RealtyTechBytes.com » Sales Tips

Pole Pixie provides promising photos

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:00:52 +0000

About a month ago I received an email here at RealtyTechBytes.com from a reader asking me to review a product that he has invented and is currently selling.

I wrote back and explained that I don’t do product reviews per se, unless I actually own and use the product. He wrote back and offered me a free product in exchange for the review. I wrote back and said that I couldn’t do that either, but I did offer him a way that we could work together in a way that would benefit both of us and you the readers. More on that at the end of this article, so be sure to read all the way through.

The product is the Pole Pixie and the reader who brought it to my attention is John Hokkanen, who is not only the inventor, he’s also a real estate broker in San Diego! John created the product in order to give all of his listings the benefit of aerial photography without the expense of hiring helicopters.

The concept is straight forward, and the execution is exquisitely simple. John has developed an adapter that screws onto the end of a painter’s pole (Or even a broom stick). Once that is in place, you simply screw your camera on to the adapter using the camera’s tripod mounting hole. The adapter has the necessary 1/4 20 screw in place.

There is also a foam “plate” available that can be used to keep the camera from touching the ground when you lay the assembly down. An added benefit is the bright “arrow” on the plate that helps you aim the camera when you are actually using the device. (This is an additional item)

Operation depends on your camera. If your camera has a remote control, or remote trigger, then simply hoist the camera up, aim it, and press the remote trigger. If your camera has a delayed shutter, you can use that feature. Much more information (Including a gallery of photos showing “before and after” shots) is available at the Pole Pixie web site. Although not mentioned on the site, the pole pixie can also be used with the Flip video camera.

If you take the pictures for your listings, or if you are shooting some video for your listings, I’d recommend that you get this device. It’s small, it’s simple and it does what it claims to do. And it’s only $29.95. (If you want the foam plate it is an additional $19.95)

The prices I have quoted are from the Pole Pixie web site as of June 6, 2010 and may be different depending on when you read this. Check the web site for the latest prices and ordering information.

Earlier I told you that I had worked out a way for every one to benefit from this review. Here it is. I asked John if he would mind if I gave it away to one of my readers. He agreed, so here are the details. If you would like me to give you the review Pole Pixie (and Foam Adapter Plate) that John sent to me, simply leave a comment on this post, telling me that you would like the Pole Pixie. On Sunday, June 13th, I’ll pick one name at random from all who have commented and I’ll send you the Pole Pixie. All you have to do is leave a comment. I think it would be nice for the winner to also thank John as well.

Quick disclaimer, if you receive the Pole Pixie you agree to be responsible for any taxes that might accrue as a result of me giving you this device. You also agree that I am simply passing the device along and that I do not warrant it in any way.

That’s it. Go learn more at http://www.PolePixie.com

Even if you don’t receive the review device, you’ll still end up with information that can help you sell more listings!

Realtytechbytes.com by Jerry Kidd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.Realtytechbytes.com. Did you know that I have arranged for readers of my blog to receive licensed software for free? And that there is something new everyday? Click on the link to go to the blog and look for Give Away of the day in the sidebar.

Pole Pixie provides promising photos

Facebook – your best friend or your worst nightmare?

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 17 May 2010 02:00:05 +0000

As I travel around teaching real estate professionals how to use the new social tools to grow their businesses, I continue to get questions about Facebook. More specifically, I get the question “Should I be friends with other real estate agents?” (Substitute whatever industry your competitor is in).

The concern seems to be that the competitor will learn what they are up to and more importantly, who their friends are. In other words, if I friend another real estate agent, can they steal my clients? My initial reaction is that if your client can be “stolen” that easily, then they were never really your client in the first place, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

Realizing that my initial reaction is not helpful and borders on the disrespectful, I usually answer that yes, you do want to be Facebook friends with other real estate people. After all, we need them to sell our listings and we need their listings to sell to our buyers. I also believe that transactions are smoother with agents that I know. Being in a professional friendly relationship with other agents is also helpful in enabling great transactions for my clients.

