Realty World Northern California & Nevada

Purveyors of goods and services who are at the top of their marketing game rarely use their mouth to draw a prospects attention and then pitch in the prayer of a sale. Rather they use their ears to learn what a potential customer needs and then present a solution that is cost effective and worthwhile.

I mention this because recently I had the privilege of meeting two of our newest members to the Realty World Northern California Family, Robert (Bob) Fernandez and Francisco Gonzalez, co-owners of Realty World – Golden Hills in San Jose, California, formerly Century 21 – Golden Hills. Both are long time veterans of real estate in the South Bay and both knew immediately what their business needed in order to compete in times of rapid change. Bob and Francisco are keenly mindful of the activities it takes to run and profit from operating a real estate brokerage firm with over fifty sales associates and a long book of business.

Since joining Realty World, our meetings have focused on the consolidation of tasks that real estate agents need to do in order to compete and win in the eyes of consumers. Bob and Francisco knew these activities were important and a prerequisite for any successful associate continuing in or just launching their real estate career. Their validation of what we are doing at Realty World was a positive sign to me that we had invested right in terms of bringing the business to the agent.
However, there is more to it than that. If you have attended any of the presentations we have conducted at various industry functions this year; you’ll know that the game of finding real estate and a knowledgeable professional to help is changing. Change is the one constant denominator of all markets.

I expect Realty World – Golden Hills to be one of the companies that will be on top of that game too. It’s my pleasure to introduce them to you and I hope you’ll take a minute to welcome them aboard! Bob and Francisco can be reached by phone at 408-238-5111.

So, you’re probably wondering amidst all the good news about the economy spun from the dominate media culture, why the economy still feels bad? Simple answer, many in the media complex don’t run businesses and they are listening to people who don’t run businesses for their sources. What to do?

Well, if you’re like most real estate people I know; you’re working 5 times harder for less than half the income. You’re not alone either. You know where the vacant buildings, warehouses and retail stores are; you drive by them every day. Just last summer a little over two-thirds of the entire industrial capacity in the US was working and in some sort of production use. Today, that has dropped to just under 75% or about 5 points less than normal when the economy is doing well. Don’t hear that in the news to you?

What does all this mean to your income? It means you have to see and touch more people with your value proposition in person. Belly to belly. Face to face. A prospect can’t send you to the deleted file, mail filter or trash can. They have to talk with you at some point, hence your selling strategy and listening skills had better be ready and oiled for action.

What advantage will I have in this scenario? Well, most salespeople are going to be dead before they start. Meaning they are getting ready to get ready. They will never go anywhere. You know who I’m talking about too. Second, most salespeople will resist the street in favor of blast emails, wasted postage and off line gimmicks from personal promotion to refrigerator magnets. That will account for about 93% of the competition. 7% will know this and immediately shift to the street for instant prospecting and immediate results. Remember, even a call on a prospect that has to interest to purchase or sell is a worthwhile event. It tells you who’s not players; sharpens your tactical skill and presents an opportunity for seeking referrals.

Those same 7 percent will communicate not only in person, but will use that offline call time to redirect their prospect to an online resource (namely their BLOG) to keep the prospect attenuated to the needs analysis and selling points of your in person call. Similarly, to what you do in the online world.

There is no better time to wake up and smell the pavement.

Image by HomeBiss via Flickr

A good friend and business associate recently turned me onto a new source of powerful information I thought was very interesting and fun to use.  It is a computational knowledge engine that is in its early but exciting stages of development.  This application is based upon natural language processing, which simply means you can compute massive mathematical computations by using simple language.  The site is http://www.wolframalpha.com/ .  However, I recommend watching the short presentation before using the application.

What can it do for us in real estate?  Well, it will calculate debt payments; give you the estimated value distribution of properties in an area; display histories of prices and medians with interactive graphs and just about anything you can verbalize into a mathematical sequence including internal rates, etc. Why would you not want cool stuff like that, especially if it’s that easy to use?

I thought it was interesting and certainly a different perspective to learn that I’ve been alive 18,244 hours.  Put your birthday in; your LDL level; find nutrient levels, etc…

I’ll wrap up by asking to watch this presentation. Even if you don’t use the site you should know about it.

And I always thought natural language processing was something humans did since the dawn of time…