Brokerage Business

One of the most amazing things about Barack Obama’s political career is just how short that career is. First elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, he managed not to engage in controversial issues, or at least not very many. He lost a run for United States Congress in 2000, but started campaigning for the United States Senate in July of 2002 and by early 2004 he was competing against 6 other Democrats in pursuit of the not yet vacant seat in the United States Senate. It is important to note that the incumbent Republican, and the most likely Democratic candidate both declined to run, leaving the way open for a contentious primary. Then, his strongest competitor caught a case of domestic abuse, and Mr. Obama found himself the winner of the Democratic primary. The leading Republican was later forced to drop out, continuing the dirty domestic life theme; after which the state Republican Central Committee brought in a ringer from another state to do battle with the Democratic candidate. That was a Republican misstep, and Barack was elected to the United States Senate with 70% of the votes.

So what can we take from this admittedly thumb-nail sketch of Barack Obama’s Senate campaign? The first really important thing is that he did not quit. Defeated in 2000, he was organizing a run for the Senate just 2 years later. Seems simple enough, just don’t quit. He also found some really good help, hiring David Axelrod to organize his campaign for the Senate. Most Realtors® have heard this before, but it bears repeating here, hire really good help. And it is important to note that Barack began organizing his campaign long before he knew for certain that the office would be open; so, start running your race before there are others running. Many a race is won by preempting the competition.

Make sure you have allies, even in a sales business. Naively ignoring relationship building (networking) because it feels like an imposition or is playing politics does not a career make.

Barack Obama is a world class orator; most Realtors® avoid scripts and dialogs. Those people that paid attention to Mr. Obama’s speeches early on realized that he was better with a script than off the cuff, but he improved toward the end because he became familiar with the many various scripts. Projecting authoritative dialogs on demand is a key for success in any people oriented experience like politics or sales. Consider how many votes were likely cast because Barack Obama sounded good. It worked for him, it will work for you. Practice your dialogs1

And, the most important marketing lesson learned so far is – do not be concerned with competition. We are all competing, all of the time, so get on with it. Prepare well, attend to your image, know what to say, and ask often for what you want. It worked for the President-elect; it will probably work for you.

There is a certain consensus that Barack Obama started running for the Presidency as soon as he arrived in Washington. Delivering the keynote speech at the Democratic Convention certainly helped his positioning, and the most obvious Democratic candidate did not enjoy universal popularity. There was no clear front runner for the Republican nomination, and, although the sitting President was suffering a decline in prestige, the national economy was still upright. The lesson to be learned is that chance favors the prepared mind. Making sure you are ready before an opportunity is better than trying to prepare as opportunity is passing by. So, in sales, practice your presentations, be familiar with your market, stay ahead with your training, and don’t get caught with an empty tank. Luck, timing, and circumstance plays a role in all human endeavors, however, if one is not prepared for the favorable circumstance, then one loses the opportunity.

The nitty-gritty of an election is money. Fund raising is critically important to the success of a political campaign. Without accepting any Federal money, Barack Obama’s campaign collected over a quarter of a billion dollars to finance his campaign. How did that happen? The answer is Silicon Valley and the employment of sales networking systems. For the whole story, go to www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance , but for our purposes it is enough to know that incremental donations from an enormous group of donors made the big difference, using systems geared for widespread contact and relentless repetition. And, for reasons of ignorance or arrogance, Hillary Clinton simply did not embrace the techie fund raising method, or the tech entrepreneurs that drove the tech bus. Mr. Obama’s youthful advisor’s quickly connected with the moneyed tech folks in Northern California, and the money started rolling in.

You say you are not in fund raising? Duh! How about raising funds for you, a most noble cause indeed? Are you really tech capable? Most Realtors® still have the five page static website they paid someone to throw on the web in 2002. If you are reading this, your tech skills are most likely ahead of the pack, but are you really making money from your efforts? If not, consider why not, and determine what you must do to have people jumping on board your bandwagon, begging you to help them buy or sell real estate.

With the campaigns early link of fund raising and marketing technology, it was a short step to social media. Most of the early tech donors were social media junkies, already communicating on Facebook or Linked-in. Mr. Obama’s experience as a community organizer helped him see quickly the obvious advantage of accessing the on-line community. The Obama campaign gathered many of the very developers of the new media revolution and put them to work providing everything from ring tones to site widgets. Text messaging, Twitter, www.My.BarackObama.com , listserv’s, and affinity groups, everything new media had to offer was put to work in the campaign.

So, how about you? Blog lately? Are you Linked-in? How many people follow you on Twitter? Just as the then new media of television helped John Kennedy win the White House in 1960, Barack Obama employed the new media of social networking to electrify his supporters and virally recruit new ones, while at the same time inviting a flood of money to support the effort.

So there you have it. Simple really, especially in hindsight. To be successful in marketing you must prepare well, network with like minded people, have a plan, engage good help, and take advantage of the latest technology to broaden your opportunity.

