Actually, you don’t have to guess. You’ve got an authoritative answer right here from your National Association of Realtors.

Every year the NAR does a survey wherein they ask a statistically valid sample of home buyers and sellers about 100 different questions on every aspect of their home buying and selling experience.

The purpose of these surveys is to help agent’s to do more effective marketing through a deeper understanding of home buyers and sellers.

If you haven’t seen this latest Profile, you really should; you’ll find it fascinating and loaded with information that will help you be more effective.

The latest NAR Survey shows CONCLUSIVELY, once again, that RELATIONSHIP MARKETING IS KING!

Relationship Marketing vs Advertising

If you are spending a lot of time, effort and dollars on traditional advertising like postcard mailings, magazines and newspapers, and advertising specialties then this chart is likely to make you sick.

All that time, effort and money accounted for only 5% of the methods people used to find their real estate agent!

84% of the time people found their agent through relationships!

MREAcovernewsh Another very interesting set of statistics regarding relationship marketing comes from Gary Keller’s industry classic, “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent”. The book is based on his actual consulting experience with agents throughout the U.S.

He observed that when agents “touched” Unmet people 12 times per year, they generated one transaction for every 50 Unmets in their database.

On the other hand, when Met people were touched 33 times per year they generated 2 transactions for every 12 Mets in the agent’s database.

In other words:

300 Unmets = 6 Transactions (Provided they are “touched” 12 times per year.)

300 Mets = 50 Transactions (Provided they are “touched” 33 times per year.)

This means that MARKETING TO METs IS 8 TIMES MORE PROFITABLE than marketing to Unmets!

What’s Your Potential? Find out now with our Free

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING CALCULATOR

Three Big Reasons Why You Aren’t Doing the Relationship Marketing You Know You Should

After 17 years as an independent marketing systems consultant I've gained clear insight to the obstacles that have kept too many real estate agents from doing the relationship marketing they know they should be doing. Here are the three main reasons:

1. Lack of Database Control

Mets-are

OK. Let’s be honest. Now that you can see how dramatically well the numbers work in your favor; do you have ALL of your “Mets” in a single computerized database? That’s the first step toward being able to do fast, efficient and effective relationship marketing.

2. Fear of Making Contact

GK-reported-sm

Mmmmmm: 2 Transactions for every 12 Mets, per Year. Makes you want to add a few more names to your “Met” database doesn’t it?

Ah, but there’s a catch. It says you can only expect that kind of results if you “touch” your “Mets” 33 TIMES PER YEAR.

Feel that anxiety and fear start to rise up within you? You’re thinking, “I can’t touch my “Mets” 33 times in a single year. They’ll think I’m too pushy. They’ll think I’m spamming them. They won’t want to do business with me. They’ll hate me.”

Well, if you’re thinking about touching your “Mets” with the kind of typical active Buyer and Seller marketing content that most agents have; YOU ARE VERY RIGHT TO BE AFRAID! Here’s why.

census-10-percent

Let’s go back and analyze what the Census Bureau has to say about move statistics from DIFFERENT ANGLE.

If 10% are moving each year that means that 90% ARE NOT MOVING each year.
If 10% are moving each year, that means on average less than 1% are moving each month.
If, on average, less than 1% are moving each month, then in any given month 99% of your “Met” database is NOT actively in the market to buy or sell a home.

This is why they wouldn’t appreciate 33 “Touches” of you hammering them with “Buy Now”, “Sell Now”. You may not have done the math before, but you intuitively knew that people wouldn’t like it, and now you know the exact reason why.

The DILEMMA you are left with is with is this:

You need to touch your “Mets” 33 times per year so you will be at top of mind when they, or their close friends, relatives and coworkers are ready to move.
You’re afraid that Touching them 33 per year is going to make them HATE YOU.

Is It the FREQUENCY or the CONTENT That’s the Problem?

How many times a day do you touch your immediate family?
How many times a week or month do you touch your extended family?
How many times a month do you touch your friends?

I’ll bet that your touches add up to a whole lot more than 33 times a year in all of these situations; and nobody complains. Here’s another one for you:

33 touches in a week isn’t nearly enough for some of your clients; while they are in escrow!

