Best Agent Business Blog

Life Management and Then Some

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:04:27 -0700

Database - Send us your phone and Facebook contacts to add:

It is very hard to keep track of people, emails, and phone numbers as a busy real estate agent with a busy life and business. We work with you to have a core database and constantly improve it.

My guess is that you may have people in your phone contacts (Blackberry, iPhone, etc.) that should be in your database as SOI or Leads but are not. Also, many of you have friends on Facebook who likely should be added as SOI. We can help. If you're a client, contact your Key Assistant or, if you're not but would like our help, reply to this blog or email me and we'll help you anyway. You can send us an export of your phone and/or Facebook contacts and we can cross-reference with you and your database.

Wish List - Send us your wish list:

What projects would you like to get done in Summer 2013? Send us your wish list of 3-5 projects and we will give you time estimates and work it into your current plan if you're a client or set up a plan if you're not.

Life Management Team - Yes we can do that:

We can also provide personal assistant services to help you with your life in addition to your business. If you're a client, just contact your Key Assistant; if you're not, email me. We can help with sending gifts, researching vendors and services, and just about anything you can think of.

Website Management - Monthly maintenance:

Too many agents let their website sit with no changes and only do major updates once a year. We have seen too many websites with old or missing bio/profile information, no client testimonials, connection to a missing or old blog, and other old or missing content. Is this you? You may want to consider having Best Agent Business start with a small monthly budget of 5 hours per month to bring your website up-to-date and then perform ongoing small changes each month.

Steve's Musings

I was very worried the other morning. We were out of normal coffee and I used an unlabeled bag in the pantry my wife told me was decaf. I wondered, “Should I plow forward and start my sales calls for the day or do a quick 15 minute run for a real cup of coffee?” Answer is: go for the real coffee. I sat there for five minutes just thinking about it.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Anything Is Possible: Seeking Serendipity In India

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:38:05 -0700

Videos - Short 2 Minutes - Watch Now

Why are random people in India asking my daughter Melissa if she wants a cookie? Find out HERE and HERE, then see the answer below under Steve's Musings which also shares the launching today in a few hours of Steve's Travel Adventure to Israel, India and Istanbul.

Business Profit Review - Billion Dollar Agent
We are excited to launch another new service for top agents doing over $500,000 GCI with a team. Our Business Profit Review is a draft of an unusual series of questions to get you thinking and changing your business to improve your net profits, (see HERE). If you take 1-2 hours and write a long memo to yourself and share with me (and your Key Assistant if you're a client), we can discuss to give you some ideas. Warning - this is not for the meek, and it is not for anyone who is a Big Ego Brad. This is for agents who want to become Billion Dollar Agent Brandy.

Not a Client of Best Agent Business?
If you are not a current client and would like to discuss our services, email sales@bestagentbusiness.com or reply to this blog. Or, if you know an agent who would benefit from our services, please forward a link to this blog and connect us. See how easy that was? I just asked you for a referral and it was not that scary. Try it yourself with your clients.

Taking a Big Vacation - First-Ever Autoresponder by Steve
In a few hours, I will turn on my email autoresponder for the first time ever since starting Lifebushido and Best Agent Business in 2006. See HERE for details. I am going on a month's vacation and fully delegating to my awesome team of over 100+ Ishidos around the world.

Many of you aspire to take more vacation which is truly a vacation. Over the last few months, I have been delegating more and more to my team so I can calmly take a month's vacation without phone or email contact.

Steve's Musings
I am on a deadline to hit the road for a month-long adventure. First we are driving to Raleigh, NC for the graduation of our oldest daughter Jackie from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Go Heels! Next we're flying to Israel for a family trip for two weeks and visiting our youngest daughter Jenna who is studying in Israel for a two-month high school program. Then, the real adventure begins...

I am taking our middle daughter Melissa to India for two weeks. She is a freshman at the University of Michigan and a crazy entrepreneur type like me. Go Blue!

We started a project to collect and publish amazing stories of life experiences in India Coffee Shops from people in India. We are calling it India Coffee Stories. See http://india-lifebushido.wikispaces.com/ for a crazy project in progress. Anything is Possible. If you know anyone involved with coffee shops in the USA or India, or people we should meet at coffee shops in Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Mumbai, email me at india@lifebushido.com. We stop in Istanbul for a few days on our return. I just posted a video with an important story about the adventure HERE. You can enjoy an ebook PDF of our first Coffee Stories book HERE or as an Amazon Kindle version. It is fun weekend reading - perhaps over a cup of coffee.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Nix the 20-Headed Hydra & Wonder What Your Buyer's Agents Do All Day?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:47:38 -0700

What do your Buyer's Agents Actually do with 40-50 Hours per Week?

Well, they are either calling leads, showing buyers, or not working. Most buyer's agents do not work about 50% of the time. They are not managed. They are not held accountable. Do you have this problem? We can help ASAP.

Best Agent Business can manage buyer's agents and hold them accountable with our Lead Management, Weekly Lead Reports, Daily Log and Showings Log systems. We can make sure they are working all of the time including holding more open houses, attending business networking events and more. For most buyer's agents, we can double their work hours from a typical 20 to 40 hours per week. Let us help - reply to shout out for help with the buyer side of your business.

The 20-Headed Hydra or Focus, Focus, Focus

Recently I spoke to a client who voiced concern that he feels like his business is a '20-Headed Hydra' and time management and time blocking to focus on his unique talents is difficult. My response is that he only needs to focus on three things: Client Marketing, Buyer Lead Management (currently getting BoomTown to add to mix), and Seller Expired Marketing. Everything else, which is really a 100-Headed Hydra, not 20, should be delegated and done by a combination of Best Agent Business, his in-house assistant, and his buyer's agents. Focus, focus, focus.

Inside Look at Sales Calling at Best Agent Business

Believe me, I have similar challenges to many of you. We currently have our Sales Callers doing about 30 hours of calling per week to our leads to schedule phone appointments with me for a proposal for our services. I want 60 hours so our Calling Team Leader needs to hire more people.

Steve's Musings

My Facebook post a while back was about No Drama Llamas. At Lifebushido, the parent company of Best Agent Business, we have over 130 part-time assistants working around the world from home. We have a drama-free zone. When we find that we let some Drama Llama into the Lifebushido zoo, we all focus on politely escorting the Drama Llama out of Lifebushido. Our goal is to like all of our clients and like all of the people we work with at Lifebushido. So far so good.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook. Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Mobile IDX, Billion Dollar Agent Magic and ABC for Vendor Marketing $

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:38:01 -0700

Question of the Week - Please Reply: What color is your personality? Choose between red, yellow, green, and blue, and tell me what color are you and why? For extra credit, guess what color is an assistant and Best Agent Business.

