Is Now the Time to Retreat? Hardly!

[I just wrote this article for Realty Times and thought I’d share it here. Because the article is kind of long I’m putting it out in two parts. Enjoy!]

Sure, market conditions have shifted in many parts of the country.

Cause for despair? Hardly.

You can still make as much money this year as you did last year -- and even more.

How?

Start by forgetting everything you think you know or have been told about operating in this type of challenging market.

Many agents make the mistake of retreating when the market shifts like it has over the past year. They cut back on spending, on advertising and marketing, and on what they hope to earn.

Don't join them in that trap.

Agents who build and maintain a large, healthy pipeline of prospects do not worry about changes in the market. Truly, they don't. Instead, they continue to close business, because they have a steady stream of customers to work with.

Here's what these top agents are telling us right now about this particular market and how they're meeting its challenges head on:

They are not cutting marketing dollars. Their advice to you: Market now more than ever. The key is to spend your marketing dollars wisely. Now may not be the time to spend much, if any, on image marketing or branding; rather, target your dollars on efforts that will generate prospects. Analyze what is working and what isn't. Track where your business is coming from. Spend more there and eliminate the ad buy that doesn't bring in prospects. A word of caution: You need to give this time to work. Don't just try something for a week and drop it.

They are advertising online. No big surprise here: According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 80 percent of consumers search for information about homes online -- and trust me, that number is only going to grow. Consider the vast array of information consumers can now get online: multiple photos of homes, neighborhood information (check out HomePages.com), virtual tours, mapping technology, and even printable fliers with detailed property information.

Homes with multiple photos are viewed 299 percent more than those not offering multiple views. That is not a typo. Take advantage of online ad opportunities. For example, the enormously popular Craiglist.org lets you advertise for free. Google and Oodle are other options for ads. Your goal should be to advertise your listings and services 24/7 and not be limited by local distribution like most newspapers and magazines are. An individual webpage per listing is becoming more and more popular, and is a very cost-effective way to advertise.
My next post will continue the article with 3 more ways to meet the challenges of a changing market.

Taming the email monster

Help, emails are taking over my life

Successful AgentCEO’s learn early on how important it is to streamline repetitive activities. And what could be more repetitive than emails. An informal survey showed agent’s get from 50 emails a day on the low end and up to 500 A DAY on the high end.

In the past I have been email challenged and was desperate to get the tidal wave of emails under control. Over time I’ve discovered a few tips ranging from pretty basic keyboard shortcuts to tricks like setting up rules & filters. Here’s a few of them to try out. (These tips work in Outlook)

> Hold Shift key to select multiple emails. Handy for deleting bunches of spam- be careful to not select a ‘good’ email.
> Use the Control key to select specific emails all at once. Use this feature to select certain emails to move to a folder.
> Use Copy feature to put an email into multiple folders. This is really handy when it’s an important email and want to be able to find it. I figure if it’s in more than one folder I’m increasing my odds of finding it. Just highlight the email in the Inbox, go to Edit, select Copy to Folder, select folder and hit OK.
> Create folders for everything regular.

Here’s a sample structure

Inbox----

__1_ReviewDaily----

__2_WaitingForResponse----

__3_ReviewWeekly----

Business--------

Clients------------(various client folders with sub-folders)--------

Vendors------------(various vendor folders with sub-folders)--------

Ezines------------(various ezine/newsletter folders with sub-folders)----

Personal--------

Family------------(various family member folders with sub-folders)--------

Friends------------(various friends folders with sub-folders)

I have a folder set up for just my boss, a folder set up for emails from other people in my department, and then a folder set up for company wide emails. It has made reading my email so much easier, just to have the ability to go directly to the appropriate folder. It also makes it so I don't miss important emails. Since I have a folder set up for my boss, I can see immediately if he has sent me any emails when I come in each morning. The whole set-up makes for much less "missed emails".

Use Rules:I also use rules extensively. In particular, when working on a project and I have a lot of communications between a client or partner, I will create a rule to place all incoming mail in their root folder and all my messages to them in a subfolder beneath their folder called SentTo for the individual or company.

You can create a rule to automatically move specific messages into the appropriate folder. To create such a rule, open the “Tools” menu and select “Rules and Alerts.”

Finally, move old emails to Archive on a regular basis.

Now that you have all those emails tamed and in order, don’t you feel better?

Here’s a link to some in-depth Microsoft training on how to manage emails.