Hungry dinosaur. Will Vook for food:
Category: Disintermediation (page 5 of 43)
I don’t know how I’m still awake — and from moment to moment I’m not. But we wrapped up Unchained in Phoenix tonight, and I wanted to take a quick minute to salute everyone who was part of an amazing experience. Two fingers of Bushmills — more would be a waste. To all the dogs and to everyone who learned to howl like a Bloodhound this week, we are in your debt. This was by far the best Unchained event so far, and we are but begun. Per ardua, ad astra!
The Raddison In Phoenix is great so far. Everyone’s friendly. Coffee
was tasty tasty.
But hey, we’ve got like 5 hours to kill before the fun starts at
Unchained. So where’s the Bartender?
It’s noon in Phoenix, but it’s about time for happy hour for those of
us still on the (ET)!
-Ryan Hartman
(Sent From My Fancy Phone…)
Latest Videos From Youtube.Com/BloodhoundUnchained!
[tubepress]
Per my earlier post regarding the evolution of technology driven real estate solutions, I believe the next generation of buyers and sellers will be more empowered to search, purchase and sell real estate themselves, without the services of a real estate professional.
At the highest level, the success of an entirely virtual solution rests in its ability to clearly and confidently shepherd a potential buyer or seller through the process of buying and or selling. Very few sites provide a path to success. The irony for me was what I found while reviewing do-it-yourself real estate sites/services. In my opinion, www.helpusell.com provides decent content regarding the “how’s and what’s” of buying and selling. I am not holding Help-U-Sell as a beacon of light, but merely a site which provides far more content regarding the “how” of buying than the “what” to buy.
The focus of technology solutions has been too highly skewed towards the data and not the content nor the process.
Clients are not looking for listings – they are looking for homes. Do not underestimate the connotation or meaning of home. Data is not the answer – it is part of the solution. The solution is achieved by execution. Execution requires clearly defined, repeating steps – a process.
There is a lot of chatter regarding how to keep potential prospects “stuck” on your site. Many believe that IDX property search is critical. Important? Maybe – but if you are relying on search capability as your differentiator, you’re wrong. I argue spending a majority of your time and effort building content around the process – mapping out the steps – one by one – specifically what needs to be done to get from beginning to close will get them stuck – FIRMLY – on your site. Everything else is secondary to the process.
So what does a completely virtual solution look like?
First and foremost, it assumes that there is no real estate professional involved with managing the process – or providing “services”. If you’re recoiling from that last statement, I merely ask, have you mapped out the process step-by-step and defined what you do at Read more
Really. Google “me” in your search bar or Google home page and see what happens.
I was going to post about this yesterday and I’m glad I didn’t, because as of today, searchers who enter only the word “me” in the search box will be given an opportunity to set up or edit their Google Profile.
The personal profiles are not new. I did share some of my thoughts on this in Unchained in Seattle. They’ve been around for a while now, it just seems that every time I take a look at them they add more features. First with a curious name verification process, then just last week with custom URLs. They now support a pretty good amount of info on someone depending on your settings. Numerous links to sites, an ‘about me’, contacts, and a Flickr or Picassa feed for photos.
None of this might be relevant except for the fact that Googling you is what people do. Even my wife (against my personal preference) told someone to just look me up on Google the other day. That person found me in a heart beat.
Profiles are already showing up at the bottom of page 1 search results and for those with common names there G will sport 4 profiles per page. I suppose the more you share on you profile the better your results. So far, there’s only one of “me“.
While the big G says they are not having a run at Facebook’s social network action, google profiles still would be a good place to stake your claim. Especially if you like using any of their other services, such as Maps or anywhere else your profile will be linked to…
Now if all that’s for nothing, then consider this. I reviewed my first message via my profile that simply read “Loved looking through your material. When I decide to move back to SF, I’ll give you a call.”
Update: For promotion, Google is giving away 10,000 sets of 25 business cards to go with your new profile page. Get em’ while they last.
