The following is an excerpt from my new book, 5-Minutes to Great Real Estate Marketing Ideas, Cengage Learning.  Early in my career I heard a retired real estate salesperson make the following statement:  “listing is existing!”  During my 29+ years as a real estate professional, I too can attest to this statement and how true it is to have a good listing inventory (products) as a real estate agent.  If you’ve never heard this before, believe me when I say that listing is the key to success and longevity as a real estate professional!

There are numerous ways to get more listings as a real estate agent as discussed throughout the text: for-sale-by-owners, expired listings, and many other areas.  This chapter will specifically deal with communicating to the seller on an ongoing basis once the listing contract has been signed and secured and your marketing efforts are to begin.  We’ll also discuss ideas and alternative marketing pieces that could be included with a listing presentation; however, the main objective and goal of this chapter is to provide resources to use for staying in touch with your client.

Ready to Market

After your listing contract is signed, it’s now time to begin the marketing efforts for your client.  In Real Estate 101, or any basic real estate pre-license course, the real estate agent learns the fiduciary obligations owed to the client.  A commonly referred to acronym used for these fiduciary duties is C.O.A.L.D.:

C—Care

O—Obedience

A—Accounting

L—Loyalty

D—Disclosure

Making sure that you have a good marketing plan for your client and a systematic action plan for staying in touch with your listing client during the listing period is big part of your fiduciary obligation to your client.  A good place to begin your new product and your job at hand is to familiarize yourself with a checklist of items you need to secure and follow-up on for your seller.  The following illustration details a sample checklist (also included on the enclosed CD-ROM) to use for this process.  Feel free to add or make changes to the checklist to use with your daily business.

Checklist for Agents after the Home Is Listed

•      Input data into Multiple Listing Service (MLS) or onto company forms.

•      Submit all forms and information to main office.

•      Upload all photos to MLS.

•      Input data and upload photos to company Web site.

•      Input data and upload photos to agent Web site.

•      Input data and upload photos to www.realtor.com.

•      Place for-sale sign on property.

•      Add flyer box in front of home.

•      Send sellers copies of documents.

•      Send sellers thank you cards or letters for listing  (see attached thank you letter).

•      If referral is from a friend, send a thank you card or letter (see attached thank you letter).

•      Prepare advertising copy (see 5 Minutes to a Great Real Estate Ad for more help with this).

•      Update any MLS or Web site remarks.

•      Prepare flyers for flyer box.

•      Notify top 20 agents in your marketplace about new listing (see attached letter).

•      Notify neighbors about new listing (see attached letter).

•      Set open-house date (if applicable).

•      Set agent tour dates with office or other offices (if applicable).

•      Install lock box.

•      Add information to your monthly letter you send to clients on your sphere of influence (SOI).

•      Send checklist titled “Now That Your Home is Listed” to sellers.

•      Set up a seller action plan for this listing.

Summary

Remember that staying in touch with your clients is an integral part of your job as a real estate agent.  You have a fiduciary obligation to your clients, and making sure you implement C.O.A.L.D. is important if you expect to win repeat business and referrals from your clients.

Learn how to create home-marketing books, postcards, flyers, and business cards for your clients to promote their property for sale.  And finally, educate your clients on what to expect when selling their home.  There are several reports included with my new book, 5-Minutes to Great Real Estate Marketing Ideas, Cengage Learning.  My new book is designed to help you explain the home-selling process to your clients that should help make your job a little easier. 

In my book, "5-Minutes to Maximizing Real Estate Technology," Thomson/Learning, I discuss over thirty tips for making the most out of your web site. Here are ten tips from my book that I believe all real estate professionals should consider when building and planning their web site.

