The Relationship Revolution

Profiling home buyers' behavior

In the DAILY E-NEWS from rismedia.com, they highlighted a demographic survey about online home shopping as the top story. The survey sponsor, Obeo, is a company specializing in services like virtual tours to enable consumers to take "psychological ownership" of the real estate they view online. They sponsored a survey in January of this year to determine the online home shopping behavior and preferences of different demographic groups.

Among the interesting findings, more women (41%) than men (25%) begin their home search online. The sponsors particularly wanted to profile preferences by gender. The study also confirms NAR's earlier findings - as many surveys do - about the Internet as a first step for most home shoppers. It also showed that this behavior is consistent across all age, economic and ethnic breakdowns. As the article's author Glade Jones says, the times they are a'changin'.

Real estate agents turned up as the #2 most useful source of information. As this table shows, 22.16% had  that experience. The least useful source of info was reading home ads in newspapers (4.55%), which is not really a surprise, followed by "Driving through desired neighborhoods" (10.04%), which is a little unexpected. Only 6.25% listed "Went to open houses" as the most useful source.

To get a broader picture of their interests in particular categories that are a typical part of the online listing, go to the article and download the survey. There's always more to know!

"Official" Won't Get It Done

I was talking to our marketing director the other day, and she related this story. Jean called her financial advisor, Marcia Cammack, concerned about the AIG meltdown. I'll let her tell it:

"During the conversation, I asked Marcia if she'd received the paper I signed earlier, agreeing to move some money out of AIG. Marcia turned her head and spoke to her assistant, Wendy, this way: 'Wendy, do you have handy that paper Jean Walker signed?' Amazingly, she did.

"Now, this struck me as extraordinary," Jean continues, "for several reasons. For one, Marcia probably handles dozens of clients - most of them with a lot more money invested than I have! For another, she didn't specify for Wendy what 'the signed paper' was about. Yet her assistant knew right away. We joked about what you had to pay to get assistants to read your mind, then Marcia said it was really about her relationships with clients, and that Wendy buys that philosophy 100%. For that reason, Wendy knew that I've been moving a lot of investments around in the last 3 months. (And which ones were most recent.)

'We want our clients to know we're connected to them,' Marcia said. 'That's why we don't greet them with questions like [in an official monotone], What's your social security number? Or, Give me the last three addresses where you lived. Or, What color was your last neighbor's mailbox? You know ...' I laughed with her and said, yes, I sure did, having 'official' conversations with service companies as a regular thing.

"I pointed out to Marcia that when I'd called that morning, she picked up the phone herself (her direct line), and said, 'Hi, Jean. How are ya?' I can't think of the last time THAT happened with an organization providing me a service. Most of them seem to be about trying to impress me with their importance, rather than insisting on mine. 'Well, of course!' Marcia said. 'If we did that around here, I'd be bored to death. I'd have to quit! I don't want to have those kinds of conversations with my clients.'

"We laughed a bit more, took care of business, and signed off. As always with Marcia, I felt an almost physical sense of relief that she is looking after my affairs and actually knows who I am and what my concerns are. And is dedicated to supporting them. How important is that in this kind of economy?!" Jean said.

As I've heard somewhere before, Priceless. So here's a question for you: Do your clients feel the kind of confidence in you that Jean has in Marcia? Consistent relationship marketing is key. Interesting coincidence (I swear I didn't notice it) that Marcia's firm has a key in its logo.

Higher Commission, Faster Sale?

Many of us visit inman.com on a regular basis, as it's such a good source for industry information, news and commentary. I ran across an interesting piece by columnist Ilyce Glink yesterday that's generating some interesting feedback from agents across the country. In a discussion that began with the topic of writing 90-day listing agreements, the comments soon turned to remarks from agents who feel that prospective clients "seem to think we shouldn't make a living," as one agent put it. Apparently there's a lot of resistance in some areas to the 6% commission when homes are taking longer to sell. This agent listed the many other expenses a real estate professional has that consumers may not be aware of.

One Coldwell Banker agent had an interesting take - that she's found that homes paying a full agent commission will sell faster in this market. She sees the agent commission as "part of the marketing" in that it creates more exposure for the home when inventory is high. As Nancy Lavigne says, "If there are 10 listings that meet your client's criteria and four of them are offering a higher commission, which ones are you going to show first?" Take a look at the article, and register your opinion while you're there. Do your clients know how much you do to earn that commission?

Calling All Innovators!

What do you have in common with Rick, Scott, Barbara and other members? You're an innovator! You get great ideas about new ways to use your relationship marketing tools - things we've never thought of - and you put them into practice to build business.  Here's a few examples.

The Article That Became A Web Page.
Here's one from Rick Minassian, who converts the text of selected Articles of Value into custom pages for his PropertySource website. His clients who visit the site today will find helpful pages on saving energy and how to organize a successful garage sale. There are a variety of articles he can change with the season or community interests. Here's how he did it:

1. Generated a customized .pdf (Acrobat file) of the "30 Ways to Save the Planet. And Some Money" article in the Articles of Value section of his Relationship Manager.
2. Then Rick used the "select" tool in Acrobat to capture and copy just the text.
3. In the "Custom Pages" section of his personal website, he simply added a new article (tab "Energy Savings"), and pasted in the text he wanted to include.
4. Clicked "save" and the page was immediately live on his site. Clever guy, that Rick.

The Open House Tailgate Party.
Then there's Scott Baumgartner. He landed the contract to sell Jesse Ventura's former home; it happened to be near Super Bowl time. So Scott decided a traditional Open House wasn't really the ticket. He used the "Friendly Reminder" e-Greeting and customized the text for his Open House on Super Bowl Sunday. It was a great success. And everybody got home in time to watch the game. Talk about winning by association!

Here's one more. Donna Reed had witnessed many times the lure of our $50,000 Home Sweet Home Sweepstakes. So she promoted that on an electronic sign at a busy intersection, and got lots of calls. Who wouldn't want a chance at winning $50,000? Sounds electric!

These Relationship Masters are always on the lookout for referrals, and make it a regular practice to sit down and look at their relationship marketing tool chest in new and creative ways.

Where's yours?
Tell us about your innovative use of the tools and features! Either get in touch with your Systems Coach with the info, or just send an email describing your experiment at thinking outside the box. How have you used your Print-On-Demand tools in a new way? What about your e-Newsletter custom articles? We'll feature as many winning ideas as we can right here on the Blog! Come on - We'll spread the good word to other savvy agents looking to stand out in the marketplace!