Welcome to RealClues The Weekly Newsletter for Real Estate Professionals www.RealEstateCoach.com–The Place You Go to Make Real Estate Dough(tm) Tuesday, February 17, 2009 No. 362

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http://budurl.com/vyu3

Table of Contents 1. CoachingClues: Grow Your Business with the Best from Connect 2. Welcome Notes: Please Read–Extremely Important Information 3. Reprise: Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Top Producing Real Estate Agent? 4. Create a Better Life: Four Strategies to Reduce Your Stress 5. New audio broadcasts this month in our Listen and Learn Real Estate Program: *Six Ways to Use Sliver Marketing to Dominate Your Real Estate Market *How to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Referral Business *Five Ways to Combat the Flood of Negative News *Six Secrets to “Sell that Ugly House” 6. Positive News for Positive Realtors(reg): Good News on Lots of Fronts–Is the Market Finally Stabilizing? 7. This Week at www.LuxuryClues.com: **Working with Russian Buyers? Ten “Don’ts” that Can Get You in Trouble http://budurl.com/we82 **Don’t Make this Costly Mistake in Your Luxury Real Estate Business http://budurl.com/q6ql **The World’s Ugliest Building–Demolish It Vegas Style? http://budurl.com/mfnq 8. Featured Products: I Had Forgotten How Good These Are! 9. Increase Your Production with Personal Coaching 10. Give Us Your Feedback on this Newsletter 11. How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe

1. CoachingClues: Grow Your Business with the Best from Connect (Part 2 of 2) Last week’s column looked at two major real estate trends for 2009–going global and using video for both personal and business communication. Here are eight additional tips from Real Estate Connect to build your business in 2009.

1. Use Facebook and LinkedIn to reduce spam and build your referral network Using social media is one of the best ways to eliminate spam. Only people you approve can send you messages. Furthermore, when you meet a potential buyer or seller, invite them to join your LinkedIn network where they can see testimonials from past clients, access your list of preferred vendors, and contact other helpful resources in your community.

2. Social media–the best way to reach your consumers? According to keynoter Gary Vaynerchuk, the best way to succeed online today using social media is to “embrace your DNA.” This means being honest about who you are and being transparent (i.e. being as open as possible about all aspects of the real estate transaction). Vaynerchuk also shared what he did to sell wines from his store. Here are his stats: Billboards yielded 170 orders; direct mail 302 orders; radio 240 orders, Twitter 1,700 orders. The first three advertising media cost considerable amounts of money while Twitter costs nothing. The key is to engage in the conversation and to avoid doing infomercials about you.

3. Reach your “peeps” in a single “tweet” Recently there was a story about a teenager who was sending thousands of text messages daily. Texting is a better alternative than email since a text message finds the recipient and appears the moment the person turns on their cell phone. A more efficient approach is to use Twitter. You can reach anyone who is following you with a single Twitter post. Twitter also allows you to build your search engine ranking by creating separate URLs that link back to your blog or website as well. Use “budurl.com” to shorten long web addresses, to track the number of clicks you receive on each link, as well as to monitor what works and what to discard. Unfortunately, much of what is on Twitter merely shares the routine things people do daily. A better use of this platform is to share interesting resources or to engage in an online conversation about topics linked to your business and/or living in your community.

4. Best tip for handling a seller when they give you a “Zestimate” Zillow’s online evaluation tool allows homeowners to receive an estimate of their property’s value, i.e., a “Zestimate.” On average, these prices vary by +/- 7.5 percent. A great strategy for countering the seller’s use of a Zestimate is to tell them that you give “exactimates” based on knowledge of each home you used in your pricing model. Zillow relies on static data in computer databases without any means of comparing the hundreds of factors that influence price.

5. Realtor.com and Google.com don’t work as well outside the United States To reach international buyers, don’t rely exclusively on Realtor.com or Google.com. Most people outside the United States have never heard of Realtor.com. Instead, if you want to reach buyers in France, use Google.Fr, Google.Au to reach Australians, and Google.uk to reach people who live in the United Kingdom. If you’re marketing to countries where they speak a language other than English, make sure that any information that you post is in that country’s native language. Add a button to the front page of your website that says, “I speak your language.” Provide links to key pages that you have had translated into another language. Also, you can do podcasts or videos in other languages. Use your print advertising to drive consumers who speak your language to your website and/or blog. Also, it’s smart to include measurements in meters, a section that explains how financing works in the United States, as well as currency converter that lets web visitors see how much a property costs in their own currency.

7. Reduce your phone bills and have video conversations using Skype Skype is a great way to connect with friends and family, especially if you’re working with an international relocation client. The basic program is free. Although the sound and video quality can be challenging, Skype is still an excellent way to cut costs and keep in touch using a virtual face-to-face environment.

8. Xobni.com (which is Inbox spelled backward) Xobni is a plug-in for your Outlook that lets you see all of the conversations you have had with a single individual, similar to the format on Facebook.

To prosper in 2009, be transparent, give clients what they want, and stay connected using video and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

2. Welcome Notes Welcome to our new subscribers this week. Each week RealClues provides you with great strategies to improve both your business and your life. If you find this issue of RealClues helpful, take a moment to hit the “forward” button and send it to another friend in the business.