There is a way to set up Facebook so that you can you can stay in relationship with your clients and with your competitors and keep everybody separate. It all starts with creating Facebook Lists for your competitors, family, clients, and friends and so on.

By separating people into lists, you can control what they can see and what they post on your wall. Each List remains unaware of the other List’s existence…if you will use them. Although it is possible for your friends to see your lists, they can’t see who is in the lists. I suggest using names for your lists that won’t embarrass you!

To create and customize your own Friend Lists, please follow these steps:

Click the “Create New List” that appears beneath the filters on the left side of your home page or your Friends page. Or, click the “Create New List” button from the “All Friends” tab of the Friends page.

Type the title of your list and hit enter.

Add friends to the list by typing their names into the “Add to List” field or selecting them from the list.

Select “Create List” to store your changes.

Once your lists are created, you now have to go to your privacy settings and make a few changes as well.

You can use Friend Lists to create different privacy levels for different groups of your friends. This allows you to selectively open more of your profile to the people closest to you. From the Profile Information section of your Privacy Settings page, clicking “Customize” will open a field for “Hide this from these people.” Adding a friend or Friend List name here will hide the information in question from these people when they view your profile.

If you add a user to more than one Friend List, and those Friend Lists have conflicting privacy settings, the more restrictive of the privacy settings will always be respected.

If you enter three or more friends as an exception, you’ll have the option to create a new Friend List to group these people. You can create, edit and delete Friend Lists from your Friends page.

You can have up to 100 lists with 1,000 friends in a list.

Once you have done this, you will able to control who sees what. For more reading on this topic, please see this page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=768

So, to answer the original question, if you put all of your competitors into a “Frenemies” list and set up your privacy like I have in the picture above, then they won’t see anything you do, or anything your real friends do. Then when you want to announce that open house or that new listing or that price reduction, go ahead and post it, but this time, change the settings for that one post so that the only people who see the post are your Frenemies!

As always, I am available to help you set this up. That’s part of my business.

Facebook can be a powerful business tool if you set it up correctly and use it intelligently. It can be your worst nightmare if you don’t!

Get new clients using social tools ~ Part Two

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 03 May 2010 02:00:35 +0000

Last week I talked about your need to have a prospecting plan that brings you the customers that you want to work with, instead of always having to work with whoever shows up! Wouldn’t it be nice if we always had a steady stream of prospective clients moving towards us as we move towards them? Well, wouldn’t it?

Why is it important to have clients that we like? Because life is too short to put up with people that grind our souls. You know who they are…you’ve even had a few in the past. You may even be working with one now.

Time to get off of that bus, now. Fire the turkeys and look for the eagles.

Here’s how I suggest that you go about it. First, let’s start with the premise that in order for people to want to do a transaction with you (assuming that they have choices) they have to TRUST you. They have to trust that you are the right person for the job, that you have their best interests at heart and that you will help them get to the goal they are seeking.

In order for people to trust you, they have to LIKE you. I can hear some of you say that you have trusted people that you didn’t like. Really? Really trusted? Maybe so, but for most of us, trust comes from liking.

In order to like you, people have to get to KNOW you. How do we do that in everyday, face to face life? By finding them, meeting them and interacting with them. By sharing things about our lives and being interested in their lives. And over time this leads to liking … or not. Liking leads to to trust and trust, for us, leads to transactions.

The good news that I bring you today is that the new social tools make all of this a reality and do it in a way that hits everyone of last weeks points.

