This month’s Agent Success Newsletter features Bill Eiseman of Prudential Decker Realty in Virginia.

In our exclusive interview with Bill, he advises other agents on best practices for handling short sales. With the market full of short sales and foreclosures this year, Bill delivers strategies from approaching a short sale with homeowners, to working with banks, to recognizing warning signs and how to end the short sale successfully.

Listen to this great interview with Bill Eiseman:

To hear more HomeGain Radio interviews, plus find real estate articles, survey results and more, visit ourMedia Center!

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Eric Blackwell who is the Director of Technology for RE/MAX Properties East in Louisville, Kentucky, spoke with me yesterday from British Columbia where he is speaking at the Real Estate Web Masters Conference to other real estate professionals about SEO.

Listen to our interview about SEO:

Highlights:

J: Eric, what’s the main message that you want to get across to other real estate professionals about SEO (search engine optimization)?

E: I think there is some mystery attached to the term SEO but what it really is creating a website that Google and other search engines would want it to be. It’s a lot of hard work to build a site that has both the reputation and authority that search engines are looking for. A lot of times people think you need to trick the search engines but that’s not necessarily true.

J: Have you found that there common threads between leads and traffic that come from HomeGain, and Pay per Click, and natural search engine traffic?

E: The common thread is that there are best practices that work to effectively “convert” them to clients and then to lifetime customers. Whether you get the lead from HomeGain or other source, the lead has to come into your site and you need to be able to get them to contact you or to be able to contact them – and be able to convert those clients. The more effective you are at that, the better off you’ll be and the more profitable things will be for you.

J: What are some common traps that Realtors might fall into when trying to do SEO marketing?
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This month’s Agent Success Newsletter features William “Sean” French of RE/MAX Town Center at Easton in Columbus, Ohio.

After years of trial and error, Sean has a website that captures above average visitors, and business practices and processes in place that are making his business more successful than ever.

Sean French has seen a high ROI from the BuyerLink program that drives buyers to his website – last year he invested $18,000 and saw $75,000 in return!

During our exclusive interview with Sean, he gives advice on the following topics:

• What a successful website should include
• Where to send website visitors
• 4 steps to better qualifying leads
• How to hit home runs with follow up phone calls

Listen to Sean French’s advice and business strategies:

To hear more HomeGain Radio interviews, plus find real estate articles, survey results and more, visit our Media Center!

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In our exclusive interview with Mike Farmer of Mike Farmer Realty in Savannah, Georgia, Mike describes how expanding his reach on the Internet – from providing content on consumer facing real estate blogs to providing advice to the real estate community online to maintaining his own websites and blog – has changed and grown his business.

Listen in to hear Mike Farmer’s real estate advice:

Highlights of the call:

Mike discusses what he’s experiencing as most challenging in a down market, like the Continue reading this post

This month’s Agent Success Newsletter features Alisha Wade, Associate Broker at RE/MAX Achievers in Arizona. In our exclusive interview with Alisha, hosted by Peter McCullough, she discusses how foreclosures are affecting her business and gives advice to other agents who may be facing challenges in a market full of foreclosures.

Listen to Alisha’s feature story:

“Arizona is in top 5 cities for foreclosures in the country – 20% or higher of all inventory are foreclosures. It may be awhile before the market turns around, which makes it really important for an agent to know how to do foreclosures and short sales, and not be afraid to learn how to do them.”

“Short sales are priced $10-15k below cost (and more for foreclosures ) but the danger is when the house won’t appraise, even for a home that was in great condition. It’s great for the home buyer if that happens, but not the seller.”

7 Tips from Alisha Wade:

1. Learn bank processes. Foreclosures are actually very easy to do as long as you know the banks processes. Sometimes the addendum can be 14 pages long – and you really have to read them thoroughly!
2. If you are writing a contract

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Karen Breen Elia of RE/MAX Exclusive Properties in Chicago is the special guest in this month’s “Winning Agent Call” on HomeGain Radio, hosted by Peter McCullough. The topic is home staging.

In Karen’s opinion, home staging is on the rise. “The more successful agents are finding that home staging is the key to moving properties, especially for agents in the more competitive markets,” said Karen.

Listen to Karen Breen Elia’s advice to real estate agents on home staging:

On this call, Karen shares how she provides value to her clients, overcomes objections (like personal tastes), and why it’s important to get “commitment” from clients before she begins working with them. Continue reading this post