Tip #1
• Have an easy-to-use URL/Web site address. Try to think of something
clever yet easily memorable that the consumer can use:
www.RealEstateTechGuy.com or www.JohnSellsDallasRealEstate.com.
Tip #2
• Capitalize important letters on your Web site address. As we mentioned
earlier Web sites and e-mail addresses are not case sensitive. It is a good idea
to mix and match capital and small letters to help the consumer remember and
read your Web site address easier. www.realestatetechguy.com is harder to
read than www.RealEstateTechGuy.com. In all your advertisements and on
your e-mail signatures capitalize the beginning of new words.
Tip #3
• Avoid using lots of extras. Although music/animation and many of the
latest and greatest technology Web site features are fun for those of us
using high-speed Internet data connections, but for others, such features
make your site slow to load or display and discourages users from viewing
your site. Make sure that your Web site is free from too many extraneous
features.
Tip #4
• Arrange your content by categories. It is a good idea to try to keep most
of your content in categories that the consumer many be looking for.
Tip #5
• Provide local and community events. It is important to use your Web
site in helping promote other activities and local events for your
community. Sometimes your Web site can be a good reference for an
annual community event, provide times and locations for various activities,
and list happenings for local consumers.
Tip #6
• Showcase photos of local attractions and events. You can also use your
Web site to create mini slide shows of landmarks in your area. Displaying
photos of local hospitals, schools, along with shopping districts is an
excellent way to help out-of-town buyers gain more knowledge about your
community. Photos of annual events and pictures of parades and past
activities can also be a great way to drive traffic to your Web site (Note: If
personal photographs of individuals are used, be sure and get a disclaimer
before posting them on your Web site.)
Tip #7
• Add local school activities. Providing a link to the local school activities
or creating your own list of activities around the local school is a good way
to direct consumers to your Web site. It would probably be a good idea to
link this listing to the school's activity page in case activities change. Most
local school districts have this information on their Web site where you
could then link to it.
Tip #8
• Post a homework schedule. As noted in the previous tip, most school
districts provide lots of information for parents. You can take advantage of
these features by including links to homework schedules and other tips on
your Web site. Even though consumers can find this information from the
school district's Web site, offering it may increase your traffic.
Tip #9
• Offer to post sporting team practices and games. Many times if you
have children who are participating in a little league or some other type of
sports association team you can volunteer to post the practice schedule and
performance or game times along with dates on your Web site. It is an
excellent way to get family members from the team your child is
participating on to go to your Web site. It actually can have far-reaching
potential as friends, grandparents, and others who are interested in
watching the child perform go to your Web site for more information.
Tip #10
• Provide link to local weather. Weather forecasts are easily accessible at
many Web sites for consumers, but it doesn't hurt to provide a link to the
local weather site or create a three- or four-day forecast weather box on
your homepage for your local area. Some sites such as www.weather.com
offer Web tools that allow you to add this information to your Web site.
Maximizing Real Estate Technology
Providing customer-specific information is essential. Group information into
categories to make the Web site visitor appreciate your cyberspace office. Put
buyer information in one area and selling information in another to save the
Web visitor much time when looking for those details at your site. Begin to
think about ways you can develop more specific information for buyers,
sellers, investors, and other target markets. For example, you can develop
first-time home-buyer information under your buyer's category along with
information for VA (veterans) with other references that would be pertinent to
this market niche.
By following these simple steps I'm certain you will have great success for driving consumers to your web site and bringing them back in the future. For all of my web site tips and other technology ideas, short-cuts and ways to save time and make money, check out my book, "5-Minutes to Maximizing Real Estate Technology," Thomson/Learning. For more information go to www.5-Minutes.com.

John D. Mayfield

Noted author and speaker Seth Godin posted the following on his blog today:

“You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there's a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time.”

An interesting point that Godin brings up, and for many real estate professionals and agencies the statement is true.  Yet, most agents tend to spend the bulk of their time thinking about what they’re going to do, and telling their selves the market is going to turn around soon, then I’ll get busy with my real estate plans.  The reality is, there’s a fire in your kitchen, and you need to put the fire out now!  Case in point, my own business www.RealEstateSalesMeetings.com is a new venture I started where I provide weekly sales meetings, audio interviews and more to brokers around the country.  One way I thought to help build my business was through blogging, podcasting, and other free promotional ventures on the World Wide Web.  I started out in full speed, posting, recording, adding new twists and turns everyday through these “free” electronic mediums.  The results were amazing, but like most normal business professionals I began to pile more “to do’s” on my plate, allowed myself to be pulled into other directions, and the fire which was once under control and remodeling that was off to a “great” start quickly died.  I lost my focus and my sense of urgency to continue with my task at hand.

So I have two options with my new business venture:

1.       Tell myself that the plans and drawings for my newly remodeled kitchen will be awesome, “someday.”

2.       Fix it!

As real estate professionals if you want to succeed, you must always be in mode #2, (fix it).  Telling yourself what the outcome will be like is okay, if you’re busy and hard at work fixing it, however if you’re just sitting there dreaming and thinking about it, the project will never get finished.  Listen to how Seth Godin finishes his blog on this subject of “Managing Urgencies,” and follow his advice:

“Add up enough urgencies and you don't get a fire, you get a career. A career putting out fires never leads to the goal you had in mind all along.

I guess the trick is to make the long term items even more urgent than today's emergencies. Break them into steps and give them deadlines. Measure your people on what they did today in support of where you need to be next month.

If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.”

To read Godin’s entire blog, click here!

Recently I posted four new sales meetings for my real estate brokers/managers as members of www.RealEstateSalesMeetings.com, from the book, "The Fred Factor," Currency, Doubleday Books, how passion in your daily work and life can turn the "ordinary" into the "extraordinary!"  In the book, "The Fred Factor," author Mark Sanborn provides four "FRED" Principals everyone should strive to remember about their selves and their workplace:

1. Everyone Makes a Difference
2. Success is Built on Relationships
3. You Must Continually Create Value for Others, and it Doesn't Have to Cost a Penny
4. You Can Reinvent Yourself Regularly

With today's real estate market in a downturn, these four "Fred" principals can play a major role in your real estate career, and help you survive a down market.  Over the next week I would like to challenge each of you with a few questions that posed to my real estate brokers and for them to share during their weekly meetings.

First, let's look at how "everyone" can make a difference.  The questions I asked brokers to discuss with their agents at their weekly sales meetings are:

Do you add to or take away from the experience of your customers and colleagues?

Do you move our organization closer to or further from its goals?

Do you perform your work in an ordinary way, or do you execute it superbly?

Do you lighten someone's burden or add to it? 

Do you lift someone up or put someone down?

When you consider these questions, you need to remind yourself that you can make a difference in your workplace and with the customers and clients you have by focusing on a few small issues.  My challenge to you is to consider the questions above, then ask yourself if there's room for change, and then make a commitment to follow through with that change.  As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"