New Jersey 8-7-17

NEW JERSEY EDITION

5 tips to GET NEW CLIENTS HOW DOES MARKETING DIFFER FROM ADVERTISING – and from Merchandising & Branding Developing Your PRICING PHILOSOPHY

BE THEIR REALTOR® FOR LIFE: How to Build a Relationship with Your Clients that will Last a Lifetime

COVER STORY

SUSAN MILLER

NEW JERSEY EDITION

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SUSAN MILLER

CONTENTS 4) 5 TIPS TO GET NEW CLIENTS 13) BE THEIR REALTOR® FOR LIFE: HOW TO BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CLIENTS THAT WILL LAST A LIFETIME

17) HOW DOES MARKETING DIFFER FROM ADVERTISING – AND FROM MERCHANDISING & BRANDING

SUSAN MILLER

20) DEVELOPING YOUR PRICING PHILOSOPHY

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5 Tips to Get New Clients If you’ve been in the industry for a while, you’ve probably built up a healthy percentage of repeat and referral business.

Although it can be tempting to just maintain those relationships rather than generating new business, there’s something to be said for staying on top of 4

your game by never resting on your laurels. Actively pursuing new clients is not only a way to generate more business, but depending on how you do it, it could even lead to a profitable new niche. Here are just a few ways to build up your new client base.

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Become a referral partner with industry peers

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Cold Call Expired and FSBO Listings

Everyone from mortgage lenders, to financial planners, to insurance agents, can be potentially lucrative referral partners for a Realtor®. You may already have great relationships with some that just need to be more formalized. But, you don’t just want to partner with anyone, make sure these are people you also feel completely comfortable referring your clients to - people who share your values and work ethic.

Another avenue to consider is divorce attorneys – yes, you heard that correctly. Helping people go through this difficult period actually requires a very specific skill set.

You need to be able to handle the legal aspects, as well as the emotional ones. There are numerous training courses you can take if you decide to take this route, which could end up being a lucrative and much-needed specialty.

This is a route a lot of agents take when they are just starting out, that usually leads to great success. You probably haven’t cold called since you started out, and this is a great skill to build up again.

It will not only sharpen your sales skills, but could generate a lot more business.

People with For Sale By Owners (FSBOs) and expired listings, are usually very motivated to sell. This is a great chance for you to really hone in on why they need to hire you. Do you offer innovative marketing plans? Access to a large sphere of influence? Expired listing clients are looking for ways to sell a property that seems impossible to move. With FSBOs, you need to show them how you can get them more money in their pocket, even

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with paying you a commission. Pursuing both will really engage your mind to think outside of the box, which will not only get you more business, but make you better at what you do.

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Partner up with a Relocation Company

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Become a Builder’s Realtor® of choice

This is another niche market that you can really capitalize on if you want to pursue a new specialty. But, it is a specialty, so getting educated on the process will help you generate the business you want. It’s a complicated area of real estate, you’ll often

times be helping to facilitate dual transactions, as you try and secure a property at the same time you are helping your relocation client sell their previous home. This specialty is becoming an in-demand skill in areas that have major corporate headquarters.

This can be a real score for any Realtor®.

The competition might be fierce to land a client like this, but there are numerous ways to make yourself stand out from the rest.

Gain certifications and become knowledgeable about the construction process. Be wellversed on what trendy materials, features, and finishes will add value to a property.

Get the builder on board with you by offering to take just a segment of the subdivision then wow them with your marketing skills.

Take on properties they haven’t been able to sell. You can even offer to throw an open

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Create a Website that Offers Real Value to Potential Clients

Perhaps the most useful way of getting contact information for people looking to sell is by adding a home valuation feature to your website. When people are first considering selling their home, finding out how much 6

house for them. This is another way to show them the level of service they can expect from you. These clients might be harder to land, but the payoff will be enormous.

it is worth is one of the first questions they want answered. By becoming a resource to potential clients (and current clients!), you just might be the first person that comes to mind when they’re actually looking to sell.

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“It is really important to work with a realtor who understands positioning, pricing and marketing to get you the results you’re looking for.”

SUSAN MILLER When speaking with Top Agent Susan Miller of Diane Turton Realtors in Spring Lake, New Jersey, one can’t help but notice the enthusiasm she possesses for the real estate industry. A true go-getter, this top-producing agent has been helping clients on the Jersey Shore find their dream homes and simultaneously providing the very best client service available.

A former manager in the biopharmaceutical industry in California, Susan made the switch to real estate ten years ago after returning home to the east coast. Currently working solo, but with the support of the other employees in Diane Turton’s top-producing Spring Lake office and partnering with Patricia Hamilton 8Copyright Top Agent Magazine

on many occasions, Susan has established herself as a go-to realtor who can be depended upon to take good care of each and every one of her many grateful clients.

