Real Estate Blog & Blogging » Business Planning

Become a Relocation Partner

Matt Jones — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:59:18 +0000

Ever get tired of endlessly riding in cars with buyers? Do you ever just feel like you need to be working smarter instead of working harder? Well maybe you can be. Partner with me and let’s open a FavoriteAgent.com relocation office together. Really. If we do it together, we can both add value and provide what the other can’t, and best of all, we can make a lot of money.

But before we get into all that, let’s think about what a relocation company is at its very core. It is a company that attracts people who are relocating, engages those clients, and then places them with real estate professionals. Finally, a relocation company oversees the process to ensure the client is happy and that the agents pay them the agreed upon referral fee.

The largest relocation company today is Cartus Mobility (originally part of what is now Realogy, the parent company of Century 21, ERA, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s International, and Better Homes & Garden real estate brands). In all likelihood, the company in your market who handles their relocation is the busiest company in your market. Sounds good, right? It gets better.

The agents who work those relocation clients are accustomed to paying as much as 40% of the gross commission for each side of a transaction, and since it is a relocation, over half the time there are two agents for one client — one helping them buy and another helping them sell their existing home. But even if there are not two transactions, there is always one.

Now, imagine if you could identify those relocation clients early in the buying cycle, engage them, and then refer those clients to an agent you’ve pre-screened on the client’s behalf. You could make 40% of the gross commission on each end as a referral, and you could run the entire operation from the comfort of your home. Simple right?

All you would need is a system to attract relocation clients, and then client management that allowed you to oversee the progress your referral agents were making on your relocation business. That’s where we come in. We’ll supply the clients but we need you to oversee the relocation operation in your local market. To be our eyes on the ground, so to speak. Let me walk you through an example:

Using our proprietary system, we would place online advertising in your market and attract a new relocation client and seamlessly forward that lead to your client manager. For purposes of this example, let’s say the client has a $200,000 home to sell where they currently reside, and they need to buy a similar but more expensive home in your market, let’s say $250,000.

First, you refer the listing to an agent you’ve pre-interviewed and collect a referral fee of 40% of a $6,000 gross commission from the listing side. That’s an easy $2,400, and believe me, the listing agent is thrilled to get the easy listing and will be happy to pay your referral fee.

Then on the buyer side, there’s a 3% commission on the new purchase price of $250,000 (assuming no bonuses or higher commission offered by builders or agents). That is another 40% of $7,500 gross commission, or $3,000 for the buyer side. Not bad.

Now think about it: You’ve not burned a dime of gas. You’ve not wasted a week of your life riding around town showing houses. You’ve not wasted your weekends holding open houses or canvassing neighborhoods. You’ve not had to place advertising, yard signs, lock boxes, or any of the other hassles of doing traditional real estate business.

Together we have provided the valuable service of identifying, engaging, and referring our client, and we’ve made $5,400 in referral fees. And because we are partners, we would split that fee — $2,700 for you and $2,700 for us. Neither of us has any legal requirement for record keeping, because we are not the agent or the broker, but rather simply collecting a referral fee. We also have no transactional liability and pay no franchise fees. Okay, so what’s the catch?

Here it is: If we decided to partner with you to open a FavoriteAgent.com relocation office in your market, we would have several requirements of you. First we would require that you attend regular training and accountability conference calls. Because we will be making a big investment in your market, we also require a very specific sequence of customer engagement action steps.

Remember, there are several steps in this process: Identify, engage, refer, and service. We would handle identifying the clients. You would then engage them and refer them to your relocation team, who would provide the brokerage service to the client.

You would be required to recruit a minimum of two agents for your relocation team and get them to sign a blanket referral agreement with our company. Of course, depending on your transaction volume, you may recruit as many referral agents as you deem necessary to handle your volume of business.

We also require a one-year commitment, renewable by both parties every year. And we would require you to continue to license our LCM Success virtual office software so that you will have the client management platform needed to interface with your own relocation team and with our system.

As we advertise and grow in your market, we will periodically evaluate the relocation customer count and may adjust the number of relocation partners so as to maximize our volume of business. (If you would like to discuss entering an exclusive agreement, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss it with you.)

Imagine…

What if instead of going into the office to begin the traditional real estate grind, you tried something brand new? You decide to take the thirty-second commute to your home office. You check your email and there are two brand new relocation leads that have come in overnight. You sit back in your chair, sip your coffee and begin to plan your day.

You pull together some stats for your relocation team training and accountability call in half an hour. Then you open your client manager and look through the 18 relocation leads that have come in over the last month. Of those, there are only 7 people you need to touch base with today and then you are done. After that, you need to call your three referral agents and check in to make sure no balls are being dropped. How easy is that?!

