(Can’t see the video? Click here.)

Sorry, cheap videos from Flip cams, iPhones just don’t cut it anymore. Competition and consumer expectations have raised the bar. In a world of infinite coffee choice I pick Intelligentsia.

In a world of infinite choices in your business, why pick you?

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

I’m hosting a free 1/2 day conference on March 12. We have some great speakers coming to Steamboat to present and the announcement goes out to the public Monday morning.

To say thanks for reading my blog I’m opening up the first 15 seats to you now (there’s only 60 seats).

All the details are here: www.steamboatedge.com

Thanks for reading and I hope you can make it.

About the Conference
What a rough few years for real estate. The way we see it, you can either continue to do things the way you’ve always done them, hoping for the best or you can embrace the new-normal and move forward. This conference is about moving forward; the future of real estate marketing.

2008: “Oh S%#t, is this really happening?”

2009: “Can we just hang on?”

2010: “Time to move forward!”

Because there are so many properties and so few buyers, marketing has become the centerpiece of any successful real estate business. At the same time, the face of marketing has changed. The “bullhorn” & “how many people can we reach” approach to marketing costs more & is less effective. It’s time to consider new opportunities to connect buyers & sellers and do it earlier & more effectively.

Buyers have more choice, more education and less time than ever before. While you may have fewer financial resources the good news is there are more opportunities than ever before. Somewhere there’s a place where these two things cross & success happens. This conference is about moving your business forward with new approaches & opportunities.

Conference Details:

March 12, 2010
8:30am – 12:30pm
Catamount Golf Club

Head over to the conference site for more details & RSVP

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

Tactic Treadmill

If  you want to improve your fitness you have a lot of options and one of them might be a treadmill. The thing about treadmills is that you do a lot of work, spend a lot of time & energy and you don’t really get anywhere. As soon as the treadmill stops, the value stops.

You also have a number of choices to improve your business. It turns out there’s been one very popular choice I call the “tactical treadmill of business.” It looks something like this: You need customers so you place an ad in the newspaper. After that runs for a while it’s time to place an ad in the quarterly magazine  (where  it takes an enormous amount of time to get the ad  just right). Along the way you do a little direct mail trying to connect with people in your “database.”  As soon as that’s done it’s time to advertise in the newspaper again. And around and around and around it goes looking something like this:

Click to enlarge

If we plot the value of the Tactical Treadmill versus time we get a graph that used to look something like this:

Value vs Time

In the past, using the Treadmill had some certainty of a return but now there are two big problems with relying on the tactical treadmill of business.

First, when the treadmill goes away so does the value. When cash is tight and you spend less, the value is much less. Hop off the treadmill and all the value disappears. All that stuff is now in the landfill.

Second, many of the key elements that the treadmill depended on have changed. Advertising costs and response rates are going in opposite directions; ad rates are going up & response rates are going down. The number of information channels are going up at the same time our attention span is going down. At my house, for example, TV shows don’t start at 7:00 p.m., they start at 7:20 because we record them, skip the commercials and we’re still done by 8:00.

When the treadmill goes away so does the value.

Successful businesses have abandoned the Tactic Treadmill and are focusing their efforts on creating new value and connecting with customers in more meaningful ways.

As you look to the new year how about a different approach? I’d like to suggest an approach that gets you off the tactical treadmill and results in a graph that looks something like this:

Get off The Treadmill

The hard part is this approach isn’t worth very much when you start. But over time it has the potential to outperform the tactical treadmill and won’t be subject to the same downward forces as traditional media.

If you can begin to leverage some of the new opportunities of today, you’ll start to grow and develop marketing & permission assets that don’t go away, don’t diminish over time and continue to provide value as you move forward.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be posting a series of articles on ways to do this.

- How to listen & why it’s the best thing you can do now.
– How successful companies are realigning their business to satisfy customers.
– The biggest change traditional media wishes you didn’t know about.
– Why the new stuff isn’t the old stuff.

Thanks for reading!

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

Presentation Slide Download (19mb)

3.0_Thinking3

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

So what are you going to do differently NOW to be more prepared when this happens next time? How is your business model going to change so that next time we hit a down market (and we will) you’ll be better prepared? It’s too late to do anything now. You’re not suddenly going to find the silver bullet. For many this is a time for survival. Better to look to the future and begin to change things.

Many brokers will go out of business; the opportunity seekers who only got in because they thought it would lead to quick money will, hopefully, be the first to go. The real estate community will be better off when they “tap out.” Others will panic & suffer while they work another job and try to ride out this storm. A small few will continue to do well. That got me thinking about what it means to and what leads to success in real estate. I think most brokers fit in one of these buckets:

1. The Cheapest

2. The Middle

3. The Longest

4. The Best

Being the Cheapest

There are some who have found a niche by being the cheapest. Time Value Real Estate & Help You Sell are two examples. But there’s a fundamental problem with being the cheapest in real estate. Being the cheapest is predicated on being able to cut out inefficiencies in the industry so you can offer the same service at a lower price and still make a profit. Dell Computer did this really well for a while. Inevitably that advantage gets eroded over time as your competitors cut out their inefficiencies and soon your advantage is gone. You’re left with a cheap brand that no one wants in their front yard and no way to make a profit. After Dell optimized their manufacturing and logistics as far as it could they then cut corners on quality and customer service. They lost a lot of customers, market share and brand equity. In the long run being the cheapest rarely pays off.

