We are pleased to present our REALTOR® members with the launch of our 4th Annual Agent Appreciation Campaign!

Each year, for one month, HomeGain gives thanks to its customers for their continued support.

As part of the 2009 Agent Appreciation Campaign, we are featuring:

• A FREE business review (see choices)
• Tools for your clients
• Weekly Surprise! Play a new game EACH WEEK and win $50 account credit, plus a grand prize on October 31st open to all participants.
• Reasons to thank a Realtor
• And more!

Please refer to the email you should have received from HomeGain.com with the link to the campaign website.

If you are a real estate agent who is a member of AgentView, AgentEvaluator®, BuyerLink™ or AIMS, and did NOT receive the announcement email from HomeGain.com with a link to the 2009 Agent Appreciation Campaign website, please email us.

With the campaign announcement, we are also pleased to induct 39 HomeGain members who have reached club status across 17 U.S. states (since August):

• 2 new Diamond Club members (totaling 19 members who have earned $500,000 in gross lifetime commissions from HomeGain leads)
• 13 new Platinum Club members (totaling 346 members who have earned $125,000 or greater)
• 11 new Gold Club members (totaling 278 members who have earned $75,000 or greater)
• 13 new Silver Club members (totaling 230 who have earned $50,000 or greater)

“HomeGain is an enormous advocate of its Realtor members’ success,” stated Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. “We are proud that our marketing solutions help contribute to their success. We will continue to recognize our agent members for their hard work and dedication to the real estate industry.” Continue reading this post

It’s been a pretty busy time here at Tropical Realty in Melbourne Florida since we got back from the HomeGain Nation Conference. Business is going great and my Realtors® are busy as always.  Our system of creating all our leads for our agents is a true win in every aspect of my business.

However, there is a down side to this and if you don’t protect yourself while you build your team, it could cost you thousands of dollars!

So what am I talking about?

I’m talking about having a written agreement between you and your agents to ensure that you, the team leader or brokerage, own the leads.

This past week we dealt with a real estate Agent who left our office to take a full time job as an assistant for a broker. She did everything correctly by coming to me and letting me know she was leaving because she couldn’t afford to be a Realtor anymore.  She was one of our less successful Realtors who had a lot of potential, but never really put the effort needed into becoming successful.  I did like her and feel bad for her though so I kept her leads flowing (big mistake).

So lesson one is to never let your emotions guide your business.

It’s very important that you take all emotion out of any negotiation and run your business as a business.  Be strong and cut leads off from Agents if they don’t produce.  End of story. Continue reading this post

In many cases, the perception of an online consumer is that they are not real. The result is that they are not treated as a true prospect and, clearly, deals will not close due to this situation.

This perception is understandable since an online consumer is represented on a computer screen as a series of characters in an email address or in their name. The person is not standing in front of you. They have no pulse and you cannot look them in the eye.

Their preferred method of communication is email which, by its nature, maintains a certain level of anonymity. Due to this desire to remain anonymous, the online consumer controls the frequency, or even possibility, of contact.

This same desire prompts an online consumer to register false contact information on a real estate agent’s web site whether or not entering contact information is even necessary for the consumer to gather the information they want.

Clearly, this is a huge source of frustration and, in some cases, expense for an agent.

But, on the other hand… Continue reading this post

We have polled home buyers and sellers once again and we’re sharing the results in order to help our AgentEvaluator® agent members better meet the needs of prospects.

We sent our survey to more than 14,000 home buyers and sellers who came through AgentEvaluator in the last year -– some who closed with a HomeGain agent and some who did not choose a HomeGain agent.

5 Useful takeaways from the survey that all AgentEvaluator members should read:

1. Consumer Feedback on agents is one of the top things homebuyers and sellers are looking for when they use AgentEvaluator.

• Takeaway: If you don’t have consumer feedback (reviews to say what a great job you’ve done as a Realtor) entered in your profile, get some entered today. To upload reviews, go to the Consumer Feedback section of your Proposal Templates page.

2. Most of the consumers who worked with a HomeGain agent chose that agent because of their personal response.

• Takeaway: As shown in both this year’s and last year’s survey, personalization has consistently been the most important reason consumers select HomeGain agents. If you ARE NOT personalizing EACH proposal to address the specific situation of the prospect you’re responding to, you should start today.

3. Most consumers expect to receive their proposals within 1 to 3 days. Continue reading this post

Yesterday, we held an all hands meeting to thank everyone for their contributions and to review how we were perceived following the launch of the HomeGain Agent Blogging Network.

While we received a positive reaction, I wanted to remind our employees of our commitment to our real estate agent customers. I sent this email to each of our employees:

“All,

Something that bears repeating, HomeGain’s primary concern is to help real estate agents.

The point for us to remember is that our business is not primarily about creating buzz, but about creating value for our customers.

They need our help and to hear from us. We need to let them know we support them.

I’ll trade 100 headlines for one satisfied customer.

Have a Great Weekend.

Louis Cammarosano
General Manager, HomeGain” Continue reading this post

Max the HomeGain gorilla arrived by mail over the weekend and we had a long discussion about lead management.

He carried on and on about orange being consumers’ favorite color, even tried to talk me into using an orange font color to write this, but one thing he said that really hit home is that consumers don’t like to be pushed.

It might seem odd that a gorilla is concerned about pushing, but he has a point.
I don’t like to be pushed.

From what I’ve learned about “systems” if you push the system to get what you want, the system pushes back, until you find the right leverage to get results. In this case, if an agent pushes his lead management system to get immediate results, the system pushes back.

Leads are set up to receive information and then, in their own time, act on that information and hopefully use your services. I believe consumers look at a company like HomeGain as Continue reading this post