Archive for June, 2008

FIND Tip #4 - Choosing Promotional Items For Your Farm

Jun 29, 2008 Marketing

This is the 4th post in our series Farming Isn’t Dead.

So after our last three lessons of choosing a farm, creating a plan, and finally introducing yourself personally to your farm, now you’re ready for the fun part: choosing promotional items and materials for your real estate farm! Below we’ve listed 75 creative promotional ideas you can use for real estate farming, though there are many other things you could do that aren’t included on our list!

The things you decide to give away to your real estate farm are very important. It’s okay to be a little creative in this, as the more creative you are, the more likely you will stand out to your farm. Here are some guidelines on what to send to your real estate farm:
1. Price: While price alone shouldn’t be your only factor in choosing what to send to your farm, it is important that you choose materials that stay within budget. Most of the creative promotional real estate items we’ve listed are available for less than $2.
2. Usefulness: You need to give your farm something that is useful or appreciated. The promotional item has to be nice enough or useful enough that they won’t throw it out and may even pass along to a friend.
3. Target Market Appeal: You’ll need to learn a little more about your residents in your farm to give them the right kind of promotional real estate materials while farming. While some people might enjoy a potholder or a mouse pad, others might not have any use for them. So before you start spending tons of money, choose generic “one size fits all” kind of promotional items until you learn the needs and tastes of your neighborhood better.

Now that we’ve set up some basic farming guidelines, here is a long list of 75 real estate farming ideas you can use as promotional items. There are plenty of websites and companies available that can offer these items personalized and with a bulk rate discount:

1. Calendars
2. Sports Schedules
3. Coffee Mugs
4. Flower Seeds
5. Single flower such as carnations, tulips, or roses
6. Frisbees
7. Local Coupon Book (You can be creative and make this yourself through your local printer and contacting area businesses if they would like to advertise)
8. Neighborhood Directory of names, phone numbers, & hobbies/interests/services. (Compiling this for your farm can also help you with your market research efforts of targeting them better!)
9. Rubber Duckies
10. Wind-Up Chattering Teeth (okay, so maybe that’s not really useful, but it sure is creative!)
11. Compile a neighborhood recipe book.
12. Yo-Yo’s with your information on them.
13. Whistles
14. Puzzles
15. Stress Balls (Don’t let the real estate market stress you out - Call Me!)
16. Playing Cards
17. Piggy Bank
18. Notepads or Post-It Notes
19. Mini screwdriver or other tools on a keychain
20. Bottle Opener
21. Tape Measure
22. Gourmet Tea Bags, Hot Chocolate, Or Coffee
23. Coupon vouchers for free meals at a local restaurant
24. Calculator
25. Keychain Flashlight
26. An Ice Scraper if you live in a cold climate
27. Flip-top mirror
28. Cool glow ice cubes
29. Beach balls
30. Pocket First Aid Kits
31. DVDs or CDs (You can have them manufactured cheaply in bulk - can make a CD of relaxing music or a DVD with a video of “how to stage your home to sell” for example.
32. Mini Fans
33. Chapstick
34. Band-Aids
35. Pizza cutter
36. Chip clips (aka “Bag Clips”)
37. Wipes (Like those ones they give you when your order wings)
38. Remember their pets: Dog collars, dog bowls, dog treats, etc. etc.
39. Candles
40. Mints
41. Golf Tees
42. Magnets
43. Photo Frame
44. Ruler
45. Paper Clip holders
46. Pencil Sharpener
47. Watercolor set
48. Colored Pencils
49. Tape dispensers
50. Socks
51. Coloring Books
52. Golf Balls
53. Teddy Bears
54. Rubik Cubes
55. Magic Eight Balls
56. Bubbles
57. Tire Gauge
58. Sewing Kits
59. Nightlights
60. Light bulbs
61. Bar of soap
62. Air fresheners
63. Rain gauge
64. Thermometer
65. Gardening Rake/Shovel
66. Hand sanitizer
67. Keyboard Brush
68. Balloons
69. Batteries
70. Memo Boards
71. Corkscrews
72. Erasers
73. Umbrella
74. Toys for kids
75. One dollar (or a quarter, dime, nickel, etc) (Let me show you how to put more money in your pocket when selling a home!)

