Making the Riccelli bet to take away the fear of trying something new

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Richard Riccelli doesn’t write here very much, but, when he does, it’s pure gold. I’ve been writing in BloodhoundBlog about Richard since the blog was young, as have others, and Richard has been writing with us for as long as we’ve been a group blog. I can’t sing his praises enough. I’m sure I can’t even see nine-tenths of his genius, but I am forevermore enthralled by what I can see.

A peculiar aspect of Richard’s brilliance is his uncanny ability to identify and excise the deal-killing objection. In his own marketing business, his fees can run dauntingly high. Don’t want to pay? No problem. If he loves the project, Richard will work for a cut of the take instead. This is unheard of in direct marketing, and the shear audacity of it can silence every other objection he might hear from his clients. How can you argue with free?

For months now I’ve been playing with Riccelli-style direct marketing ideas at ABetterListing.com. The site’s not done yet. Taking account of testing, it will never be done. But it takes on its first big market test tomorrow.

This is the back of an open house invitation card for a house we’ll be listing next Friday:

Cathleen and her crew of energetic teenagers will be distributing 2,500 of those cards this weekend, with another 2,500 going out next weekend. The whole launch is a Very Big Deal since the house we’re listing falls into the Jumbo Zone — where desire is unlimited and loans are unavailable.

But ABetterListing.com was built for this kind of door-to-door direct marketing promotion, and the promotion itself is built around a Riccelli bet: We’re betting that we’re better than anyone else you’ll talk to, and we’ll pay off on the bet if you don’t agree.

An even better Riccelli bet would be this: “If we don’t get you a contract within 30 days, we’ll sell it for free!” Unfortunately, in the neighborhood we’re working in, homes are selling in 267 days — on average — when they sell at all. We’ll save that offer for a better market.

I’ll talk more about ABetterListing.com another day. There’s a lot going on there, and my ultimate goal is to turn that site into a de facto listing appointment. Most people will still have us in, if only to make sure we’re as good as our word. But, if I can get that site working the way I want it to, it should be able to generate “untouched-by-human-hands” listing contracts.

All of this is making me completely crazy. This is on-line selling, not on-line lead generation. If you’re coming to BloodhoundBlog Unchained in Orlando, I’ll be talking about it at length. We’ve been living for years on the web pages we built for investors and relocators, and those pages need to be rewritten. But the stuff I’m doing with ABetterListing.com is completely new, all of it based on Riccelli-style direct marketing ideas.

If you can sell — and I mean sell all the way to a paycheck — with nothing but text and images and video on a web site, your costs per paycheck will plummet and your net profit per paycheck will soar. Using this link, a ticket to Unchained is only $99 — and everyone speaking at the event will be teaching money-making ideas like this.

And I’ll make a Riccelli bet with you, too: If you don’t come away with a fat wallet full of radical new marketing ideas — ideas you won’t hear at any other real estate marketing conference — we will refund every penny you paid for your ticket.

Like the man said, “What do you have to lose?”

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