So what’s the difference? Why is very high touch frequency welcome, even demanded, in some situations; yet resented in others? The answer is that Frequency isn’t really the issue; IT’S THE CONTENT OF THE TOUCH!

We are very simple creatures really. All day, every day, we’re all basically motivated by two things, and two things only:

The desire to increase our pleasure or gain
The desire to reduce or eliminate our pain

When a touch helps us with either one, or both, of those motivations; we like it.

When a touch is irrelevant to either, or both, of those motivations; it’s an annoyance because it’s a distraction from our compulsive and endless efforts to increase gain or reduce pain.

With this insight you have the necessary clue that will enable you to touch your “Mets” more than 33 times per year and have them love you for it!

Simply make sure that all of your touches are relevant to increasing the gain and reducing the pain of homeowners who aren’t in the market to buy or sell right now.

Do that and you can STOP BEING AFRAID of making sufficient contact to maintain your “Met” relationships, and thereby GET ALL OF THE BUSINESS that naturally proceeds from doing that.

3. Intimidated by Distribution Cost and Effort

The cost of printing, handling and postage for enough pieces, frequently enough, USED TO BE PROHIBITIVELY EXPENSIVE for most agents.

Actually, it still is. Fortunately you don’t really have to print, handle and post marketing material anymore. In our brave new age of Web sites, email and automated drip marketing any agent who wants to can afford to run very large and sophisticated touch campaigns for almost nothing. So, cost isn’t really a factor anymore.

Effort, on the other hand, because relationship marketing is so frequent and personalized, can still be daunting. This video demonstrates why.

Happily, the Web, Email and Automation mean that DISTRIBUTION EFFORT AND COST ARE NO LONGER AN ISSUE!

RELATIONSHIP MARKETING IS KING! And it’s easy for you to play.

You participate in ongoing activities that enable you to continually meet new people.
You keep ALL OF YOUR METS in a single computer database to facilitate automated marketing.
You keep ALL OF YOUR BUYERS AND SELLERS in the same computer database to facilitate automated marketing.
You Contact Type all of your contacts to accurately segregate them into the following categories:

Newly Mets
Mets
Past Clients
Hot Buyers
Warm Buyers
Hot Sellers
Warm Sellers

You have sufficient quantities of high quality, Web based, personally branded, marketing content that is appropriate for each of your database Categories.
You have a library of email templates appropriate for Mets, Buyers and Sellers. Each email template contains a link that goes directly to a specific and appropriate page of your Web based, personally branded content.
You have a library of automated relationship marketing campaigns in place that enable you to touch all of your contacts with high quality, relevant content:

Do this and you’ll get your 84% marketing result,

and your 2 Transactions for every 12 Mets.

What do you need to get your Relationship Marketing Campaigns up and running?

Contact Records with Email Addresses:

Mets
Buyers
Sellers

Top Producer 7i loaded with all of Your Contacts
Web Marketing Content that is appropriate for Mets
Web Marketing Content that is appropriate for Buyers
Web Marketing Content that is appropriate for Sellers
Your Marketing Link Library
Your Email Template Library
Your Automated Action Plans
Your Action Plans Assigned to Your Contacts
“Driver Training” so you can keep all of your campaigns running smoothly.

To be even more specific you need:

Your Contacts
Your Agent Web site (that covers the Buyer and Seller Marketing Content)
Top Producer 7i (that’s the system that does all of the automation)
The Homeowners Intelligence Web site (this is where you’ll get all your Met appropriate Marketing Content; more about this in a minute.)
Help in setting the whole system up and learning how to “Drive” it.

I’ve got some terrific implementation options for you including Completely Turnkey and Do-It-Yourself assistance that I will explain to you soon, but first you need to know about the Homeowners Intelligence Web site.

Remember in the earlier part of our discussion when we cited this Census information?

And we looked at that statistic from the opposite direction?

If 10% are moving each year that means that 90% ARE NOT MOVING each year.
If 10% are moving each year, that means on average less than 1% are moving each month.
If, on average, less than 1% are moving each month, then in any given month 99% of your “Met” database is NOT actively in the market to buy or sell a home.