Here are the social tools platforms that I think a REALTOR® should consider adopting:

Have a website or a blog. The blog is preferred over a website because it gives you the ability to update it with current information, showcase current listings and past transactions, solicit feedback, have private areas for clients where you can provide information relative to a transaction and more. You could do that on a website, but you’d be contacting or paying a webmaster every time you wanted to make a change. You’d also miss out on the fact that blogs generally rank higher in search engines than do static web sites, the fact that a blog can be totally free or trivially inexpensive, the fact that blogs can be subscribed to and the fact that blogs can foster community by eliciting comments and feedback. On the downside, you have to continually “feed” a blog…it needs fresh content to remain relevant and to keep people interested.

Have a presence on Facebook. Facebook has two faces. It has the personal profile and it also offers a business the opportunity to create a business (fan) page. The personal profile is where you can connect with family and friends, to share items of personal interest and to reconnect with people that you may have drifted away from. The business or fan page is where you connect with customers and potential customers. It operates much like a personal profile page in that it has a “wall” where you can post things that spark conversation and where others can contribute to the conversation. You can do so much more with a Facebook business page. Things like share listings, showcase past sales, describe your services, show videos and photos and much, much more. Think of your business page as your blog or website inside of facebook.

Build out your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn started out as a place for headhunters and job seekers to connect with each other and has grown from there to be a place where professional people congregate. If you imagine Facebook personal profiles to be a backyard barbecue, then you can imagine LinkedIn to be a Chamber of Commerce Mixer. LinkedIn gives you the perfect venue to showcase your past accomplishments (think very detailed resume), as well as a place to search out people that you’d like to meet…like the HR Director of that company who is moving people in and out of your market area.

Start using Twitter. Twitter offers you the opportunity to have short conversations with many people in a very compact period of time. There are tools available that allow you find and connect with people based on demographic criteria that you choose. You may wish to find people in a zip code, or community. Perhaps you’d like to find people who are talking about moving or buying or selling a home. Twitter gives you that ability.

Right about now, some people start squirming over the issue of privacy. Rather than go into that here, go read what my good friend, and social media maven, Ginger Wilcox has to say about privacy. While you are there, sign up for her updates and you may even want to register for the webinar that she and Amy Chorew are putting on about privacy issues.

The next thing that comes up is time. Where do I get the time to do all of this? I’d like to trivialize this, but the truth is that you will have to expend some time. But, instead of dismissing these tools because of time constraints, why not take a good hard and honest look at how you allocate your prospecting time now. What is working for you? What is not working for you? Take the things that are working and continue with them. But stop doing that which isn’t working and start looking for ways to fold these tools into whatever you are currently doing that is producing results.

And if after you have honestly evaluated your time expenditures and find that you really aren’t consistently prospecting for new business, why not start now? The social tools that I outlined here can all be used, or you can select the ones that resonate for you. Anyone one of them can fulfill the criteria that I laid out last week. If you can do them all, I believe that you will be able to be selective about the clients you work with sooner rather than later.

If you need help in setting these up, strategizing how to utilize them, or just need some help in getting your business up and running (or back on it’s feet), feel free to contact me. It’s what I do these days!

Get new clients using social tools ~ Part One

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:00:13 +0000

I have long held the belief that in order for me to be happy in my business life, that I really need to work with people that I like and to avoid those people who seem to make it their mission in life to grind down my soul.

I discovered that working for other people as an employee makes it difficult to avoid the people I don’t like. After all, if I become an employee, then my employer gets to dictate who I work with. When I became an employee in the real estate business, I soon discovered that I needed to be a manager, in part because I could then hire the people that I wanted to work with or at least compartmentalize the ones that I didn’t like.

As an independent contractor though, this process can be very easy…or extremely difficult. The choice is yours. The path to easy lies in a solid, effective plan for prospecting for the type of client that you want. Such a plan needs a few components:

It needs to be actionable
It needs to be realistic
It needs to be done with reasonable frequency (Everyday!)
It needs to be effective
It needs to be enjoyable
It needs to be inexpensive or free (Especially if you are starting out)

If you can implement such a plan, finding the right people to work with can be an easy and enjoyable process. If you don’t have a plan, then you get to work with whoever shows up wanting to work with you! And that will bring you turkeys as well as eagles!

