Agentjason 2.0

Surprise New Take on Commission?

via www.psfk.com

Working at this cafe in Japan must be a blast every day.  It has one rule:  You get what the person in front of you ordered and the next person gets what you order, no exceptions.  Use the link just below the pic to read the story.  I would have to go at least once to experience it - would you go?  After reading the story I started thinking about real estate.  Every year that I've read NAR's survey of home buyers and sellers, they've reported the vast majority of sellers hire their agent either based on a referral or they rehire the agent they used before.  Yet in the daily world of an agent who's building a strong listing inventory, competition for the listing is common.  So think of this for a minute:  What if you got the commission that the agent who presented before you proposed?  In other words, the seller hears from all agents, then whomever they pic, the fee they charge is the same fee proposed by the agent that presented before them.  Would that affect what you charge or how you perform on the listing appointment?

Even better, what if your broker paid you the commission that closed immediately before yours?  Sometimes you'd get a really large commission, sometimes small, but mostly around the office average.  How would that affect teamwork?  Your standards?  Company production?  Awareness of how your actions effect the associate down the hall?  Just a fun little thought I was playing with this morning.  What's your reaction to/take on it?

Special thanks to Seth for sparking the thought! 

iPad: Excellent for Realtors (and traveling motivational speakers!)

via live.gdgt.com

My briefcase just got a lot lighter when I travel! The new iPad plugs into a projector and has all the presentation software I need and it will be great for my Realtor students as well!  Imagine walking into a listing presentation and using this instead of a laptop.  I can still remember walking into a CompUSA one evening to purchase my first laptop computer.  It was a dull grey, very heavy Toshiba with a tiny low resolution screen and it took forever to boot up.  Yet, I was totally stoked to plop that down on the table during my next listing presentation.  I'm sure I'll be doing tons of presentations on the new iPad.  What about you?  Will you be getting one?  In any case, just remember, you are the presentation.  Not the screen - pretty as it may be!  For a quick lesson on designing masterful presentation visuals, click the link above to see screen shots from Steve Job's presentation.

Update: Apple's official iPad demo video.

Measure Listings with iPhone

 When I took listings in Austin, our MLS didn't list room measurements that many others do.  But if your MLS requires that data, or if a buyer has ever asked you about room dimensions, you might love this app I found for the iPhone.  I takes measurements from photos of rooms and the reviews in the app store are pretty good.  I haven't tried it out yet but would love to hear from any of you that have.  What I know for sure is that it's a good thing when a Realtor has a chance to combine tools and carry one less thing in the field!  Link to app store.

UPDATE: Thanks to Alan May for investigating this app further. Turns out that this app only allows you to draw lines on a pic and record measurements for reference later. Bummer.

REALTOR® Magazine: "30 Under 30" - Be an alumni with me!

Each June, REALTOR® Magazine features 30 rising young stars in the real estate industry. Now's your chance to be considered for the 2010 class of "30 Under 30." Applications are due by Jan. 31, 2010.

via www.realtor.org

It's been seven years since I was selected for the 30 Under 30 feature in REALTOR Magazine and the issue has grown up to be one of the most popular issues all year long.  There is even an alumni website created by an alum in Dallas - which I can't find right now so if anyone out there know the URL, please leave it in the comments.  Anyway, I wanted to remind you to fill out an application if you're under 30 and so inclined.  Maybe we'll be alumni together!

When was the last time you "sold" a house?

 

Hmmm, where have we heard this before?  "Salespeople don't sell houses.  Houses sell houses.  Salespeople screw up sales!"  My grads will know this as a frequently used quote from Floyd Wickman.  Of course he says "screw up sales" tongue-in-cheek meaning that if a Realtor tries to hard to sell a specific house, they'll miss natural buying signals thrown off by the client altogether.  Understanding this is one of the keys to mastering Floyd's material for working with buyers and it's cool to see someone outside of the industry get it.  Jason is one of the founders of 37Signals and he's been speaking today at Inman Real Estate Connect in New York, so you can tell real estate has been on his mind.  And I'm looking forward to his book this spring but I'm not sure what he means by "Broken model."  With only 140 characters available in a Twitter post, it's anyone's guess really but if by broken model he means, more Realtors need to learn that houses sell themselves, then I agree.  But to me, it's not so much a broken model as it is a sales skill that Realtors have had to learn since the probably the beginning of our industry.  What do you think?

Your Strongest Life in 23 Questions

I was skeptical, but this little exercise seems to have nailed me!  And thankfully, confirmed I'm on the right path - sort of.  Jon's sister is starting a new career and is really into Marcus Buckingham so I agreed to spend a few minutes taking this online test (even though it is for "women" but whatever).  Here's what the test said about me.  What do you think?  Does Marcus have me pegged or what?!  The widget below the post should allow you to take your own test (it's only 23 questions).  Guys:  don't let the "for women" thing turn you away.  Marcus is a really good looking guy and he's probably just very smartly aiming his product/book toward ladies!  Haha!  If you do the test, put your results in the comments.  I'd love to learn about you all!