This care and concern she shows her buyers and sellers has translated into a business that is based more than 80% upon repeat and referral business. “I know my clients appreciate the service and expertise I give them during the transaction. We stay in touch, some of my client’s children have bought houses from me. I work at all levels, whether it’s first-time buyers, or a multi-million-dollar property.”

Cutting-edge marketing techniques ensure that Susan gets top dollar for her listings. “It is really important to work with a realtor who understands positioning, pricing and marTop Agent Magazine

keting to get you the results you’re looking for,” says Susan. “I stay on top of the market and I impart that knowledge to my sellers.

“I’ll target buyers with a custom marketing program.” This is where Susan’s expertise in technology also comes into play. “I think it makes a big difference in getting my listings sold for the best price. I can track what’s going on with people viewing my listings to see what area the buyers are coming from, and then I can do some targeted marketing in those areas,” she says. Professional staging and photography are also imperative.

Client loyalty is something Susan has earned over the last decade. “They remember that I’m always there for them,” she says. “I Top Agent Magazine

think one of the things they liked most about working with me is that I always answer my phone.” “I pay attention to details, and to deadlines. I’ll personally pick up deposit checks, especially if it’s a big transaction, just to make sure they get in and that we’re satisfying every aspect of our contract. I’ll do whatever it takes.” I have surrounded myself with a network of trusted professionals so that no matter what situations arise I will give the best solutions for my clients.”

It’s not the obvious financial rewards that motivate Susan. Rather, it’s the more personal side of the business. “I love working with people,” she says. I love helping people get into their homes with the least amount Copyright Top Agent Magazine9

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“My focus is to be the best in this field, and I feel that you have to continue to educate yourself, particularly with the ever-growing technology. Being on the cutting edge benefits both my sellers and buyers.” of stress for them as possible.” Monmouth county is a true jewel and introducing clients to their new home is a pleasure, community knowledge and a great list of restaurants get everyone started.”

As for the future, Susan’s plan is to continue building her business, while sacrificing none of the exceptional client service that has become her hallmark. “My focus is to be the best in this field, and I feel that you have to Top Agent Magazine

continue to educate yourself, particularly with the ever-growing technology. Being on the cutting edge benefits both my sellers and buyers.” That same desire for continuing education has resulted in her achievement of both the ABR (Accredited Buyer’s Representative) and SRES (Seniors Real Estate Specialist) designations.

“I just really love this job, let me bring you home.”

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For more information, call Susan Miller of Diane Turton Realtors 732-449-4441 (office) or 732-539-6414 (cell), or email smiller@dianeturton.com.

Follow Susan on Facebook @susanmillerrealestate Instagram@thesmiller Website susanmillerhomesnj.com www.

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Be Their REALTOR for Life: ®

How to Build a Relationship with Your Clients That Will Last a Lifetime In the world of real estate, an agent’s relationship with their clients can make or break their career. This industry revolves around working well with people, and being able to develop a strong relationship with your clients is the foundation that you business is based upon.

Just like with a house, if that foundation is weak, the rest of the structure is also going to be unsteady and fragile. The mark of a good REALTOR® is their ability to build up a good referral network and following of loyal clients. This isn’t something that just happens by accident. Building healthy, strong relationships with your clients takes work and knowing how to gain another person’s trust, respect, and friendship. Here are some ways to make sure you are building the right kind of relationship with your clients.

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1. Use Your Friendliness and Optimism to Win Them Over: No one wants a pushy, overly confident salesperson for a REALTOR®. Clients are much more inclined to put their trust in the hands of someone who is friendly when it comes to one of the biggest financial transactions of their lives. A pleasant, outgoing disposition will win you more clients as well as friends. You want to establish rapport in the first few minutes of first meeting prospective clients. Rather than starting with business right off the bat, begin your meeting with some small talk such as similar interests, hobbies, and family life. This will immediately help to put your clients at ease, and show that you are not simply trying to “sell” them something.

People also respond well to optimism. During what can be a very stressful time, clients need someone to help them stay positive when a situation looks difficult and challenging. Optimism also tends to radiate charisma, and people want to be around and do business with charismatic people. You want to learn how to understand, motivate, and inspire people.

2. Be an Inquisitive Learner and an Empathetic Listener:

out any potential concerns they might have.

After you’ve gained as much information as possible, you can then gauge their interest in your possible solutions by asking “what if” questions. Being inquisitive also demonstrates to your clients that you are genuinely interested and invested in their situation.

On the other side of this coin is knowing how to listen empathetically. Empathy involves actually putting yourself or your mind in their shoes so you can genuinely understand their concerns, needs, and opinions. That understanding and empathy is then reflected in your conversation with that client. Your clients want to know that you care about their situation, and that they’re not just another sale for you to make. People are much more willing to put their trust in you when they can sense that you are actually making an effort to feel what they feel in order to understand their situation.