You should be able to make it to an early lunch at the club and then take the afternoon shopping for a new convertible. Hmmm. Tennis anyone? Catch that afternoon matinee? Actually you can do whatever you want. No sales meetings. No caravan. No time wasted by other agents in the office. No everyday real estate grind.

Your new job is the very picture of simplicity. All you have to do is engage your relocation buyers and hand them to waiting referral agents. No endless showing appointments. No dinner time listing appointments. No dread of constantly having to drum up the next deal. Oh, and let’s not forget — no weekends. No nights. No gruelling hours. No marathon closings. Just making friends and placing them with great agents. How cool is that?!

So let me ask you a question. What if we were to close only two transactions per month together? You’d pocket an extra $5,400* with no expenses and no liability. What if we closed four? Or ten? Do the math. How many agents can you recruit and how much business can they do? That could be a lot of money with virtually no risk.

Does this sound like something you would enjoy? Are you willing to learn some very specific engagement strategies? Are you willing to do it our way and not try to reinvent the wheel? Are you able to recruit at least two agents who can handle referral business professionally? It doesn’t even matter what company they are with as long as they are licensed and they are good with our customers. Are you prepared to make a one-year commitment? If so, contact us and let’s talk.

Maybe a relocation partnership makes sense. Or maybe it doesn’t. It can’t hurt to talk and once we find our partner agent for your market it could be too late for you. Thank you for taking the time to consider this proposal. I look forward to talking soon.

*Projection based on the sample transaction in the example above. Your market may vary.

I Hate Technology!

Do you ever get the idea that an entire cottage industry exists for the sole purpose of fleecing agents out of their hard-earned commission dollars? Ever feel like a new technology company springs up every 15 minutes with the latest, greatest new clever idea? And all the pitches are the same: a room full of drones on phones, calling agents from the NAR membership list, promising great success! Read more >>

The Re/Max Saga Continues…

Matt Jones — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:30:04 +0000

Many of you may recall that two years ago Re/Max legal department sent me a cease and desist letter demanding that I redesign our company’s yard signs. It was their contention that they own a trademark on all uses of red over white over blue on yard signs. Seriously — I’m not kidding — they honestly do!

Okay, you can stop laughing. There’s more. You may recall that I then asked you, my readers, if I was missing something. Was I being unreasonable in defending our company’s own yard sign design? I wrote an article and another followup asking for your feedback. And did you ever give it. Never, in the history of my blog, had I received as many comments — 146 in all!

SEE BOTH SIGNS AT EITHER LINK ABOVE!

Unlike many stories, however, your opinions were very one-sided. Nearly all of you agreed that Re/Max was overreaching. Of course, I basically told them to get lost, that I wasn’t violating their trademark and that there was no evidence of confusion in the marketplace (a key element in any trademark action).

They wrote back and effectively said, “No, we’re really, really serious. You must cease and desist all uses of your yard signs immediately.” to which I responded, “I’m really, really serious — I am not violating your trademark, but I am reasonable. If you feel that strongly about my signs, I will be happy to redesign them as long as you pay for the replacements.” That was it. Not another word for two years.

Then a few days ago, I received another FedEx package from Re/Max. This one included yet a third cease and desist letter that said, “No, we’re really, really, really serious.” I responded and said that my position hadn’t changed but reiterated that if they felt strongly about our sign, we were still willing to change it, but at their expense.

But, an interesting thing happened, during that interim: We started hearing from other companies who had also received nearly identical threatening letters from Re/Max and had found our story on the internet. Many of them had signs that were not remotely similar to Re/Max’s and one was from an entirely different industry. All ranged from very concerned to terrified by the prospect of being involved in federal trademark litigation and were seriously considering abandoning what appeared to be perfectly legitimate marks.

After hearing so many nearly identical stories from so many unrelated sources, it is hard not to get the impression that the Re/Max legal department has an actual business practice that seeks to leverage its rather vague trademark into something greater than it is by this tactic of bullying smaller companies into acquiescing to their overreaching demands, whether or not there is any legal basis for it, out of fear of litigation expense, negative publicity, and/or other negative consequences.

Obviously, Re/Max International has substantial market power and financial resources with which to bring frivolous complaints against much smaller companies that are financially unable to defend themselves due to the prohibitively high cost of federal trademark litigation. (The expense of a single trademark lawsuit could easily exceed $100,000 per party, enough to make many smaller companies simply walk away from their hard earned brands.)

