I’m hosting a free 1/2 day conference on March 12. We have some great speakers coming to Steamboat to present and the announcement goes out to the public Monday morning.

To say thanks for reading my blog I’m opening up the first 15 seats to you now (there’s only 60 seats).

All the details are here: www.steamboatedge.com

Thanks for reading and I hope you can make it.

About the Conference
What a rough few years for real estate. The way we see it, you can either continue to do things the way you’ve always done them, hoping for the best or you can embrace the new-normal and move forward. This conference is about moving forward; the future of real estate marketing.

2008: “Oh S%#t, is this really happening?”

2009: “Can we just hang on?”

2010: “Time to move forward!”

Because there are so many properties and so few buyers, marketing has become the centerpiece of any successful real estate business. At the same time, the face of marketing has changed. The “bullhorn” & “how many people can we reach” approach to marketing costs more & is less effective. It’s time to consider new opportunities to connect buyers & sellers and do it earlier & more effectively.

Buyers have more choice, more education and less time than ever before. While you may have fewer financial resources the good news is there are more opportunities than ever before. Somewhere there’s a place where these two things cross & success happens. This conference is about moving your business forward with new approaches & opportunities.

Conference Details:

March 12, 2010
8:30am – 12:30pm
Catamount Golf Club

Head over to the conference site for more details & RSVP

So what are you going to do differently NOW to be more prepared when this happens next time? How is your business model going to change so that next time we hit a down market (and we will) you’ll be better prepared? It’s too late to do anything now. You’re not suddenly going to find the silver bullet. For many this is a time for survival. Better to look to the future and begin to change things.

Many brokers will go out of business; the opportunity seekers who only got in because they thought it would lead to quick money will, hopefully, be the first to go. The real estate community will be better off when they “tap out.” Others will panic & suffer while they work another job and try to ride out this storm. A small few will continue to do well. That got me thinking about what it means to and what leads to success in real estate. I think most brokers fit in one of these buckets:

1. The Cheapest

2. The Middle

3. The Longest

4. The Best

Being the Cheapest

There are some who have found a niche by being the cheapest. Time Value Real Estate & Help You Sell are two examples. But there’s a fundamental problem with being the cheapest in real estate. Being the cheapest is predicated on being able to cut out inefficiencies in the industry so you can offer the same service at a lower price and still make a profit. Dell Computer did this really well for a while. Inevitably that advantage gets eroded over time as your competitors cut out their inefficiencies and soon your advantage is gone. You’re left with a cheap brand that no one wants in their front yard and no way to make a profit. After Dell optimized their manufacturing and logistics as far as it could they then cut corners on quality and customer service. They lost a lot of customers, market share and brand equity. In the long run being the cheapest rarely pays off.

Being in the Middle

“Average,” “crowded,” “staid” and “hopeful” are a few adjectives to describe brokers in the middle. They don’t do anything bad but don’t do anything exceptional either. They play by the rules, and hope by sheer luck that a deal comes their way. They hop from company-to-company hoping that they’ll be exposed to a little more “market share.” Or they plod away year-after-year doing the same thing hoping for the big break. This is a tough, crowded spot to be in and the majority of brokers will always be here. This is the land of mediocrity not success.

Being in the Longest

Right or wrong, many attribute “time in grade” as the primary driver in choosing a broker. They want the person with the “most experience” the person who’s been in real estate “the longest.” Not much you can do here. You’re not going to add 20 years to your resume overnight. So that leaves the last option.

Being the Best

Being the best may have a lot of interpretations but I think they all lead to one conclusion. Clients see you as a “trusted advisor” that’s a resource beyond real estate. Being “the best” calls on you to question the status quo, rules of thumb, and traditions. Being the best means you solve problems, not simply place an ad in Homes & Land. It means constantly improving & learning new things. Being the best means that what you tell a client and what you actually do match. Being the best means that you sacrifice short-term profits for long-term reputation. You become a trusted advisor that transcends mere real estate transactions. Real estate almost becomes a secondary issue in the minds of your clients and friends. The benefit is that when all hell breaks loose your trusted advisor reputation provides much more insulation.