Be first in market with Mobile/Phone MLS/IDX Search - SmarterAgent

Mobile apps for smartphones are the fastest growing category of computing. Vendors are appearing with useful consumer mobile real estate applications. We identified Smarter Agent four years ago, and I have had detailed calls with them in the past. See smarteragent.com. Smarter Agent provides consumer buyers with a sexy IDX search with your branding and a call-me button that goes only to your phone, not the listing agent. If you've tried this, I'd love to hear how it has worked for you.

We invest thousands of dollars a year in tracking over 500 vendors and web services and attending industry conferences. Watch our Partners pages grow: www.bestagentbusiness.com/partners.

Magic - How does a Billion Dollar Agent focus 80% of time on Unique Talent?

A Billion Dollar Agent spends 80% of his/her time using their unique talents and generates $1,000,000 GCI with $500,000 net profit. Would you like to be a Billion Dollar Agent? You are likely spending 20% of your time on your unique talents and 80% doing paperwork, tasks, errands, and emails which are making you $20/hour. Let us help - call me, respond to this blog or email. Our fancy shmancy, Unique Talent Transformation operation is free, and it only takes about 10 minutes per day for 10 days with a single email back and forth between you and me daily. This is not covered by your health insurance.

Call me right now at 202-297-2393. I want to transform your life in the next 10 days, for free. Promise.

Vendor - Joint Marketing - ABC for Marketing Dollars and Referrals

We often have clients organize the Vendor part of their database and ABC their vendors just like Clients, SOI, Buyer, Seller. Vendor - A will be any vendor who has provided a referral or marketing dollars. Vendor - B are vendors who you think could provide referrals or marketing dollars. Vendor - C are all other vendors. If you do over $200,000 GCI per year, we can organize your vendors to provide 5% of GCI in marketing dollars. That would be over $10,000/year. How? Well, just respond to this blog email or call me for those details. Another Billion Dollar Agent secret.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog, and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Why You Should Be Using SendOutCards

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 01 May 2013 07:38:05 -0700

Question of the Week - Please reply to this blog with your answer:

For every 100 pieces of postal mail you receive, how many are hand-addressed?

SendOutCards - Great marketing mailings using Best Agent Business

Many of you are familiar with the greeting cards via SendOutCards. We are using SendOutCards more and more for our business, and many clients. Here are some ideas: single thank you cards after you meet with someone, regular quarterly seasonal cards to Clients/SOI, welcome card to Buyer leads, post listing appointment cards, Expired/FSBO campaigns, and more.

To send a free sample card, click HERE and choose Send a Free Card. You can also view the 10 minute video for an overview. When you send a free card, you will get a free gift account created. If you would like to send up to 5 cards, just email me after you send your free card and ask me questions or discuss how you may want to use this for your business. I will then have credits for 5 cards added to your gift account.

Accounting - QuickBooks Online

We can provide basic accounting for your business using QuickBooks Online. We run our business using QuickBooks Online. (Click HERE to view). The entry level is about $9.95/month.

Increase your net profits, reduce your stress, and let us help you keep your 2013 accounting/financials organized so you can avoid tax season stress in early 2014. For a typical agent, we need about 10 hours for kickoff and organization, and then only a few hours a month to update your income/commissions and bank statements/credit cards. Email accounting@bestagentbusiness.com if you would like more info.

Steve's Musings

What is the ideal amount of time that I am on the phone each day? To whom should I be speaking among choices of my team, sales leads, joint venture partners, and clients? For example, one hour is too little and seven hours is too much as a fit with my unique talents. Right now, about three hours per day is my ideal. How about you?

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Seller Leads Deserve More Respect and Real Estate Webmasters

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:01:12 -0700

Seller leads deserve more respect and attention from you.

Video - Short 2 Minutes - Watch Now: FSBO Marketing using SendOutCards

Seller Leads - Watch Closely
As you grow from yourself to a team to a large team, Seller leads are more and more important for your profitability. Here are some problems and solutions:

· Pile of Seller leads in Top Producer or other DB: We often run into someone who has 500+ leads coded as Seller in DB with no clue of status. We do not know which are Dead, Closed, or Seller ABC, or Lost due to Price or Lost due to Compete. A big mess. An expensive mess. Having notes is not useful, we need to recode them as Seller - Dead Lead, Seller - Lost Compete, Seller - A, Seller - B, etc.

· Not Even in Database: Every Seller Lead is worth $1,000 of GCI to someone within a year, just as a simple estimate of $6,000 commission and 20% of seller leads list and sell with someone within a year as estimate. If you do not complete a Lead Sheet and capture the lead by sending to us to enter in your DB, or entering it yourself if you're not a client, you just lost a chance at $1,000 if it gets lost in your piles of files.

· No Calling: Are you failing to call your Seller-B and Seller-C leads who say they will decide in a few months whether they will be selling? Or they are unsure they are selling? Spend $50/year and let us call and mail to them monthly.

· No mailing: If you have Seller leads, we should be mailing to them monthly a proof of production such as a Just Sold card with solid testimonial.

It always amazes me that agents will spend $200-$300 for radio leads and then fail to spend the $50 incremental to call/mail to the Seller-B and Seller-C leads coming from the radio or other sources which are not NOW business.

Real Estate Webmasters - Awesome Buyer Website
A few of our clients are at a San Diego conference for Real Estate Webmasters. REW is an awesome buyer web lead system with more of an SEO focus. See http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/. If you are a client thinking of adding a $1,000-$3,000/month Big Buyer Business system, always discuss with me the options you are considering. If you're not a client, feel free to respond to this blog or call me to discuss anyway. Often, you should be spending that money on Seller lead generation instead of buyer web lead generation. This mistake is made by 50% of large teams.

Steve's Musings
Sunday April 28th was a special day. I got to meet two Ishidos, Jen and Kate, for brunch. I have only met five Ishidos of over 130 people who currently work with Lifebushido. Then, we got to stop by a Wedding Show event sponsored by client Keri Shull.

P.S. We published another ebook on Amazon Kindle. See Bookbushido - Entrepreneur Business Book Notes. Tell me what you think. This is a series of book summaries of many business books that I have read.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Get to the Gut with Your Marketing Money

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:19:58 -0700

In real estate today, prospective clients have instant access to the contact information of thousands of agents in one simple Internet search. The manner in which people actually choose an agent, however, has not changed. They still go with the proverbial "gut feeling". That's right; all the marketing dollars spent could turn up 'nada' unless you can 'get to the gut'.

Do you know the best ways to sell a feeling? Trust? Likeability? Expertise? We do. If you're having trouble 'getting to the gut' let us help. We can analyze your Marketing Plan and tell you where it can be more effective in 'getting to the gut'. We'll show you where and how a well-placed professional photo of yourself can make all the difference in helping build trust and your professional image.

Did you know that one of the best ways to build a sense of trust, professionalism, and likeability with strangers is to let them hear your voice? The top consultant in the country for radio advertising for real estate agents is Matt Wagner. See http://www.radioandtelevisionexperts.com/index.html. I have known Matt for many years. Many Billion Dollar Agents do radio advertising and some of our current clients work with Matt.