So much for your side of the story. But what is it like for the prospect trying to choose someone to “hire”?

If they are looking for a REALTOR®, they can look at magazine and newspaper ads, they can ask friends for a recommendation, they can visit open houses, they can rely on past transactions, they can visit web sites or they can use social tools.

Although all of the above methods work, the one that I believe benefits both the REALTOR® and the consumer is the social tools method. And here is why:

For the REALTOR®, the social tools method covers every one of the requirements of a good prospecting plan (see above).

But the consumer also benefits if the REALTOR® has done a good job of filling out their social graph. (More on that next week).

The consumer can interact with the REALTOR® long before they are ready to transact. That interaction will give them the time to study the REALTOR’s® past performance, response time, marketing plans, resources and other tools that a REALTOR® uses to practice their craft.

You as a REALTOR® also get to examine the potential client as they interact with you! You can spot a turkey a mile off by using the social tools to look at them as well! Over time, birds of a feather will flock together!

So what are the social tools I recommend using? That will be next week’s topic. If you want to be sure to not miss that post, go ahead and look at the top right of the sidebar on my blog and subscribe via email. (or click here) Or use your RSS reader to subscribe by clicking here.

And in the meantime, be sure to let me know what your thoughts are; am I on track or way off base?

Free tool to put your listings on Facebook

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:00:55 +0000

I got an interesting email from Realtor.com the other day. Nothing unusual about getting an email from them, there always seems to be one from them trying to get me to come to a seminar or buy one of their products.

Most times I simply delete them without opening it, but this time the subject line intrigued me. Here it is: “Notice: your listings are now “shared” on major social networking sites…”

So, I opened it. Here is what it looks like: (Click on the photo to enlarge it).

Imagine my surprise to find that Realtor.com has some very useful and FREE tools here.

Although the PDF and the video are useful tools, the most useful item here (In my opinion) is the little widget that puts your listings onto your Facebook profile. Wow!

Go here to see one in action: http://www.facebook.com/DianeGilfether Scroll down past Diane’s list of friends to see the widget.

Clicking on a listing in the widget takes you to the property listing on Realtor.com where all of your pictures and virtual tours are located. Sweet!

So, how do you get one? Simple just go here: http://www.facebook.com/realestatemarketer and become a fan. Then scroll down the page and on the left below the pictures of their fans you will see “Featured Downloads”, keep scrolling down and you’ll see “Install the Free See My Listings”. Just click on the orange “Install Now” button. Select your MLS, add in your NRDS number, your City and State, your DRE number and then update. Follow the directions to finish the installation.

Of course if you have no listings nothing will show up, but if you are carrying listings, this is a pretty sweet tool to help you market your listings!

What do you think?

There is not one word about the iPad in this post!

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:00:23 +0000

As I write this post it is Easter, so Happy Easter to those of you, like me, that celebrate it. Since this is a day that I reserve for family, this will be a very short post.

A few weeks ago (http://realtytechbytes.com/idxworth-itor-not/) I asked for your help by filling out a short survey…out of over 1200 readers I only received 12 responses! So, please take a few minutes to fill it out.

If you wish to receive a copy of the survey results when I am finished gathering results, please leave your first name and email address when you complete the survey, otherwise you can remain anonymous.

I am not sure what results I will get, but I am sure that they will be interesting to any agent who is spending money on IDX or who is contemplating doing so!

Please go here to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RBT67CK If you are having trouble taking the survey, please email me by using the contact form at http://realtytechbytes.com/contact-me/ and let me know.

And as promised, this post did not contain one word about the …!

Facebook for your business

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Are you looking for a way to reach new clients that won’t cost you an arm and a leg and is also effective? If so, I may have the answer for you.

