Chime:

How did you get started in the real estate business?

Brad:

My first experience with real estate was when I bought my first house, back in 1989. Later on, I started investing in single-family homes, land and even shopping centers. I got more involved as a business coach for Keller Williams in the period from 2003 to about 2009. Then I finally decided to get a real estate license, although my work really does focus on coaching.

Chime:

In your book, Just Sold!, you talk about activity management instead of mere time management. What’s that all about?

Brad:

In reality, it’s impossible to manage time. But what you can manage are the promises you make to yourself and others to do something within a specific time frame. If you make a promise to yourself to knock on five doors on Monday, you can manage that by scheduling your time to make that happen. From what I’ve seen, most agents need to get better at managing their activities.

Learn more about managing activities that drive your business by checking out the podcast!

The post PODCAST: Ring in the Sales, Episode 7 — Brad Warren appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

Ring in the Sales:

Shon, you mentioned that you’d have to be an idiot not to recognize the traits and the habits of successful agents. What do you mean?

Shon:

Well, let’s ask a question: why are some agents getting a massive ROI on ad spend, while others experience a negative ROI? Undoubtedly, it’s due to their lack of ability to convert the leads that they’re generating. And there’s really five reasons why realtors are experiencing that negative ROI. The first reason is all about response time. It’s all about speed-to-lead in today’s world.

Part of the challenge is leads have developed the ability, through digital marketing efforts and companies like Zillow and Trulia, to self-identify way earlier in the process than they ever could before. So, they might fill out a web form at two in the morning, with no intention to buy a home or list their home for at least 12 months. Yet, that realtor gets that lead and gets excited — they attempt to reach out to the lead and the lead doesn’t respond, and then we throw it in the can. But recent research suggests that if you attempt to reach out to these leads at least six times, then your conversion rate associated with that prospect increases by 900 percent.

To hear the rest of Shon’s helpful lead conversion advice, check out the rest of the podcast here.

The post PODCAST: Ring in the Sales, Episode 6 — Shon Kokoszka appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

Ring in the Sales:

How did you get started with The Broke Agent?

Eric:

I started getting involved in real estate as a part-time receptionist in a real estate office. I came to like what I saw working in the brokerage, and realized real estate would be a good career for me, so I became a real estate agent in Los Angeles. Over time, I noticed that there was no comedy in the real estate content online. My goal when I started The Broke Agent was to make real estate agents laugh. I started a blog and started tweeting and using all the social media channels, and it took off.

Ring in the Sales:

What are some of the worst mistakes you see agents making on social media?

Eric:

I see so many people who aren’t projecting what the real estate industry is all about. Real estate is the only industry I can think of where people think they must brag constantly to show how hard they’re hustling. I think the number one mistake is that agents aren’t being authentic.

Listen to the podcast for more! 

The post PODCAST: Ring in the Sales, Episode 5 — The Broke Agent appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

Floorboards squeaked and creaked under his feet, and the place smelled stale, unlived-in. Yet (what was left of) the kitchen was modestly stocked, the queen bed in the single bedroom had been slept in, and the electricity was still on. The faucets ran hot, and a pair of worn sneakers sat empty near the back door. The overall feel was that someone had been living here fairly recently, but perhaps not actually been here for a week or two.

Allen confirmed the property was clear, and holstered his gun.

A screaming banshee came bursting through the back door and knocked him to the floor before he could turn around and face it. The wind knocked out of him, he scrambled from face-down to face-up, only to find himself straddled by his attacker.

She held a baseball bat high over her head, poised like the Sword of Damocles, ready to come down at any moment and put the lights out for Allen.

“Wait!” he said, hands held in front of his face. He realized his gun was now lying on the floor a few feet away. “I’m not here to hurt you!”

“Who are you?” the woman breathed heavily, keeping the bat raised high, prepared to strike.

Allen figured he had only one chance to get the answer right. In situations like this, something closer to the truth often worked out better than something closer to a lie.

“My name is Allen. I’m an agent.”

She looked perplexed for a moment. “Real estate?”

Allen shook his head. Sometimes blowing cover was the right move. Something about his assailant’s scared blue eyes told him she needed someone to trust right about now. “No. Well, yes. I mean, that’s my cover. But I’m not our here doing geographic farming. Because I’m also a law enforcement agent.”

The woman’s shoulders raised and lowered with her deep breaths. “Which agency?”

