Recap of Beijing

Mark Spitz's 36-year old record of 7 gold medals at one Olympic event, across all Olympic sports, was shattered when 23-year-old swimming machine Michael Phelps grabbed his 8th gold in Beijing and 14 all-time gold medals. Who will ever forget his 0.01 of a second photo-finish with Serbian - Wow.

There are very few blueprints available to real estate agents who want to expand their business through the building of a team.  The people who have built teams have done so predominantly through trial and error.  My desire is to give you the initial steps of that blueprint to success.

First I’d like to commend you for sticking with me through the previous six installments.  We’ve covered a lot of ground, and hopefully you’ve been able to take something of value away from each article.  Now we finally come to the end.  We’ve discussed lots of topics, from technology to advertising.  From theory to practical application.  Now it’s time to help you assemble your own online marketing plan and what specific steps you need to take to put your newly formed strategy into action.  So let’s get started.

It’s amazing to watch the world through the eyes of a child.  The exposure we gain is immeasurable.  The evaluation skills we can take and the questioning of everything by the child gives pause to our often routine, busy lives.

Last week, President George Bush signed The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 (the Housing Act) into law.

In the last installment, I discussed website basics.  I intentionally left off one part of the typical website: the capture mechanism or gateway.  Some call it the form or registration page, but whatever you call it, it is the most important part of your site.  As far as I’m concerned, it is more important than the website itself.  Yes, I really said that.  Let me repeat myself: It is more important than the website.

Stuart Siegel has successfully parlayed eNeighborhoods, a business which he founded, sold, re-bought and sold again, into a co-ownership of the Florida Panthers. Here is how is happened:

Most Agents hold top-producing Agents in the highest regard.  A top-producing Agent is given a status that is almost God-like.  Since I was put on a pedestal for many years during my sales career, let me give you an undeniable truth.  Each and every one of us has a top-producing Agent inside of us trying to get out.  Each person has the God-given ability to produce at a stratospheric level.  Top-producers are ordinary people who happen to be doing extraordinary things.

Ok, so we’ve talked about advertising — the value proposition in the ad, the call to action, the advertising key words, as well as sources of Internet traffic.  We discussed pay-per-click (or pay-per-visitor) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO).  Now it’s time to talk about the actual website.  What do the customers see once they have clicked on your Internet advertisement?  In this segment we will be discussing everything about your website, from the website’s landing page, to the content, to the value propositions, to graphic appeal and finally to keeping those customers on your site for as long as possible, or to minimizing abandonment.

Nearly all the agents I talk to feel the same way about referrals—they love to get them, but can’t figure out how to get their customers to consistently cough them up.
 
Giving money for referrals doesn’t seem to help that much—and complicated “rewards programs” only seem to create paperwork headaches.
 
So how’s a business owner supposed to get more referrals?

In this blog, I'm going to give you three suggestions—and they’re all super simple.

First, enhance the customer’s experience.
 
Sounds simple, I know.
 
But audit your processes and you’ll probably find a lot of room for improvement.