By now you have either become a member of Facebook, or are considering it. After all, there is so much buzz about it that over 250 million people have joined since January of 2009. Take a look a few of the stats that are posted on Facebook’s info page:

Facebook Company Figures
More than 400 million active users
50% of the active users log on to Facebook in any given day

Average User Figures
Average user has 130 friends on the site
Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook

You can see the stats for yourself at: http://www.facebook.com/facebook?ref=pf#!/press/info.php?statistics. You will also see that 70% of the users are outside of the US, which is fine, but more importantly, that means that 120 Million are US users. I was also able to determine that there are over 8 million California users, and nearly 2 million San Francisco Bay Area users (Includes all users within 50 miles of San Francisco) over the age of 25. More on how I determined that later.

But, just being a member is not enough. You can use the tremendous reach of Facebook to advertise your services. Facebook ad campaigns can give you the ability to target the people who see your ads in numerous ways:

Location down to the city level
Age
Sex
Interested in Men or Women or Both
In a relationship
Language Spoken
Likes and Interests (Very powerful ability to target with this one)
Education
Workplace

Facebook lets you pay for these in one of two ways, either per impression or per click.

To my way of thinking, Pay Per Click is the way to go, Even if someone doesn’t click on your ad, they can still see it and that goes a very long way towards brand recognition. Think about it, your very expensive newspaper ads works the same way…people still see the ads even if they don’t take action, and over time your brand recognition builds. It is the same with Facebook ads.

So, how did I determine how many Bay Area users there are? Simple, I created an ad. As you start to target your ad, Facebook shows you how many potential people will see the ad. The number declines as you focus in on your market. That is a pretty sweet deal!

One drawback with running Facebook ads is that you will need to understand your target audience, craft an ad that they will respond to, and have a compelling offer to show them if they do click the ad.

This is no easy task, but it is one that I can help you with. If not me, then there are others who can help get you started too.

The point that I am making is this, Facebook allows you to target your advertising in ways that were nearly impossible to do before You can advertise to that target market for pennies (Or for free if they don’t click. You will build brand recognition if nothing else).

Try doing that free thing with your newspaper ads!

Feel free to contact me on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/jerrykidd or on my blog at http://RealtyTechBytes.com or on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/jerrykidd if you’d like some help getting started.

Is Facebook the new AOL?

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:00:37 +0000

Over the last two years I have been talking about being where the people are, where the home buyers are, where the home sellers are, and if you have been listening, you have heard me say that where the people are is not in your office.

I have been a huge proponent of packing up your gear and getting out into the coffee shops and shopping malls and working from wherever your clients congregate. I even teach classes on how to assemble, set up and use a mobile office. A real estate office in a brief case as it were. (I have a class on that topic coming later this month at Bay East Association of REALTORS® on March 29th)

This presupposes that the only way to be where the people are is to physically be in the same locations as they are. But, you can also be where they are by being available to them online.

As real estate professionals, we know that we need to have a web site, so we do. But precious few of us enjoy stellar success with our web sites. So, some of us have converted to blogs. Again, it’s a precious few that enjoy stellar success with that platform.

There is an online method of reaching people that a lot of us have discovered, and that is Facebook. I see more and more people coming to Facebook every day. No one seems to know what to do or say when they first arrive, but over a short period of time, most folks get the hang of the social interaction that takes place on Facebook.

Facebook’s popularity is phenomenal, so much so that the SFGate website reports that Facebook edged out Google as the leader in website traffic. Take a moment to read the short article here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=59202.

Given that Facebook appears to be on a steady growth path, and given that everyone you know is either already there, or will be shortly, it’s important that you be there too.

Don’t worry about the business aspects when you start out. Instead, concentrate on connecting with people that you know. Spend some time searching for past and current clients, past and current school mates, past and current neighbors, past and current jobs and so on. The idea here is to simply connect with people and to interact with them. In many ways, Facebook has become the new AOL. New and improved AOL for sure, but it embodies much of what fueled AOL’s popularity in the past.