Allen stared up at the woman. Other than looking extremely stressed, she was quite attractive. Wavy light-brown hair streaked with sunshine, clear blue eyes, smooth warmly-tanned skin, full lips. “I’m with an international organization called The Outfit. You’ve probably never —”

“I know about The Outfit,” she interrupted. “It was my husband’s job.” Little tears filled the area above her bottom lids, and she slumped slightly, but kept the bat over her head. “Sixteen years he survived The Outfit, only to get murdered after he retired!”

The woman stood up and tossed the bat into a corner of the room, then buried her face in her hands. Allen pushed himself up off the floor slowly and stood in place. “Was your husband Jim Greaves?”

The woman turned to Allen, her cheeks wet, and nodded. She took a ragged breath and said, “I’m Cyndi Greaves. Will you help me find Jim’s killer?”

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Tune in next week for another exciting installment of Agent Allen!

The post Agent Allen #7 appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

RITS:

How did you found GeographicFarm?

Chris:

I was taking a coaching call from my coach, Christina, and I was getting my mailing pieces out — it was working, everything was going out, the graphic design was on par. And I wasn’t having to do it myself, I had an actual designer doing it — and everything was going out smoothly.

So, my coach is like: “Gosh, you get everything out every single week; I have so many of my coaching clients I have to hound and hound… How do you get this done?” And I said, “I have a graphic designer and I know what I want. I make decisions quick, I know where to get printing, I know the mailing house that I like to use. I know how to get the best deal on postage, and I know which ones I want to mail to versus which ones I don’t. I know how to decide which area is going to be the best area to go after. And she’s like: “Everybody needs this product.” So, I say: “Why don’t we call it GeographicFarm?” So, she says: “Okay, your coaching assignment is to send me a business outline for this.”

So, I did, and that’s how GeographicFarm was formed.

Basically, it was formed out of a need where you have all these agents who shouldn’t be sitting there on Microsoft Word trying to decide on some postcard. Real estate agents have a way of making things extremely ugly when they do it themselves. But, if they bring in somebody who’s really good at what they do… Basically, we found that real estate agents that are on top of their game need an automated system to be able to be consistent in what they do. And that’s how it was formed.

Listen to the whole thing here.

The post PODCAST: Ring in the Sales, Episode 4 — Chris Morrison appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

RITS:

You’ve met and worked with a lot of real estate agents. What do wish agents would stop doing?

Nick:

I’d like agents to ask themselves what their goal is every day. If you work for someone else, there are set things you must do every day. The most difficult thing from a real estate perspective is following that kind of a pattern without the structure of working for someone else. If you can apply that method to your real estate business, you’ll be successful.

RITS:

What can a real estate agent start doing this week to begin creating successful methods?

Nick:

I’d suggest figuring out what you make per transaction, then divide that into the amount you want to make this year. That will give you the number of transactions you need to meet that goal. Then, you can use the other tips we’ve discussed to determine what you need to do every day.

Listen to the whole thing — right here!

The post PODCAST: Ring in the Sales, Episode 3 — Nick Dreher appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

The first episode included special guest, Alyssa Glutz from Cherry Creek Mortgage, who discussed some great tips for agents to create a consistent pipeline of buyers, as well as how to take advantage of Alyssa’s unique Color Your Credit system to build your business and impact people’s lives. Here’s a quick sample of the podcast:

RITS:

If you were to give agents one piece of advice for how to really impact their business, what would it be?

Alyssa:

Find a group of 20 renters you want to mentor… You’re not gonna charge them — you’re giving them a scholarship to be part of your Color My Money Club. You’re bringing the influence for them… and then you’re doing nothing more but taking the content that I provide on Color My Credit and you’re giving it to them, via email or starting your own Facebook group, or doing something to create your own little club that you can influence. In the end, your goal is to make 20 renters into home buyers in a year.

RITS:

Do you have advice for how agents can find those 20 renters they want to work with?

Alyssa:

I always tell agents when you’re working an open house, or you get on the phone with a prospect and you feel that hesitancy, you can stop and say: “Hey, I don’t know if credit is something that has held you back, but my partner is a credit educator, and I have this great credit education that’s free. It’s a free system that will help you by making an impact on your life… What’s going to hold you back?”

Listen to the whole thing by clicking here.

The post PODCAST: Ring in the Sales, Episode 2 — Alyssa Glutz appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

Google’s Claymore information had not been encouraging. He’d put his phone away and scanned the room. A table and chairs, some dishes, dirty towels. The refrigerator, which was too far away to use as a shield from the blast. He allowed himself a morbid chuckle as he remembered that ridiculous opening scene from the fourth Indiana Jones movie.

But this was no movie, and the fridge was not going to save him.