If you will close over 100 deals in 2013, you may want to evaluate radio advertising, primarily to generate seller leads. Just ask me to introduce you to Matt for a phone call. If you currently do radio advertising with Matt or anyone else, please reply to this blog or email me and tell me your current radio marketing efforts and how it's working for you.

Call Clients/SOI in Spring and Fall-

We suggest a big push to work together to call ALL of your hundreds or thousands of Clients/SOI in the Spring or Fall. Spring is a great time, when school is ending and people are looking to make a move, to call through your entire database of Clients/SOI to thank them for their business and referrals, update contact information, find out the expected year of their next personal real estate transaction, and proactively ask them who they know who is looking to buy or sell real estate in the coming months. Our Calling Team is trained, friendly, and ready to do the calling. Just reply or email me and ask me to get it started.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Stop Dwelling and Giving Too Many Leads to Buyer's Agents

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:25:14 -0700

Did you know that the more leads you to give to a Buyer's Agent the less business they will close? Sounds crazy - see this VIDEO.

Billion Dollar Agent Profit Model - Billion Dollar Agent Manifesto

I had solid success and quit the whirlwind of regular business to spend 15 Focus Hours writing a few chapters of this new book.

Call me, email me, or reply to this blog, and I'll send you the Billion Dollar Agent Profit Model and my draft chapter. If you did over $500,000 GCI or you aspire someday to do over $500,000, you need to read this draft chapter. Feel free to forward to fellow agents around the country. The cat is out of the bag:

•A brokerage is a terrible business to own. You want to be a Billion Dollar Agent Business. You do not want to be a normal real estate team.

•Big Ego Brad is a bubble which we are going to pop. We are going to separate the Big Ego Brad agents from the Billion Dollar Agent.

•Our Showing Agent model is the key to buyer business profits. The Buyer's Agent model is dead, dead, dead for the majority of large teams. They just don't know it yet. The winners who are smart will be migrating to our Showing Agent more rapidly as we roll out our Billion Dollar Agent Manifesto.

Like it? Hate it? Made you lose some sleep this weekend over it? Tell me your thoughts.

Dwell

If you are not Meeting or Calling, you may be spending time Dwelling. A mind at rest will Dwell on stuff. Usually negative stuff. Usually mindless stuff. Usually stuff which is not moving your life forward. You can call it the drunken monkey, or the gremlin in your head, but we all have experienced it. A mind at rest will ramble and dwell on various non-helpful things. Mindset is critical for business success. You must proactively manage your mindset or else you will dwell into the depths of despair constantly. Been there? Yep, I have as well and I am fairly successful in business. Almost every single top coach will emphasize that what goes on between your ears is the most important part of your business. I agree.

Steve's Musings

I have made a personal decision to go all out with the new book Billion Dollar Agent Manifesto. I am going to say it like I see it for the real estate industry and the current model of real estate teams.

P.S. Do you have a Kindle? If you're a client, tell me and we will send you an ebook gift of a new book we released on the Kindle. Even if you're not a client, tell me anyway and I'll still send it to you.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

What Are You Avoiding?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:58:36 -0700

What are you avoiding in your business right now in terms of staffing, activities, priorities, or finances?

Delegate 10 Day Challenge -

Are you still spending way too much time doing $20/hour assistant/admin or courier/gopher tasks? If you are still spending more than 5 hours a week doing assistant work, you are losing money every single day. Plus, you will be happier if you focus on your unique talent.

Starting NOW, I challenge you to email me every day for the next 10 days with the list of all assistant work you did during the previous day. Email me with subject: Day XX - Delegate Challenge where XX is days 1-10. Email me every morning when you start your day. Take 3 minutes and think about previous day and tell me what assistant tasks you did that you want to GET OFF YOUR PLATE within 100 days.

Competitor Research -

Do you know who your closest competition is? Do you know what they do better than you? Did you know Best Agent Business has a Research Team who will analyze this and your website for everything from usability to proper grammar then report back with a thorough analysis of where you can improve? If you're avoiding this task and would like us to do it for you just reply to this blog or send us an email. If you want something special you can even explain what info you would like us to find out.

Website Management -

We suggest you budget about 5 hours of time per month for ongoing Website Management to do ongoing content and improvements. If you're avoiding this task, it is far more effective to have us spend 5 hours per month than for you to get all worked up once or twice a year and need to massively catch up on your website, or worse, look unprofessional most of the year by using a website that has incorrect information on it. Slow and steady wins the race. Reply to this blog or send me an email and ask me to connect you to the Website Management team.

Steve's Musings -

So, how do I manage and the system recruit, hire, fire, train, manage, and organize 100 people who have never met each other from around the world to work together in teams? Well - three words - SYSTEMS, SYSTEMS, SYSTEMS. Plus, we hire people very selectively and focus on their unique talents. We practice what we preach. If you really want to know how we do it, just schedule a call with me.

P.S. Buffini taught me to write notes. Bush the elder taught Buffini. Last month, I wrote and mailed over 50 hand-written notes from 50 agents/speakers/contacts who I met at a conference. Yes, I know my hand-writing is really really bad, but it is the thought and touch that counts. Remember to always keep in touch!

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Opportunities Abound...If You Know Where to Look

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 06:39:29 -0700

Buyer Leads - Still a Massive Opportunity
The more buyer leads you are generating per month, the more money you are likely leaving on the table. Once you are above 25 buyer leads per month, we see agents losing track of the process and systems to monetize those leads. I know that I keep hammering this point home all the time. I do that because the net profit impact is huge, especially when combined with our Billion Dollar Agent model for Showing Agents. If you are reading this and truly ready to commit to closing this gap in your business, ask us for help.

Case Study: REO versus Expired
I share examples from top agents I speak with each week, whether they are clients or prospective clients of Best Agent Business. In this case, an agent is working 60-80 hours per week with focus on REO business, earning about $25/hour once all was said and done.

On the REO side, the price point was $120,000, below area averages, the agent was getting 2.5%, and he almost always was paying a 30% referral fee to REO aggregators. So, perhaps he got $2,100 GCI before his broker split. If he worked Expireds, which were viable in his market, the average price would be $200,000 and he would have $5,000 GCI per deal.

Lesson Learned: Run the numbers in your business. Face reality. If you are like many top agents between $100,000-$500,000 who are NOT good at running numbers, let me help. I love numbers.

Budget Profit Planning
You likely have goals for 2013. Your goals may be X transactions for Y sales volume and Z GCI. If you do not have a goal for net profit and a simple one page budget plan to map your business, you need one ASAP. I would be happy to take 30 minutes with you and help create a solid one for free for you. Just email me (or reply to this blog and I'll get back to you directly) with what you have so far or your raw numbers for goals for transactions, average sales price, average commission percentage, and your current staffing of in-house or Best Agent Business assistants/admin or your own.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook. Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Have You Cracked the Buyer Lead or Closings Profit Center Code?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:10:38 -0700

Buyer Web Leads - TigerLead, BoomTown, and Market Leader - We Did It!
We cracked the code. Best Agent Business, worked on this challenge for about two years, and cracked the code on the Big Buyer Boom and maximizing profitability of massive 100+ leads per month buyer web lead generation. Big Buyer Boom includes awesome services like TigerLead, BoomTown, and Market Leader.