It is our opinion that this use of the threat of impending legal action to unlawfully limit competition and financially intimidate much smaller companies, if true, constitutes a textbook coercive monopolistic violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and thereby an unfair and deceptive trade practice under the Uniform Commercial Code. But maybe it is a coincidence.

Maybe I am too close to this to have an objective point of view. For that reason, I would like to hear from you, my readers. Have you or do you personally know of any other companies that have received similar threats from Re/Max? If so, what was their outcome? Do you think this is fair play? What would you do if you were to receive a similar threat from Re/Max? Thank you for weighing in with your opinion — it means a lot to me.

I Hate Technology!

Four Mistakes That Cost Agents $264 Million Last Year!

Matt Jones — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:31:18 +0000

Today, over two-thirds of all Realtors® reported having a website, one in ten reported having a real estate blog, and more than half are using social media. Sound good, right? Not so fast.

According to the National Association of Realtors® Member profile, the typical Realtor® brought in only four inquiries and did only 3 percent of their business from their website. Since the average agent did only 7 transactions, that means that most agents did statistically no business from their websites, while a few did a lot.

Not surprisingly, those who spent the most on websites also got the most inquiries and the largest percent of their overall business driven by website traffic. But what is most notable is that while agents spent a reported $264 million on their web marketing, most produced literally no business for their investment.

Here are the 4 Common Mistakes most agents make in their online real estate marketing, costing them from hundreds to thousands of wasted marketing dollars. See if any of them surprise you.

Website Content Is King. Since the very first online marketing seminar I attended, I have heard this common theme: Content is King. Because of that advice I continued to add content to my website until I had the most content of any real estate website in my market.I added articles on buying and selling, advice for first time homebuyers, information on every type of mortgage program, community information, relocation information, schools, recreation, and even weather forecasts. Over 2,000 pages of content! Guess what? My visitors yawned.Now many years and millions of visitors later, and only after having extensively tested every possible configuration of content-based websites, we’ve learned the hard way that content is not king. Okay, so what is king? The home search is king. Make it easy for your customers to search the entire local listing inventory, and they will love your site.

Web Traffic Is Everything. We’ve all heard that it is important to have lots of traffic to your website. After all, it only makes sense that without high traffic you can never generate any real business, right?Wrong. It really doesn’t matter if you have thousands of visitors to your website; if you never capture any of them, you are no better off than if you had no traffic. What really matters when evaluating your website presence is the capture rate. You can have very low traffic and still capture a large amount of business if you have efficient web capture.For example, if you have 1000 visitors to your typical real estate website and and manage to capture 0.87% (the typical capture rate) then you have a potential 9 customers. On the other hand, you could have only 100 visitors but have an efficient LCM gateway and capture 25-35% of your visitors, giving you 25-30 customers.In other words you could have only one-tenth of the web traffic and still generate over three times the business, simply by having a high capture rate. Traffic is not everything. Efficient capture rate is everything.

Search Engine Ranking Is Crucial. You’ve probably been told how important it is to have a high search engine ranking. In fact, some companies exist for the sole purpose of improving your Google rankings .The entire search engine optimization (SEO) industry is based on this very idea. While building and managing your website to improve your search engine rankings is certainly better than having poor search results, organic searches is only one way of generating traffic to your website, and as explained in paragraph 2 (above), traffic is not that important.Moreover, search engine optimization is expensive and ongoing. Generally speaking one can plan on investing several thousand dollars up front and several hundred dollars every month forever to obtain and maintain good search engine placement. SEO is an ongoing expense if you plan on maintaining a good search engine ranking.

You Get What You Pay For. Let’s face it: A Rolex watch is better than a Timex. A Lexus is better than Kia. A Coach handbag is better than a Walmart special. But then again, the prices are not the same. And as a general rule, the more we spend, the more we get, all other things being equal. In other words, we get what we pay for.But when investing in technology, that rule is not always true. An agent could spend thousands of dollars on a fancy website and search engine optimization to maximize his internet traffic, but by investing in the wrong things, his results could still be poor.At the same time you could take a very limited budget, investing only pennies a day in the right technology and generate a hundred times as much business as that other agent with the huge budget. In that case you don’t get what you pay for — you get much more.

The Bottom Line. If you noticed, the key to successful online marketing comes down to having the right technology. In other words, investing smart, not investing big. Most agents today just throw money at their online marketing and then wonder why they have such poor results. Not so with the new breed of internet-savvy agents.

What today’s sharper agents are doing, is guerrilla marketing, internet style. They are first putting in place the critical technology and then they are advertising smart, not big. And the results are astounding. Most are generating 2-3 new inbound customers every day without spending so much as a dime in advertising or search engine optimization. Some many times more.