YOUR
LEAD ROLE
TEACHER

You begin by asking:
'What can she learn from this?"

Your focus is instinctively toward the other person. Not her feelings, necessarily, but her understanding, her performance, her skills.

Your best quality:
Your faith in the others’ potential

Always:
Tailor your style to each student

Be careful you:
Don’t come to believe that everyone is capable of everything

Your smartest career move:
Any job where you’re paid to facilitate the success of others.

YOUR
SUPPORTING ROLE
PIONEER

You begin by asking:
'What’s new?'

You are, by nature, an explorer, excited by things you haven’t seen before, people you haven’t yet met. Whereas others are intimidated by the unfamiliar, you are intrigued by it.

Your best quality:
Your willingness to risk

Always:
Seek out situations where things become obsolete very quickly

Be careful you:
Don’t move on so quickly that you gain a reputation as a dilettante

Your smartest career move:
Any job where you’re paid to build something out of nothing

Ridiculous Facebook behavior

Off the top of my head, lately I've been invited to a movie screening, several open houses, a recruiting event, a CE class and a few networking group meetings - all on Facebook, all far away from Austin.  I declined all of them, removed them from my events list and considered myself spammed.  But Jason, don't you travel a bunch?  Well, yes I do.  But the Facebook invites I'm getting are from people who, even if I was going to be in their town, would not necessarily have knowledge of it.  

It's one thing to make a lot of connections on Facebook and another entirely to leverage those relationships correctly.  If someone connects with you online, they are signaling that they want to hear from you, but that does not mean they want to hear from you through a bullhorn.  Imagine walking into a room at the next real estate convention you go to and after meeting most of the people in the room, you pull out a bullhorn and invite everyone to your open house back home next weekend.  Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?!  Well more than a few of us in the real estate industry are doing this to one another online and we should stop.  We should stop because after a while, people will start to ignore you because you'll slowly (or maybe quickly) teach them that your messages are irrelevant to them.  "Attention" is the most valuable thing we can get from someone.  It may be a little harder and take a few more minutes but here are a few suggestions - feel free to add more in comments!

• Make sure to put your Facebook friends into groups like:  Clients (past, current), Affiliate, Realtor-Local, Realtor-Out of Area, Personal, Family, etc.
• Put some thought into where the people you're sending invites to live and whether they're likely to be interested or not.
• Think about what you can do when groups are set up!  Local news to clients?  Commission bonus to local Realtors?  Referral messages to out-of-area Realtors?

Does this make you have any other thoughts or questions?  Let me know in the comments!  

Solve your own computer problem in 3 steps

The internal webcam on my MacBook stopped working today.  Crap!  That was my first thought.  Then I did a series of things that came very naturally (I don't have any computer or programming degrees) and when I was done, and it worked, I had another thought.  This stuff does not come naturally to everyone.  I can't even count the number of times I've been working with an agent long-distance and ended up playing tech support just to get their computer working so we could do our thing.  Nor can I count the number of times Jon has said to me, "Honey, come fix my computer please!".  So I thought I'd list out the steps I took because it's the same pattern I follow before considering taking my computer to the Apple Genius Bar when anything goes wrong.  Most of the time, I'm running smoothly again in just a few clicks.  NOTE:  I'm a Mac guy but these steps would be similar for PC and the more you do this the more you will learn.

1. Google search the problem.  In this case I typed "macbook webcam not working".
2. Click around on the results.   Pay attention to forums where people discuss the issue and official support sites.  I found a forum where the discussion led me to an article on Apple's support site.
3. Adjust and repeat until you find your answer.  This time I got the answer I needed the very first time but you should be willing to run into a few dead ends and try again with an adjusted Google search to find other options until your issue is fixed -  or until you pull your last hair out!

That's it!  Three easy steps plus a little patience and you can probably fix most computer issues yourself.  Webcam problems or not, if you work on Mac and want to try what I did to reset some memory and maybe enjoy a speed increase, follow the simple step on this support page.  After doing this particular operation on the MacBook, my Safari browser is blazing fast and my webcam works again, so a bunch of stuff must have been cleared up!  Yay!

When Agents Learn SEO Basics

What good does it do to show up number one when you do not have the real information people are looking for.

via www.skyrealtyaustin.com

I ran across this quote in a post by my friend Curtis way back in November and I'm finally getting around to posting it. I've know Curtis for a while now and have watched as he's grown from a single agent, to broker of his own firm in Austin. I also think he has lots of well trained associates - which has nothing to do with the fact that I've trained many of them. ;-)

But anyway, if you click through, you'll see it's a short post but it signals that Curtis really knows what he's talking about when it comes to leveraging the web in a residential real estate practice. From time to time he hosts classes on the topic for Realtors in the Austin area so if you get the chance you should check one out. What I like the most about that is you can learn from someone who's both done it and who is probably not going to be worried about selling you a "tech service package".