Take A Walk With An Italian Cat

Next time you happen to be in Italy I highly recommend taking a walk in the countryside with the neighborhood cat. I find them to be great listeners and they seem to know there way around. This particular cat seemed to enjoy working on his English as my wife Sheri and I were deep in the countryside and miles from the nearest major road. The nearest town was Vicchio di Mugello a few hours north east of Firenze.

At 800 years old this Olive Oil Resort Villa was the oldest villa I’ve had the pleasure to stay in. And until you had an olive oil massage by someone with shall we say ‘working hands’ your really haven’t lived! As a side note, the best omelet of my life. Simple clean and oh so tasty!

Villa Campestri Olive Oil Resort

Click, Click, Bag!

I have an extensive background in direct sales marketing at a company that I sold in '05. In addition to 'always taking care of the customer' I always insisted that we keep the items we promoted in stock. People just have too many options today when buying products online not to be competitive on both price and stock. Which brings me to my bag.

We shoot HD video in our real estate business and we invested in a high end video camera about a year ago. The camera came from Amazon because they had it in stock at the right price. A year later I got around to ordering this carry bag. If you're like me you'd Google the item, check the prices and click, click, you're done in two minutes!

In this case I had two choices; Amazon with instant stock and shipping the next day or a major supplier of audio/video equipment who's web site stated "usually ships in 3-4 days." Click, Click, Amazon shipped me the bag.

5 Marketing Mistakes To Avoid In Real Estate

Mistake #1: Using To Many Words. It’s not what you say it’s what you don’t say. People tend to scan so they can easily be turned off or worse, turned away by wordy websites, ads, emails, and newsletters. After writing an article, consider editing it by 50%. Then consider another 25% cut.

Mistake #2: Not Branding Consistently. Your brand is your business. All marketing and communication should include consistent branding and a consistent look.

Mistake #3: Not Tracking Results. Any money you invest in marketing that you can’t quantify is wasted money. Over the course of your budget year, you should be able to see a consistent return on your marketing investments. Marketing should be an income producer not an expense that takes away from your bottom line.

Mistake #4: Why I’m Tops. Prospects don’t really care how many awards you’ve won or that you’re number one. Prospects want to be taken care of with great customer service and to have their needs met. Great branding does not put you on a pedestal for the world to admire. Great branding puts your clients on a pedestal and you in a position to serve their needs.

Mistake #5: Breaking the Three Second Rule. New online prospects will generally give your website about three seconds on their first visit. If they don’t see value that can help them solve their problem, they are on to the next website until they find one that ‘sticks.’

Some MLS Photos Arn't Worth 1,000 Words!

This garage door was the only photo of this Palm Desert condo!We all know that a great photo is worth a thousand words. That said, I just don't get why so many real estate agents continue to take and use really bad photos. I'm not talking about the exposure being off a bit or that the composure could have been a bit better, I'm speaking about those photos that don't give you a clue what the property is really like!

A $1.5M estate home's kitchen at a bank owned listingAlmost 90% of today's home buyers start their property searches online. And you'd think that these listing agents would realize that. Why is it then that these poor quality photos continue to be featured on MLS sites across the nation? Business as usual for dinosaur real estate agents, lack of professionalism or both?

These agents are short-changing their selling clients, potential buyers and really themselves too. Many of the worst examples happen to be bank owned properties. While a few banks 'get it' it seems like the majority of banks still don't realize that a better marketing presentation of each of their properties might just bring more interest (and possibly more and higher offers) for each property.

Discount Broker ZipRealty Sued By California

ZipRealty Is a discount brokerageAs reported in numerous news sources, California’s labor commissioner, Julie Su, recently sued discount real estate broker ZipRealty Inc. for $17 million over unpaid minimum wages. The state says that ZipRealty broke the law by not paying its agent’s minimum wages or overtime. Zip relies on employee agents to respond to peoples online customer service inquires.

I can’t imagine why any buyer or seller would want to hire a real estate agent only qualified to make minimum wage. This gets worse. Zip and several other discount brokers are apparently loosing money hand over foot. Zip has made Zip in profits since day one. In fact, Zip has lost $115.8 Million to date.

It looks like excellent customer service is still thriving in real estate! It could be however that some buyers don’t know that it usually costs nothing to use an experienced real estate professional as the seller pays most service fees?

For home sellers, the difference between a discount agent that charges 5% and a full service agent at 6% is 1%. Would a seller come out ahead if their acutal selling price were reduced by just 2% because the seller chose to work with a discount agent making minimum wage?

Suggested Article: How To Choose A Listing Agent To Sell Your Home