Here I am, broker and lead of a Denver real estate team here in the heart of the country. We’ve had our share of challenges. However, we continue to invest into our business and persevere and it’s paying off. When others are asking, “How’s business?”, we can truthfully say, “You know it’s great. In fact it’s been better these past several months than during the past few years.”  Sure, it’s not as good as it could be but it is better. I’ve had to make tough but obviously necessary decisions and moves towards achieving the end goal of coming out of this lull on top of our game.

Moving Our Office

I recently moved from a small boutique real estate firm to one of the largest and fastest growing brokerages in Colorado. This move helped to bring down costs while expanding the team’s opportunity. Overnight, I increased team incentives via lower fees, and vastly increased my access to in-house agents, now candidates for my team. Instead of hiring new members from outside my company, then recruiting for my team, now I simply need to put the word out to the office.

Hiring Team Support

With some of the savings on the overhead, I hired my first administrative assistant. I’ve spent many, many hours trying to keep up with the vast amount of work I’ve created for myself and now it was time to share. By lightening my load, I’m better able to focus on the larger opportunities and issues at hand. I’m looking at everything from virtual outsourcing, to engaging consultants, to hiring hourly and even salaried employees. Continue reading this post

I’ve personally taken the time to register around the country for the sole purpose of having a great email drip campaign to convert leads into appointments and appointments into pay checks. Ironically, I’ve accidentally noticed that many of the websites I have registered on were not calling my personal cell phone, let alone sending me an email of properties or even a thank you for registering.

So I ask the question, “why force registration and not follow up?” My data gathered around the country over a period of about six months has astonished me, and possibly even you. Experience clearly shows the importance following up and having great systems in place in the way to grow your business and dominate as opposed to drowning in today’s market.

I’ll get to the statistics in a moment. First off, I was amazed that this project took me so long. After starting this project, I realized how many people do not force registration. I also realized how many people do not have websites. Sorry, I did not collect data on the number of websites I had to visit in order to register, however the number was at least 2 out of 3 who did not force registration. Continue reading this post

Have you ever wondered how to really capture and convert leads?

Have you read posts on here from me and others that are getting tons of sales each year by using HomeGain’s BuyerLink product along with great lead conversion systems?

Do you want to add 12 sales, 24 sales or more a year to your bottom line?

If this sounds good to you, then let me show you how. In one week from today, on March 1, at the HomeGain Nation event in San Francisco, get ready to learn the tricks and secrets of lead conversion.  I have spent the last 8 years working to increase our lead capture and conversion rates.  It’s not rocket science, but it does take a strong work ethic and a great solid system to make it happen.

I will demonstrate how to capture leads and more importantly how to turn those leads into customers for life.  This is a step by step process that I have developed so that my agents, regardless of experience.  It’s all in the systems and on March 1, I’ll be revealing this for you to learn.

By this time next year you will be having your best year in real estate.  Why?  Because the system I teach works.  This past year we sold 311 homes with 90% or more of those from the BuyerLink product we buy from HomeGain. Our goal this year is 425 home sales.

I’ll be giving away a few copies of my new book, of which Louis Cammarosano (General Manager at HomeGain) wrote the foreword, titled “100MPH Marketing for Real Estate“.

See you there!

On Monday, in anticipation of the HomeGain Live Nation Real Estate Forum on August 3rd in San Francisco, HomeGain will recognize several agent and broker members in a press release for their success with the HomeGain’s BuyerLink™ per-per-visit marketing program.

The press release will recognize Mitch Ribak of The eHomes Realty Network and Tropical Realty of Suntree in Florida, Debra Gravelle with RE/MAX Home Team Realty in Washington, Rosemary Mancuso of Keller Williams in Massachusetts, and Ron Petzel of Realty Executives in Florida.

Mr. Ribak is on track to sell 350 homes in 2009 with the help of the BuyerLink marketing program. “BuyerLink has helped me increase my business revenues year after year – it brings in over $110,000 per month,” said Mitch Ribak. “We get double the click-to-lead conversion rate using HomeGain versus Yahoo! and Google. We expect to earn over one million dollars in commissions coming from BuyerLink this year.”

Debra Gravelle stated, “I just calculated that I am now over $50,000 in commission from BuyerLink! That’s amazing considering a $600 a month budget.”

“Since September of 2008 I have spent $5,400 and have made back $72,355 in income just from BuyerLink,” said Rosemary Mancuso. Plus, I have 24 home sales pending. HomeGain’s leads are very high quality and I rely on the traffic they send me.” Continue reading this post

Here we are, half way through the year almost. Have you looked in the mirror lately?  On a daily basis I receive emails from Realtors all around the world struggling to succeed in this business.  I am a little perplexed at all the emails actually.  As soon as I ask them my first question, though, the answer is clear.

My question is usually something like, “How are you doing compared to your yearly business plan?” or “What are you doing to ensure you have implemented your business plan?”  I always get the same old answer: “Well I don’t really have a written business plan” or “Sure, I wrote my goals down, I always do…what’s an action plan?”

So what seems to be the disconnect between Realtors and running a business?

Firstly, let’s look at yourself.  Do you run your business as a business?  I had a great letter from an Agent of mine this year, it was for me to read to all my Agents.  Anna May has been in real estate for 20 years and has had many successes.  I don’t have the email handy, but I’ll paraphrase it: Continue reading this post

I know that most everyone looks at me as an Internet guy who is good at lead conversion. As much as that is one of my strong points, one of my favorite things I do is teach my agents about Customer Education. Over the past few months I have spent a ton of money to educate myself on new concepts I could bring to the real estate world to help my company increase our business.  

One of our biggest obstacles, and most likely one of yours, is the lack of commitment that many home buyers are making these days. When I started my search a few months ago, I had no idea what I was going to learn.

I learned how to use Customer Education in our business to help drive sales.

Usually, as Realtors, we are quick to blame everyone and everything else about why a customer didn’t end up buying a home from us. I have observed this since I got into the business in 2001.  Since then I have realized that in order to become successful in this business, in fact in any business, is to accept responsibility and learn from our errors. Over the past year our Real Estate Agents have averaged 8 new buyers per month but only sold 1 home per 8 buyers per month.  

After analyzing these numbers, I realized that the reason Buyers were not commiting was because of the lack of information or more importantly their misinformation. After all, we are all products of the media these days and if they say the Real Estate market is bad, that’s a great excuse for Realtors not to become successful.  

If the Realtors don’t believe in the market, how can the buyer believe? Continue reading this post