Keller Williams Capital Partners presents “A Few Good Leads”, a video spoof/parody of the movie “A Few Good Men” to promote the office’s kick-off to Power Hour. Enjoy đ
Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise Discuss Real Estate Leads ;)
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Tag Archives: lead generation
Befriend Every Client You Can on Facebook
Written By: Matthew Ferrara
Matthew Ferrara
You get the point. Sales means getting to know people; building a sphere of influence. Earning their trust and their referrals. Itâs about listening to their needs, being in the right place at the right time. And that place is no longer on the doorstep, in the mailbox or on the land line.
The location of sales has moved to a virtual address.
Even if you believe the cliche of getting âbelly to bellyâ with customers (an unfortunate image), youâll have a hard time finding bellies nowadays without searching a hashtag, tagging them in an update or geocoding a video. Confused by that last part? Buying an iPad wonât help. Neither will sticking your head in the sand.
Modern sales requires â demands â you befriend your clients on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
And anywhere else they may go online in the future. It doesnât matter what you sell: homes, cars, or coffee. In the social networking sales matrix, product specs donât matter as much as personal cred. Trust is the currency. Referrals are the only way. Trading happens in shares, re-tweets and tags. Self-centered monologue gives way to share-centered dialogue.
And nobody worries about privacy, because everyone is all-in.
How do you sell in such an environment? Is the risk going too far â or not going far enough? Actually, neither. Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter didnât change the game just the rules. And Facebook isnât anything more than the modern consumerâs expression of their frustration with the old rules of the game.
So hereâs a social sales primer, with six ways to sell using social media:
1. Build relationships, not presence. Sales happen one-to-one. Even companies that ship thousands of books, computers or tickets do so on a person-to-person basis. So stop trying to be a big voice to thousands who donât care. Start trying to be a trusted voice to one person who does. You can do a lot with a well-placed âlikeâ or a single âhappy birthday!â When you abandon advertising and embrace prospecting, this makes sense.
2. Talk shop, not shopping. Social media isnât a Sears catalog but a salon. Sometimes thereâs polite chatter, the currency of relationships. Sometimes a business question, the opening of opportunities. Forget about violating the Facebook Terms of Use by posting products on your personal page. You will have already violated the terms of engagement with your friends, of which you will now have fewer.
3. Share more, sell more. Smarter customers make smarter decisions. Brands arenât shapes and colors, but people. People who act on behalf of their customers best interests. Share yourself â answering questions, offering advice, being available â building your customerâs competence. Smart customers will choose you.
4. Stop worrying, get exposed. Modern customers demand genuine people. They hate spiels, and can smell a phony a tweet away. Stop being afraid to be genuine online. Be a person first, salesman second. Your tattoo pics might create a connection your scripts couldnât. As for last-gen worries that your mobile number will get out: How will next-gen customers text you otherwise? (They arenât going to call).
5. Get assimilated, then lead. Influence requires trust from within, not authority from without. Old-model marketing declared, postured, positioned. Next-gen marketing inquires, shares, collaborates. Stop trying to be loudest, biggest, bestest; the attempt only fractures your networks. Real influence is done softly.
6. Be quiet, to hear. Great social selling is done by searching. Status updates reveal more than focus groups or surveys. Consumers willingly divulge all, frequently. Simply learn translate. Nobody likes being qualified; incubated; treated like a lead. Besides, they already told you everything you needed to know, if you were listening.
Social network selling requires rethinking; and abandoning ideas of the past. None of these suggestions is much different from the days of cocktail party and golf course networking. But the comfort of telemarketing distance is gone; the passive aggressiveness of the postcard is past; the door knocking assertiveness has been medicated. Todayâs customer wonât play that game any more. From Do Not Call to DND, they have set new rules for the game.
Itâs still a chase: Theyâve just shifted it to warp speed.
REALTORS and Texters: Nielsen Wire Study Hints at Future
After living in the US for over 16 years there’s one thing I’ve learned American’s don’t like to hear: they aren’t #1 at everything.
Professionally I see this most with mobile technology. I experienced it myself several years ago when I bought a phone just before a trip to England. As a joke I asked the sales person (I won’t name the company, let’s just call them Verizon) “Will it work in London?” and to my surprise he said “no” and with a big smile and some pride added “but you can rent a phone from one of our London stores”. I laughed out loud, not from my (bad) joke but from shock, and responded “Are you kidding me? Rent a phone?”
I explained that European phones had, for many years, worked all over the world and asked why US mobile technology was a decade behind. That was the first time I saw the confused face coupled with “Really?”
I’ve had the same conversation many times since but now more tactfully point out that with countries like Japan doing things with phones that American’s haven’t even thought about there is a huge opportunity: we can see what is coming. Companies like Mobile Card Cast are well ahead of the game and it’s why we partnered with them to provide free SMS/texting services on our single property Website sign riders. But therein lies a problem.
To my continued surprise we still get regular complaints from Realtors: “What are all these numbers on the sign rider?” We explain that it is a free service that provides interested buyers with a mobile version of the single property Website while simultaneously generating leads for the Realtor. Too often this results in a response of either “What is texting?” or “How do I text?”
This proves my point, especially in real estate, that America has a long (very long) way to go when it comes to understanding (step one) then effectively using (step two) mobile technology. And so to my good friend Matthew Ferrara who recently posted this article. This isn’t astrology (“You will meet a dark handsome man who will appreciate your candor”) but good, old fashioned, common sense advice. Enjoy:
Written By: Matthew Ferrara
Matthew Ferrara
According to a recent study by Nielsen Wire, Under-aged Texting: Usage and Actual Cost, the social shift from traditional communications styles is ramping up with younger generations. There was a time when REALTORS were exasperated that consumers didnât want to leave a voice mail, and some buyers expected to hear back within a few minutes (at least the hour) when they sent an email. Just how ready theyâll be when the next wave of first-time renters and fledgling buyers comes along and prefers to text chat, even while sitting in the front seat of the car.
Donât laugh; Nielsen notes that teenagers are sending more than 3,000 texts a month, or about 10 per hour they arenât sleeping or in school. Children under 12 years of age are right behind, sending four message per non-school hour. Kids are texting their parents at the dinner table and from the living room sofa, while sitting right next to them.
Whoâs to say that method of communication wonât become the norm for other interactions. Young people prefer to scan their own barcodes rather than wait in line for a cashier to check them out. They use text-messaging to receive information about houses directly from the sign; why should they âupgradeâ to a voice call when they didnât really want to talk in the first place?
At some point, wonât they have to talk to us? Probably, but donât think texting wonât be present in that âconversationâ either. The style, duration and depth of future conversations may be radically different than those we have today. It was a huge leap from the âSixty Minutesâ of news to âHeadline Newsâ to Tweets as news today. The message changed along with the method. Whereas Boomers once dreamed about living in a home for a decade, clutching a paper listing sheet in their hands, Gen Y previews homes on their iPad and imagines living it â until the next model is released in a year or two.
As Marshal McLuhan foretold, âthe medium is the message.â For the next, next generation of consumers, it could turn out that the text message is the message. As for REALTORS, 49% of whom still donât own a smartphone in 2010, itâs time for them to get the message.