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Realize that telling isn’t selling!


Many of us have attended a sales training course and heard this familiar refrain. It’s not enough to tell your prospects about features and benefits – you must also SHOW them. That’s why the best way to present real estate knowledge is visually. Buyers want photos, video, virtual tours, and 3D maps to help them understand properties and neighborhoods quickly and easily.


It’s also important and crucial to recognize that this trend is accelerating especially with young buyers who are currently emerging as a force to be reckoned with in real estate transactions. Younger buyers also known as generation Y are individuals who grew up on blockbuster movies with special effects and playing 3D computer games; are not going to be happy with columns and rows of data. Younger buyers are visually stimulated.




The best way to make complex information easy to understand is to make it visual. It enables you to show the relationships and comparisons that can make buying and selling decisions easier. Find out other ways you can attract buyers.

Download this free real estate ebook: Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build Your Business http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

In Real Estate, Deliver Knowledge not Data

Full service real estate pros know how to compete with information overload and are comfortable stepping in to supply information where the Internet leaves off. Buyers and sellers need a trusted guide to transform overwhelming information into valuable knowledge. Real estate pros who know the difference between data, information and knowledge will be a step ahead.
Real estate information overload on the Internet also presents issues for agents. It doesn’t:

Data is unstructured, individual bits of information, such as MLS data some agents give their customers.

Information can be defined as data displayed graphically in maps, graphs or charts that can help buyers quickly understand the details of homes, schools and neighborhoods.

Knowledge is information that can be applied to a specific client’s circumstances to make better buy­ing and selling decisions. Real estate knowledge that answers practical questions – Is this neighborhood more or less expensive than my current neighborhood? – will help you win business.

Make information overload work for you. Too much information will raise concerns about choosing the wrong house, the wrong neighborhood, wrong school or wrong financing. The key is listening to your buyers and to anticipate the information they really need. If you can cull out the misinformation and non-relevant information, buyers will appreciate your service.

In addition to helping you win business, real estate information can help real estate pros avoid steering issues. Agents can’t say whether a school is good or bad. But they can deliver a report comparing SAT scores, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratios and other information that can help their clients decide.

It’s your role to package, personalize and interpret information for your prospects, buyers and sellers. And the best way to make complex information quick and easy-to-understand is to make it graphic. Want to learn more ways in which you can deliver knowledge to prospects? Download our free ebook Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build your Business. http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

Take back the information advantage

Real estate professionals historically have held a clear information advantage. Listing and neighborhood information was locked up in 3-ring binders or dumb terminals tucked away in brick-and-mortar real estate offices. Buyers and sellers needed to work with real estate pros to get the information, or fly blind.

In the 1990s, the tide began to turn – eventually into a tidal wave of real estate information across the Internet. Neighborhood demographics, sales trends and robust listing information appeared on thousands of websites. As the information advantage shifted toward consumers, some traditional realtors were caught by surprise, and many thought that advantage would never be regained.

Today, agents are less frequently recognized as a valuable source of information. A 2008 study by the California Association of REALTORS® showed 10 percent of respondents found the Internet a more useful source of real estate information than agents. The percentage of respondents who found Internet information less useful than agent-provided information has declined sharply since 2004.

How can you differentiate the information and expertise you’ve built throughout your career from some­thing your clients can pull up on Google? Follow the guidelines in this special report to give your clients information they need and can’t get on their own, marking you as the true Neighborhood Expert.

Download this free ebook: Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build Your Business http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

The Secret Formula for Increasing your Income is Really no Secret.

In real estate appraisal terms, the “highest and best use” of a property is how that property would be used most efficiently or profitably. In the same way, the highest and best use of your time as a real estate professional means making the most of those events that lead most directly to income-generating activities– sales, referrals and repeat business.
In other words; Spend more time with better prospects, using better presentations and proposals.

Real estate’s top performers and coaches will tell you the highest and best use of your time is in personal meetings, proposals and presentations. That’s why it’s vital to have a system to make the most of every marketing proposal, open house, and buyer showing. A system that enables you to convert more pros­pects to clients may be the best marketing investment you can make.

If you think you don’t have time to provide detailed neighborhood knowledge, consider the benefits. If you’re trying to sell a fixer-upper in a desirable area, it’s important to let buyers know about potential appreciation. When working with buyers, it’s a good idea to “sell the neighborhood” along with individual homes. This provides an opportunity to maintain buyer interest and loyalty even if a particular property is not available or doesn’t work out.

Want more tips on how you can increase your income? Download our free ebook Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build your Business. http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

Welcome to our new format – the 2-minute real estate coach! In today’s challenging market, eNeighborhoods subscribers are telling us their concerns:

1. Looking for ways to work smarter and faster

2. Interested in business-building tips for recessionary times

3. Making the most of their marketing dollars. Staying motivated, organized and productive

We hear you! With our new format, we’ve teamed up with our sister company Homes.com to offer today’s best ideas and success strategies from the industry’s leading real estate professionals and coaches. Send comments this way: Success@eneighborhoods.com
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Are you making the most of every meeting, proposal and presentation with your eNeighborhoods products? Real estate information is all over the Internet today, but does it really deliver what buyers and sellers need – and you need – to be successful?

Here are a few thoughts on how real estate pros can take back the information advantage while building their brands and delivering the first-rate service buyers and sellers expect from a full-service real estate professional: Knowledge is (earning) power

Today’s top real estate pros know how to compete with information overload on the Internet and turn it to their advantage. Buyers and sellers need a trusted guide to transform information overload into valuable knowledge. To solve the “too much information, not enough understanding” problem for prospects and clients, it’s important to know the difference between data, information and knowledge:

Data is unstructured bits of information, such as the MLS printouts some agents give their customers.