You are your own best asset whose value is directly tied to your own self-improvement and reputation.

The real estate industry is in a huge state of change and that makes a lot of people nervous. The “risk averse” are shaking at the thought that everything they’ve been relying on is fading into obsolescence. Meanwhile others are blogging their way to the top of Google, approaching real estate in a fundamentally new way, adding value as never before and are reaping the rewards. So what would it look like to begin to make small changes? What if you started today? What would happen if you spent $100 less per month on print and $100 more on new marketing techniques? Start a secret blog, Google yourself, hire a consultant, learn what RSS means, upgrade your computer, keep a journal. Start small but move the f’ing ball forward!

You are your own best asset whose value is directly tied to your own self-improvement and reputation. Those who are truly the best naturally practice this whether they realize it or not.

If you’re not committed to being the best it’s ok.

Go ahead – “tap out.”

Trulia on your iPhone

Originally uploaded by trulia

Here it is. Location aware real estate search in your pocket, on the go.
One more tool that empowers buyers.
More info here:

www.trulia.com/mobile

Click the green button to play:

There is such great opportunity for those who think beyond the Pilot & MLS to provide extreme value to their clients & potential buyers.

Provide value first, do what you say & build your brand.

You can find Larry’s books here:

With so many brokers concerned about referrals are you memorable enough?

There is so much average stuff in the middle there’s not enough room to remember it all. I suppose it’s a bit like this graph with the painful experiences being a little more memorable:

Click for larger

If you do everything right & meet expectations, you’re average.

So many Steamboat Springs brokers are concerned with referrals but I wonder if they’re really doing the stuff that’s memorable. Are you memorable enough? 3 years from now will your clients remember the exceptional experience they had with you. 3 years from now what will your clients say? Will they say you were average? If you’re truly average, I doubt they’ll remember anything at all. And in today’s world truly average is actually a pretty high bar.

If you do everything right & meet expectations, you’re average. It’s only when you exceed expectations or really screw things up do you become memorable. Going with the flow, blending in, doing what everyone else does feels safe but we won’t remember you come referral time.

Buying & selling a home is such a life changing experience for your clients the goal should be to make it THE most memorable experience of their lives so there is no way they could forget you.

(Not my kids)

Just as we expected, we had a great dinner and our daughter wasn’t fidgeting or dumping salt all over the table. So the question is, what kid friendly stuff do you have to occupy kids when you’re clients bring them along? It might be a good idea to have a “kid kit” in the trunk with an assortment of activities for boys and girls.

Love my kids and I’ll love you forever.

Why?

In 1988 it made sense for a managing broker to take a heavy split of your commission. It was extremely expensive to operate a business. Printing costs were enormous, early computers cost a fortune and of course the Internet didn’t exist. National TV campaigns drove serious business to the big franchises and the phones rang because of it. As consumers we had two choices to get in touch with you, dial a phone or turn a doorknob. “Floor Duty” was a lucrative use of your time because of that. So a managing broker taking 50%+ of your commissions made sense. The bulk of your business came from your association with that company.

Today, the complete opposite is true for most brokers I meet. The majority of their business comes from leads and clients they personally generate. Most brokers I meet view “floor” as time to get office work done. They view their association with a brokerage as “doing time” as required. And yet commission splits have remained almost unchanged.

So, I think you deserve more money.

You deserve to keep more of what you earn for the very reason that you’re doing more to earn it and your managing broker is doing less. You have more choice than ever before. Don’t spend yet another year hoping things will get better. If they haven’t by now chances are good they won’t. With companies like Colorado Group, there are alternatives to the commission split game. And it is a game, which most managing brokers should know is coming to an end.