We maximize profitability of massive buyer web lead marketing. Most of you focus solely on conversion of leads to closed deals. In rough terms, industry standards are perhaps 1-2% conversion of leads to deals. If you do EVERYTHING we advise we can achieve 5% conversion.

But - and listen closely because this is the key - many top teams are making very little net profit after spending $2,000-$5,000/month on these Big Buyer Boom systems. The key is net profits. That is why you are in business. Increasing the conversion rate from 1% to 5% is only one of about five key parts of our system to Maximize Big Buyer Boom Profits. I am ready to spill the beans, but do not ask me unless you are willing to focus for 30 minutes on paper and 30 minutes on the phone over the next two weeks to see the Best Agent Business vision. This is another key result of our ongoing Billion Dollar Agent research.

SendOutCards - Greeting Cards for Marketing
We actively use SendOutCards, www.sendoutcards.com/bestagentbusiness, for marketing to our leads and clients. We also use SendOutCards for about 9 clients out of 100+ clients. You can use them for keeping in touch with Clients/SOI for holidays and birthdays, introducing your company to buyer leads who are likely 3-12 months out; following up on listing appointments, and touching a Seller during the listing/closing process. You can test the system and sign up for some free sample cards on the website.

Closing Management - Profit Center not Cost Center
Most agents think Closing Management is a cost center with operational costs of $200-$500 per closed deal. Some of you do closings yourself, some have an in-house assistant, and some outsource to a virtual assistant. Best Agent Business is doing closing work for about 10 clients and will greatly expand in 2013. We are ready with a system which will make Closing Management a profit center, not a cost center. The key is that we advise investing additional client touch time and resources to proactively turn every 'transaction' into a loyal raving fan, to ask and receive multiple referrals within the first 100 days after closing. Since each new buyer/seller lead is worth $50-$500 via referral, our goal is to have you hire us for all your Closing Management, and the referral leads we generate will be worth more to you than the cost of our time to do Closing Management. Give us a try.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management, and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Steve Quits This Week and Where Are Your Wasted Marketing Dollars Going?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:31:52 -0700

So you may wonder why I am quitting this week. Read onwards to find out why...

Videos of the Week - Short Sweet and 2 Minutes Max - Watch them Now

Your Custom Newspaper for Farm Marketing - If you are above $200,000 GCI and spending over $1,000/month in Farm Marketing or thinking about starting Farm Marketing, you should consider a custom newspaper. See HERE.

Billion Dollar Agent Case Study - David Orso - Money Bag Mailing for SOI - Kudos to Future Billion Dollar Agent David Orso for creative 3D mailing of a money bag. See HERE and borrow this idea. See David at www.davidorso.com and send him referrals to Anne Arundel County in Annapolis, MD area.

Uhhh - Where Are My Wasted Marketing Dollars Going? - Around 1am at the bar at a recent top agent conference, I was speaking to an agent who does over $1m GCI, was a speaker at the conference, and was widely regarded as a 'Golden Boy' among the lesser agents. Of course, his profits are in the toilet and he is unsure why because as a Hyper Harry, he just keeps moving faster and spending more money and getting his ego stroked at these conferences as a top dog. FYI, he is a prospective client, not a current client. He is likely spending 20-25% on marketing and wasting most of it. I have a call with him next week. When I asked him for the key topic he wants to discuss, he emailed me: "tracking--I don't know where my money is working or not working".Anyone else have the problem? We can solve it.

Big Buyer Business - Look Behind the Curtain at Denver, Atlanta, and Dallas -
We have finished a massive research project related to Billion Dollar Agent Manifesto of tracking down 5,000 top agents who are spending an average of $2,000/month on big-buyer systems like TigerLead, BoomTown, Commissions Inc, Market Leader, and others. See http://bestagentbusiness.wikispaces.com/Big+Buyer+Business+-+Overview+for+Top+Agents for our not-so-top-secret plans. Add it up. That is over $10 million a month on buyer leads, over $100 million per year, and they are all wasting 50% of those leads. We currently help maybe 50 of those agents, and we will now grow to help hundreds of those agents. Would you like to see a sample map of top buyer websites in Denver, Atlanta, Dallas? See http://lifebushido.wikispaces.com/Map+Denver+Atlanta+Dallas and keep zooming in on a city, and then click on some houses and on the website. If you're a client, or maybe would like to be, tell me if you would like to see the list of your competition in your city and have us Mystery Shop all of them.

Steve Quitting This Week - Okay, so I am guilty of trying to get subject lines to get your attention and peruse our blog. Yes, I am quitting this week, but just for one week. I am quitting the regular whirlwind and maelstrom of working IN the business, just like all of you, and will be blocking out solid a 25 hours to work ON the business and get final draft of our new book, Billion Dollar Agent Manifesto, done.

Billion Dollar Agent Manifesto - Please tell me what you would like me to focus on for a new book? Please connect me with any agent who did over $1,000,000 GCI in 2012 for an interview for the book. We estimate there are less than 1,000 agents around the country, and we will be tracking down everyone possible. We are looking for agents or teams, not brokerages.

Steve's Musings - Did anyone else enjoy Holi festival somewhere last week? HERE is a video from a Holi festival we attended last weekend. Sort of like Purim in some ways. No, really. Festival of Colors. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi.

P.S. Are you a real estate consultant, salesperson, businessperson or what? Are you something today and you aspire to be something else tomorrow? Let us take you there.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Videos of the Week, Delegate More, and Start Using Flipboard

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:28:44 -0700

Stress Spectrum - Boredom - Bad Stress - Good Stress
Did you know some kinds of stress can be good? It is called eustress and is similar to the concept of a good challenge. Also, did you know boredom is stressful? See HERE.

Billion Dollar Agent Case Study - Jane Fairweather - Farm Marketing
See one of the best Farm Marketing postcards ever - from a Billion Dollar Agent HERE.

Delegate More Weekly - Did you ever wonder how a new agent grows to over $1,000,000 GCI in 5-10 years and hundreds of thousands are stuck at below $100,000? Or perhaps you are stuck at $100,000-$500,000? Get unstuck.

Did you ever wonder how I run my business, Lifebushido, with well over 100 people around the world working part-time from home with different hours every week?

Delegate More Weekly. You need to focus every single week on delegating the next chunk of work off your plate. Every week. Block out time and delegate. Here are some areas:

· Listing and Closing Management: Even if you are only doing 1-3 listings/closings per month, get this off your plate as much as possible. If you stress out when you take a new listing because you have to spend 2-5 hours to do all the Listing Management tasks, delegate to us.

· Future Wish List: You have projects you want to get done. Some of them will take you 20 hours. That is why they never get done. Delegate 18 of those work hours to us and you only spend 2 hours. Send your Key Assistant your wish lists or tell me.

