Are you Ready to Communicate with the New World?

Video involves more of the senses; it sells you and your service using sight, sound and emotion. With video, you can make a perfect “first impression” every time. Using one of the tools listed below I have a list of five  easy ways to get you started with video. Lets bring video into your real estate business.

• Use your digital camera – most can create video clips very easily
• Your Virtual Tour Product – I use Real Estate Shows. For just $99 a year I can create as many as I want. They use photos with movement, text and royalty free music.
• Or invest in the The Flip – an easy to use video camera with a USB port on the side. Simply by plugging it into your laptop or computer you can create a movie, email it or post it on YouTube.

Remember Video is mobile and Viral. The iPhone and mobile phones enable viral, on the fly video distribution.

Here are some ways to use video.

1. Customer Testimonials. The next time you are at a closing table, pull out your digital camera and ask your client for a 30 second testimonial of what is was like working with you.  Once you have these videos, post them on your website, email them as references, or post them on Youtube or Wellcomemat. Make sure you get it writing that you are allowed to use these testimonials as advertising.

2. Open House Videos. Many of your clients can’t make it to the open house when it is held, so bring the open house to them! There is a great website called OpenHouse.com where you can post your vidoes. Walk through the home with your Flip or your digital camera and take 10 second vignettes in all the rooms and tell the stories why living in that home is special. The Flip can take all those clips and create a movie very easily. If you are using your digital camera, try using MovieMaker – a free program on your computer. If you want something more robust, try Sony Movie Studio. Only $54,95 and they offer a free trial.

3. Social Networking with Video. – Viral marketing can help distribute your video into a group of people’s inboxes who may not have ever heard of you. Consider creating a “JUST MOVED” video for your buyer clients. We do this for our clients. We take 8 pictures of the house and then the last picture is the client very happy in their new home. We then put appropriate text and then give the new address and phone number of our buyer. If you give this instead of just moved postcards, your buyer client will send this on to their sphere. On average everyone has at least 100 people in their sphere. We know we have gotten business from this type of video. Check out a great example here.

4. Neighborhood videos – Using your virtual tour product. Start by taking pictures of your farm area, a condo complex, the area in which you live, add text and music and send it to your sphere to remind them what a great place they live in. A gentleman I met on the gulf coast in Alabama took a poem he wrote and put it to music and photos of his area. He received two listings as a result.

5. – Up and coming . . . Video lsting presentation. Just go to YouTube and put that in the search window and you will see some examples by early adopters.

Next post: where do you put these videos . . . with easy to follow step by step instructions. Until then, make me proud, go out and get some video under your belt. Get out your camera and start practicing!

Customer Service – Now more than ever

Yes, I have been ranting about customer service but every time I have a new experience I am mind boggled, that we still treat people . . . well not like people.

Wikipedia offers this definition:

Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.

According to Turban et al. (2002), “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.” Its importance varies by product, industry and customer.(Hmmm, maybe this is part of it)

Some have argued that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy.

I support that argument. And it comes in all forms.

I showed up at Home Depot today and was greeted by THREE men in orange aprons. Have you ever had that experience? Normally I have to run after these guys and tackle them before they will help me. when I told all three of them I was happy to see them, they said to me, “NO, we are happy to see you!”. I guess it takes business that is a little slow to bring out the customer service at Home Depot.

Then I went food shopping – yes it was that kind of day. I walk into my local grocery store and they hand me a scanner. Yes it is new technology, yes I can check prices, scan all my items and see my total as I go through. COOL, I thought. This will be fun. Every few minutes my little scanner makes noises and there is a new coupon on my scanner for products I don’t ever buy. Anyway it was still fun . . . until I came to the check out counter. The young man looked at the scanner and said, so did you scan everything? I said no, and he looked dismayed. Apparently they can plug this scanner into the computer and then they don’t even have to scan your items anymore. So get this, he is “irritated” with me that I didn’t scan all my items as I went through. Hmmm, customer service? And now I get to do their job. Wow.

So, where does that leave us in the real estate industry. If you are a manager, have you ever visited your sales associates open houses to see if they are engaging the consumer. Do you call you office to see how clients are greeted? Do you email people to see their response time. If I was recruiting, I would do this to any one I was thinking about bringing onboard. Why bring someone in who has bad customer service habits.

What is your customer service policy, or your mission statement for that matter? Do you read it every so often to make sure you are living up to your own standard?

I am dusting off my customer service materials, and rereading them. Maybe I will have a teachable moment the next time I meet extreme BAD customer service. Hopefully it will not be in a real estate office.

Power of Technology – Thanks for letting me Share

On of my most popular CE classes is called Power of Technology. One of my recent clients asked for me to write up why I thought the course was necessary and why it should get CE Credit. As you may or may not know, receiving CE credit for Technology classes can be excruciating painful. Many associations still don’t view as this knowledge a consumer benefit.

Anyway this is what I came up with, and I wanted to share . . . thanks for letting me!

Thank you for the opportunity to share some quick thoughts on why I believe this class, Power of Technology truly benefits the Consumer:

Today’s sales person needs to be more effective meeting the consumers’ expectations, Even with all the data and tools available to us, we have a hard time interpreting the data to help us. Part of the problem is that we have four distinct groups of consumer, generations if you will. The goal of the class is to empower the salesperson with information to change their relationship with their buyers and sellers, so the consumer has a better experience with their real estate transaction. If we don’t know what the consumer wants and expects we can’t effectively support the consumer in their buying and selling process.

We spend some time reviewing statistics from NAR. We will begin to understand trends by identifying key data from the most recent NAR study of buyers and sellers.