Several recent posts have had me thinking about just how technology isn’t addressing the needs of cats. Needless to say, there are many different types of cats – cats that roam alleys picking through the remnants of fish bones versus the ones that eat Fancy Feast and sit on the laps of chauffeur driven owners who may, on occasion, stop at a traffic light seeking Grey Poupon. It could happen.
I suspect the cat population is quite diverse – many having different likes and dislikes, perhaps differing motivations as well. Given that some cats roam alleys versus sit in the lap of luxury, perhaps the roamers may be more self reliant- the “fat” cat perhaps in need of greater doting, relying on others to take care of their needs. Needless to say, there’s a larger, even more diverse range of cats beyond the alley cat and the fat cat.
I reckon there’s a parallel between cats and consumers.
When it comes to measuring the success of a broker and/or agent, furry walls are often designated as a sign of success. Jeff recently commented that his hirsute success is based on results. I have absolutely no doubt that his superior service would make him the Rockefeller of fur trading. He knows his cats – but more importantly, his cats know him. Perhaps not all his cats are “fat”, but they have a taste for Grey Poupon.
On the flip side, Greg’s recent post highlighted the self reliant cat’s approach to selling a home. From Greg’s picture, it may be a good thing that cats have nine lives, because this cat is dead.
How are current technology solutions really addressing the differing needs of cats … er… consumers?
I found Glenn Kelman’s recent survey results enlightening.
Well last March we surveyed 1,058 people who were using our site about what they wanted in a real estate agent. Some of the answers were gratifying for us to see — transparency was tops on the list — but one that stood out was the answer as to why people who had already chosen a traditional agent had decided against using Redfin: 47% Read more
Did I really just say that? Sorry but it’s high time to call a spade a spade.
I recently decided to cut the apron strings so-to-speak with my old broker and go “indie”. After paying in about $200K in exchange for about $12K worth of business over a five year period, I had to evaluate whether the relationship with my broker was anything other than terribly one-sided. Since about Year 1.5 when I began working full-time from home, I’d managed to become pretty independent in terms of how I operated and procured business. I finally saw I wasn’t getting much of anything in return for those hefty commission splits and transactions (not counting the occasional pep talk, although at times it was much appreciated.) So I left at the start of the New Year. Since making the split official, I’ve had a chance to evaluate the cost of every aspect of my business compared to what it used to be. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that my overall costs are much lower. More surprisingly, however, I also discovered:
1. business cards were a profit center for the broker
2. sign installations were a profit center
3. color copies were a profit center
4. template sites (complete with crappy framed in MLS data) were a profit center that did not even generate leads
5. advertising was a profit center
6. leasing back office space to agents was a profit center
7. accounting services were a profit center (in the form of huge transaction fees)
8. sending closings through the broker’s joint venture with a local title company was a profit center
9. home warranty applications were a profit center (by skimming off the top of agents’ referral checks)
10. 100% tax deductible sales meetings were a profit center – vendors paid the broker to have their mediocre template sites etc shamelessly endorsed & pushed on agents
But wait, you may be thinking. Surely there were other ways your broker was adding value? Sadly, not really. Training beyond the basics was almost non-existent. Occasionally something would be offered gratis, eg a bank talking about changing lending standards, thus hoping to get some loan business. Or “training” Read more
As winters go, the current capricious season has been as tolerable as any I’ve experienced sober since being administratively abandoned here 14 years ago against my will. So what if I left a smarmy sales vice president waiting (with 45 life insurance presentation kits and a slide projector) in Baggage Claim 7 at O’ Hare International for an ‘inexcusable amount of hours’ on a cold March morning back in 1990-whatever. Big whoop. I figure the suited puppet is corporate milk toast by now anyway so I have no regrets in that regard. A year and a half later I had my real estate license and thirty days after that, I sold my first multi-unit building for condo conversion. ‘God forbid’ the ass clown would ever think to spring for a cab. Thinking back on it now, that’s what he most likely had to do. I just don’t recall it being mentioned in my Fed Exed severance package that so quickly followed.