Now that you have some ideas, you’ll be able to plan accordingly how often you will walk your farm (once a month is good, once every 4 months should be the bare minimum). Be sure in addition to giving out these promotional materials you also follow up by sending them a monthly newsletter/neighborhood market report) and any “Just Sold” or “Just Listed” postcards. If you’re a new agent, you can just send them open house invitations if you sit an open house for another agent.

Next week we’ll talk about ways to use these promotional items as the sunlight and water and to keep your farm producing profits year after year. Feel free to leave any comments below or subscribe to our feed by email to make sure you don’t miss our future real estate tips by having them directly sent to your inbox.

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Available Realtor Designations From NAR

Jun 27, 2008 Agent Life

Are you aware of how many Realtor designations are available from the National Association of Realtors? Many of us are familiar with designations such as CRS and ABR…but have you heard of RSPS or ePRO?

If you haven’t taken the time to check out the latest available designations from the National Association of Realtors, you may want to do so now. Many of these designations for real estate professionals can be helpful in furthering your real estate career. You can view their list of Realtor designations available <a href=”http://www.realtor.org/education/realtor_university/designation”>here</a>.

If you haven’t earned any of these realtor designations yet, what is stopping you?

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How to Have the Best Realtor Tour

Jun 26, 2008 Agent Life

Many agents are always looking for ideas for Realtor tour and how to have the best Realtor tour that attracts many real estate agents - and hopefully their clients. Realtor tour is the day of the week that depending on your multi-list you host your home open only to other real estate agents. It can be challenging for many real estate agents however to entice enough agents to visit the Realtor tour and make it a worthwhile endeavor. So today I’m going to share some ideas for Realtor tour to help you have better real estate agent open houses and not disappoint your clients.

Here are our tips on how to have the best Realtor tour:

Serve food: Many broke, starving agents LOVE food. What you serve is up to you but you will ideally want to have easy to clean up and easy to eat foods. You’ll also want to try to stay away from foods that other real estate agents may be allergic to, such as peanuts.

Have a raffle: Raffles are a great way to entice other realtors to stop by in hopes that they will win. The more enticing your prize is, the more likely other realtors will take the time. High dollar amount gas cards, restaurant gift cards, and other gift cards are very popular and will help you have the best realtor tour for a higher agent turnout.

Give stuff away: While raffles are nice, there’s nothing better than knowing you can walk away with something in your hand. We’ve had turkey give aways (a store voucher for the amount of a 10 lb. turkey) near Thanksgiving. With food and gas prices rising, this can be very costly for you, but can also be a great way to gain exposure. Another, less expensive, popular option is free scratch off lottery tickets.

Pre-Sell: You’ll want to make sure every agent knows that your listing will be open so they can plan to attend. You can’t have the best Realtor tour if no one shows up! Send them emails inviting them to tour or create a flyer to distribute. You may even want to call a few agents and personally invite them. Also make sure you note it in your MLS so it will come up in the tour date’s listings. (And be sure you also say “raffle” or whatever hook you are using to have the best Realtor tour.

Tour other agent’s listings: Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little. Make sure that two weeks prior you try to drop by as many realtor tours as possible. Exchange business cards and talk about their buyers and invite them to check out your newest “must see listing” when you have it open on Realtor Tour.

These ideas for realtor tour will help you have the best Realtor Tour ever. If you have any great ideas for Realtor tour to have the best Realtor tour ever than be sure to leave them in the comments below!

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How to Provide Excellent Customer Service

Jun 25, 2008 Marketing

Providing excellent customer service is a challenge for many real estate agents and brokers. Afterall, many real estate agents do not even recognize that part of their job is to provide excellent customer service. Before you can provide excellent customer service, you must first define what excellent customer service includes.

Here are a few things excellent customer service includes:

1. Accessibility: To provide excellent customer service, you must first be accessible to the customer. The customer should be able to call, email, or mail you with any of their questions or concerns. It should be easy for the customer to find this information. Having a website with a FAQ section and all of your contact details can help you be even more accessible to provide excellent customer service.

2. Promptness: All calls should be returned and all problems resolved the same business day. Postponing a problem more than one day will cause the problem to escalate to a bigger problem, especially because you are giving the customer more time to stew over their disatisfaction or predicament. Another customer service mistake is that phone calls and messages go unreturned. Playing phone tag or constantly getting an answering machine and never speaking to a live person do not create an excellent customer service atmosphere.