We noted that the DILEMMA you are left with is:

You need to touch your “Mets” 33 times per year so you will be at top of mind when they, or their close friends, relatives and coworkers are ready to move.
You’re afraid that Touching them 33 per year is going to make them HATE YOU.

We also acknowledged that your fear is well founded, IF you were planning to send your Mets 33 BUY NOW! SELL NOW! messages in the next year. Our solution to your dilemma is DON’T DO THAT!

Instead think about your Mets from a homeowners point of view:

Aren’t they always interested in making their homeownership experience even nicer?
Aren’t there always little repairs, improvements and upgrades they’re thinking about?
Wouldn’t they appreciate receiving expert guidance on virtually any and every homeowner issue?

I’ve helped many clients to set up their Met marketing campaigns, but it always troubled me that they never had enough high value content available that wasn’t BUY NOW! SELL NOW! oriented. So I finally decided to do something about it.

How HOMEOWNERS INTELLIGENCE Came to Be

First, I made a list of topics I was sure that homeowners would be interested in. The list included:

Safety

Child Safety
Fire Safety

Electronics

Home Theater
Internet
Security
Sound
Television

Interior Design

Carpeting
Designers
Flooring
Furniture
Lighting
Tile
Windows

Landscaping

Fencing
Gardening
Irrigation
Outdoor Furniture
Outdoor Lighting

Maintenance

Electrical
Heat & Air
Painting
Plumbing
Roofing

Market Trends

Market Trends
Finance
Credit Reporting
Interest Rates
Insurance
Lenders

Investing

College Homes
Income Properties
Tax Tips
Vacation Properties

Keeping & Growing Your Home

Employment Resources
Entrepreneurial Resources
Networking Resources
Virtualization Resources

Real Estate News

Homeowners Intelligence Blog

Bonus Sites

Manage Events
Home Schools

Then I did a search through the top 100 Web sites on each topic to find the smartest, most informative, most reliable and trustworthy sites. Here are just some of the 180+ sites I selected:

Finally, I built a Web Site called Homeowners Intelligence that included all of those links and designed it so it could easily be personalized for you.

So there you have it; content that is perfect for your Met Relationship Marketing Campaign. It is high value, high quality content that will be appreciated by homeowners throughout the entire year. Because it is located on the Web you never have to worry about printing, handling or postage either. Click here to see a full demo version of the site.

Just one more thing before I tell you about the terrific Implementation Options we’ve got for you including Completely Turnkey and Do-It-Yourself assistance. It’s about how I’ll teach you to “Drive” Your Fully Automated Relationship Marketing System.

My name is Ray Cobel and I've been an independent Marketing Systems Consultant for 17 years. Over those years I've helped my clients implement a number of leading contact management and marketing systems.

When I began to specialize in the real estate industry I looked carefully at the leading program. I could have picked any of them, but I wanted to master the program that had the very most to offer my clients. That's why I chose Top Producer 7i.

tpcilogo02 I spent the first four months I had the program on intensive digging into every nook and cranny of the program, because I wanted to be comfortable that I really knew it before I applied to become a Top Producer Certified Instructor. Then I flew to Vancouver, Canada for their special training, and passed a 30 hour written exam. (Whew! Even the lawyers Bar Exam doesn’t take that long!)

I've given hundreds and hundreds of clients, thousands of training sessions, all over the U.S., in every training format there is:

Live Onsite Groups
Live Onsite One-on-One
Live On the Phone One-on-One With Remote Desktop
Live On the Phone to Groups in Online Meeting Room Format
On the Web with Static Tutorials
On the Web with Click-by-Click Streaming Video

When I first started working with Real Estate Agents via phone and online connection I showed them exactly how to work in their programs, then answered their questions and watched them do it. By the end of these sessions my clients were clear on how to do it.

Trouble was that they got busy right after we hung up and by the time they got back to doing the things I had showed them, they'd forgotten how to do them.

That bothered me a lot, because I like to see my clients get and keep actual benefits, not just go through some wasteful exercise. So I began capturing screen shots, annotating them and organizing them into Web tutorials. After my live training sessions I gave my clients access to these tutorials as a refresher.

The feedback on them and the improved retention they were bringing my clients was great. So I started making them available to my clients even before our live training sessions too.