Allen examined the trigger cord. Whoever set this trap had stapled it down to the floor, from the lever under his foot all the way around to the counter under the mine. Allen pulled out his pocket knife and squatted down, careful to maintain pressure on the trigger plate. He pried up the first couple of staples, then slid his fingers under the cable and pulled upward, popping the remaining staples one at a time toward the mine, until he had several feet of slack.

He then scooted toward the mine, sliding his foot along with the trigger, until he was alongside it at the counter. The mine sat on its own secondary trigger, so there would be no moving it. He crouched down, his back to the counter, and reached for a table leg, pulling the heavy piece of furniture toward him with a deep, nails-on-chalkboard screech.

Pulling the table all the way over him, so he now sat under it, back to the wall, with the table against the counter and the table top between himself and the mine, Allen plugged his ears, pressed his chin into his chest, and released the pressure on the trigger.

The Claymore blew outward with a chest-pounding, ear-splitting blast, shredding everything in its path and taking the door Allen came in though clear off its hinges. The brunt of the horizontally-directed explosion had shot out over Allen’s head, above the table top. Allen coughed, choking on the cloud of powdery dust in the room, which now smelled like fire and pressboard and sulfur.

Allen crawled out from under his makeshift bomb shelter and dusted himself off. Now he could explore what remained of the house and try to get some answers.

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Tune in next week for another exciting installment of Agent Allen!

The post Agent Allen #6 appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

     Sorry, Tom, got delayed. Will check back in after next open house.

Sure, Tom had probably seen that text a half dozen times by now, but it always seemed enough to keep the unimaginative agent off Allen’s back during missions.

Turtle Beach in St. Kitts was a beautiful, sparsely populated little area at the south end of the island. The soft breeze, easy sunshine, and serene ocean cove visible from nearly every property would have made it a sweet area to claim for a geographic farm. With an east-facing beach of pure white sand that seemed created for eternal relaxation, Allen lamented that Greaves wouldn’t get to enjoy it, having gone on to his own eternity.

Allen found the bungalow from Fram’s “property alert” and carefully cased the perimeter, to make sure there were no booby traps or surveillance activities.

Looked clean.

He checked the back door. Unlocked. He drew his side arm, took in a deep breath of salty air, and cautiously pushed the door open.

Allen scanned the musty kitchen. Light filtered in through the dirty windows above the sink, where a pair of lazy flies hopelessly circled the months-old stack of dishes. Next to the overturned dining chair, his eyes fell on the dark brown splashes indicating dried blood from a violent struggle. He spied a note attached to the fridge with a souvenir magnet, and took a step forward.

click

Allen froze and looked down.

He’d really stepped in it now. Well, on it. It was the foot-pedal activation switch for an M18 Claymore mine. Allen gulped and looked around the room for the mine itself. The cord from the switch wrapped around the door, hugging the wall, and ending just six feet away to the left. The mine was positioned on the counter near the microwave, pointing right at the door where Allen stood sweating.

Allen pulled out his phone. Of course. Bad coverage. He reached up as high as he could until he got a signal, and started Googling the trigger time on a Claymore. Every millisecond was going to count if he was going to get out of this alive and with all his limbs.

As much as he loved the islands, he didn’t want to wind up like Fram.

——————————————————————————

Tune in next week for another exciting installment of Agent Allen!

The post Agent Allen #5 appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.

The average reader only spends 37 seconds reading an article or blog post. So, you really need to make that time count by using formatting that makes reading easier (bold, bullet points, line breaks), This will make your content more scannable and able to be digested quickly. Make your key points stand out. And make use of tools like this:

[bctt tweet=”Want to engage audiences with truly compelling content? You gotta know the latest tools and know how to use them. #phenomenalcontent” username=”GeographicFarm”]

By making your content easily shareable through all social channels, you’ll let your audience do some of the work for you. Your brand can spread like wildfire if you provide the flame and the wind!

It’s also important to stay on top of the latest integrations. For example, you can now use BombBomb to directly record your embedded video messages for emails in your Chime CRM! The best tools can make creating and distributing compelling, top-notch content a breeze.

In a world that’s shrinking due to technology, the communication space is getting crowded. Take the solid ideas of the past and use today’s and tomorrow’s methods of conveying hot content. It’s not only essential to survival, but it’s the only way to come out ahead. A huge piece of that puzzle is having a smart system for bringing it all together. Chime is the real estate operating system that integrates with your favorite communication tools, from Gmail to Microsoft Exchange to BombBomb and so much more. Schedule a demo today!

* * * * *

Ready for more? Check out this FREE eBook, Creating & Distributing Phenomenal Content, available here.

The post Phenomenal Content — Part 5: Use the Stuff That Works appeared first on GeographicFarm.com.