After my response to the "secret agent" I received another email from her about a week later. Here's what it said:

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.

     During my 20+ years as a business advisor and executive coach, I have mentored thousands of people to higher levels of success, especially in the real estate industry. Near the end of 2007 I started receiving “anonymous” emails from a REALTOR® in southern California (that’s the only personal information she revealed to me) that were both a plea for help and a revealing look into the real estate coaching business. Since the emails I received were anonymous (I really have no idea who the person is who has been sending me these emails) I decided to publish some of the content as a way to advise other real estate professionals as well as provide a means to help real estate coaches learn some important insights about their methodologies.

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.

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.

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.
 

In this Part we’ll examine the subject of online advertising.  I am probably going to use some terminology that is new to you, but I will attempt to either keep it simple or provide explanations as I go so even the most un-tech-savvy agent should have no problem taking something of value away from this article.  I need you to forget everything you’ve ever heard about advertising while you read and I want you to turn on your common sense — not very common these days — and see if this doesn’t resonate with you down deep inside.  I believe it will, and I believe it will result in your changing the way you look at advertising, and particularly online advertising forever.