How Different is Social Networking from Real World Professional Networking?
Interesting post from one of the gurus of real estate coaching Mike Ferry.
I am currently at the Inman News conference and the core topic is ... yes you guessed it ... social networking.
One of the speakers said that social networking is actually the same as personal and professional networking in the real world. As Mike mentions below, if he were to use a bullhorn to yell out to 100,000 agents, he probably won't have a great conversion from prospects to customers. But when he actually uses personal communication, he has a much higher conversion rate.
What do you think?
It's interesting that the Real Estate world is convinced that the web ... the internet ... social media ... are the answers to all the problems that we deal with. As most of you know, I get criticized on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis on the fact that I don't support this type of thinking. If you really do spend any time on the internet today (which I hope you don't) you'll see that the amount of information that is being put out is so extraordinary that it makes getting to good solid information more difficult every day. For those of you that question this, even the experts are saying it's becoming a useless tool because anybody can put anything on the internet and it immediately becomes ... "law."
I keep saying the same thing ... if you learn how to communicate with people and you improve your communication skills, you're going to win the game, whether it is sales, or management leadership. I can't imagine that you're going to blog, text, or twitter one of your children when they're doing something wrong ... and if you are, there's something wrong with you.
We use social media ... the internet, etc. as an excuse for communicating and most people that are "thinking" understand exactly what I'm saying, and all those people, whether they be in Real Estate or other professions, who aren't "thinking" will continue to use any device they can use to avoid human contact. Take a look at the following series of numbers ...
We have 77,000 customer names in our database. We have 55,000 with email addresses, we have 30,000 of what we call "good emails" ... 25,000 of those addresses are changed so often we can't keep up, so therefore they are no good.
We sent an email invitation to the 2011 Superstar Retreat to 20,000 of the 77,000 ... we scrubbed all MFO clients, and those already registered for the Retreat ... an invitation to come to the Retreat.
16,000 actually received it ... 4,000 disappeared into space.
949 actually opened the email ... 671 went to the website ... and 3 actually bought a ticket.
So here's what's interesting ... we at The Mike Ferry Organization have access to all the latest technology, and we've sold 4000+ tickets by talking to people and 3 through technology ... well, that isn't going to shut up the technology people but it sure keeps my mind clear on the fact that if we're not talking to people, we're not going to make sales.
Mike Ferry
CEO - The Mike Ferry Organization
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