Sound unbelievable? But you better believe it. If you are not familiar with LCM gateway technology and how it works, take a minute and go for a quick test drive. When you do, the light will come on and you will realize why this one simple tool is the “Holy Grail” of technology.

Click to take the 5-minute test drive >>

Today’s New Age Realtors®. Still not convinced? I totally understand. I wouldn’t be if I hadn’t used this very technology to turn my own practice around. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what several of these “new age Realtors®” have to say in their own words.

The Big Risk. At the end of the day, investing in any technology is a gamble. In the case of our LCM gateway, it is a gamble of less than a dollar a day, with no activation fee and no long-term contract. You can try it and cancel immediately and for any reason if you’re not totally satisfied.

On the other hand, not giving it a shot is a huge gamble. Why? Because either you aren’t doing anything to generate business from the largest of all customer pools today and you are watching as your competitors are getting the first shot at 94% of all new real estate shoppers who are beginning online.

Or maybe you are investing as much as several hundred dollars a month in online marketing and yet getting little or nothing in return. Add it up: Over the course of this next year that could be thousands of dollars that could be producing literally thousands of new sales opportunities.

“But it’s a huge learning curve!” you’re thinking. No, it really isn’t. Most agents are up and running in less than an hour and most of these agents have very limited internet experience. The LCM gateway system is designed to be super-simple and it includes a coaching staff that holds your hand until you start making money. How cool is that?!

So if you aren’t using LCM gateway technology, give it a try today. What do you have to lose? There’s no long-term commitment, no activation fee, and the pricing is ridiculously low. Check it out and start having more business than you can handle in less than an hour.

Click to check out LCM gateway technology >>

I Hate Technology!

Let a Lender Pay Your Ad Bill (Mastermind Call)

Matt Jones — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:55:51 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.The following video is the live audio from a Master Mind recorded training call held on January 17, 2012 titled: Let a Lender Pay Your Ad Bill. In it I share a simple idea that will allow you to offset some or all of your advertising expenses every month! I’ve been doing this for years, and frankly it’s so easy that if you aren’t doing it, you’re just leaving thousands — maybe tens of thousands — of dollars on the table. I am able to capture 2-3 new inbound customer every day without spending a dime on advertising.

Listen in and learn an innovative idea you’ve never heard before. After you’ve had an opportunity to listen to the training call, I also recommend that you check out the following additional link to an article I wrote on the subject:

Let a Lender Pay Your Ad Bill

I Hate Technology!

Open House Until It Sells (Mastermind Call)

Matt Jones — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:37:48 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.The following video is the live audio from a Master Mind recorded training call held on January 10, 2012. In it I share an idea that can save thousands of dollars in expenses this year, and better yet, that will make your customers love you. I’ll warn you, this is an outside-the-box idea. But that also means it will separate you from the competition, and I guarantee no one else is doing it. Some of you will think it’s crazy, but if you listen with an open mind, the opportunity for savings is huge.

The “Open House till It Sells” is a guerilla marketing idea that will cut your overhead, create a buzz around one of your listings, and it may be just what you need to move that house in a slow market.

Open House ’til It Sells

I Hate Technology!

Thank You Letter to My Readers

Matt Jones — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:04:06 +0000

Beginning a brand new year of real estate, I want to pause and personally thank you for following my blog, participating in our mastermind calls, for reading, commenting, and all the things you do to help us help the agent community. Many of your calls and emails have also been very encouraging to me. I truly appreciate all you do.

This past year, our blog readership has been the best ever and our blog community has risen to being on the radar screen of NAR, Inman News and many other prominent media outlets. Again, thank you. When we took on the NAR over the dues increase, you jumped in with an outpouring of emails and hundreds of blog comments that got their attention, although they ultimately didn’t care what we thought. Maybe if we were a bigger force, they would have cared.

That brings me to the second purpose of my email — to ask you for a favor. I’d like you to invite your agent friends to join our free blog community. I know it is a hassle to stop for a minute and send a few emails, so I made it simple. I’ve built a site that lets you simply put in their email addresses, and it will send an email to them, inviting them to become one of our readers.

If you will simply invite ten friends to join us, I will give you any one of my ten books as a thank you for taking the time. Oh, and check this out: After ten friends accept your invitation I’ll give you all ten of my books, absolutely free, as my way of thanking you for helping us grow our community.

This is the year for us to have a bigger impact on the real estate industry. This is the year for our voice to be heard. And this is the year to help thousands of struggling agents turn the corner and begin prospering. Let’s make 2012 the best year ever in this the best of all businesses — real estate!