Oh, one more thing, you must want to succeed. It is said that Mr. Obama is ambitious. As long as his moral compass is on an even keel, I have no problem with ambition. If you do not have a burning desire to succeed, it is very difficult to do so.

The will to succeed trumps all else.

Written by Larry D. McGee, Denver Realtor - Visit Website Sphere: Related Content

First and foremost, this post is not about politics, and certainly not about the President-Elect’s political point of view, his policies, or the policies of the Democratic Party. The election is over, the results are in, and we shall all sally forth to face whatever will be the daily events that are destined to become part of our collective national history. There are, however, lessons to be learned from Mr. Obama’s campaign that may be instructive to Realtors®, or to any individual or company that would like to realize success from their marketing efforts.

Let us start with the name. Barack Obama. He stopped using his nick name Barry during his first few years of college. While he most probably was not considering the Presidency at that time, he definitely wanted to take advantage of a name that was unique in the culture of American colleges of the time. Like most all of us at that age, he wanted to be at least a little different, to establish his identity.

So, look at your name, or the name of your company. Is it unique, or does it have a heritage? Or is it too common to be memorable. From my company’s name, The Berkshire Group, we get the word “The” signifying that it is the only Berkshire that matters. “Berkshire”, with a strong first syllable and soft second syllable, is both melodic and evokes a sense of England heritage, which is accurate, since County Berkshire is just west of London, England. And of course “Group” to say that there are a number of us, offering the strength and presence that come from numbers. You may not want to change your name, but you certainly may want to create a unique symbol that identifies you as somehow special and unique in a sea of Realtors®.

Barack worked at obtaining a first class education. With a B.A. in political science from Columbia, and a J.D. from Harvard, the soon to be 44^th President punched the right educational tickets to provide a firm basis for a future of high achievement. So, how about you? While a J.D. from Harvard is not absolutely necessary to achieve top line results as a Realtor®, learning more about the vast industry we call real estate cannot hurt. And being President of the Harvard Law Review most likely provided a great boost in self confidence, useful when running for office.

As a Broker for many years, I have observed that a good basic education for real estate sales success is in Psychology or Communication, with a minor in Business. Whatever the formal college basis, it makes very good sense to add training in the specialties. CCIM, CIPS, CRB, CRS, and ALC are all acronyms for serious and focused training in one of the many aspects of real estate. If you are not educationally prepared to be successful, it is much harder to be so. It is also true that few successful sales people achieve that success with a measure of self- confidence. From where do you obtain your conviction, the inner strength that projects your aura of confidence? Always have your well of confidence at hand, because sales and politics call for resolve, authority, and belief in one’s self.

President-elect Obama became involved in community activities, with much apparent success. His commitment and work with community activities created credibility, provided tremendous networking opportunities, and gave him a grass roots understanding of organizational skills that would prove useful during a political campaign. He learned the skill of influencing people to do things because they want to, and not because he wanted them to. And that is a handy skill both in politics and sales.

Become involved with the people you expect to serve. Show up and be passionate about their something, but only if it is also your something. If you do not regularly meet people, demonstrate you care about them and their passions, and become genuinely involved in those passions, it is very difficult to achieve success in sales. And it must be real. Most people can recognize a faker. Your network is the people you meet and care about, and the people they know.

Barack Obama traveled. He had the fortune to develop a world view while growing up, and as a young man traveled to Europe and Kenya. As a United States Senator, he made official trips to Europe and Central Asia. Seeing how people live in other places provides a breadth of understanding that cannot be obtained from books. You certainly do not have to embrace how other people live, or agree with their beliefs and lifestyle, but it is useful in both politics and sales to understand why they believe and live that way.

Where have you been? While it is true that traveling the world is both expensive and difficult, it might be somewhat instructive to at least hop in your car and travel across town. Get out of your comfort zone and your routine and expose yourself to the what, why and how of the daily lives of other folks. Eat food not on the normal diet, look at culture unfamiliar and become comfortable in being with people not like you. Most Realtors® are very good at this, because discrimination is not only illegal, it doesn’t pay very well.

Mr. Obama read. And he wrote. As President of the Law Review, he had to become not only a good reader, but a critical one as well. His first book, Dreams of My Father, was published in 1995. Are you reading? Local events, real estate news, Inman, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, social networking sites, novels, The Economist, National Geographic, something, anything to make your mind work and stay fresh. While you or I may not be ready to write a book, we can all blog. We can write notes to our clients. We can e-mail our friends and social network. If you don’t have the skills, go take a class in creative writing. Do something! Now!

The ancient Greeks first offered that all of us as individuals are a composite of our personal associations, the places we have visited, and that which we have studied, or more simply: people, places, and books. Those bedrock items of humanity are also the basis for a successful career in politics and sales.

Tomorrow, we will take the basics and add the marketing tools that proved to be too much for both Hillary and John to overcome.