· Anxiety - Boredom - Avoid: Are you avoiding doing your accounting? Or getting your database organized? Or implementing some new technology you bought a few months ago and never touched yet? These are Anxiety-Boredom-Avoid tasks you need to delegate.

· Gopher - Courier: Are you doing $10/hour work running around town for work or personal errands? Stop the madness. Hire someone locally or use a local courier company.

· Assistant Tasks: Most of all, delegate all $20/hour assistant work to Best Agent Business so you can focus on your unique talent and do $100-200 meeting and calling activities.

Magazine - Flipboard - iPad - I am going to blow your mind right now. Watch and follow:

· Do you have an iPad?

· Do you have the Flipboard application? This is an amazingly useful and fun media browsing application on iPad. See http://www.flipboard.com/ and download it if you have not.

· Did you know I created a magazine on iPad last night in about 10 minutes? Go to Flipboard, search for magazine called Billion Dollar Agent, browse it, and see the article I just added on Expired Manifesto and secret code. The first three clients who find it and call me will get a gift of 10 hours to create a magazine for your company. If you're not a client but maybe would like to be, I'll give you some free hours too to try us out.

Imagine if we created a magazine for your hundreds of buyer leads with selected, curated, cool new listings or neat things about the city or your services. Imagine if we created a magazine for your clients. You know that new commercial about some cell phone stuff that has this soft female voice saying AWESOME. This story reminds me of that.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Billion Dollar Agent - Summary With Coaches

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 05:09:58 -0700

Best Agent Business is proud to announce its new and much anticipated e-book entitled 'Billion Dollar Agent - Summary With Coaches' is now available at Amazon.com. The book, created through Best Agent Business' vast network of reference and collaborative resources, is available for $0.99 cents and is a guide to excellence in the real estate industry.

'Summary With Coaches' outlines precisely why you need an assistant if you make more than $100,000 in GCI annually, how focusing on your unique talents is essential, and where delegating can really pay off in your long term success plans. As a follow-up to 'Billion Dollar Agent - Lessons Learned', 'Summary With Coaches' first walks you through the seven areas that make up a Billion Dollar Agent and then how to focus on, train, and practice them in your daily business routine.

After helping you determine the "Billion Dollar Agent Level" you are currently at, the book will walk you through steps on how to improve in each of the seven areas using key steps from several of the nation's best and most successful agents, brokers, and coaches. You'll learn why you need to delete the term "past clients" from your vocabulary, the differences between "hunters" and "farmers", and how to determine the tasks you're doing that are destructive to your business.

'Billion Dollar Agent - Summary With Coaches' will help you determine which of the 3 key management areas, Financial, Systems and People are not your forte and what to do about it. It then leads into some fascinating, insightful and inspiring interviews from five of the most admired and successful coaches in the country including Mike Ferry, Howard Brinton, Floyd Wickman, Walter Sanford, and Ken Goodfellow.

'Summary With Coaches' could easily be the best $0.99 cents you've ever spent. Having consolidated access to today's most relevant advice from over 100 agents and industry experts is worth its weight in gold. We very much look forward to hearing your feedback on our latest addition to the Billion Dollar Agent library.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can become a Billion Dollar Agent? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Make the Most of Your Social Media Campaign

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:35:19 -0700

According to Socialmediatoday.com, a recent survey of 600 small business owners across the United States shows 90% are actively using social networking sites and 74% see social networking as valuable, some say even more valuable, than networking in-person. Forty-two percent of owners surveyed said that 25% of their new customers found them via sites like Foursquare and Facebook. Clearly, it's essential that your business has an online social presence. Socialmediatoday.com also notes that 58% of surveyed owners have a tough time promoting their pages, if they even know how.

Most real estate agents will still say that the number one way they get new clients is through referrals. A referral alone, however, doesn’t guarantee you new business, and you're far less likely to get a referral for a client who is new to your area when they don't know anyone there. While people do value the advice of friends and family, they also want to do their own research on their own time, which generally means a Google search. If Google results don’t represent you well, or even worse, there aren't any, then a recommendation won't help you much.

The message of this digital age is clear. To succeed, you need to be where your customers are: online. So, what to do if you're one of those owners who doesn't know how to promote themselves via social networking, are not getting the return you expected via social media, or don't have the time to manage it properly? You could get an expert and hire us to do it for you, or if you're happy tackling the 'social media quagmire' on your own, here are a few tips:

1. If you have a LinkedIn profile, be sure it is filled out with a professional biography, links to your website and/or blog, and testimonials from your clients.

2. If you're on Facebook, separate your professional and personal contacts so that you don’t share something inappropriate with clients, and be sure to create a page for yourself. According to Drew Hendrix from HuffingtonPost.com, some people only use advertisements on Facebook and other websites to market themselves, which "is a good way to bring in traffic to your website, but it completely skips over the free form of advertising".

3. Love those who "like" you. Always add a Facebook widget on pages of your website. Yes, it can take up space but those "likes" are valuable. Not only are you finding out what people think but it opens a dialogue, allows you to keep in touch with your fans with promotions, and people tend to like pages more if they see it has lots of likes already. Always be kind and thank those who have "liked" you.

4. Think like your clients, then use key words wisely. Remember, your prospective clients will be searching for you using relevant key words such as, "real estate for sale", "Cincinnati", "$200k", so test yourself often by running searches to make sure you pop up. If not, change it.

Social networking offers tremendous benefits for real estate professionals, but it’s just a tool. Like any other tool, if you aren’t using it properly, you won’t fully reap the rewards.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Social Media Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management, and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Advice From Best Agent Business This Week

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:16:22 -0700

Video - Stop Wasting Leads and Close the Lead Gap - 2 minutes. You are too busy to even get to your Hot leads. Correct? Close the Lead Gap now and watch this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p--dK4OfAL0

Video - Billion Dollar Agent Case Study - Too Much Business - 2 minutes. I spoke to a client this week who has too much business. Big problem. Big opportunity. Here is problem and solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAt8HBIay9A

Hedge Funds - We have two clients working with hedge funds doing massive purchases of single family homes in various cities based on investment criteria. If you are thinking of getting involved on any side of this kind of hedge fund or large private fund flow, respond to this blog to chat. I can help.

Hyper Harry Impulsively Tosses $20,000 Out the Window - Unfortunate story. A client recently informed us they are cancelling their Commissions Inc. website which is about 6 months old. They decided that the Big Buyer Business website idea looked like a Squirrel and smelled like a Squirrel so they chased it and bought it and paid $1,500-$2,000 a month for 6 months, plus some of our calling hours. Now, it is no longer shiny so they just as impulsively dropped it all, losing about $20,000 plus the lost opportunity of about $100,000 to $200,000 GCI that I guarantee some agent in their market will get from those buyers when they buy.

