I have read several posts on AR asking questions on how to market to FSBOs, and I wanted to share something that I started doing several years ago that seems to work like a charm. First of all, you need to have a telephone call-capture system up and running (otherwise called an IVR system, or a "hotline" system).  If you don't know what a call-capture system is, here's the nutshell version... for those of you familiar with them, skip the next paragraph! Call-capture systems are toll free recorded phone lines.  They usually look something like this: For Toll-Free Recorded Info Call 1-800-999-1111 ID#1234.  I'm sure you've seen these in advertisements.  When someone calls into a call-capture system for the advertised information, the system captures their phone number (similar to caller-I... 09/02/2007

I was having a discussion with a fellow Training Director for a real estate office, and he shared some training woes with me.  I tried to help him with his predicament, drawing upon my own experience in training.  As the Director of Training for my market center, I am tasked with the responsibility for making sure that our agents receive awesome training.  We take our commitment to training VERY seriously.  In fact, as a whole, Keller Williams Realty has been called "A training and consulting company cleverly disguised as a real estate company."  Between our team leader, operating principle, the agents and myself, we've come up with some great topics for training, and have SOMETHING on the calendar for every weekday. His problems are all with the instructors.  Instructors show up late. ... 09/01/2007

I have had several discussions lately with people about the costs and benefits of running a real estate team.  Great employees can make you many times what you pay them, but poor employees, or even "adequate" employees, may end up costing you thousands, or millions, of dollars. Let's take a buyer's agent, for example.  If you give a buyer's agent leads, and expect that buyer's agent to follow up on the leads, then you would tend to expect closings down the road.  What is a reasonable number?  Well, that's probably something that you'd have to determine based on the type of marketing you are doing, and the market that you are in.  However, let's assume that for every 10 leads you get, three result in contracts. If your agent is not closing three out of ten leads that are given to them, t... 08/31/2007

Recently I was teaching a class to several new agents on the amazing opportunities for free advertising on the internet.   I was set up, complete with LCD projector and laptop connected wirelessly to the internet.  My class was going quite well, with the agents taking plenty of notes.  It was time to present a favorite site for internet savvy real estate agents, to explain about the numerous possibilities available in free classifieds.  I pulled up my internet browser, typed in the website, and as it loaded, I began to speak of the benefits offered. There was giggling.  And laughing. Ask any seasoned instructor, and they will tell you that laughing is good while you're instructing, PROVIDED that it is a response to something humorous that the instructor intentionally did or said.  I per... 08/28/2007

I am going to deviate from the more common real estate themes of my blog and write about a topic I am passionate about:  REALTOR® safety.  Perhaps it is my background in law enforcement, but I feel that there are many REALTORS® who work day to day oblivious to the possible dangers that lurk in our world.  REALTORS® place themselves in contact with strangers everyday.  It is our job to get out there, meet people, and broker the sale of properties.  Unfortunately, many people from the criminal element also know this fact.  Each year, REALTORS® are assaulted, robbed, and even murdered.  Is that enough to make you want to quit selling and find a safe career in basket weaving?  Hopefully no, but I would like to increase your awareness to what happens all around you. Awareness is probably the... 08/28/2007

If you don't list, you don't last.  This concept is driven into our skulls by real estate trainers year after year, but I would like to go one step further and make the argument that if you don't generate leads, you don't list, and therefore you don't last.  Now this may sound quite simple to most of you, and I am quite willing to concede that it doesn't take a doctorate in Realestateology to figure it out.  Unfortunately, the big, ugly truth is that even though 100% of you may understand this, we have an 80% failure rate in real estate!  So what is the underlying problem in the quest for making a real estate career work?  I often find that it is a lack of understanding the basics of lead generation, and even more prevalent is a lack of DOING some sort of lead generation activity.  I ca... 08/26/2007

Think back to when you graduated from Real Estate School.  This could be a few months ago, or several decades ago when caves and sod houses were the hot listings.  What did you get out of your pre-license training?  Most people will say that the class got them through the test, and that is true.  If you maintained consciousness you also learned a great deal about the law, generally the "thou shalt nots" of real estate, but there was a huge, gaping hole that begged to be filled with know-how. You didn't learn how to sell property, write contracts, input listings, market for prospects, farm neighborhoods, utilize technology or talk vendors into buying your lunch.  The last one comes naturally, but all of the other ones require one big word:  TRAINING! Aside from vendor lunches, training i... 08/26/2007