Being in the Middle

“Average,” “crowded,” “staid” and “hopeful” are a few adjectives to describe brokers in the middle. They don’t do anything bad but don’t do anything exceptional either. They play by the rules, and hope by sheer luck that a deal comes their way. They hop from company-to-company hoping that they’ll be exposed to a little more “market share.” Or they plod away year-after-year doing the same thing hoping for the big break. This is a tough, crowded spot to be in and the majority of brokers will always be here. This is the land of mediocrity not success.

Being in the Longest

Right or wrong, many attribute “time in grade” as the primary driver in choosing a broker. They want the person with the “most experience” the person who’s been in real estate “the longest.” Not much you can do here. You’re not going to add 20 years to your resume overnight. So that leaves the last option.

Being the Best

Being the best may have a lot of interpretations but I think they all lead to one conclusion. Clients see you as a “trusted advisor” that’s a resource beyond real estate. Being “the best” calls on you to question the status quo, rules of thumb, and traditions. Being the best means you solve problems, not simply place an ad in Homes & Land. It means constantly improving & learning new things. Being the best means that what you tell a client and what you actually do match. Being the best means that you sacrifice short-term profits for long-term reputation. You become a trusted advisor that transcends mere real estate transactions. Real estate almost becomes a secondary issue in the minds of your clients and friends. The benefit is that when all hell breaks loose your trusted advisor reputation provides much more insulation.

You are your own best asset whose value is directly tied to your own self-improvement and reputation.

The real estate industry is in a huge state of change and that makes a lot of people nervous. The “risk averse” are shaking at the thought that everything they’ve been relying on is fading into obsolescence. Meanwhile others are blogging their way to the top of Google, approaching real estate in a fundamentally new way, adding value as never before and are reaping the rewards. So what would it look like to begin to make small changes? What if you started today? What would happen if you spent $100 less per month on print and $100 more on new marketing techniques? Start a secret blog, Google yourself, hire a consultant, learn what RSS means, upgrade your computer, keep a journal. Start small but move the f’ing ball forward!

You are your own best asset whose value is directly tied to your own self-improvement and reputation. Those who are truly the best naturally practice this whether they realize it or not.

If you’re not committed to being the best it’s ok.

Go ahead – “tap out.”

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

Trulia on your iPhone

Originally uploaded by trulia

Here it is. Location aware real estate search in your pocket, on the go.
One more tool that empowers buyers.
More info here:

www.trulia.com/mobile

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

Click the green button to play:

There is such great opportunity for those who think beyond the Pilot & MLS to provide extreme value to their clients & potential buyers.

Provide value first, do what you say & build your brand.

You can find Larry’s books here:

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

With so many brokers concerned about referrals are you memorable enough?

There is so much average stuff in the middle there’s not enough room to remember it all. I suppose it’s a bit like this graph with the painful experiences being a little more memorable:

Click for larger

If you do everything right & meet expectations, you’re average.

So many Steamboat Springs brokers are concerned with referrals but I wonder if they’re really doing the stuff that’s memorable. Are you memorable enough? 3 years from now will your clients remember the exceptional experience they had with you. 3 years from now what will your clients say? Will they say you were average? If you’re truly average, I doubt they’ll remember anything at all. And in today’s world truly average is actually a pretty high bar.

If you do everything right & meet expectations, you’re average. It’s only when you exceed expectations or really screw things up do you become memorable. Going with the flow, blending in, doing what everyone else does feels safe but we won’t remember you come referral time.

Buying & selling a home is such a life changing experience for your clients the goal should be to make it THE most memorable experience of their lives so there is no way they could forget you.

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

(Not my kids)

Just as we expected, we had a great dinner and our daughter wasn’t fidgeting or dumping salt all over the table. So the question is, what kid friendly stuff do you have to occupy kids when you’re clients bring them along? It might be a good idea to have a “kid kit” in the trunk with an assortment of activities for boys and girls.

Love my kids and I’ll love you forever.

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology

Why?

In 1988 it made sense for a managing broker to take a heavy split of your commission. It was extremely expensive to operate a business. Printing costs were enormous, early computers cost a fortune and of course the Internet didn’t exist. National TV campaigns drove serious business to the big franchises and the phones rang because of it. As consumers we had two choices to get in touch with you, dial a phone or turn a doorknob. “Floor Duty” was a lucrative use of your time because of that. So a managing broker taking 50%+ of your commissions made sense. The bulk of your business came from your association with that company.

Today, the complete opposite is true for most brokers I meet. The majority of their business comes from leads and clients they personally generate. Most brokers I meet view “floor” as time to get office work done. They view their association with a brokerage as “doing time” as required. And yet commission splits have remained almost unchanged.

So, I think you deserve more money.

You deserve to keep more of what you earn for the very reason that you’re doing more to earn it and your managing broker is doing less. You have more choice than ever before. Don’t spend yet another year hoping things will get better. If they haven’t by now chances are good they won’t. With companies like Colorado Group, there are alternatives to the commission split game. And it is a game, which most managing brokers should know is coming to an end.

Every evening a managing broker watches his entire company drive away. He can only hope that his company comes back in the morning. It’s my hope that the sooner managing brokers realize this the sooner they’ll approach their job differently. They are no longer the gatekeeper they once were. Their value has shifted to other areas. Maybe attend a conference or establish a new media initiative instead of adding yet another page to the split spreadsheet.

Altera Performance Group - New Media Marketing & Technology