3. Give the Customer What the Customer Wants: This of course is not always easy. Many times you will face a loss if you give every customer exactly what the customer wants all of the time. Many times a customer with a complaint or problem does not know what they want or what is needed to resolve the problem. Give the customer a few options to choose from. The more choices the customer has, the more the customer feels in control and feels satisfied. Giving the customer what the customer wants is crucial in providing excellent customer service.

4. Compromise: You must be willing to compromise to provide excellent customer service. Maybe you cannot give the customer everything the customer wants, but surely you can give the customer something the customer wants. Be clear to the customer you are willing to compromise and ask that they be willing to compromise as well.

5. Follow Up: This is the hardest for most people to do when dealing with customer service issues. But in order to provide excellent customer service, you MUST follow up. You can opt to send them a letter, postcard, or a telephone call. Following up with customers makes them feel as if they haven’t been forgotten and can possibly lead to future business. Following up is one of the crucial steps many companies make when providing customer service and is the step that puts the “excellent” in excellent customer service.

By incorporating these ideas in your business, you will be able to exceed customer service expectations and provide excellent customer service to your future customers and clients. Do you have any tips or suggestions on how to provide excellent customer service? Feel free to share your tips and suggestions on ways to provide excellent customer service in the comments below.

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FIND Tip #3: Introducing Yourself to Your Real Estate Farm

Jun 23, 2008 Marketing

This post is #3 in our series Farming Isn’t Dead.

So now that we have our real estate farm chosenand have created a farming plan, it’s time for the first crucial step: Introducting yourself to your real estate farm.

There are a wide variety of ways to do this. The way I reccomend to do it is to start off with a very simple farming letter - from your office manager or broker - introducing you as the neighborhood specialist. Of course, this is widely dependent on your office manager/broker being okay with this.

Here is an example of a letter you can use to introduce yourself to your farm:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Farm Resident:

It is my pleasure to introduce Suzy Agent as the designated ABC Realty real estate specialist for your neighborhood Silver Creek Meadows.

Suzy Agent was chosen as a specialist for your neighborhood for numerous reasons and accomplishments acheived through ABC Realty. She is a dedicated full time realtor in the greater Bay area and isknowledgeable of the surrounding areas, especially your community of Silver Creek Meadows.

Suzy Agent is a Certified Residential Specialist and an Accredited Buyers Representative. Suzy Agents hard work, determination, and enthusiasm make her a special member of the ABC REalty team and we are confident in her ability to represent the residents of the Silver Creek Meadows Plan with integrity and distinction.

If we can be of any assistance with your real estate needs, please do not hesitate to call Suzy Agent at our office at (555) 555-5555. We look forward to serving you and the community of Silver Creek Meadows.

Sinverely,
Joseph Office Manager
President of ABC Realty

Obviously, the details of the farm letter are not real, but this is an excellent starting point in introducing yourself to your farm. If your broker does not want the letter coming from the broker directly, you can always opt to change this letter as a first person account.

The work of introducing yourself to your real estate farm isn’t over after the letter is mailed however. You will want to plan your very first trip to your real estate farm within a week after it has been mailed. After this letter has been mailed, all you will have to do is knock on the door and say “Hi, I’m Suzy Agent, the residential specialist for Silver Creek Meadows with ABC Realty. I wanted to stop by and introduce myself in person as well as give you our latest report on home prices in the neighborhood. If you have any questions, my card is attached and you may contact me anytime.”

The report you give to them doesn’t have to be anything fancy. But you will want to make sure it is easy to understand and read. You may want to simply list median home prices, median days on market, and of course information on all of the current listings or recent sales in the neighborhood.

Don’t expect everyone to be happy or glad to see you at first. Some homeowners may be rude or you may get chased by kids or dogs while walking and introducing yourself to your real estate farm. But you’ve made an important step in introducing yourself to your farm and establishing yourself as the residential specialist for their neighborhood. After you get back from your first walk through your farm, you can pat yourself on the back for successfully introducing yourself to your real estate farm.

Next week we’ll talk about some of the promotional materials you can use for later mailings and visits to your real estate farm.

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