By Tom Branch, on August 20th, 2010 
Patricia Kennedy’s blog titled, “‘Bad’ Behavior Doesn’t Always Violate The Realtors’ Code Of Ethics” struck a note with me.
Customers make an interesting study. It seems that they always want the very most for the very least they’ll have to pay. They are ruthless, selfish, demanding and disloyal.
You know the story. You’ve done business with someone for several years and they’ve been a good customer. You’ve given them the best service possible and you think they are your customer for life. But then some little thing possibly out of your control goes wrong, or they see an ad or get a call from a competitor, someone they’ve never met before, with a slightly lower price, and the next thing you know, they are gone, oftentimes without a single word to you.
At first you don’t notice it. But one day you realize that it’s been a while since you’ve seen or heard from that customer. When you find out what happened, you feel badly, because if they would have just called you, you might have been able to make a couple of changes and save the business. But it’s too late, they’re gone.
This scenario is repeated time and again with business owners from every company who sell every type of product or service. It is going to happen. To pretend that it doesn’t, or won’t happen, is simply deceiving yourself.
It’s incredible how many business owners just write off the loss of a good customer. But that’s not the thing you should do. Instead, now is the time to become even more proactive and go after that “lost” customer.
One of the best ways to minimize or cut down on the frequency of losing your good customers is to resell them on the reasons they bought from you in the first place. Regularly scheduled meetings or conversations with your customers to remind them of their motives can go a long way in helping insulate your business from the competition.
Remember that your competition has similar products, services and prices. Also remember that your customers’ reasons for buying are only 35 percent based on those products, services, and prices – the other 65 percent is for what you can do for them.
Spend the time with them. Review their needs, wants and concerns. Remind them why they bought from you in the first place. Reinforce their motives and their decisions for buying, and you will reduce your customer defection rate and develop not only loyal customers, but friends as well.
By Tom Branch, on August 13th, 2010 
Laura McDaniel’s blog titled, “Google Images – Do you use them in your posts?” caught my attention and sent chills up my spine. By now I hope most of us realize that lifting images off the web is Copyright Infringement. But lifting photos is not the only way to wind up in trouble.
Let me tell you a story that will change the way you think about it.
We purchased a website template for a small website we ran as a lead generator. The template included a really nice image that suited our needs so we kept it and went live with the site in February of that year. Come July I get a Cease and Desist letter from a law firm and along with an invoice for $1000 as liquidated damages in lieu of a suit being filed.
That kind of letter will back you up. I figured I could handle this on my own since I purchased the photo as part of a template so I faxed off a letter to the law firm telling them how this occurred and that we purchased the photo as part of a template. I even included a copy of the receipt and contact information for the company who sold it to us. I figured that was taken care of and went back to work.
A few days later I get a return fax telling me that the company who sold us the photo had not licensed it. They wanted us to comply with the Cease and Desist and pay them the $1000. At this point I gave in and called my lawyer. This was the start of a serious lesson in US Copyright Law.
Lessons learned:
– US Copyright Law does not recognize innocent infringement. I had it on our site and regardless of how it got there (with a few exceptions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act – none of which applied to me) I was considered a Copyright Infringer.
– Since the photo was not registered with the Federal Copyright Office, I was liable for the actual loss and any profit attributed to the use of the photo. They sell the photo for $49 and we had not generated any leads from the website so there was no profit to go after.
– Had the photo been registered, we would have been in far worse shape. The minimum award is $750 plus reasonable attorney fees. Awards can go substantially higher based on the situation.
Epilogue
Our lawyer sent the law firm our check for $49, a letter from our CPA that we actually had a YTD loss on the books, and that we would comply with the Cease and Desist portion of their request. They never cashed our check and we never heard from them again. I paid my lawyer for three hours of his time. Total cost about $1000 plus all the time and effort.
We went back through years of blogs and every website we owned. If we could not find the receipt for the photo it was removed. Now we only use photos that we have taken or purchased from reliable sources. We use iStockPhoto for most everything these days.
I never want to go through that again.
By Tom Branch, on August 9th, 2010 
I received an email this afternoon from a potential client. He had found a listing on Zillow and had emailed me for more information. The listing did not have an address but an ID number in Plano, Texas. The listing had been posted by a local agent with a large brokerage.