Information might be defined as organized data. Examples include maps, graphs or charts that help buyers and sellers see relationships and make comparisons. Knowledge is information that can be acted on to make better buying and selling decisions (and results in higher satisfaction, with you, their agent).

It’s your role to package, personalize and interpret information for your prospects and clients. Is this neighborhood more or less expensive than my current one? Are the schools better here? Can I afford the taxes? Real estate knowledge that answers practical questions helps you win business.

The best way to make complex information quick and easy to understand is to make it visual.

Visual impact = financial impact

Many people are visual learners, and the best way to present real estate knowledge to them is visually. Buyers expect photos, video, virtual tours, and interactive maps to help them select or reject properties quickly and easily. Younger buyers who play 3D computer games and watch special-effects movies in high definition are unimpressed with columns and rows of data from an MLS printout.

Important: In addition to helping you win business, neighborhood knowledge can also help you avoid mistakes like steering issues. You can’t say whether a specific school is good or bad. But you can deliver a report comparing SAT scores, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratios and other information that can help their clients decide.Eager to show off their knowledge, many less-experienced real estate pros spend lots of time feeding their opinions to their clients. More seasoned agents know that buyers and sellers trust their own judgment above all, and help them arrive at their own conclusions. The result is often a smoother transaction and clients who are more comfortable with the buying and selling decisions they have made.

This article is from the upcoming eNeighborhoods Special Report:

Build Your Career and Your Profits with Neighborhood Knowledge

It’s coming soon and we’ll notify you when it’s here. Get ready to build your business - and your profits – with Neighborhood Knowledge!

Six tricks: Keep marketing content on track

For veteran copywriters and content providers, it's always gratifying to see research highlighting the effectiveness of text copy to attract online visitors, persuade them to take action, and ultimately drive sales. Text copy will always be a key driver in marketing and sales, but in the evolving online, multi-platform world, it's no longer sufficient to seek comfort in the "content is king" credo and write on.

Why? For all types of marketers, the true north of actionable content has always been to make it relevant and deliver it to the right audience at the right time. These same principles apply across platforms, whether content is distributed through Weblogs, streaming media or podcasts.

But as people become more sophisticated and diverse in the types of content they consume, the application of simple rules becomes more difficult. Is your content breaking news or old news? If you're not sure, here are six tricks to ensure your content retains its regal status:

Mind your medium: Today people have the opportunity to interact with more types of media than ever before. Your message could be delivered through an animated billboard, podcast or a branded desktop application. You probably wouldn't send the same content to a senior corporate executive and a 19-year-old gamer. But many organizations will try to reach both target audiences with the same marketing channel. While television may reach both parties, it may not be the most effective way to reach either one. It's said that more than $50 billion is spent annually on television advertising, but young males may spend more time playing video games.

In your eyepath: Eye-tracking is an increasingly popular way evaluate web pages because eye movements provide insights into the human thought processes that cannot be derived from surveys and self-reporting. On a very practical level, eye-tracking has confirmed things like scanning behavior and "banner blindness" in web users. Although studies have underscored the relative importance of text versus graphic content, they have also shown that people habitually scan rather than read, skipping large portions of text on every page they visit. Use color, bolding, bullets and subheads to break up copy so it can be easily scanned.

Target your list: Direct response diva Lois Geller champions a quick formula to identify the components of success in direct marketing campaigns: The offer and list are each responsible for 40 percent of campaign success, with creatives accounting for the remaining 20 percent. You may have extremely relevant and valuable content, but if it's sent to the wrong list, you won't make a connection. The best practices of direct response marketing have been developed for more than a century, and they still provide valuable direction in the 2.0 world.

Remember the offer: All the persuasive and elegantly written copy in the world can't make up for the wrong offer at the wrong time. If your campaign is underperforming, and you’re fairly certain you are sending the right creative to the right audience, then you probably have the wrong offer. There aren't that many moving parts... time to test some different offers to see what's most attractive. If this offer-list-creative trio is beginning to sound like the old CLUE board game (Mr. Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick), it should. Put the three together in the right combination and you've found the killer (marketing campaign).

Keep it in order: It sounds basic, but a quick survey of print ads, emails or web pages will yield plenty of examples of putting the cart before the horse. The problem of ordering your message becomes more difficult as technology provides people with more and more control over how they consume media. In many cases, a solution is pitched before a compelling business problem is outlined. In others, the proposed solution may follow the problem too closely. Especially in more expensive or complex sales, let your content and campaign establish relationship with successive degrees of involvement. Print, broadcast or interactive, the right content in the wrong order is a recipe for mediocre results.

Consider the source: While telling your own story is an essential skill for marketers, sometimes it's better to let someone else take the podium. A great rule of thumb from Marketing Experiments is to back up your own claims with data, while leaving qualitative praise for your product to customer testimonials. The same can be said for online credibility indicators such as seals and certificates. Placing the Verisign logo or Better Business Bureau seal next to your checkout form is probably simpler and more effective than creating a long explanation of why prospects should trust you with their credit cards. And if you can get Steve Jobs, Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki to say anything at all about your product, that would help too.

Get eNeighborhoods’ Now's the Time to Buy Free Special Report today.

http://www.eneighborhoods.com/time