Realty Business Coach

7 Tips for Coping with Email Overload

This is the feature article in this week’s RealtyBiz Agent Success Newsletter.

I’m now back from Spain and have spent the last week trying to catch up on email, contacts, client relationships, and everything else that I put on hold for my vacation. Getting away was great - and I made sure not to do any work on the trip - but coming home to an inbox filled with thousands of messages was not fun.

While I love the instant access to virtually anyone that email provides, that instant access can be a huge drain on my productivity - especially when 80% of the email I receive is not urgent, doesn’t require a response, or never seems to get to the point. Read more…

Introduction to Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

This is the feature article in this week’s RealtyBiz Agent Success Newsletter.

Online advertising is becoming more popular among small businesses that want their site to display on the first page of search results for specific keywords. Pay-per-click advertising is a great way for businesses to do just that. PPC advertising allows websites to list their sites in search engines almost immediately by setting up an advertising campaign that displays your ads on the major search engines. Read more…

Be More Productive with the 80/20 Rule

This is the feature article in this week’s RealtyBiz Agent Success Newsletter.

I’m headed to the Priorat region of Spain for a week on Friday. Of course, I still have a million things on my to-do list and a million more on would-like-to-do list. As I added yet another thing to the to-do list, I realized this just wasn’t working. Every time I crossed off something, I added two new things to be done. Sound familiar?

After taking a deep breath, I sat back down with my list and started prioritizing. It’s so easy to stress ourselves out with all the day-to-day problems that come up, that we often lose track of our goals. In my case, I needed to finish up a client project, write two newsletters, and pack for my trip. Everything else fell into the “would be nice but could wait” category. Read more…

How to Create a Successful Real Estate Website

This is the feature article in this week’s RealtyBiz Agent Success Newsletter.

Have you ever wondered why only a handful of real estate sites generate tons of leads while the vast majority of sites hardly ever do? The secret to their success isn’t rocket science - it’s what they focus on.

Most agents decide they need a website because their competitors have one. So what’s the first thing they focus on? What the site should look like.

Not surprisingly, agents want their sites to look attractive and professional, with lots of bells and whistles, animations, and graphics. Next, they realize they need some content for the site, so they add information about their credentials, services, listing information, and processes. Read more…

International Last Minute Travel On A Budget

I’m traveling to Northern Spain (Priorat) for a week in wine country the last week in May. The trip was somewhat of a last minute decision - I had wanted to go as part of a tour (through The Wine School of Philadelphia, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Seriously, if you love wine and you’re close to Philly, stop in for a class - you won’t be disappointed.), but the tour sold out before I could join. A few days ago, there was a cancellation and I seized the opportunity.

So now, I have less than three weeks to plan my trip (and learn enough Spanish to get by!) The tour is providing accommodations, but each of us must find our own way to the villa. Here are some tips I’ve picked these last few days about planning a last minute trip. Read more…

A Marketing Plan Guide For Real Estate Agents

A couple of things -

New Site Design - I’ve completely revamped the RealtyBizCoach.com design and moved the blog off the front page. It’s now at http://www.realtybizcoach.com/blog/. I think everything is working, but if you notice any bugs while viewing the site, please let me know.

Free Marketing Guide - I’ve just released a revised copy of my free report, “A Marketing Plan Guide For Real Estate Agents” - just in time for Mother’s Day!

The Marketing Plan Guide is a complete revamp of the previous guide I have been offering for download to those who joined the RealtyBizCoach mailing list. In fact, I pretty much scrapped what I had and started over. The result is that the new Guide is double the pages and much more hands-on with worksheets you can fill out to help you plan your monthly marketing activities. Read more…

How To Get The Most Bang for Your $2500 Marketing Budget

This is a bonus sixth step in the continuing series on how new agents can successfully break into the real estate market. (FYI disclosure: I use a few affiliate links throughout this article.)

I’ll close this series by going back to Mike’s original question. As a new agent, if I had $2500, how would I spend it? Read more…

How To Build a Referral-Based Business

This is step 5 of a five-part series on how new agents can successfully break into the real estate market.

Yesterday, I talked about the importance of nurturing your prospect list. Today, I’m going to shift gears and discuss what you need to do to build a referral-based business.

Last week, Mike asked me, “Where do you get the most bang for your buck in marketing?” Personally, I think there’s no question that it’s referral marketing. So why did I spend the last few days talking about building credibility, educating prospects, generating leads and following up consistently? Because when you’re starting out, those are the steps to building a referral-based business. Read more…

Following Up: The Secret To More Sales

This is step 4 of a five-part series on how new agents can successfully break into the real estate market.

Most small-business owners (myself included) are guilty of not following up with all leads they generate. When leads pour in, it’s tempting to cherry pick the low hanging fruit while ignoring all the others who aren’t quite ready to hire you yet.

In yesterday’s post, I discussed how to create education-based marketing materials that your prospects will want to read. The purpose of creating those types of marketing materials is to get prospects to self-identify themselves as interested in what you have to offer by giving you their contact information and permission to follow up. Read more…

How to Cost Effectively Generate Leads

This is step 3 of a five-part series on how new agents can successfully break into the real estate market.

Yesterday, I discussed why agents should focus on creating education-based marketing materials that address prospects’ key problems and concerns rather than focusing on “getting their name out there.” In today’s article, I’ll talk about the best ways to generate leads using those education-based marketing materials - but first, let me again stress why education-based marketing is so important.

Marketing in the Attention Economy

Irrelevant advertising no longer works. Sure, back in the ’50s when there were only a handful of magazines, TV and radio channels, it was fairly easy to reach a broad audience and tell them virtually anything you wanted them to know. If you repeated your message enough or had a cute jingle accompanying your commercial, prospects would remember it and, hopefully, they’d buy because of it. Read more…