Then came the big surprise. Clients who reviewed the tutorials prior to the session hardly needed any additional live training at all. In fact many of them told me that they learned what they needed from the tutorials and were able to skip the live sessions.

After thinking about it I recognized four big reasons why my clients were doing so well with the tutorials:

Self Pacing

Everyone learns at different speeds. The very best speed is the one that's most comfortable for you. By having the tutorials online, available 24/7; my clients were able to do as much, or little, in a session as was comfortable for them.

See & Do

The ability to have the tutorials open in one Window while Top Producer 7i is running in another window makes it possible to see a direction, then immediately do it. The combination of visual learning plus actual doing of the steps provides the best reinforcement. Consequently my clients’ comprehension and retention increased dramatically.

Repetition on Demand

I know I have to do something several times before it gets burned into my brain. If I wait too long between attempts, I forget what to do and really need a refresher. The convenience of having Click-by-Click instruction available online 24/7 makes it easy to get all the refreshers and repetition needed to make retention stick.

Scheduling Convenience

As you know, Real Estate Agents have very flexible schedules. When somebody wants to buy or sell a house they've got to be available. It's hard for them to stick to a fixed training schedule. Having Click-by-Click instruction available 24/7 makes it easy to fit training into your schedule whenever you have a few spare minutes.

This success with the static screen shot tutorials made me want to press ahead and create a comprehensive package of tutorials that addressed all the marketing aspects of the Top Producer 7i System. Only this time I wanted to add the missing learning component; audio. With audio added my clients would have the optimal learning system:

Screen shots for visual learning
Audio for learning by listening
See & Do practice for kinesthetic learning

The only way to combine all three learning methods online is with streaming video, so that's the way it had to be. I dove into the project with gusto and came up for air three months later. It was only then that I calculated I had created a comprehensive package of almost four hours of Click-by-Click videos on all the marketing aspects of Top Producer 7i.

The next calculation really stunned me, however. It turned out that writing scripts, capturing screens, annotating clicks, recording audio’s and synchronizing all of it into tight little videos took an average TWO HOURS OF PRODUCTION TIME for EVERY MINUTE of video.

At first I was in shock over the amount of time I spent, but then I realized something very powerful and beneficial had come out of it.

Free-woman-left If I were to go through everything in those videos in a live, one-on-one session with a client it would have taken at least 20 hours of consulting time to go through everything just once. And there is no way that anyone could effectively comprehend and retain all that in just one run through.

Now my clients can get every click of that instruction in less than four hours, anytime they want, at their own pace, side-by-side while they are actually working in the program, and repeat any part of it as often as they need to.

This is clearly a much better learning experience for my clients. And because it's on video now, my clients can have it all for a mere fraction of what one-on-one consulting used to cost.

YOUR BENEFITS from setting up Your Fully Automated Relationship Marketing System ARE:

All of your Mets will be touched by you at least every eleven days throughout the year; thereby enabling you to stay at top of mind with everyone you’ve Met.
Your touches will be welcome and appreciated, because they provide high value content that is all about enhancing the homeownership experience; not about Buy, Buy, Buy, or Sell, Sell, Sell to people who are not currently in the real estate market.
You will have possibly thousands of high value touches going out to hundreds of your Mets throughout the entire year without you having to give it another thought.
The roughly 10% of your Mets who will move in the next 12 months will CALL YOU FIRST, because you have stayed at the top of their minds.
Your Mets forward your VALUABLE emails to their friends, relatives and coworkers who ARE CURRENTLY IN THE REAL ESTATE MARKET; thereby dramatically INCREASING YOUR NUMBER OF REFERRALS.
You will use the same system, linked to your Agent Web site to do automated marketing with all of your Active Buyer and Seller Contacts too.
You will not have to pay for any printing.
You will not have to pay for any storage.
You will not have to pay for any handling.
You will not have to pay for any postage.
You will not have to pay anything extra to have your Top Producer 7i system many your fully automated relationship marketing campaigns.

In a nutshell, you will be doing Fully Automated, High Touch, High Value Relationship Marketing to all of your Contacts with ALMOST NO COST and NO EFFORT. It just doesn't get any better than that!