All agents, at one time or another, have really been excited to show a house to a potential client.  They practically dance through each room, pointing out the features with a flourish, all the while anticipating that the next thing the prospect will desire is their name on a contract. What if the prospect desires nothing more than to take your money and leave you for dead? It's a sobering thought, but unfortunately, it happens more frequently than most of us want to acknowledge. As a REALTOR(R) Safety Instructor, I think that it is paramount to point out a basic concept that can save your life - POSITIONING. This is something that I taught police officers for years, in my previous life. Positioning is vital to cutting off an assailant's line of attack.  What do I mean by positioning?  ... 08/26/2007

Many of you know that I am a pilot, and I follow aviation news pretty thoroughly.  I was excited to find out that Allegiant Air started its first service to Las Vegas from Greenville-Spartanburg airport (GSP) today about seven in the morning. Allegiant is a low cost carrier, and they currently fly to two other destinations from GSP, both in Florida.  The Vegas route will be a boom to their business, if you ask me.  I'm sure there are plenty of Upstate South Carolina residents who would like to try their luck in Vegas. :-) GSP is also in talks with Frontier airline to provide a low cost flight to Denver, as well as other more Western cities.  This would be great with me, having all my family in the Denver area! GSP is a great asset to Upstate South Carolina.  In my opinion, it is one of ... 08/24/2007

I have a home that I will be selling in the VERY near future.  It is gorgeous, and has been staged well except for one thing - the owner has smoked in it his entire time there. This is quite aggravating, because I've seen the way that buyers generally react to smoke odor in a house.  Even smokers have a tendency to overlook these houses, especially if they are smokers who take their cigarettes outside because they KNOW the negative consequences on their homes. Overall, it just makes a house "feel" dirty. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.  I will appreciate all of the feedback.  Once I compile all of your comments, I may post another blog on here as a summary, to give others these ideas. Thanks, and have a great day! Bill 08/24/2007

On Monday August 27th the Greenville Little Theatre will be holding auditions for the upcoming play "Dracula".  I dropped by the theatre today (well, technically yesterday since it's quite early in the morning) to chat with my friends at the box office, and I picked up a script for the show. It's hard for me to decide what I want to audition for in this show.  There are several good parts, although the parts of Dracula and Van Helsing are pre-cast (the excellent talents of Will Ragland and Allen McCalla respectively).  There is a part for an insane guy... hmm, that could be interesting! For those of you who don't know, I am a theatre enthusiast and a part time actor.  I've been in three shows at the Greenville Little Theatre: Guys and Dolls, Ah, Wilderness, and Into the Woods.  Two musi... 08/23/2007

If you break down the top three things that will dramatically affect your real estate career, they are Leads, Listings and Leverage.  Leads give you the ability to gain clients.  Listings give you inventory to cultivate contracts and buyers with.  Leverage makes it easier for you to get more of the other two, and gives you the ability to ENJOY the life you are creating through your highly successful real estate business, or at least enjoy a cup of coffee once in a while. Simply put, leverage is multiplying your ability to get things done.  It would be ideal if you could just replicate yourself a couple times, and designate one of yourselves to marketing, one to client relations, one to data entry, and so forth.  Unfortunately, after extensive research, I have concluded that human replic... 08/23/2007

No matter where you are, you can't escape the news of a record number of foreclosures hitting the United States.  Fortunately for South Carolina, we are not doing as bad as the national averages.  Our housing market has slowed, it's true, but overall our market is doing fairly well. According to RealtyTrac, the state's foreclosure rate in July, with 412 foreclosure activities, was 4.04 percent higher than a year ago, but down 6.15 percent from the same month two years ago.  That works out to be about one foreclosure activity per 4,679 households in the state. RealtyTrac, which follows foreclosure proceedings, published a total of 179,599 foreclosure filings nationwide in July, which includes everything from notice of default to actual sales. That pushed the foreclosure rate 9 percent hi... 08/23/2007