1. Focusing on how the consumers buy real estate services, we can better service the consumer. We will use this data to benchmark the sales person’s offerings of services to make sure they are in synch with the consumer. This allows me as the instructor to target new standards of performance I believe are critical for today’s real estate agent. We can trust the data. NAR has been producing it for years. It is based on consumer focus groups. Today’s consumer likes statistics anyway. Over 56% of consumers are investing in the stock market, which means they do research all the time. They appreciate knowing we are doing research.

2. What is the consumer actually doing? After we establish these practices I show the sales person ways to “reach out and touch” these consumers through practices on the internet. Questions we will answer: How can the sales person tailor their practices based on the research? What weaknesses do they need to overcome? What opportunities does the data suggest?

3. Many salespeople use technology for the wrong reason. It is about contacting the consumer when they are interested in real estate which means quickly. According to NAR the typical sales person does not contact the consumer until 16 hours after they have been on their website. By then, the consumer is onto something else and is not in “real estate” mode. They have also probably gone to 5 other sites and emailed 5 other people. Sales people will be taught about wireless strategies. This makes sure they are getting back immediately to the consumer and meeting the consumers’ expectations.

4. Sales people need to understand statistics to change marketing. When they understand the consumers wants and needs, and their buying habits, the sales person can supply relevant information that the consumer needs. Questions we will answer: • How will that influence a sales person marketing? • How will they be able to communicate and service the consumer more effectively?

5. As a result of material they will learn in this class:

• The consumer will experience expanded marketplace presence for the sale of their property;

• Buyer consumer will be able to access and review potential properties in a time-efficient manner.

• Buyers and sellers will receive the type of communication they prefer

• Buyers will receive the information they need to make an educated decision.

• Buyers know how to find inventory

• Buyers don’t understand financing

6. By understanding what is going on in the Internet with search engines, web sites, the consumers property will be better represented We will explore how consumers look for real estate, what type of data they want. We can make sure that the consumers property is represented properly on the Internet.

7. Sales people will have a general review of advertising law, the Can Spam Law, Copyright law. Once something is on the web it is hard to take down We need to represent ourselves more professionally to the younger buyer. Learn risk management techniques to protect the consumer’s data Stay in compliance with the Code of Ethics which always affects the consumer Consumer data and privacy can be protected if agents take simple steps to properly manage on line marketing activities including placing ads in sites with similar privacy policies, searching for unauthorized usage and including disclosure information to avoid potential misleading statements in advertising on line.

8. Learn how to work with FSBOS who advertise on line. How to mine then effectively. Remember 79% of them end of working with a REALTOR, it should be you.

Living the Code

I have been finishing up evaluating my 2009 business plan and writing value statements. Defining values lays a foundation for the way in which business will be conducted. When these values are in place, you create your company’s vision, something you aspire to and work to attain.

A passion for a value and its implementation into the daily activities of work was identified by many successful companies as the single key to their business success. A value is a belief, a mission, a philosophy that is really meaningful to a company. Values can range fromhighly analytical and rational to highly creative.

Doing this research started me thinking – (what doesn’t?). Values tell us how to conduct ourselves and our business. Values are only as good as they are implemented into the company AT ALL LEVELS. We can’t just think about them but not DO them. So who of us has these value statements and REALLY make sure that they are pushed down and implemented at all levels of our business. You need to constantly ask yourself:

• Are my core values being represented when I deal with clients?

• When I interact with the public, when I deliver our products and services, do my core values shine through?

Okay, so where is this coming from? I seem to be a glutton for bad customer service lately. As I drove out of the parking lot of a real estate association in upstate New York where I had just taught for 7 ½ hours, a light on my dashboard blares out “NO COOLANT, STOP ASAP.” Needless to say I am on a country road, with only my GPS to find the highway. I end up having to drive out of my way to find a gas station where they just shrug and say they can’t help me and shuffle off not to have see my face. Oh, did I mention is it raining, and it is cold and dark? I ended up stopping two more places with no luck. I end up buying the coolant and having my son in law walk me through on the telephone what to do.

So, where has customer service gone? No one writes value statements and tries to deliver that type of service. Just think if in this market, that people thank you for your extreme customer service. I recently heard a Robyn Waters speak about Values in Business. She mentioned that the consumer wants to work with someone they identify with. Many business books stress that the consumer wants to work with a company that mirrors their own values.

Lately the trend towards continued growth in business has focused on the Three Es – three key drivers in the economy. When a company has values that promote these factors, the consumer wants to work with them. These key drives have to do with:

• The turbulent economy

• The rise in energy costs

• The fragile ecology.

It could be as simple as returning your phone calls in a timely manner, sending people the actual information they asked for. So you want to see one? For areal estate business?

Here goes: I feel that the standard of excellence to which my team holds themselves has been set by our clients, and our sincere desire is to work with as much honor and effort as those whom we serve.

Ethical and Professional Practices

A reason we maintain the trust and long-term client relationships that we have earned over time is that we have stayed, at our core, the same company that we were when we began. An uncompromising pledge to work hard and honestly is taken up daily by a smart, highly-trained sales staff which prides itself on deep and broad knowledge of the fields we serve. This includes cutting edge marketing and technology strategies.

Our professional goals are simple and necessary: we strive to serve our clients with respect and confidentiality. We work hard. We work diligently to help fulfill our client’s needs.

We work urgently, to serve our clients needs on a schedule that fits their lifestyle.

And we work honestly: we are unequivocal in stating that we abide by the Golden Rule and the REALTOR® Code of Ethics. We treat our clients, colleagues, and affiliates with respect, courtesy and fairness.

Next week – more technology – just needed to rant.