Lemons into Lemonade or where have all the buyers gone

Hi,

Reg Gupton here.

Yesterday while on a group coaching session with my clients, more than one person complained that their pipeline was empty or near empty. They were freaking out.

I explored the obvious action or should I say inaction when the market gets tough. In my 30 years in the housing as an agent, CRS instructor and now coach, I have observed that agents withdraw into themselves when things get hard like a turtle or ostrich putting its head in the sand hoping that things will get better if I just wait.

They retreat rather than look at what is working for a colleague, what has worked in other down markets or, where the opportunities are now.

One of my hiking/outdoor friends is actively investing in the stock market. On a hike recently, were talking about what she was doing as the market move up one day and down the next. She told me that the investor with the right attitude and skills could make money in any market. She is doing fine, thank you very much.

I asked my clients yesterday: "Who is this the right market for? Who should be buying is this market?"

This is a short list of those who should take advantage of this market.

• Those who can put 20+% down.
• Those who have great credit.
• Those who have a good, stable income. And more importantly believe it is going to last.
• Those who believe that rental and non-rental properties might go down slightly before they go back up as they always have in the past.
• Those investors who plan to hold their property for 5-10 years.
• Those who want to take advantage of the lowest interest rates in 40-50 years (depending on who you listen to).
• First-time buyers who plan to stay for 5 plus years.
• Those who would like to take advantage of a huge listing inventory.
• Those who would like to work with motivated sellers.

After we created this list of the characteristics of the target audience, I asked them: "now what?"

They decided that crafting two emails, one for investors and one for everyone else would be the thing to do.

These emails will be sent to their lists several times with different subject lines as between 65 and 80% will not have opened and read them the first time they are sent.

I hope you will do the same.

If you are looking for a book to help you these tough times, look no further. It is here:



To your continued success,

Reg Gupton

Are you making this marketing mistake?

Reg Gupton here again.

In 1967, I graduated with a Bachelors in Business Administration from Eastern Michigan University. Then in 1969 I got my MBA in marketing and quantitative methods. From that time on I have been a student of best marketing and sales practices.

Marketing Basics

The way that people and companies market has obviously evolved over the years, but there are some facets that remain the same and have for over 90 years..

Three things that I have seen work consistently throughout the years are as follows:

1. Building and nurturing a relationship with your clients and prospects creates an environment that is conducive to marketing and sales, which become more like suggestions and referrals.

2. Providing value above and beyond what is expected will help to nurture relationships and also help people to know, like, and trust you.

3. Putting systems or processes in place to handle tedious or menial marketing tasks makes accomplishing your goals and objectives seem much more simple or less monotonous.

Marketing continues to evolve in conjunction with the ways that people communicate with each other. As you can imagine it is tough to keep up with the changing trends, but you don’t have to be doing the latest greatest thing to be generating leads from your marketing.

No Need for New Tricks

Even in our fast paced world there are some tools that continue to produce great results even today. Of these tools, a personal favorite of mine is direct mail. Direct mail delivers a physical presence to the client/prospect and has numerous applications.

I would recommend that you use ExpressCopy for direct mail for several reasons:

There are many occasions that warrant sending out a touch to a client or prospect and ExpressCopy has hundreds and hundreds of pre-made postcard designs and layouts to make the process easier

You’ll find scheduling mailings a breeze, the time you will save is undeniable
ExpressCopy postcards are professional and protected by UV lamination, ensuring that they arrive looking like they are hot off the press

It’s a Win Win

If you sign up for ExpressCopy through me, I will make a little bit of money, but in return I would like to offer you something extra.

After you sign up for ExpressCopy through me I am thrilled to talk with you for a free 1/2 hour session (a $150 value) with me during which we can talk about to whom and with what frequency you should be sending direct mail.

Sending direct mail is not always obvious. Over my 30 years in the housing I have seen many, many agents waste their money by doing this wrong.

Until August 20th, ExpressCopy is running a summer special on their direct mail pieces. This means that you can save 4 cents per postcard, which will add up. If you were to schedule all of your holiday mailers now, by pre-purchasing and scheduling their send out date, then you could lock in the summer discounted rate. I called to check on this. It is true.

Even if you don’t get to lock in the summer special price, ExpressCopy still provides an excellent value and will always save you time.

To your continued success,

Reg Gupton