Click here to invite your friends to join us. >>

I Hate Technology!

Thank You Letter to My Readers

Matt Jones — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:04:06 +0000

Click here to invite your friends to join us. >>

Did You Like This Training? If you did, please take a minute to check out our LCM Success system. We will teach you to do real estate the "new way" and more importantly, we'll give you the tools you need to do it. Get our state-of-the-art lead capture and lead management technology and let us hold your hand while you learn to use it. No activation fee, no long-term contract, and a cost of only pennies a day! Click here to learn more.

Business Planning (Mastermind Call)

Matt Jones — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:34:13 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.All other training topics take a back seat to this one. If you want to make more money in real estate, start with my talk on Business Planning. The following video is the live audio from a Master Mind recorded training call held on January 3, 2012. In it I talk about creating a vision for your practice, and I show you, step by step, how to “reverse engineer” your buisness plan based on how much money you want to make. I also share my business planning calculator, which allows any agent to reverse engineer his own business plan in less than 10 minutes.

Listen in and learn what it’s going to take to achieve your goals this year. After you’ve had an opportunity to listen to the training call, I also recommend that you check out the following additional link(s):

Business Planning Calculator

I Hate Technology!

Alarming New Stat: Agents Now Working for a 26% Split!

Matt Jones — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:24:37 +0000

I know times are tough, but this one takes the cake. Many agents today are working for the worst commission split in the history of the real estate business. What’s even worse is that in many companies, the agents are competing with each other just for the chance to work for nothing! Here’s how it works.

With the failure of most traditional marketing to produce sufficient number of transactions for the average agent to survive, many agents have been forced to move to traditional companies to have enough business. And those traditional companies have been happy to provide relocation leads at outrageous prices.

One major Atlanta broker-owner, speaking under the condition of anonymity, said that the agents in his eight offices have become more and more dependent on his company to provide sales opportunities. He went on to explain that their relocation department pays a 40% referral fee to obtain relocation leads. That’s before they pay another 8% (of the gross commission) to their franchise home office.

When you put those two huge expense together, that leaves only 52% to split between the company and selling agent. In most traditional companies, the split on company provided business is 50/50, leaving the agent with only 26% of the gross commission. And that’s before paying for gas, client meals, advertising, or other operating expenses.

Why would agents willingly pay out three-fourths of their commissions and only keep a fourth for themselves? Only one reason: because they have to. Today agents are finding it harder and harder to generate enough business to make a living. Traditional real estate marketing has failed them, and most agents have dabbled in online marketing, only to waste their already limited budgets.

There is a new group of agents, however, that has rejected the notion of paying out three-fourths of their commissions and has instead taken their marketing into their own hands. Many have departed from their typical “I love me” websites that are so prevalent in this industry, and have replaced them with very inexpensive LCM gateway technology.

This new class of agents is no longer dependent on their company for their livelihood. They have taken control and started working smarter and not harder. Many of them spend less to produce a steady supply of new business than they wasted each month using a typical website or small magazine ad that produced very little if any business.

Today it is not uncommon for an agent to wake up to find 2-3 new inquiries in his email inbox. Not once in a while, but every day; day in and day out. Sure, some will never become clients, but many will. Now instead of spending the entire week trying to hustle up a sales opportunity, and then the entire weekend trying to show and sell homes, these agents are able to spend their time doing what they do best: working with clients. Their marketing is on autopilot.

Is it easy money? Of course not! There is no money without work. But it is possible to automate your marketing and free up a lot of your time that is currently being wasted chasing the next transaction. Imagine what it would be like to have a pipeline of business backed up waiting to work with you.

So let me ask you a question: Have you ever tried out LCM gateway technology? If you haven’t I encourage you to take a simple test drive of our LCM and see it for yourself. It costs nothing to check it out and if you decide to try it there is no contract or activation fee and with current pricing* you could spend less than a dollar a day and generate more business than you can work.

Take the free LCM test drive.

Learn more about LCM technology.

I Hate Technology!

The Ultimate Listing Presentation (Mastermind Call 2)

Matt Jones — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:25:27 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.The following is the live audio from a FavoriteAgent.com Success Team training call held on December 6, 2011. This is the second installment of The Ultimate Listing Presentation. Learn this approach and you will be listing every home for 8% or more while selling your clients’ homes in half the time and netting them more money in the process.

Listen in and learn how to become the top listing agent in your market. And after you’ve had an opportunity to listen, I also recommend that you check out the following series of articles for your review on the same topic:

I Hate Technology!