And what I’ve concluded since that liberating (if not sentimental) six-figure parting of the ways is this: If ever there was a super-imposed bordered, semi-landlocked example of urban, bi-polar personality disorder just waiting to spit in the face of cabin fever, it exists in my fair city, Chicago, between the months of November and April, pick a year. And, as is the case of so many frost-bound salesmen who have come and gone before me, my own personal demons continue to appear in a variety of veneers (with mere weather and spirited drink being the least seductive of my temptresses anymore).
My final hours in corporate America began to un-tick in the following way one blustery weekend a millennium or so ago. I had been sitting on the same Viagra Triangle bar stool since Saturday morning when Last Call was finally announced. I allegedly paid another unwilling patron to help me locate my car and drive me home. When I hit the pillow and cold crashed on the bed hours later it was the break of daylight the following Sunday. I needed to be out the door in exactly 24 hours Read more
What makes you unique? I’m not referring to your eleventh toe or your ability to recite the Arabic alphabet backwards. That’s not unique – that’s plain odd.
Why do clients want to work with you? What makes you better than the rest of the pack? I ask this question based upon the comments I received in my last past.
Simply because you may rank first or second in a Google search does not make you unique – it makes you visible. Now that you’re visible, what is the value you bring to the table?
I did a search on an address of a property I’ve listed, sadden to see that my SEO wizardry had failed me – Trulia and a whole host of other sites beat me to the punch – but honestly, I don’t care. My client’s property is well represented in cyberspace. It’s visible. But visibility is not value in and of itself.
Now – say you use the fact that you rank first, maybe second on the list of the Google search you ran, specifically on the property’s address – or maybe even on the property’s characteristics – terrific!
But wait – as a consumer, I see your site and perhaps Trulia, Redfin or another local broker’s site with the same property – and a slew of other sites with the same information. It’s visible but it is not specifically clear to me as a consumer why I would choose your site versus another. Perhaps I choose your link because it’s first on the list. Not a bad choice, but it was relatively arbitrary – it ranked first – not necessarily best.
If you’re marketing yourself as the best professional to sell a client’s home because you own the ranking of their property in a search result, you’re kidding your client – but mostly, you’re kidding yourself.
Greg Swann nailed the value proposition as to why high visibility on the web is a key differentiator: he’s visible – but he also sells his clients’ listings in less time than comparable properties in his market. Like almost 50% less.
Your high visibility facilitates your ability to sell Read more
Barry Bevis in Tallahassee is looking for help. And he’s willing to pay for it.
He has a listing that he’s having trouble moving, and he’s looking for marketing ideas to draw the attention of a buyer.
Here’s Barry’s note:
I have a great listing that just won’t sell…
I’ve given it my version of the Bloodhound treatment: Custom Sign, Website, URL and lots of photos. You can see the home by clicking here.
It’s in a preferred neighborhood with parks and shopping within walking distance. It has been well maintained and is priced well — according to comps and other brokers feedback. It has a great yard and a hot tub!
The negatives: After a year of trying to sell I know them! Small Master bath and No Half Bath. Tile Counters in the kitchen — our area prefers Stone. The cost to cure these “issues” is beyond what the seller can do.
We did start with it priced too high. The seller was “not in a hurry” and wanted to try a higher price. I said okay because he is a friend — knowing all along that it was a mistake. Now its in the ballpark and would appraise at the new list price.
I get a couple of people in a week — and loads of website traffic. But no offers. Not even obnoxious low ball offers.
So the seller keeps asking me what to do… Besides lower the price. So this month we are dropping the price 1K a week, a 4K price drop. That will make it show up on any buyers automatic web searches as “Price Reduced.” We are also offering to pay a point to drop a buyers interest rate, likely below 5%.
What else should I be doing?
I’m looking for ideas to ignite interest in this home and get it sold. I’ve got a $100 AMEX gift card to the most creative idea. Greg and I are the judges.
Step up and tell me what to do!