Showing your interest through questions, and then thoughtfully listening goes a long way towards gaining trust. Showing empathy and acknowledging the feelings and emotions involved in your clients situation helps build a relationship founded on genuine care and trust.

3. Watch for Nonverbal Clues:

Don’t be afraid to show your curiosity and ask your clients a lot of questions. Some of these questions may even be difficult and uncomfortable. You want to discover and learn as much as you can about your client. Don’t make the mistake of jumping straight into the role of the know-it-all. Every different client has unique needs, so you want to learn as much as you can about their specific situation before trying to propose a solution. You want to uncover their primary motive for buying or selling, and flush

Most communication happens nonverbally, so knowing how to interpret your client’s body language can be incredibly helpful. Here are a few things to pay special attention to: Eye contact: Be careful with the level of eye contact you use with clients when first meeting.

Too much and too little eye contact can send the wrong impression. You want to try and maintain eye contact around 70 percent of the time. That is the amount that most people are comfortable with. Pay attention to your client’s level of eye

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contact to determine how comfortable they are.

When someone avoids eye contact that could mean they are not engaged in the conversation.

A good way to quickly build a feeling of rapport when first meeting clients is to make eye contact when you first meet them and then start nodding yes to what they’re saying. If the client reciprocates the eye contact and nodding, you’ve established a connection.

4. Prove your honesty and credibility:

Choose the right handshake for each client: One handshake does not fit all people, and that first handshake can be crucial to making a good first impression. The way to do a good handshake for each client is to try and mirror the other person’s handshake in strength, keep your shoulders aligned as you are preferably standing when you shake hands. While you shake your client’s hand make sure you make eye contact and give them a sincere smile.

Showing a little weakness can actually be to your advantage in this situation, and will actually make others more inclined view you as honest. You don’t want to come across as too good to be true. When revealing this weakness, however, the key to coming out on top is turning what sounds like a weakness into a strength. For example, your service may be more expensive, but that’s because you offer more personalized and extra services than your competitors.

Honesty and integrity are the two traits that 98 percent of buyers and sellers report are qualities they consider “very important”. The thing is you can say you have these traits all you want on your website, bio, etc., but trust has to be earned, and the only way to do this is to prove your credibility.

Here are a few tips for how to sound more credible:

When you talk to your clients avoid using filler words such as “um” and “uh”, which can decrease your credibility. You also want to watch the tone of your voice. People tend to translate a deeper tone as sounding more credible.

You want to develop a relationship to last a lifetime when interacting with your clients. There are many things you can do to accomplish this, and using these tips can take you from getting just a few referrals and repeat customers to gaining a loyal client following. Taking the little extra time to make sure you are projecting the right attitude and making sure that you are doing things to gain your client’s trust can make a world of difference for your business.

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How Does Marketing Differ From Advertising—And From Merchandising & Branding

by Rob Flitton

Almost everyone has trouble sorting out how marketing differs from advertising, not to how it differs from mention merchandising and branding.

3.You have a product or service than can and should innovate as the market reflects back to you Marketing is the ongoing activity of interfacing your business with the marketplace—of communicating the value of a product or service for the purpose of selling that product or service.

So here is a definitive statement on the definition of what each activity is, and the order in which they should occur—disobey the order, and you cannot reliably or rationally market your product or service; you MERCHANDISING will only be guessing.

Merchandising is the activity of creating a segmenting strategy for MARKETING the promotion or sale of a product or Marketing is what happens first in service for the purpose of selling the process and is the most important that product or service. role in any business organization.

You need to decide what market segment you want to appeal to with Think of marketing from 3 angles: the level of quality of: 1.You have an industry that your business is in, and this does not change • Quality of merchandise 2.You have an audience or market- • Speed and availability of service place that can change or innovate to some degree • Dress code for representatives Top Agent Magazine

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• Returns, customer service, or warranty policy • Office or retail store aesthetics and degree of luxury Think about the difference between Nordstrom and Walmart (two profitable companies)—just as Walmart will never have a piano player, Nordstrom will never have a vague return policy. You cannot find good floor-service at Walmart, but you don’t expect to. The CEO of Walmart 18

doesn’t lament “I wish I was the CEO of Walmart,” and vice-versa.

Profitability is about making everything in your merchandising line up in accordance with your chosen product or service and its theme.

BRANDING Branding is the strategic ascribing of words, a name, term, sign symbol or design, or a combination of these, so that a user may easily identify the product or service—so that the user will regard the product or service as Top Agent Magazine

If sales don’t happen, you need to begin back again at the beginning and innovate your MARKETING. the solution to their problem and motivate them.

persuade the audience to take or continue some action.

When you think of any great brand, or observe their logo or imagery, it evokes certain words or a phrase to pop into your mind.

