begin mixing them together in just the right amounts. Along the way, you make adjustments to get your preferred outcome.

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Posted by Alex Perriello
President & CEO, Realogy Franchise Group

On October 8, I sent a letter to all of Realogy’s affiliated brokers and sales associates to announce that we are launching an initiative to help our neighbors and local communities by trying to prevent as many foreclosures from occurring as possible.

The positive support I have been receiving from our brokers and agents in response to this letter has been overwhelming, and I wanted to share the message with the wider real estate community. When Sherry offered me the opportunity to talk about it on the Clean Slate Blog, I couldn’t resist.

There are now hundreds of thousands of families all across America facing foreclosure because they simply cannot afford their mortgage payments, or they owe far more than their house is currently worth. To make matters even worse, the Mortgage Bankers Association reports that an astonishing 50% of homeowners who do lose their homes to foreclosure have never once contacted their lender.

With this stark reality in mind, I have issued a “Call-to-Action” to the entire Realogy franchise community to help “Save the Dream” of home ownership. Specifically, I am asking every agent and broker to find just one family in their local community who may be facing foreclosure and help them reach out to their lender or a housing counseling agency so that they can begin the process of exploring a loan workout solution and hopefully stay in their homes.

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