Promote yourself by doing your job. - Stop the vicious cycle.

As REALTORS(r) we constantly worry about how to get our name out into the public, if we are advertising enough, not enough, spending too much money or not enough.

I know that my business plan is cyclical in nature.
I get a big closing.... advertise a lot.... dont get many calls from print advertising.... get disgusted.... start just getting out there... talking to people....making contacts....answering calls....doing research...showing houses....listing houses....writing offers...making sure it all happens....closing deals...getting paid....advertise a bunch...get disgusted. And round and round it goes.

I am determined in this year not to advertise myself. I will still use print advertising because our buyers and sellers in our small town watch the monthly homes magazines to see what is on the market. I will reserve the Sunday paper only for Open House ads, which work for us, and advertise all of my listings on my website, our office website as well as making an ePropertySite for each listing. These get farmed out to various online real estate search sites like Trulia, Zillow, and Front Door. The majority of our incoming buyers come from the web or referrals from past clients.

The funniest thing that I have noticed is the more I focus on promoting myself the less customers I get. The more I focus on doing my job well, the more I get done, the better my customers are served and the more customers I have. I think that REALTORS are the only ones that judge other REALTORS by how much they advertise themselves. I see faces splashed all over the billboards and on skins on cars but being behind the scenes I see that those agents aren't doing the most business. Its the ones that are being helpful, going out of their way for people even if they don't have a guarantee of a big commission that are winning the customers for life. and that is the best promotion you can have.

For example. Take our Broker, Carolyn Spence, It was a floor call of a couple asking about Rentals. Instead of just reading them the rental list and hanging up she realized that this couple relocating because of the Air Force may not like our availiable rentals compared to where they were coming from in San Antonio and decided to actually take time with them to discuss area rentals and the benefits of home ownersip in our growing town.

They took a day and went to the lender to see what they would qualify for, they went and saw numerous houses, she took them out to lunch, they were tickled that they were new in town and had already found a friend. They were still undecided about whether to rent or buy but they knew that they had a REALTOR to trust in any event. They ended up deciding to buy and Carolyn made an offer on a house that was much less than they were approved for but much nicer that the available rentals in that same monthly payment range. They were happy not to be pressured into a bigger more expensive house and Carolyn was happy that they found something they would be comfortable in for the next few years.

Then the Clovis News Journal calls - They are doing a story on transferees opting to buy instead of rent and Carolyn shares the story. I open up the Sunday Paper and see, above the fold, this article. http://www.cnjonline.com/news/air_32857___article.html/force_home.html and Carolyn was just doing her job serving the customer - not performing with $$ in mind.

It reminds me of a bible verse. "He who seeks to save his life shall lose if but he who loses his life for my sake shall save it." Luke 17:33

I know the verse is talking about eternal life but another meaning to me is that sometimes you don't always gain the thing that you are seeking by pursuing it. Sometimes you have to walk the higher road and do the right thing for your customers and then promotion comes just because you did the right thing.

And if the only way some agents can get their face out there is to pay for it to be there, I hope it works for them. I'll just keep plugging away.

Playing with the big frogs

Clovis, New Mexico is a little pond.

I know we are short of water out here on the high plains but as far as ponds go I call Clovis a little one.

We have 42,000 people in our town and we have 125 real estate agents. We actually have 19 brokerages in our MLS that serves Clovis and Portales, NM but only 9 of those companies have more than 3 people in them. So anyway, a little pond.

After living here for 14 years and being a REALTOR here for 6 years the first thing you realize is that there are a few big frogs in our pond. It is easy to be intimidated and figure that the foothold those big time realtors have is something that can never be overcome.

They have a broad customer base in the pond and have many loyal customers on that lilypad that use them time and again.

It seems that business comes to them. Their office is the coffee shop and they seem to succeed by just being. But on our journey to becoming a big frog there are lessons to be learned. I think the big frogs in our pond are going to be suprised at how quickly we grow.

As agents we have to change with our buyers. There are always going to be buyers in our pond that use the same agents their friends and family have used for twenty years but those hometown buyers are not in the majority any longer.

Many of our buyers today are linked to Cannon AFB and are being transferred here from some major-big ponds. You might even call them lakes. Not all of them are happy about the move but they are making the best of it and settling into pond life nicely.

These families are doing research on the town before they move here. They are looking up housing, shopping, things to do in New Mexico, and restaurants before they even get here. All agents are the same size to them. They don't know reputation or quality. They only know what they see or hear from friends and the agent that wins over these customers in the agent who always answers their email, calls people back, and goes out of their way to be helpful and answer the questions that buyers have -even before they ask.

Its not enough to be a big frog anymore. The little frogs that can text, twitter, and get their listings out on the web through office websites, trulia, front door, zillow, yahoo, google earth, msn... and all of those other online resources for real estate information...are going to be the frogs that get new loyal customers that make our pond grow.

New businesses and industries coming to our town are not going to have patience to deal with big frogs with big attitudes. Committees and name dropping have no meaning to them. They are going to expect more because they come from bigger ponds and what we think are big frogs are really, pretty small in their eyes.

The moral of the story?Im going to not be intimidated by the big frogs surrounding me in my own little pond. I am going to go ahead and make a statement that can be seen around the world and bring the world to my pond. Raise the bar of expectations for your associates, dont let being new (or old) be an excuse.... Raise the bar and remember little frogs can jump high too.