•1.                 List to Last.  Hone your listing skills, or learn to live with less.  70+% of the agents in my market have not had a single sale this entire year.  They were the order takers of yesteryear, and many of them are already out.  If you used to keep 20 listings, now you need 120.  That's right!     

Working with Buyers is very time consuming.  With tons of expireds, all you have to do is practice, practice, practice listing.  The more you do that, the better you'll be at it. 

List for the right price.  What is the right price?  2-5% below your latest comps.  Don't forget to analyze the active listings before deciding on that right price.  Appraisers now use active listings, not just sold comps to arrive at a pricing decision, and so should you.

Ask the Seller for a price reduction at least once a month until the property sells.  Stay alert and inform your Seller of any other price drops in the neighborhood.  You want to consistently be the lowest priced active comp, so you can get first dibs on the showings.

Make it easy for agents to show your listings.  Put MLS lockboxes in easy to reach places.  Service your listings regularly and make sure they are comfortable environments.  Keep it cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter.  Put up air freshners.  We do a clean sweep of "cards and bugs" at least once a month on all our vacant listings. 

Show & Treat.  Leave fliers and treats for the agents and Buyers seeing your listings.  Bite sized candy bars so popular with trick-o-treaters, are also popular with the Realtors and prospective Buyers.  Put up a sign that says: "Agents and Buyers: Take a flier and a treat!   Thank you for coming!"  Your listing will at least stand out as "the listing with the treats".   Sugar always puts a smile on one's face and attaches pleasant memories to whatever else goes with it.  It might as well be your listing...

•2.                 Make it Impossible for the Seller to say No.   Impress the Seller with your knowledge, your skills, your advertising, your reporting, your fresh ideas, etc.  Offer more value than any other agent.  Do more than anybody else.  Once you get the listing walk the walk. 

Whatever you do, make sure you charge the right amount of commission.   Since it takes me a lot more money and effort to sell a listing, we have raised our commissions.  We offer more money to the co-operating brokerage also, so they have more incentive to show and hopefully sell our listings.

•3.                 Net sheet every listing presentation.  Net sheet every price reduction.  If you have not discovered the magic of the net sheet, read my blog on it: "Just Show Me The Money!"   The bottom line to your Seller is now more important than ever...

•4.                 Report back to your Seller, REGULARLY.    Gone are the days of the expedient sale.  With properties lingering on the market month after month, you better have continuous communication with your Seller, or your Seller will think you're just sitting on your duff doing nothing. 

At least once a month, all my sellers receive in-depth reports containing:

•a.       All the showings and comments from the agents who showed the property;

•b.      Current competition in the particular project and the immediate area.  What listings have sold in the neighborhood (if any).  What comparable listings have sold in the immediate area and for how much.  

•c.       Overall statistics for the area, showing how many properties are currently available for sale, how many have sold and for how much.  The absorption rate is also specified (it takes 3.5 years to sell out of our current condo inventory).

•d.      A copy of ALL my advertising. 

•e.      A copy of the MLS listing for the property. 

Send the reports by e-mail whenever possible, snail mail if not.  Follow up with a phone call to the Seller, going over everything, answering any questions, then asking for a price reduction.

Make your Seller an integral part of your team.   Use the word "US", instead of you and I.  Once you become "partners", you are in the same team.  Brainstorm together, share ideas, work together to get the job done. 

•5.                 Cross Market.  This is a favorite one of mine and one that deserves a lot of brainstorming and attention.  Here are some ideas:

•a.       For every listing you have, have another similar one to pitch to agents when they call to make showing arrangements.  They call to facilitate showing one of your listings, and they end up showing two.  Now you have 100% more chances of an offer...

•b.      While your leads are waiting on hold, entice them with some superb Real Estate deals "du jour".  Why have elevator music, when you can have a sales pitch?

•c.       Why send blank e-mails, when you can stamp each one of your e-mails with a few of your listings?  I have one listing websites for all my listings, masked with either the address of the property or the subdivision name (typically both).  You will see my mug, contact data and two or three of my current listings stamped on every one of my outgoing e-mails.

•d.      Use your card to market your listings.  Advertise at least one of your listings on the back of your cards.   The one listing websites are typically what I use.  See:  www.PalmettoHarbor.com              

•e.      Post a blog a day and have it sent automatically to all your subscribers - any and all leads, current, past and future clients.  Active Rain gives you access to a plethora of fantastic information.  Feel free to use any and all my blogs labeled with the re-blog sign to post on your website.  This will not only keep your website fresh and Googlecious, but will have you in front of your clients on a daily basis AND build you as the Real Estate expert that you are.

•f.       I have about a dozen more ideas I'll post in a later blog.   I bet you can concoct some great ones of your own.  Just think: your mission is to come up with at least one "Cross Marketing" idea today.  Just one!  Bring it to us please, in exchange for all of these!

•6.                 Go International.   Open your eyes to doing International business.  You don't have to be bilingual to represent foreign buyers.  Most savvy International Investors speak English, and you can have anything translated for free right on line.  See:  "Free Online Translator"

Also, look into training on how to do business internationally.   Invest in CIPS education.  

•7.                 Advertise like your life depended on it.  Learn as much as possible about Advertising and dedicate a lot more attention and money to it.  A weak market necessitates a lot more advertising to get the same job done.  Yes, I've made less money and I've spent more, but I'm still at the top in my market - I consider it an INVESTMENT in my business.   Read the comments to: "I'm Overspending My Advertising Budget Again This Year; I Can't Afford Not To!"  

•8.                 Figure out how to do more with less.  Cut off all the "Fat".  Get Lean.   ...And I don't mean, go on a diet...  Run a tight ship.  Get rid of superfluous expenditures that do not deliver.  From cutting unproductive staff, to cleaning up all expenses that do not deliver, these lean times call for "trimming the fat" in business...

•9.                 Learn to love systems.  Figure out a system for everything, from creating a list of all the things you have to do once you have a listing, to automatically paying your bills on line, to formulating advertising you re-create over and over.  Have a system in place for everything.  Once a system is in place, follow it 100% of the time.  Systems allow you and your team to do more in less time.

•10.           Educate or stagnate.  In a very competitive market such as ours, education takes on a new meaning: it is no longer a choice, but a requirement.    If you are not up to date on lease with an option to buy, land contract of sale transactions, owner financing and other such instruments, you better take a crash course soon, so you can educate your Sellers and provide them with viable alternatives to straight sales.  The more you know, the more your Clients will benefit.  Read:   "Do You BS, or CRS?"   

•11.           If you can't sell it, rent it.  If you are not doing property management, this is a good time to start.  If you don't want to do that, at least ally yourself with a very good property manager.   Explore the option of renting when the Sellers simply can not afford to sell (when they don't have the money to bring to closing...). 

•12.      Develop a few Niches of your own.  Whether it's selling to Seniors, or Positioning yourself as a Foreclosure/Short Sale Specialist, Niches will help you garner unique opportunities in a market such as ours.  Of course, you have to work to "Niche"; you can't just call yourself the specialist, you actually have to garner the necessary training (pay the price).

Myrtle Beach Real Estate by Mirela Monte                           Join The Optimist Group!