Advertising can occur in numerous ways or methods ranging from simple to complex, free to hugely expensive.

The goal in branding is to encapsulate your offering into a word or phrase— to make your proposal to solve a known problem obvious to the potential user taking a look at you. Ideally, a phrase or image allows the user to make an emotional connection to the product or service, and to be able to relate its story to others. You want a word, or a few words (a phrase) to pop into their heads when they see or think about your product or service.

In simple terms, it is the process of telling the world (or your intended audience) about what you have to offer to them.

ADVERTISING Advertising is the activity of telling or communicating to potential users the benefits of using or employing a specific product or service to Top Agent Magazine

And…at the end of all of this process is making the sale—of closing on a deal to sell your product or service.

And if sales don’t happen, you need to begin back again at the beginning and innovate your MARKETING. Rob Flitton is a Seattle Real Estate Marketing specialist helping independent agents to increase their income. Email Rob robflitton@gmail.com at any time or call/ text him at 206-612-2314.

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Developing Your Pricing Philosophy

By Dirk Zeller

Ask a dozen agents to explain their home pricing philosophy, and you’ll

hear a dozen different approaches. And if the talk reveals frank responses, you’ll also learn that the most common pricing strategy is no strategy at all.

Here’s my advice: Break out of the ranks by establishing and following a specific strategy for arriving at the ideal selling price for each home.

Adopt the philosophy that, in real estate sales, price is king. Price trumps all other factors—including marketing approaches, home condition, market competitiveness, and sales approach. I believe that, in the end, marketing and condition of the property are controlled by the price.

The alternative, advocated by many agents, most sellers, and even some sales trainers, is to emphasize marketing over pricing. Rather than working to set the ideal price, they believe success will come from optimizing the home’s condition and presentation and then marketing it with skill and savvy.

I take the opposite belief, based on years of experience working with sellers who wanted unrealistic prices for their homes and who experienced firsttime sales failures as a result.

Over my sales career, I resurrected and re-listed more than 600 expired listings—nearly 75 a year. Among all those transactions, I never met an owner with an expired listing who thought that an unreasonable price had anything to do with the home’s failure to sell. They all blamed the previous Copyright Top Agent Magazine 20

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agent and that person’s approach to marketing. Each sought some magic marketing strategy to change the reality of the law of supply and demand.

There is a magic strategy: Price the home correctly.

Price is the only factor that can overcome sales obstacles, compensate for a home’s deficiencies, and motivate a purchaser even if the condition of the property and your marketing approach is less than perfect.

Getting the listing at any cost Does this scenario sound familiar? An agent (usually a newer agent) is short on business or maybe even desperate for the chance to stake a sign in someone’s yard. The agent wants a listing at any price – even if the chance Top Agent Magazine

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to seal a deal erodes the likelihood of selling the property. To gain a seller’s nod of approval, the agent makes a flatteringly high pricing recommendation, throwing out a number the client wants to hear and then hoping something good will result from the bad situation.

I can think of few examples, if any, where this philosophy works. Hope isn’t a successful pricing strategy. Worse, the please-the-client mindset is a hard one to abandon. Agents who achieve listings with unrealistic prices find it hard to later counsel their clients honestly.

If you take and price a good listing competitively, it will sell. You can’t keep a good price a secret!

The pitfalls of a “please the buyer” approach are many and significant. By overpricing, you can practically count on a reduction in your productivity, profitability, and salability, and here’s why: It’s impossible to keep your productivity high when your time is spent in conversations with an unsuccessful seller who lacks motivation to take corrective action. The seller’s negativity, concerns, and phone calls will only increase with each week or month the house remains on the market.

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As time goes on, you’ll devote more and more time unsuccessfully trying to create a sale not only for your seller but also for yourself. This will pull you away from activities that are more likely to deliver income. The ensuing frustration will de-motivate you and stunt your ability to secure better appointments that create other income opportunities.

An unsold, overpriced listing negatively impacts your profitability because it costs you time and money to service while it delivers no revenue to your business. And the situation only gets worse the longer the listing languishes on the market. You’ll end up deducting the expenses of this in-limbo listing from the proceeds generated by any revenue-producing deals you manage to close in the meantime, reducing your net profit and business success.

Unsold homes that linger on the market seriously diminish your salability, which is the term that describes your sales success track. Your salability is based on such key statistics as your average ratio of listing price compared to sale price and the average number of days your listings are on the market.

Obviously, these statistics, which prospects rely on when choosing one agent over another, can be crushed by a “get the listings at any cost” philosophy. They’re also harmed by the “start high and reduce later” tactic.

If you take and price a good listing competitively, it will sell. You can’t keep a good price a secret!

Dirk Zeller is an Agent, an Investor, and the President and CEO of Real Estate Champions. Copyright© 2014, Dirk Zeller. All rights reserved.

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