When you as a Real Estate Agent adapt an Expired plan to your Market Area, you need to adjust that plan to fit “where” you are working expireds.

Before I give you examples of three clients that have modified Expired Plans to meet their areas, I want to make sure everyone is clear on what the goal of working expired listings is: “getting the listing appointment.” Now, actually getting the listing at a marketable price and then selling that listing are two other articles, but here we are going to be talking about “getting your foot in the door.” I have three clients in total different market areas that use three totally different approaches.

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I came across a thread Stephan Swanepoel started in the Real Estate Trends group on Inman News.  The subject of the thread and the title of this post were one in the same. While Stephan's article was insightful by itself, I was also intrigued by some of the comments.

In response to an underlying theme about leaving "virtual bread crumbs" as a way of establishing agent credentials, readers offered the following:

It Could!!!   Do you realize that any online property marketing tool has the potential to link out to your competition in 2-4 clicks?  You pay for a nice property website or visual tour with all the great fancy links to area information and fun stuff that are very engaging to buyers. Buyers love your site so much that they click and click until they are so far away from the original listing they were viewing that they may even end up on your local competitor's website searching for more properties and filling out information inquiries....How does this happen? (link to example below)

After a year of trying to sell her four-bedroom home and eight years of singledom, Deven Trabosh is offering her South Florida home and a shot at marrying her on the Internet. Read the full story by Associated Press here.

One has to wonder if this will help sell the house faster or not at all.

Today I had an interesting call, one that when you reflect on the call you ask yourself "Why!"  The call was from a prospective customer wanting to know about an online class we offer about staging.  The caller wants to know if the course is guaranteed to make him money?

I explain to him that our course comes with a money back guarantee that if his production did not increase by one additional transaction that RealtyU would refund his purchase price for the course.  The agent was more concerned that the course would guarantee him more transactions.

What is the most important asset you own?  Is it that wonderful home you live in?  Is it the beautiful car that you drive to and from your listing appointments?  Is it your investment account of stocks?

It looks like many of the traditional media just have to fight off one Internet battle after the other as Web 2.0 alternatives lay siege to longstanding methods of communication. With the blogging boom, the social community explosion and “texting and twittering” detonating together with the wide adoption of readily accessible and portable video, the transmission of ideas, messages and announcements will never be the same.

I am a real estate business coach.  I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of clients over the past 7 years, and, you know what?  Something has changed with most of my clients’ businesses over the past few years.  My guess is that if you are a real estate professional, this is also true to some extent for your business as well.

I will tell you one other thing about many of my clients; most of them are exceeding their goals and many are having their best years yet.

In June 2002 I got my real estate license and embarked on a brand  new career — selling houses!  I was excited.  I studied everything I could find.  I took classes.  I read dozens of books on real estate practice.  I couldn’t wait… and then nothing happened.  Don’t get me wrong — I did all the things that all the experts said I should do, but my results were very limited at best.

The question in the subject of this post was one I came across in another forum.

I was feeling a little flippant today and also in somewhat of a mood to pander to my real estate buddies.  Here was my response.