I dropped over to the MLS and brought up all of her listings. She had 7 active listings and none in Plano. I went back over to Zillow and noted she has over 170 active listings. I dropped her an email and asked her for the MLS number or listing information if this was a non-MLS listing. She emailed back that, I could look it up myself on a local new homes sales site.
What’s she’s done is to copy new home listings and put them up on Zillow as if they are her listings. I see some resale listings as well. I’ll bet those have been poached from other agents.
I see three issues–legal, ethical, and copyright.
I can’t find the rule in the Texas Property Code, but offering a property for sale without the consent of the owner rings a bell with me.
This is a clear violation of Article 12 of NAR’s Code of Ethics. SOP 12-4 states, ” REALTORS® shall not offer for sale/lease or advertise property without authority. When acting as listing brokers or as subagents, REALTORS® shall not quote a price different from that agreed upon with the seller/landlord.
Many of the “photos” are artists renderings taken from the builders’ listings. This is a clear case of copyright infringement.
I dropped her broker an email letting him know about the situation.
I started to dig around and easily found another broker doing the same thing. I’ll email him in the morning.
If they don’t take the “listings” down, I plan on going the distance with an ethics complaint.
I wonder how widespread this is?
By Tom Branch, on July 31st, 2010 
You are in business for yourself. That is, you may own your own business, or you may be associated with another company as an employee, a partner or an independent contractor. Your working agreement or arrangement doesn’t really matter.
The important thing to realize is that no matter what the arrangement or situation you presently find yourself in, you are really working for yourself. If you work by commission, for example, the sales you make are not only putting dollars in your employer’s pocket, they are putting dollars into your own pocket as well. The more you sell, the more you make.
Just consider yourself as a business that prospers or falters financially by the amount of commission dollars you generate. The point is, even though you may be working for, or are associated with another company, you are really working for yourself to increase the amount of money you earn for you.
Three Keys for Success
It’s important to realize that your success in whatever you do in business, or in life for that matter, will always be determined by three things:
1. The need or demand for what you do,
2. Your ability to do it, and
3. The difficulty in replacing you.
In other words, how valuable are you and the service you perform to other people? To illustrate this point, let’s apply our three step formula to the job of an elevator operator. In today’s world of push¬button, self operated elevators, how much need is there for the job he or she performs?
Most people are quite capable of operating an elevator themselves. It doesn’t take much knowledge or training, so an operator can be replaced without much difficulty. As a result, elevator operators, if you can even find one, are not paid much.
Now, contrast the elevator operator and the money he or she commands with that of a professional major league baseball player. Specifically a player that is good at batting.
What is the need for what they do? A look at attendance figures for baseball games will show that more than just a few fans are interested in watching what they do. So the need obviously is great.
How about the batter’s ability to do what he does? Sports analysts say that the action of hitting a ball moving toward you at over 90 miles per hour is the single most difficult movement in sports.
In the game of basketball, the target (the hoop) doesn’t move. Same in golf. While the ball moves, the hole, or goal, remains stationary. In football, there are 11 teammates all with a common goal of advancing the ball. But in baseball, it’s the batter alone trying to hit a small, 90 mph target with his bat. So it stands to reason then that the better or more often a batter can hit the ball, the more he or she will be compensated.
Now, what about the difficulty in replacing a good batter? When only the best in the world can hit the target less than a third of the time, and most of the other players are successful far less than that, it doesn’t take long to realize why the best batters are among the highest money¬makers in the world.
Obtaining Superior Rewards
Now how about you? It’s been said that you can tell how professional a person is by the size of their income at the end of the year.
And you can tell exactly how valuable the service you perform is by how much people are willing to pay you for it. If you do the same job that everybody else does, and do it no better than the way they do it, you can’t expect to earn more money or be considered any more valuable than those other people.
You see, the market, by nature, will pay superior rewards only for superior goods and services. It will pay average rewards for average goods and services, and it will see that inferior rewards are paid for inferior goods and services.
In other words, you will be rewarded in direct proportion to the value you provide your customers. It’s inescapable. That’s the law of nature.
Now, if the products and services you sell or provide are similar in coverage and price to everyone else’s (and most of them are), then the difference between you and other people in your position has to be in the type and amount of personal service you provide your customers and clients.
This then has to be the area you excel in – it becomes your competitive edge.