Normally I reserve Welcome Notes for real estate topics. Yesterday, I received a link to a video about inflammatory breast cancer produced by KOMO television in Seattle. I had never heard of it, nor have most doctors. In fact, at the time that KOMO made the video, there wasn’t even a link on the Susan Komen breast cancer site nor did the people answering cancer hotlines at major cancer centers know about it. This cancer does not show up as a lump. It will not show up on a mammogram or a manual examination. Instead, it may look like an insect bite or a skin irritation. It is the most virulent and deadly type of breast cancer. Also, unlike the other types of breast cancer that usually hit women later in life, inflammatory breast cancer often hits teenagers. Given the lack of widespread information about this type of cancer, please take the time to forward the link below to every woman you know. It could save her life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D_5tXybj -E

On a different note, if you are a woman who holds a leadership position in real estate and would like to attend our by invitation only conference for the top female leaders in our industry, please email me at Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com for more information about this amazing event.

Have a great week!

Bernice Ross and Byron Van Arsdale, Chief Dough Makers www.RealEstateCoach.com, www.RealEstateDough.com, www.LuxuryClues.com, www.RossdalePress.com, www.ConferenceCallTraining.com, and www.TeleconferenceLine.com

3. Reprise: Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Top Producing Real Estate Agent? What does it take to be a top producer? Is it training, connections, behavioral style, or just dumb luck? If you’re dreaming about being more successful, understanding your strengths and weaknesses is the first step to increasing your business.

http://budurl.com/vccb

4. Create a Better Life: Four Strategies to Reduce Your Stress All the doom and gloom in the news is enough to stress out all of us. This article first ran in 2007 and gives you four concrete steps to help you reduce the stress in your life.

http://budurl.com/8r6b

5. Listen and Learn Real Estate–Visit our library of over 130 audio broadcasts and best of all, you can access them for less than a buck a day http://budurl.com/vyu3

*Six Ways to Use Sliver Marketing to Dominate Your Real Estate Market The old approaches to real estate marketing are dead. Sliver marketing is the secret to becoming a top producer in today’s real estate market

*How to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Referral Business Still using the old and tired real estate referral strategies from the 1990’s? If so, pump up your referral network with an entirely new approach using LinkedIn.

*Five Ways to Combat the Flood of Negative News We are being constantly bombarded with negative real estate news. This session outlines five specific ways to combat the constant onslaught of negative news and stay positive, no matter what the market does.

*Six Secrets to “Sell that Ugly House” Are you stuck with one of the ugliest listings ever? If so, here are tried and true ways to “sell that ugly house.”

6. Positive News for Positive Realtors(reg) Discover how easy it is to find out what’s right about the real estate business–just click and listen!

Plenty of good news this week–the market is turning. Tune in to find out what’s right about the real estate business.

http://budurl.com/xtk8

(If this is your first visit, don’t miss our first Positive News that is just as appropriate today as it was a year ago! Just click and listen–it’s that easy!)

http://budurl.com/hm8f

6. LuxuryClues.com: Persuade Unrealistic Sellers to be Realistic Working with Russian Buyers? Ten “Don’ts” that Can Get You in Trouble http://budurl.com/we82

*Don’t Make this Costly Mistake in Your Luxury Real Estate Business http://budurl.com/q6ql

The World’s Ugliest Building–Demolish It Vegas Style? http://budurl.com/mfnq

7. Featured Products: I had forgotten how good these were! *Recently I was listening to the Audio CDs this week from our List and Sell Real Estate Like Crazy program. I had forgotten how jam-packed this tool is with the information you need to convert buyer and seller leads into signed business. While reading one of my two books Waging War on Real Estate’s Discounters or Real Estate Dough(tm) Your Recipe for Real Estate Success is a great starting place, it’s not the same as hearing the scripts delivered on audio CD. This 11 hour training set contains two separate listing consultations plus a Buyer Interview as well. The powerful scripts from these two books come alive on this CD. Also, the manual is over 200 8×11 inch pages and includes additional scripts and strategies that did not fit in the two books. Best of all, we have a terrific package for you to get Real Estate Dough(tm) plus the 11 hour List and Sell Program for only $147.000 (the original price on these two products together was over $300) To learn more about List and Sell Real Estate Like Crazy, click on the following:

http://budurl.com/ve6w

8. Increase Your Production with Personal Coaching Looking for a well-trained coach who knows the real estate business? Our coaching team can help you increase your production and make your dreams come true. Send an e-mail to Shane@RealEstateCoach.com and we’ll help find the right coach for you.

9. Give Us Your Feedback On This Newsletter We want your feedback-to share your thoughts and suggestions, please e-mail us at Shane@RealEstateCoach.com.

10. How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe Visit our Web site, http://www.RealEstateCoach.com to subscribe/unsubscribe to RealClues.

Copyright (c) 1996-2009, RealEstateCoach.com and Teleclass4U.com, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute RealClues as long as this copyright notice and full information about contacting the contributors to this newsletter is attached.

Contributors to this newsletter: Bernice Ross, MCC, and Byron Van Arsdale, MCC, Owners, www.RealEstateCoach.com, www.LuxuryClues.com, www.ConferenceCallTraining.com; www.RossdalePress.com; and www.TeleconferenceLine.com Shane Bowlin, REC General Manager

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