The New Ultimate Listing Presentation - Solve the Lead Problem First

You have to solve the lead problem first.Allow me to tell you a
fishing story. A real estate fairy tale, if you will. Once upon a time
there was a huge river, stocked full of home-buyer and home-seller
fish. All along the banks of that river were REALTORS with their
fishing poles. Everyone was catching all he wanted, and life was
good.Then one day, way upstream, a big commercial fishing company set
up operations, with its computerized fish finders, its power nets, and
the latest in fishing technology. The company began to pull many of
the home-buyer and home-seller fish out of the water before they could
make it downstream to the unsuspecting agents.And it wasn't long
before the fishing downstream began to get tough - so tough, in fact,
that many REALTORS just threw in the towel and quit the business.
Others worked longer hours and did what they could to survive, while a
third group simply gave up on the whole thing and bought fish from the
big commercial fishing operations.But what if an agent were able to
get the same technology that the large commercial fishing operations
were using? What if he were to go way, way upstream and begin to catch
large quantities of home-buyer and home-seller fish? Not only would
life be good again: it would be GREAT! What a huge advantage that
agent would have!Well, believe it or not, this story is actually true.
The big commercial fishing operations are the lead vendors, such as
HouseValues, HomeGain, and ServiceMagic, and every day the "fishing"
gets tougher downstream because new lead vendors open their doors.If
you don't believe me, just check your email inbox. Not a day goes by
that I don't receive some new version of the same old thing - somebody
using my listings to advertise on the Internet, catch my customers,
and then attempt to sell them back to me.And if the lead vendors
weren't bad enough, add to that many of the national companies who do
the same thing -- catch those home-buyer and home-seller fish
upstream, and then sell them to their own agents, for a referral fee.
I thought they were supposed to be looking out for their agents, and
not exploiting their lack of marketing skill. Hmmm.But there's another
part of the story that's also true. It's possible for an agent to use
the same kind of technology that the lead vendors and national
companies use to capture their leads - commercial lead capture
technology on a single-agent level. It's called an LCM Gateway, and
for those agents who use it, the technology produces amazing
results.Some real-life examples of "lead capture" technology:In
Greensboro, North Carolina, we have an agent named Kay Hunkins. She's
a veteran agent who was one of the first in her market to begin to try
to tap the Internet. Well, she was getting literally thousands of hits
to her websites every month and had her sites listed in lots of online
relocation directories. The result was that she was getting between 10
and 15 leads from the Internet every month. Not bad.When she installed
a lead capture gateway on one of her existing websites, however - she
did nothing else differently - she was immediately so busy that she
actually found herself ignoring most of her prospects and following up
only on the choicest leads.She began taking listings left and right,
and she put a deal in escrow the same week she started with us.
Without upping her advertising a dime, she began to capture over 20
leads every day. All of her leads were people who had been coming to
use her site anyway, but now she was able to identify them!Or there's
John Miller, an agent in Austin, Texas. When he began using lead
capture technology on his website, John was struggling with only a
handful of leads every month. After installing lead capture gateway
technology, he captured between 300 and 400 leads every month. His
business will never be the same! Now he's so busy that he's having to
recruit agents and build his own real estate team!So did these agents
suddenly get smarter? Did they begin working harder? Did they work
longer hours? Did they just get lucky? No. No. No. No. They just got
better fishing equipment. And that "fishing equipment" is our LCM
Gateway. Now, instead of having to be dependent on "commercial fishing
operations" to sell them leads, they make more leads than they can
possibly use, and all for next to nothing.And I could go on and on
with story after amazing story. There are many talented agents out
there, just waiting for the tools to succeed and someone to point them
in the right direction. They are the reason for their own success - we
just happened to be fortunate enough to help them assemble the right
tools and then point them in the right direction.The simple fact is
that you have to solve the lead problem before you can attack the
other challenges in this business. Having more business than you can
handle allows you to work without pressure. It allows you to turn away
those "problem" customers. It gives you the ability to multiply
yourself by building a team, if you so choose.And most importantly, it
gives you freedom. No longer are you at the mercy of lead vendors,
relocation companies, or even your broker. You have the freedom,
finally, to take some time off and enjoy life again. A good lead count
will solve virtually every other problem you can have.