Hey you, Hyper Harry. Yes you. Stop impulsively starting and stopping things in life. It is holding you back from being a Rockstar Rick. I have been there and done that. Spent 10+ years of my youth as a classic Hyper Harry. Call me or respond to this blog if you need some therapy time off the clock 202-297-2393.

Recruiting Services for Agents and Assistants - Did you know we do all aspects of recruiting for Buyer's Agents, Showing Agents, and even In-House Assistants? Yep, we do. If you're a client, just ask your Key Assistant if you need help with recruiting. If you're not but would like help, respond to this blog or call me. We do job specs, place ads, screen applicants via email, do phone interviews, track and manage, check references, escalate to you, and more.

Steve's Musings - Did you know Best Agent Business has researched the best database in the country of top agents using top buyer website systems? See HERE

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Social Media Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call 202-297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Check Your Numbers

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 07:10:31 -0700

Buyer Leads - Still a Massive Opportunity: The more buyer leads you are generating per month, the more money you are likely leaving on the table. Once you are above 25 buyer leads per month, we see agents losing track of the process and systems to monetize those leads. I know that I keep hammering this point home all the time. I do that because the net profit impact is huge, especially when combined with our Billion Dollar Agent model for Showing Agents. If you are reading this, and are truly ready to commit to close this gap in your business, reply to this blog or email me and ask us for help.

Case Study-REO versus Expired: I would like to share examples from top agents I speak with each week, whether they are clients or prospective clients of Best Agent Business. In this case, an agent is working 60-80 hours per week with focus on REO business, earning about $25/hour once all was said and done. On the REO side, the price point was $120,000, which was below area averages; he was getting 2.5% and he almost always was paying a 30% referral fee to REO aggregators. Perhaps he got $2,100 GCI before his broker split. If he worked Expireds, which were viable in his market, the average price would be $200,000 and he would have $5,000 GCI per deal.

Lesson Learned: Run the numbers in your business. Face reality. If you are like many top agents between $100,000-$500,000 who are NOT good at running numbers, let me help. I love numbers.

Budget Profit Plan for 2013: You likely have goals for 2013. Your goals may be X transactions for Y sales volume and Z GCI. If you do not have a goal for net profit and a simple one page budget plan to map your business, you need one ASAP. I would be happy to take 30 minutes with you and help create a solid one for free for you. Just email me what you have so far or your raw numbers for goals for transactions, average sales price, average commission percentage, and your current staffing of in-house or Best Agent Business assistants/admin.

Wow, so much more to learn and do. I am super excited by your business and our business and the many agents we want to help. The road ahead is crystal clear. The wave of foreclosures across the country is finally slowing; same with short sales, and yet it is going to drag out for a while. Real estate, however, is hyper-local, and each market area is at difference point on the curve. Your strategy must be defined by the current and future mix of REO, Short Sale, and Regular/Equity closed deals in your market. Take that, combine with your history, client database, and unique talents, and talk to me.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like to help identify ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management, and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

How Much is a Buyer Lead Worth to You?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:35:36 -0700

We are transforming the industry this year related to the buyer side of the business. You heard it here first. Anyone who has a credit card can buy 100+ buyer web leads per month for about $10-20/each. A buyer web lead is worth about $20. If you have a $200,000 sales price and commission of $6,000, then you probably are fine with paying a referral fee of 25% or $1,500, for a closed buyer deal. Is that correct?

So how much is a buyer lead worth, which is a buyer who is pre-approved, ready to buy and ready for showings? I would suggest that 1 in 2 of those should close, correct? So that buyer lead is worth about $750 or half of the $1,500.

Now, what I really, really, really want to figure out with you is how much do we agree a Buyer - A lead is worth? Assume a Buyer - A is someone who is coming in from out of town within 30 days, or ready within 30 days for showings to start, and they have a clearly stated motivation of buying a house. How much is a Buyer - A worth? Well, if 1 in 5 leads that are Buyer - A buy a house, they are worth about 20% of $1,500 or $300.

We will discuss and reach agreement with all of our clients again this year on the value of a Buyer - A lead. We can then determine whether you make more profit by having you, buyer's agents, local in-house callers in your office, or Best Agent Business calling your backlog of buyer leads to make you the most net profit possible. Reply to this blog if you'd like to discuss. I'd love to hear from you.

Question: If you pay your buyer's agent the same 50/50 split for working a lead that is worth $20, as a golden nugget Client/SOI referral or buyer side of a seller that is worth $750, who is getting that extra $750? Yep, the buyer's agent. Why are you still giving away those golden nuggets?

Closing Management at No Cost: I am convinced that if you are currently paying anyone else for closing management work, if you switch to Best Agent Business, it will pretty much be free or a profit center. We invest extra special love and attention during the closing process to generate referrals and we even ASK FOR REFERRALS during and after the closing process. Thus, if we proactively generate one referral which leads to a closed deal for every 3-5 closings, our work effort is pretty much no cost. Ask me if you'd like to get started.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Lucky to be Born on St. Patrick's Day and What Are You Paying For Zillow, Realtor.com and Trulia?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 05:23:58 -0700

I think this every year, and since my birthday is coming up this weekend, I'll think it again; I am a lucky guy. I was born on March 17^th in San Diego, CA on St. Patrick's Day. I truly think that is part of the reason that I am generally optimistic and positive. I know only four other people born on St. Patrick's Day, and we all have the same personality.

Zillow - Realtor.com - Trulia
I recommend everyone to budget $100 per listing for online Listing Marketing better than every single agent in your MLS. Most of you have cookie-cutter Listing Plans which require perhaps 2-3 hours of assistant time to implement. I think you should be having us spend up to 5 hours - or $100 - to do a Billion Dollar Agent Listing Plan.

Email me NOW or reply to this blog with how much you are paying per month/year for Realtor.com, Zillow, and Trulia advertising. Then read reality below. The online real estate market is a highly fragmented industry. Realtor.com should get a fraction of your listing marketing spend. You are likely overspending and got SOLD by Realtor.com. Recently, Realtor.com only had 5.72 percent market share, Yahoo! Real Estate maintains second position with a 4.45 percent market share, while Zillow is third with a 3.94 percent market share. Trulia received a 2.96 percent market share.

Everyone who does more than 20 listings a year should be on the premium paid level with Zillow and Trulia. Get it done, send us the logins, we will implement. This is one of many ideas. Are you doing video and video SEO posting for your farm areas? Not listings, farm areas? Are you doing Google Adwords so that when someone types in listing address or neighborhood it is in, there is an ad at the top which goes direct to a virtual tour of the listing? How cool would that be? I bet your seller would be so impressed they would email that link to many of their friends and post on their Facebook to show how their real estate agent is cool and smart and has top state-of-the-art marketing systems.

This is only two of so many ideas we have. Get with it - invest five hours in an overall Listing Marketing Upgrade and have us identify 10-20 ideas for you. You choose what you want, we implement going forward for your Listing Plan. By the way, this is yet another way to blow away the competition on Expired Listing Appointments.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

FSBO/ Expired Marketing Ideas and Your SOI is Worth $300 Per Person

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:31:41 -0700

Video - Your SOI is worth $300 per person per year - 2 minutes. If you give us 100 people to add to your database as SOI (sphere of influence), we will get you $30,000 per year in GCI. Grow your Personal Farm Marketing ASAP and watch this short video.