By Tom Branch, on July 28th, 2010 I was recently inreviewed as part of a story on online marketing strategies.
Written by Alice Allan on July 28, 2010
Crossing paths with a Google employee was the factor that focused Tom Branch’s online marketing strategy.
“I sold a property for a Google employee,” the Dallas-based RE/MAX broker associate explains. “I traded my services for an AdWords education!”
Branch says a “very focused” AdWords campaign gives him the best return on investment of all his online marketing strategies.
“AdWords can be really expensive unless you carefully build and monitor the results,” Branch explains. “I spend about $1500 per year and that generates $30k to $40k in revenue.”
But Branch’s strategy isn’t limited to AdWords alone. “Blogging helps with search engine ranking,” he adds. “I’m beginning to experiment with long tail keywords to see if I can take advantage of less competition.”
“I do almost no offline advertising these days,” Branch says. “There’s just no ROI.”
If you’ve been meaning to try out Google AdWords, but are unsure where to start, have a look at this simple how-to video released by the company earlier in the year. And for more on long tail keywords, read our guest explanation by Modern Search creator Joe Hanna here.
Related posts:
- Agent Strategies: A Real Estate Marketing Mix
- Agent Strategies: A Charitable Niche
- Agent Strategies: Hyper Local Blogging
- Google AdWords, SEO & Blogging: A UK Perspective – Part One
- Agent Strategies: Share Your Information
- Google AdWords, SEO & Blogging: A UK Perspective – Part Two
- Agent Strategies: Blogging Plus SEO
- Using Google Keywords for More Traffic
- Agent Strategies: Listings Are Not Enough
- AdWords Tips from Google
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By Tom Branch, on July 28th, 2010 
As a business person, it is imperative for you to understand that only 35% of the reason people buy the products or services you offer is for the actual product or service itself.
The other 65% of the reason they buy is for what you can do or provide beyond the product or service, and what that product or service does for the customer.
In other words, if you are trying to sell your customers and prospects products and services, you are wasting your time. They are only 35% interested in products and services.
But they are 65% interested in the benefits of having you involved.
You see, chances are good that your customers and prospects can buy the same product or service (or at least comparable ones) from any one of several of your competitors.
And with that product or service, your competitor may offer a number of additional advantages as well.
They may have a lower price, better quality product, some added bonuses or extra services, a location that’s more convenient, or a payment plan that fits their budget better.
In today’s tough, competitive market, it’s difficult to compete on price or product. You may be able to command a certain advantage for a period of time because you have a lower price than your competitors, but we both know that it will be short-lived.
The truth is you will never be able to maintain a competitive position in the marketplace – long-term – because of the prices you charge or the products you provide.
It’ll just be a matter of time before either one of your competitors lowers prices or duplicates (or even betters) your product, or you raise your prices because you no longer have the necessary margins to justify your prices.
But there’s one thing your customers can’t get from any of your competitors. And that’s you, your empathy, your problem solving expertise, and your knowledge and commitment to service that you bring to his or her unique situation.
By Tom Branch, on July 27th, 2010 
My recent blog titled, “Do You Have To Be Available 24/7/365?” garnered quite a few comments and some of them got me thinking about the kinds of people we attract.
According to Phylameana lila Desy, “The theory behind the Law of Attraction is that we create our own realities. We attract things we want and we also attract things we don’t want. We attract the people in our lives, the stuff in our homes, and the money in our bank accounts through our thoughts and feelings.”
How does this relate to our real estate businesses?
I’ll argue that our actions and attitudes attract certain types of clients.
If you’re the kind of agent who makes themselves available at all hours of the day and night, you attract those kinds of clients. While many of those same agents will tell you they hate working with those kinds of clients, they’re actually attracting them through their words and actions.
Does a well-dressed agent attract a different kind of client that one in jeans and a t-shirt?
If you discount your work for a client, does the next client expect the same?
To make matters worse, people know other people like themselves. It’s called centric behavior. So if you hated working with a certain client, you’re not likely to like any referral they send your way either.
Want to change the type of clients you attract?
First, you have to change the way you think and act. Second, you have to let some of the old clients go. Not all business is good business. Refer out those referrals to other agents and keep moving towards the “new” you.
Are you attracting the kind of clients you want to work with?
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