December 2009 saw the demise of Editor & Publisher Magazine, which had been around since 1854. It lays claim to being the chief chronicler of the American newspaper industry and has presided over the business for 125 years and is a clear signal that an era is rapidly drawing to a close.

NEWSPAPERS

Daily newspapers have been losing between 2% and 5% per year of their circulation base during the last 10 years. In 1940 there were 1,878 newspapers in the U.S. with a total circulation of 32.4 million. …

The last installment was more geared toward brokers and team leaders so I will make this one for agents.  I’ll warn you: This strategy will not make you friends, but it will make you money.  If you are like most agents today, you are struggling for sales opportunities.  You know what to do when you find a new customer, and hopefully, you do a great job.  The problem is finding enough customers.
Here’s a great way to find new customers, and it costs almost nothing.  It works best if you have …

First impressions are almost always irreversible and can make or break your connection in a matter of seconds, and how you connect on and offline will make determine if you will win or lose!
What can you do differently than you have been doing?  Are you relying on the same old things, systems, and habits…. or even more concerning, doing the same things your competitors are doing?
Today’s savvy consumer knows what they want, and are not willing to pay for services that do not meet their need. The largest buying segment …

Too many luxury real estate marketing professionals have become mesmerized by the mechanics of online social networks and have all but forgotten the phone call as being a vitally important component of professional networking.

The following is a list of functions that a good CRM enables you to do. Many people buy a CRM because they are told they need one, or because they want to get more organized. Often while evaluating a CRM or after purchasing one, they then end up saying that it cost too much for what they need, because it does so much that they do not need. The reality is that the CRM does so much because it is what you need, IF you want to grow your business significantly, while …

Many of you who’ve followed my blog or my training know how I feel about open houses.  I think they are a bad idea.  I should clarify that statement.  I believe that there is one single instance in which you should consider an open house: continuously until it sells.  I’ll explain.
Our company, FavoriteAgent.com, is the global leader in real estate virtual office technology, and we believe very much in the independence of agents and in lowering the high cost of overhead in today’s brokerages.  I’m about to share an idea that …

As a luxury real estate marketing professional your reputation is at the core of your personal brand equity—the value of your brand. Your reputation, your trust factor can be the deciding factor in selecting you to list a luxury property over your competition or be selected as a buyer’s representative.

Look around.  Today, agents are dropping like flies.  Real estate brokerages are closing on nearly every corner.  Good people are leaving the real estate business like rats from a sinking ship.  Not that I have any first hand knowledge about rats and sinking ships.  Where do they go anyway?
I digress.  Why are they leaving the industry?  Primarily for one reason:  They can’t afford to stay.  In other words, the real estate business as it is today is not profitable at all for many of us, and only marginally profitable for …

It’s almost time to start our Zero2Hero Agent Challenge 2010, but it’s not too late to for you to enter.  We already have a good sized field of contestants and we hope to get started soon.  So far we have agents from Georgia, California, Hawaii, Florida, Michigan, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, Texas, and even one from Hong Kong.   We have agents from big cities and small towns.  We have new agents, and agents starting over.  From national franchises and local independents.  In short, we have a great sample of the real …

Okay… The holidays are over and we are at the half way point of the first quarter of a new year…..So the question is…What has changed in how you are doing (or not doing) your business to make real money?
We are all prisoners of our habits, and especially after a certain age, it is tough to “change”. It’s been said, that if we keep on doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep on getting what we have always gotten….but that is not true anymore! In today’s competitive marketplace we may …