Please toss me a bone, whether you're a client or not, and reply to this email after viewing the video to tell me whether it makes sense. Please comment, Facebook Like, share, yada yada if you like it.

Video - Advanced Expired Marketing - This is a shout to a new client Eric in Florida. It also applies to Dave in Richmond and 10-20 other clients. See this video on Expired Marketing. What do you think? By the way, we currently reject the majority of leads or clients who want to do Expired Marketing with us because they do not have the capital or business acumen. If you do have the capital and business acumen and focus, then let's get started.

FSBO - They are coming - start marketing now - In more markets, the shift from Expired to FSBO is under way and most agents are not ready. As it becomes a Seller's Market in more and more locations after many years of being a Buyer's Market, there will be more and more FSBOs popping up. We are solid on doing FSBO Marketing of database, mailing, and calling, and we are taking on more clients for FSBO marketing. Services such as www.landvoice.com provide FSBO data for the past six months. If you look out 6-24 months and project that FSBO and discount brokers will emerge again, then it will be much better if you already have 5-10 FSBO testimonials from the coming 6 months of FSBOs you have listed and sold.

Real Geeks - Awesome Buyer Website - I continue to be impressed by the value provided by Real Geeks. See http://www.realgeeks.com/. This is one of about ten vendors in the field such as Market Leader, BoomTown, TigerLead, Commissions Inc, Kunversion and others. All are excellent. Real Geeks is also an excellent value and can generate leads at a far lower cost per lead once you consider the total cost of software license, PPC, and any SEO efforts. If you recently compared any of the main buyer big website vendors, tell me who you reviewed and your analysis. They all work. You just need to follow our Billion Dollar Agent Profit Model and have us do the calling and get Showing Agents. If you are still using Buyer's Agents, you are falling behind your competition and leaving tons of money on the table.

Welcome Back to Best Agent Business - We continue to get a few clients each month to come back to Best Agent Business after pausing or stopping services 1-3 years ago. As we grow, our services and systems continue to improve. If you were a client in the past and getting a newsletter, reach out and let us show you our improved services and talk to many of our happy clients with testimonials. We want to help you grow your business.

Steve's Musings - I am feeling good today about business. Business is going well and we keep making things better every single week. This is called Kaizen. We constantly gather Gnossos and share it with each other and clients. We Kaizen everything always. And sometimes, we Bushido. What do you do in your business?

P.S. Slow down. You are trying to do too much. If you go slower, you will do better. Try it.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Handling Price Reductions and a Broker Going 'Broke-er'

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 07:12:32 -0800

Seller Feedback and Price Reductions - Listing Management - Do you worry that no one is taking the time to proactively call your Sellers for customer service touch base calls? Do you feel guilty that you are not getting that done?

Do you still do manual price reductions? Do you have to remember to contact sellers, convince them of the need for a price reduction and sell them all over again on your expertise to get the price reduction? Delegate both of those tasks to Best Agent Business.

We do excellent Seller Feedback calling for many clients - some with over 50 listings. We call the Sellers weekly during the first month, and then once or twice a month afterwards. We update the database and send summary of notes to you after the calls. Our proactive customer service work reduces incoming fire-fighting issues to you and makes your Sellers happier which leads to more long-term referrals.

We can do all your price reductions for $20/hour, and we are not licensed. Repeat after me, "That will never work. That is impossible." It is possible and it is working. As a salesperson, your job is to get the listing priced properly and with an automatic price reduction clause. We simply process price reductions as part of our Listing Management plan, inform Seller of price reduction taking effect per listing agreement, and process changes on all websites. Yes, that is called Magic.

Karl Clear is a broker going broker and Shawn Bold is a future Billion Dollar Agent - Let me tell you a short story. You will laugh, you will cry, you will forward this to some other friends to laugh and cry.

Karl Clear thinks he is running a successful team of $500k+ GCI and three buyer's agents. He is growing revenue and he gets on stage at top agent events about how well he is doing. As he grows, he gets more excited and spends more and more on marketing. At the same time, he is wasting more and more of his leads. He is spending more and more time babysitting the buyer's agents or wanting to fire most of them. Every month his profitability is getting worse but because he is so BUSY and SUCCESSFUL at growing revenue, he refuses to run a proper business with monthly financials and FACE REALITY.

He is not growing a Billion Dollar Agent team, he is actually evolving from being a top agent to being a broker and getting broker. He will wake up at $500,000 GCI and realize that he is making $250,000 on his personal real estate business and actually losing $100,000 on his team and netting a poor 30% net profit of $150,000 on $500,000 GCI. If you are crying right now, we need to talk...reply to this blog.

Shawn Bold is our secret weapon. Shawn is the 5 clients out of 60 that are currently on track to do it right. If you want to be Shawn Bold and make 50% net profit on $1M GCI, talk to me.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

Thoughts From Steve at Best Agent Business This Week

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 05:39:01 -0800

Listing Management - Get a Billion Dollar Agent Listing Plan - Spring is here! If you are still doing listing work yourself and you're a client of Best Agent Business, talk to your Key Assistant and delegate it off your plate. If you are having an in-house assistant do the work, have us spend 5-10 hours and do a solid Billion Dollar Agent Listing Plan so we can backup your assistant if they are out sick in the middle of your spring season.

Video - Double Your Business Fast - If you want to grow your business faster and delegate faster, watch this short video HERE.

Video - Time Management for Closing Management and Emotional Stress - Too many agents suck down emotional stress by having Closing Management and deal stress impact them throughout their day. See HERE for our ideas of how to Time Chunk your closing work, whether you do it solo, or with an assistant.

Craigslist Posting - Any client with 10 or more listings should have us spend a few hours per week doing Craigslist postings to generate more buyer leads. If you're not a client but would like help with this, please respond to this blog or click HERE to schedule a call with me.

Monthly Mailed Newsletter - Finally, as promised a few months ago, we are doing a monthly mailed newsletter (postcard) to our Clients. Have you gotten an ExpressCopy Jumbo Postcard from us in past 1-2 months? If you're not a client but would like a copy, please respond to this blog or click HERE to schedule a call with me.

We practice what we preach. All of you should be sending a Monthly Mailed Newsletter to all of your Clients, SOI, Vendors, Buyer/Seller Leads. Let us help make that happen. It is the single most cost-effective marketing you can do.

Steve's Musings - Wow, there are so many of our clients who are telling us it feels like Spring in February in terms of incoming leads and business. I think many of you need to ensure NOW that you are staffed enough to handle the surge of spring and summer business coming. Add more assistant help or calling help now so you do not waste leads and do not go crazy. Remember, we can even help with Agent Recruiting to recruit Showing Agents or Buyer's Agents. We added that service in the past year.

