Part 3: The Work //A:
Once you find a suitable Realtor to work with, then you are going to start the work.
You should establish a brand and branding method. Advertising typically gets about 1 second to be absorbed, so what do you want your ads to instill; this will be your brand. Everything we do is about the brand. Our current brand is “
MrShuswap” and we have a logo of my partner that is easily remembered. Everything is about the logo and the website domain
www.MrShuswap.com . Develop your brand. Forget Re/Max, C21, Royal LePage, etc. You want people to see your sign and remember YOU. Clients think we all work together for the better good of them? Not. Our signs have the minimum requirements for corporate logo, etc and we got the OK in writing from head office before joining the company. Get your image and set up a domain, email addresses, etc. If the existing Realtor has pre-established stuff, no trouble, just link the new to the old. You’ll see my domain actually goes to my partners old domain, his name. I own the domain, I set it up and I control where it links to. Our emails are also ******@MrShuswap.com constantly burning the name into the minds of everyone.
Set up a brand new phone number; try to get an easy one to remember; but get a phone number that you’ll use on everything. This is the main number that you want people to call; it goes on your site, emails and signs. You control where the phone rings to by call forwarding it. One of your goals is to teach the existing Realtor how to have some time off; this is one of the tricks. Your spending a lot of time and money to get the phone to ring….. so for Gods sake, have somebody answering it! Let your Realtor take all the calls and just forward when he takes time off; once he gets used to you taking the calls, it will happen more often; but your true goal is to have sale people making the sales and you providing the professional marketing experience in the background; it’s a win/win for all.
NOTE: you may not be able to change the existing, already well used phone number; that's OK, you can use it, just convert to the call forward number and issue another number to the Realtor; this is very important in the functionality of the RE program and the Realtors time off/away.
Then, take all the existing listings and improve them. Go to the properties and redo the photography; the weather must be good and it will have to be redone if there’s snow on the ground. Take 100’s of photos of the property. Stage as much as you can. ALWAYS move vehicles, never photo people, hide garbage, tidy, clean, etc. The little bit of difference, makes the difference. Improve the marketing package as best you can. Obtain all the property and home info. Get lot plans and maps. Put all this info onto your new site.
I use to use the built in slide show feature the web host software offers, but it took too long to load and weighed down the site too much; so I’ve switched to Flickr and use their slide shows. Here’s a simple sample of a nice website presentation (
LINK), has photos, lot plan and maps and it links right from MLS to these features with programmed icons of Add’t Photos, Brochure & Media (
LINK). Put in all the extra effort you can. You don’t have to do it all at once, you can do a standard minimum and then enhance it when there’s time; oh yeah; I work from home, period.
Get your site and presentations working good for you. It’s your secret weapon.
When people decide to choose a Realtor, the first thing they do is go to MLS and see what “their” neighbours/competition is doing? They’ll be looking on MLS and guess what, they’ll see which Realtors are doing the best job…… right there! Keep your site professional, simple and easy to use. Forget the crap, give the people what they want, the info. It will bring you listings; the more listings, the more business. Also, you should co-list all your listings on MLS, it gives a far better presentation than just one Realtor as it makes the space of the property presentation twice as big and it give you exposure to the clients. Working your game.