This is a tough problem, one I wish I were unfamiliar with. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “There are no second acts in American lives.” One of the Read more
I choose to live in a big American city because frankly, I stick out like a sore sport in most rural settings and my accountant says we can’t afford London. One of my earliest pre-school memories was a Trenton to New York City train ride with my mother on a blustery Saturday morning. How much of that early 1960s day trip I accurately recall and how much is anecdotal family filler (pulled, kneaded and peppered over the redolent decades around my parents’ kitchen table) I’m not quite sure. Still, certain sepia frames have been imprinted in my mind for life— gazing up at the sky scrapers whose dizzying heights give me vertigo to this day; creeping like a mouse through the bowels of The Museum of Natural History, terrified of the mummies and the smell of all that marble; seeing a man get his arm tore off by a taxi cab while standing at a busy Broadway corner…I’m pretty sure; sitting on a New York City phone book for a child’s eternity at Mamma Leone’s, waiting for the dessert course to arrive. Feeding the ducks in Central Park. Observing the landscape artists with easels and tams, their turpentined pigments slathered on thumb-holed palettes, probably all long dead by now but full of abstract perspective on that day. Not peeing my pants for the entire afternoon.
A similar ferment churned in my gut when I first strolled the arrondissements of Paris; same thing along the canals of Rome; and Gaudi’s Barcelona. And while I can easily inhale the woodsy fragrance of say, a Walden Pond (or even Dyer, Tennessee) without much complaint, I am clearly no Thoreau. Once you think you see a guy get his arm torn off in Times Square, you can never really go back to the suburbs. Not entirely.
As each year strikes like lightning, I find myself being both drawn to, and repelled from, the urban twist of what once was Sandburg’s Chicago with its animal sense of outcome and yellow inner eye… ‘ hog butcher for the world.’ Liebling’s Second City. On a calm evening the whispers can Read more
What really is the role of technology in real estate today? So much of the discussion regarding the evolution and use of technology today seems to be centered on SEO – what ever you do, make sure Google finds you.
You have a blog or website. It has super SEO powers. It attracts many prospects. So do hundreds – maybe thousands of other agents.
Sounds great. You’ve found me. Now what?
When consumers find me, what makes them want me? Regardless of whether or not potential clients find me via the phone book, website or as a result of a conversation a past client had at a cocktail party, the real question isn’t necessarily how they found me, the question is – once found, what do I offer to my clients that meets their needs like no other broker can?
What is your value proposition? Your value proposition transcends your marketing message – it provides tangible, measurable ways in which you meet the needs of your clients, prospects and consumers.
“What is the role of technology?” You can’t answer that question until you know what your client’s needs are and how you meet them.
The role of technology is merely a tool to provide a medium which delivers the desired results to your clients, prospects and consumers.
The emphasis on technology has been entirely too focused on how consumers find you and not enough on why they want you. Just because you are more visible to potential clients does not make you inherently more valuable. If you have a blog or website, is it aligned with meeting the desired results of your clients, prospects and consumers?
Having an IDX link or other MLS search tool isn’t unique. In fact, search in general isn’t entirely unique.
If you’re found, what makes them stay?
What if a purely technology solution met the needs of consumers? It’s possible. If you can’t make it clear how you meet your prospects needs, someone or something will.
Since Greg welcomed me aboard BHB last week, ideas have been racing through my head. What would I write about first?
CRM execution tactics? Too predictable.
Skinned cats? I’ll leave that to my favorite cat skinner.
Then it occurred to me last night: why not dive right in with an example of why BHB and blogs like it are putting the traditional fish rag out of business.
I’m a sports fan(atic). I find it to be the ultimate in reality television.
But whether your remote is hard-coded to ESPN or not, you’re surely aware of the ongoing steroid crisis in professional sports.
This week’s Sports Illustrated features an article about a former football player named Tony Mandarich, commonly known as the biggest bust in NFL history. However, two decades ago, SI ran a story proclaiming Mandarich as “The Greatest Offensive Line Prospect in the History of Football”. This story was written by a journalist named Rick Telander.