Every evening a managing broker watches his entire company drive away. He can only hope that his company comes back in the morning. It’s my hope that the sooner managing brokers realize this the sooner they’ll approach their job differently. They are no longer the gatekeeper they once were. Their value has shifted to other areas. Maybe attend a conference or establish a new media initiative instead of adding yet another page to the split spreadsheet.

Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Click here if you can’t see the video)

If you like the video, here’s a few books I’d recommend by Tom:

Re-imagine!

The Professional Service Firm50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Your “Department” into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation! (Reinventing Work)

Talent (Tom Peters Essentials)

They realize that old methods like copying & pasting (listing descriptions, email newsletters, newspaper ads, “market reports,” etc.) simply add to the noise and provide no real value.
They realize the game is not changing – it has already changed.

Not in the Real Estate Business

Every once in a blue moon I meet with a broker who realizes they’re not in Real Estate. They understand they are in the “value creation” business. They understand that the once exclusive MLS is no longer exclusive and is as commonplace as a light bulb. Hire you because you have “access” to the MLS? So what? So does everyone else with sites like Iggyshouse.com.
The value of exclusivity is gone.

They understand that they must create value for the buyer, the seller and the market. That’s all they have. They have to create a perceived value that’s higher than their commission. That’s it.

A few brokers realize that having a “great personality” is not enough. They’re going beyond what anyone else is doing and creating real value. Improved communications, new marketing techniques, establishing relationships in other markets, blogging…

Why? Because they realize that all other brokers are their competition. And they want an edge thru creating value. I just had coffee with a broker who has suspended all print advertising. All of it. Every penny of marketing will be spent online and on technology. This broker even turned down a listing because the client insisted that Homes & Land be used. She realizes the value of a magazine like H&L is gone. As she put it “It’s a crowded commodity marketplace whose value doesn’t justify the price.” Guess what, the client called back a week later with a signed listing agreement. Risky? Maybe. But I never saw anyone make it big without taking a risk and I happen to agree with her.

Your Clients & Prospects Have More Choice Than Ever Before

Online all “real estate” is neutral. There’s no location advantage. It’s just as easy for me to browse to your site as it is to your competition’s. And if your competition has a better story, an offering that’s aligned with our worldview and can demonstrate how they’ll solve our problems more effectively than you, they win & you lose. And even worse than loosing, you are invisible. We don’t even know that you exist. That’s what happens in a world of infinite choice. 1 in 22 people in Steamboat Springs are Brokers – that’s infinite. With an infinite choice why pick anything but the best? Why pick anything other than that which aligns with my worldview?

Those blue moon meetings are what motivate me. Far too often I have the opposite type of meeting. Stale, complacent, bored, lost brokers who are looking for a quick cheap fix. That’s a good thing for those who recognize the noise and complacency and choose a different path. To those I say get busy.

Neighborhood Ownership

As the vast majority of Steamboat Springs real estate professionals try to eat from the same trough the concept of neighborhood ownership is one to seriously consider. It’s not easy, it won’t happen overnight, over a month or maybe even over a year and it might not be a sexy as other markets. But in an ultra crowded market going to the edges, finding a niche and providing personalized value to a select group can be a very successful approach.

My sense is that Silver Spur homeowners are a tight-knit group who may be as concerned as anyone about property value but are more motivated than most to make it happen. They’re younger, well educated, have families, know their neighbors and see their home as an integral asset in their wealth accumulation strategy. Home improvements, curb appeal improvements, community improvements are all areas where a sharp broker could be providing valuable information to this neighborhood.

Earn It

The home owners of Silver Spur are too smart for a blanket half-hearted attempt to win them over. Simply increasing the volume of noise they’re exposed to through direct mail, etc. will only have the opposite effect. Instead, a slow, sincere approach providing value first without any expectation of a return is what’s needed. If you can earn their respect, they’ll talk about you. If their property values increase in-part because of your added value they’ll talk about you more. Take the success story you’ve earned down the road to Heritage Park, then on to Steamboat 700. Lots of opportunity.