There are any number of books available on how to leverage your Facebook experience and still maintain some semblance of personal privacy, so I won’t rehash that here. I will suggest that you contact everyone that you know and ask to “friend” them. Categorize them into lists as you do that. Keeping your friends in lists will help you configure your privacy controls later.

Another thing I’d suggest is that you talk to people on Facebook about things that are interesting to them, not necessarily what’s interesting to you. In other words, all of the social rules of interacting with people that you have already learned in life apply here as well.

More on this in a future post or in a class, but for now, watch the trend, get in on the action and start thinking of ways that you can become a valuable contributor to the Facebook experience for the people that you know.

IDX…worth it…or not?

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:00:35 +0000

In my “day job” as a trainer and consultant to real estate agents and brokerages, I have been researching vendors that provide IDX search tools. IDX is Internet Data Exchange and it is a set of rules that allows brokerages to display listings from other brokers on their web sites. IDX provides the ability for a consumer to search for active listings on a broker’s web site.

There are a number of ways that a website can display a search function ranging from free methods provided by a brokerage’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to paid solutions offered by third party vendors who take a “feed” from the MLS and package it for resale to brokers.

I have been curious for some time about the effectiveness of these search tools on an individual agent’s website. The recent “2009 Survey of Home Buyers and Sellers” from the National Association of REALTORS® has renewed my curiosity.

Here is what they had to say (in part) that sparked my renewed interest:

“First-time and repeat buyers largely agreed on the websites that provided them with the greatest value in their home search. Sixty percent of home buyers used multiple listing services (MLSs) websites, the most frequently used online resource. Different age groups use MLS websites with varying frequencies ranging from 64 percent of buyers 25 to 44 years old to 50 percent of buyers 65 or older. Buyers also frequently use real estate company websites. First-time buyers are however somewhat less likely to use REALTOR.com® than repeat buyers. Other websites with property listings were visited by almost one-third of buyers, although first-time buyers frequented these sites notably more than repeat buyers.”

This got me to wondering if IDX sites on agent websites were worth the money that agents have been pouring into them as it seems to imply that consumers are looking elsewhere for their property search. So, I decided to do my own survey and I hope that you will help in the research by taking the survey I created at SurveyMonkey. In order to take the survey you need to be an agent who has a an IDX search facility on your own blog or website. Or, if you are a consumer who has bought or sold a home in the past 12 months or who is presently in the process of doing so, I’d like your input as well.

I am not sure what results I will get, but I am sure that they will be interesting to any agent who is spending money on IDX or who is contemplating doing so!

Let Google help you grow your business

Jerry Kidd — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:00:15 +0000

Lest you think that I am Google’s payroll (I am not, but that’s not a bad idea!) I want to tell you about a page that Google has just for you, the Real Estate Professional.

You NEED to click on this link: Google Tools for Real Estate Professionals now and read every word and follow the instructions that it contains.

Here is what Google has to say:

Here’s why it pays to use Google to connect to home buyers and sellers:

Google can help generate real estate referrals and leads.

Google has more real estate searches than other search engines combined, and more unique visitors than all real estate specific web sites.

Google is the most-used search engine for researching and purchasing real estate information and services.

The Google Network reaches over 80% of U.S. Internet users.

Because I think that it is so important that you do so, I am going to keep this very short. Take the time that you normally spend reading RealtyTechBytes and go read Google Tools for Real Estate Professionals instead. You can thank me later!

About the Author: Jerry is a 23 year veteran of the real estate industry and has done it all from listing and selling, to managing single and multiple offices. He has been the IT Director for a major SF Bay Area company, and has also been the Training Director for another major SF Bay Area company. In addition to writing this blog, Jerry is the Principal of Jerry Kidd Training and Consulting, specializing in showing real estate professionals how to utilize today’s exciting social tools to create and nurture relationships with home buyers and sellers. Visit http://www.JerryKidd.com to learn more about the training and consulting services offered.