Got your attention?  My mom just sent me this fun little link.  Try it out.  So far I'm a bobbing bobcat. Go mom! http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf   Sometimes it's nice to have some meaningless entertainment at hand.  Afterall, we don't need any more distractions, do we?  I think that if I try really hard, I might actually find time to do some work one of these days.  Perhaps. I won't hold my breath yet.  On a serious note, it's nice to have mindless things to help de-stress the day, when you have a tough conversation with a client, or a hard meeting. 08/23/2007

There are some things that you can do to help your home sell quicker and for more money.  When you are selling your home, you have to think about the buyer's perspective and not your own. "The way you live in a home and the way you sell it are two different things," says home-staging guru Barb Schwarz in her book "Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House for More Money." Here are some home-staging tips to share with anyone preparing their home for sale: Staging is not decorating. Decorating is personalizing a space, where staging is "depersonalizing" it. Staging is not about displaying a favorite color rug or ruffles someone loves. It's about selling the house. Remember, if your clients are showing a messy house, they're throwing away money. If you can smell it, you can't sell i... 08/23/2007

After working in the real estate industry for six years, I have found that there are a lot of people out there who think that they MUST get the most expensive home that they can afford.  This can lead to a lot of problems, not the least of which is financial ruin. WAIT???   A real estate agent is saying that people buying MORE EXPENSIVE homes is a PROBLEM??? Yes I do, but let me explain.  Throughout my experience, I have run into countless people who get qualified for a loan, and they feel that they NEED to look for homes that are at the top of their price range.  There is almost a desire to get the absolute best that they can.  The problem is, most people QUALIFY for a lot more than they can REALISTICALLY afford.  For example, when I bought my house in 2001, I qualified for around a $1... 08/23/2007

Today I step across the threshold of another milestone in my life.... the first blog entry!  While I have utilized the latest in techology for many facets of my business, the wonders of the blog are relatively new to me.  I think that part of it stems from a fear of learning the art of "blogging".  After several conversations with fellow Keller Williams agents from across the country who maintain highly successful blogs, I came to the conclusion that this is the next step for me. That aside, I love to write, and I love to share ideas.  The blog will either turn into a great forum for me to share with the world, or it will become a playground for me to exercise my creative abilities.  Either way, I'm going to have fun.  I hope you do too. Please come back soon.  Have a great week! Bill 08/22/2007

Hello allThose of us who lived here for a long time know this; the Greater Greenville Area and Travelers Rest  are great places to live and to raise a family. Not only we are only few minutes to so many wonderful places that were gifted to us by mother nature, but also we are surrounded by all that count.-We have Mild weather. Just look at Upstate SC portion of this picture picture and please let me know what the first thing that comes to mind? for me ... peace.-We have Great infrastructure ... truely we mean it when we say ... get there in minutes, not hours.-We have great schools. Check them out under the 'Discover The Carolina' Link on my website-We have passion for the arts, the outdoors, golf, fishing, hunting, bicycling, or just enjoying quite family dinners on our backyards looki... 07/22/2007

Gardening is one of favorite pastime of homeowners in Greenville. However, it is not without some challenges. The soil in Greenville area is mostly red-clay, and only well-established gardens can boast black topsoil accumulated from years of gardening. Beware also of a few frost days with the last one to be expected mid-April. Apart from big box nursery sections in stores such as Walmart, Lowe’s and Home Depot there are quite a few local nurseries. Those nurseries offer not only top quality plants but also excellent service and professional advice how to select right plants for your garden and how to make sure they will flourish for years to come. Some of the popular nurseries in Greenville area Lichtenfelt Nurseries http://www.lichtenfelt.com (great selection and beautiful display gard... 06/05/2007

Greenville seems to be increasingly a very attractive place to live. Not only Greenville is one of the most affordable places in US (20th lowest cost of living) but also one of the trendy ones with scoring respectable 80th place in "creative class" and 95th in "bohemian indicator". The newest best cities to live ranking can be found on Kiplinger Magazine website and is also mentioned in the local newspaper The Greenville News.http://www.greenvilleonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007705290351  05/29/2007