Written by Larry D. McGee, Denver Realtor - Visit Website Sphere: Related Content

The Effect of the Cause

Midday Friday, I was informed that an expected closing had fallen. My associate, the listing agent, received a call from the buyer’s agent with the very sad news that the buyer was laid off from his job this morning, an hour after his wife had completed the final walk through for the scheduled 1:00 P.M. closing. Fallen sales are always disappointing, particularly so in the present economic climate, but this one got me to thinking about the effects of this one fallen sale.

Consider that the buyer got of bed today with high hopes, enjoying the adrenalin rush that comes from the anticipation of securing a new home. He had a job as he started the day, and I am sure that he and his wife were happy and pleased with how life was treating them. For those two unfortunate people, their day is not ending anything like it started. In a few short hours were lost the security of income, the security of shelter, and security of relevance.

It gets worse. The seller had made plans to move to a short term rental. The seller had to unwind the lease on his quarters, recover his deposit, and cancel the movers. The movers lost the income associated with moving the seller to new quarters. The owner of the rental property has to find a new tenant. The buyers lender had to cancel a mortgage loan, loosing not only the income (lenders have bills too), but the time devoted to the effort. The cost of the appraisal, inspections, title insurance commitment, and other miscellaneous fees suddenly had no value. Time spent by all the parties, lenders, title insurance employees, the Realtors (they also have bills to pay), and who knows who else, produced no benefit.

The seller has to again expose his property to a less than stellar market and find a new buyer. The buyer has to find employment, stabilize his life, and hopefully try again to buy a home in the future. I could go on with the ripple effects, but you get the picture.

When we are talking about statistics, it just isn’t very personal. When some economists are speaking about the overdue need for a correction, I can only assume they are speaking with tenured professorships in hand. But when you are watching the correction happen to people you know, it gets your attention. And it is happening often, all over the country. The finger pointing and post mortem discussion is historically important, and necessary, as we restructure the economy to avoid this sort of meltdown in the future. I suspect, however, that most of us get it.

Memo to the President –elect and the sitting President:

Get together. Get on the same page, or at least in the same hymnal, about a plan. The citizens of the United States are facing the crises of a lifetime. Mr. Obama, the great orator, needs to offer definitive assurance to the entire country that there is a plan, a direction, a unified agreement as to what must be done to restore confidence in ourselves. It might be a nice touch if Obama and Bush could share a podium and speak with one voice. We can only have one President at a time, but it is not written that we cannot have two leaders at the same time. Then, when we are feeling better about our prospects, and only then, should we begin the debate about how to fix all of the other things that ail us.

Written by Larry D. McGee, Denver Realtor - Visit Website Sphere: Related Content

As the Broker/Owner (AKA: The Boss) of The Berkshire Group, most of the chats I have with my associates are just that, chats; usually about structuring a contract, or those one minute training moments that have so much value. However, occasionally, my conversations are much weightier, such as the one I had yesterday with an associate regarding a legal dispute over a contract to buy and sell. While the issue was of some significance, it was a particular snippet of our conversation that stuck in my mind. The snippet was “why are you so interested in helping me solve this problem?” I was so interested in responding to that question; I almost missed the significance of the question.

Once upon a time, brokers were responsible for the actions of their associates. That meant, along with multiple hundreds of other things, the broker went to bat for the associate if there was a dispute. I am still laboring under that concept. As another case in point, late last year, when another of my associates was stiffed on a coop commission, I went to bat for her. The hours I spent documenting the case for the attorney, completing the arbitration forms, and attending the hearing with her, were not things I had to do according to the current Colorado Commission rules or state law. I did it because I believe that is part of my job and morale responsibility as the Broker and leader. I believe that much of the consumer’s disconnect with our industry is a lack of interest and active supervision by the broker for the associates in their charge , and I want my associates to have the whatever advantage I can provide to them.

I operate a small brokerage, what is described as a “boutique” in current parlance. That means I can pay attention to what my associates are doing, not to hold them back, but to support them in moving forward, and sometimes going to bat for them. One can make many arguments about the best size of a brokerage and management “span of control” but in today’s real estate world, with sometimes hundred’s of associates operating under a single broker or manager, it is simply impossible for the leader to be attentive to the needs or issues of their associates. There just isn’t time. The question is, who cares, or perhaps, does it make any difference?

Actually, most brokers and their associates really do care. Brokers nationwide are struggling with the economy, just as everyone is, and there are now and will continue to be enormous challenges and changes in the real estate brokerage business. The industry may return to smaller brokerages, more able to make changes quickly to serve their associates and their consumers. Big brokerages will have to retool to cope with financial challenges, and more brokers will play a larger role in the success of their associates. As technology advances, previously high tech costs will become markedly lower, encouraging the transparency that all consumers are demanding. Franchises will become less attractive as the desire to create a Realtors® personal brand becomes more cost efficient, and the cost of franchising becomes prohibitive with reduced profit margins.

It will matter, and make a difference to many Realtors® to have a broker that will provide leadership, currency, support, and the occasional bat; because the average productive Realtor® will, by necessity, have to focus intensely on creating and executing the fewer business opportunities available.

Written by Larry D. McGee, Denver Realtor - Visit Website Sphere: Related Content