P.S. We are investing $10,000 in research and development in 2013 to become the best possible Hyper Harry Assistant service in the country. Approximately 5% of adults have ADHD, but of the top agents doing over $200,000 GCI that number increases to 30% of. That means about 3 of 10 of you reading this email. I just read a great book called Fast Minds. See http://adhdfastminds.tumblr.com/. Here is a very silly video about Hyper Harrys who cannot sit still and simply drive around to keep moving - for no specific reason.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

If Your Assistant Became Ill, Would You Be High and Dry?

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:34:55 -0800

Staff Transition - What if a Key Assistant Needs to Pause?
We have about 15 Key Assistants, of our 130 assistants, who are the direct contact with clients. Recently, one of the Key Assistants became ill and had to pause work. If that assistant was an in-house assistant or a solo virtual assistant, our clients would be left high and dry and dead in the water.

The beauty of our Best Agent Business model is that our team of Team Leaders, Key Assistants, and Client Services pulled together in 24 hours to reassign those clients to a new Key Assistant, inform clients of transition, and had Client Services focus and make sure we were on track or got back on track with those clients. We have systems. We have depth of resources. We have documentation.

We Care - Passion for Work and to Help You Grow Your Business
I have been frustrated recently by some interactions related to in-house assistants/buyer's agents who work for our clients and our Best Agent Business team. We care about your business, and your personal and professional success. We greatly appreciate the work you give us and we constantly are asking you how else we can help. We do not complain that we are too busy or take extra time off constantly.

If Best Agent Business can deliver more consistent service with a happier smile than some of your current in-house staff/agents, then why don't you shift more work to Best Agent Business?

Calling - Craigslist - Closings
A few short suggestions and guesses about your business:

We should be spending more hours calling your Clients/SOI and Leads
You should consider posting listings to Craigslist 2 times per day
You should consider having us upgrade Closing Management to generate more referrals and make it a marketing center rather than just cost center.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management, and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

The 10 Day Time Management Challenge and Movie Magic Marketing

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:06:54 -0800

10 Day Challenge from Steve - Perfect Day Email - Time Management: I challenge you to send me a daily email by 12pm (your time) with info on your morning:

Time Management Challenge - Best Agent Business - Perfect Day for 10 Days:

If you take the challenge and take 3 minutes for 10 days, then magic will happen.
Specifically: "When the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars".
Email Steve with subject of “Perfect Day XX”, where XX counts the days from 1 to 10.

Daily Questions - 3 minutes - 3 questions - By 12pm daily (your time) - 10 days straight on Mon-Fri. No excuses.

How many hours did you spend calling in the morning and how many live answers did you get?
What were the positive results and lessons learned from calling this morning?
What went well in your Perfect Day yesterday, this morning (so far), and what are the lessons learned?

Several of our clients have done this challenge and it works. If you have done it with me, I would appreciate a testimonial I can share to convince other clients. Start on Monday. If you're not a client, but would like to do this too, please respond to this blog.

Mynor Movie Magic: So the Grammy Awards have come and gone again, which reminded me; we have a very sharp client named Mynor who works in the Bethesda, MD area where I live/work. Mynor is friends with hundreds of people. He uses Top Producer and has a solid database of Client ABC and SOI ABC. He sometimes hosts a Spring Movie Event with an offer of movie tickets and popcorn/snack money for Sunday afternoon. This is very smart. He gets positive marketing emotional connections from the hundreds of people who read the email. Even without attending, they FEEL as if Mynor gave them a movie afternoon and free popcorn. Also, for those who attend, an incredibly low cost of perhaps $20/person for massive warm fuzzies. Kudos to Mynor for smart Client Marketing!

Mynor is certainly not our only sharp client, but I wanted to share my personal experience of Part 2 of Mynor's Movie Magic experience. My wife and I took Mynor's Client Appreciation Event offer for free movie tickets. Mynor had about 35-40 clients attend. As we got off the elevator at the upscale Mazza Gallerie, Mynor had a nice table laid out and a personal popcorn bag with our tickets, gift cards for $5 each for popcorn, and recent market statistics of sales in our neighborhood. He surprised us with that personal real estate information. Mynor would chat up clients for a few minutes, take a picture with them, and see them again for a few minutes after they leave the movie in great emotional spirits. This is how they connect Mynor with family fun and positive emotions. Great event and well organized.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management, and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm

The Best Use of Vendor Marketing and Facebook Pages

Steve Kantor - Best Agent Business - Virtual Assistance (BEST AGENT BUSINESS) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 06:57:42 -0800

Vendor Marketing and Business Relationships - A Billion Dollar Agent fully engages and leverages relationships with small business owners. This includes the 5-10% of your Clients who own a small business, and then 20-100 vendors you know. We would like you to code vendors as 'Vendor ABC' and if you're a Best Agent Business client, your Database Assistant will be helping you with this process.

A Vendor-A is someone who has already given you a referral. A Vendor-B is someone you think may give you a referral and a Vendor-C is unsure. We can help organize your Vendor Marketing so that vendors help to pay ALL the costs for your monthly mailing to Clients / SOI and also help with Farm Marketing on both mailings and online Farm Marketing.

This is an Advanced Topic, meaning it's for those who are doing over $200,000 GCI. If this is you and you would like our help starting Vendor Marketing, please respond to this blog.

I had a Farm Marketing magical moment last week after speaking to a few prospects and clients. Farm Marketing works. It can work even better using online Farm Marketing and mailings. In fact, if you properly add video, any agent could come out of nowhere and dominate a farm area of 500, 1,000, or 5,000 homes within 6 months if they used our systems. I would allocate about 75% for mailings and 25% for online farm marketing of community websites, blogs, videos, and other new technology.

Facebook Business Page and Facebook Community Pages - Every single client should already have a Facebook personal page and a Facebook business page. These are totally different things. In addition, we are starting to launch multiple Facebook Community Pages for some clients. Just like the domain name gold rush happened 10 years ago, there is a gold rush for Facebook business / community pages. The amazing thing is that they are totally free, but you need to invest at least one hour per week to make them viable.

Who knows the future? In 3-5 years, owning the Facebook Community Page for CITYNAME Real Estate or CITYNAME Community may be more valuable than the website domain name for that same keyword. If you would like our help getting your 5-10 best pages claimed and properly running ASAP, respond to this blog.

Like this blog? Do us a favor and “like” us on Facebook . Would you like help identifying ways you can improve your Marketing Strategy? Reply to this blog and we can get started. For more information on how Best Agent Business can help you streamline your marketing, time management, and many other aspects of your Real Estate Business, subscribe to our videos, visit us at www.bestagentbusiness.com, call (202) 297-2393, or e-mail us at: sales@bestagentbusiness.com.

Best Agent Business

Part Time Virtual Assistants

Steve Kantor, President

Schedule a call with Steve Kantor at

http://www.bestagentbusiness.com/schedule-a-call.htm