Now, twenty years later, Tony Mandarich Book Deal is ready to say he’s sorry for using steroids. So he looks up good old Rick Telander Spineless Jellyfish and lands himself a feature article advertisement.
Here’s the article, please keep a barf bag nearby: “Tony Mandarich is Very, Very Sorry”.
And here’s my favorite paragraph from said article (via Telander):
“… He lied to me. Lied to everybody… I knew he was using steroids… but all I could do was hint at my suspicions…”
Um, Ricky baby… you knew he was taking illegal steroids, cheating and gaming the system but you, a Senior Writer for the most respected publication in sports were POWERLESS to do more than “hint at your suspicions”?
Telander’s article goes on to reveal that
- Mandarich was known at his local gym as the “Doctor”
So what Telander’s telling us here is that he could have easily broken arguably the biggest sports-related story of the decade if he simply noses around the gym a little bit to explain how/why…
- Mandarich magically transforms from a 6′ 3″ HS kid who rode the bench on his JV team into a behemoth that bench presses 585 pounds and “runs like a deer” in college
Wait a second. This blog is supposed Read more
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but to think that it’s deja vu all over again. Is it really 1980 again? Congress appears to have stolen a page from the Conservative’s play book – but with a twist.
It seems trickle-down economics applies as much to government spending as do tax cuts to the rich, yet with the latest infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the most powerful corporations – America’s largest banks and insurance companies, we have yet to see much of a trickle – less a drop.
TARP did in fact keep the economy dry.
Perhaps the irony of it all – to me at least – is that the so-called “Socialists” also see virtue in starting at the top – fork over billions to the most powerful to get the engine running again – the proof is not quite in the pudding pie, Georgie.
From my perspective, the deluge is starting at the bottom. My email has been flooded with comments from my condo association regarding the complications my neighbors are facing in the sale of their condo. Economic circumstances are hitting very close to home – my neighbors, one of whom is a fellow Realtor – directly below me in my building – is in dire need of selling their home. Our association has a first right of refusal clause which deems FHA financing impossible. My neighbor has been soliciting the board and fellow owners that an amendment in our bylaws is required to make the sale of their home possible to more buyers.
I was amazed at some of the comments from fellow neighbors concerned about the “quality” of potential buyers who only qualify for 3.5% down – I could only chuckle thinking that some existing owners were able to buy with 0% down 3 years ago. Where’s there equity now?
One neighbor argued that we want to prevent a short sale – moreover a foreclosure – from impacting the values of existing homeowners. I’m pretty sure he didn’t read The Chicago Tribune on Sunday – there was an article about the substantial increase of foreclosures Read more
My brother called me late last week. He lives in Dallas with his wife and kids – he’s in his early 40’s, smart, tech-savvy and owns his own business. He wants to buy a new home. The home he wants isn’t currently listed with a real estate agent – it’s a pocket listing FSBO so to speak -the owner would like to sell but doesn’t want to actively list and sell it. She’ll sell at the right price – she’s not going to go out of her way to find a buyer.
My brother has bought and sold a few homes, rarely with the assistance of a real estate agent – he’s open to cooperating with an agent when he wants to sell his home, but simply not keen on paying a commission for something he feels he is more than capable of doing himself.
I am not an evangelist. If he wants to do it himself, more power to him.
Funny thing happened, however – his call was a plea for help. He wanted me to review the standard real estate sales contract – he doesn’t know what boxes to check – or at least wants to make sure that he’s checked the right ones. He needed to move relatively quickly so he could get his hook into the “unlisted” home before word got out that she would entertain offers.
“Listen Tom, I really need your help – I’ll even pay you.”
Putting the whole lack of being licensed in Texas aside, a smile came across my face. ALAS, my brother of all people understands the value of expertise and knowledge – and you know what, it ain’t free.
I asked him how he knew whether or not the house he wanted to buy was actually worth what the seller wanted?
Not sure but felt her price seemed reasonable. I told him to go to Zillow and find out what it’s Zestimate was – the good news was it fell within a few thousand of the seller’s target price of $1M.
I walked through the contract with my brother Read more