Getting Listings

Are You An Opinion Leader?

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Russell Shaw

photo credit: www.rishimodi.com Management is telling people what to do. Leadership is teaching them how to think. Opinion leaders tell people what to think. Despite various surveys indicating how low the general public ranks real estate agents, some agents are highly respected by their clients and peers. How does that happen? To understand how that is accomplished, first let’s look at the concept of influencing the opinions of others. Various studies have shown that media communication intended to change someone’s buying or voting behavior seldom works directly. The communication may be directly received by the person it is intended

Will This Post Win The Inman Innovation Award?

Posted on August 31, 2008 by Russell Shaw

Actual link to Google Maps What you are looking at is an actual image from Google maps. If you want to see what others are saying about it, you can find it on various sites. Is it innovative? A little bit, maybe. But in the end, probably not. Does a Realtor really need to "be innovative" to succeed? I don’t think so. There are more and more "out of the box" ideas that are presented to the real estate industry almost every day. Loads and loads of "new" stuff that is really just more old stuff. Most of the agents

A Talk I Gave to New Agents

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Russell Shaw

This was for new John Hall agents and the room was very hot, so I had two big fans going at the same time. Unfortunately, you can hear the fan noise. The talk is a bit over 90 minutes total and it has been split into nine parts. It is in mp3 format and clicking on each of the links will open the file in your computer. People who have heard me speak many times before said it it was very very good. Other than the fan noise, I agree with them. Talk from Russell on July 16th, 2008 part

The Enemy Line

Posted on July 20, 2008 by Russell Shaw

Achieving success is primarily a mental thing. One can observe the physical actions and results but sitting behind those actions and results are thoughts. "Correct" thoughts. The right kind of thinking leads to the right kind of actions. In any meaningful and desirable activity there is an infinity of incorrect ways to attempt to accomplish the intended result. There are but a few "correct" methods. Correct is being defined in this context to mean it works. That kind of thinking will produce the intended result. Usually, even in what could be classified as a purely "physical activity" the difference between

Listers Last

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Russell Shaw

This post started as a comment in response to some of the comments to this post on Agent Genius. Russell, in a matter of a few minutes, can give you the names of dozens of listing teams across the nation doing equal or far more business than he does. He can’t, however, do the same for buyer agent teams. Correct. I am in the top 200 agents in the U.S. again this year. But I am not "the" top. Last year (2006 stats) I was number 25 in the team "sides" category. There were a number of people who beat

Which is Better: a Home Buyer or a Home Seller?

Posted on July 14, 2008 by Russell Shaw

It probably depends on your point of view. Are you looking for a quick nickel or a slow dollar? Do you want a job or a business? How about in "this market"? Isn’t it better to have a buyer than a listing now? I’ve written before that my expertise is in getting and getting rid of listings. In some of those posts I’ve seen comments to the effect that I forgot to mention working buyers. I didn’t forget. To sell a house you need a buyer. Each time and without exception. It just goes with the territory. But if your

How High and How Low Can Your Commission Go?

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Russell Shaw

What is your time worth per hour? Your fee structure would reflect that amount. Just how does a working Realtor get their income up? Charge more? Get more people to pay them? Both? Some other answer? A few years ago (late 2004 and through 2005) there was more downward pressure on real estate commissions than I’ve seen seen in the past thirty years. There were a lot of lower commission companies that started and there was a tremendous amount of media coverage about real estate commissions needing to go down. The "news articles" and that viewpoint are still being worked

Is it Possible That Only 7% of All Realtors Do Over 90% of the Business?

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Russell Shaw

Jonathan correctly pointed out that a third of of the members of NAR sold nothing last year. Amazingly, that isn’t new – that has been true for as long as such stats have been kept on how much is being sold. In a solicitation email I received from Dirk Zeller he talked about the Pareto Principle – better known as the 80-20 rule. This would suggest that 20% of the agents do 80% of the business and that 80% of the agents do the remaining 20%. Dirk did some research for his area (Bend, Oregon) and concluded that Bend

Quantity – Quality – Viability

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Russell Shaw

“Miracles are great, but. they are so damned unpredictable.” – Peter Drucker Quantity, then quality, then viability. That is the correct sequence with regard to leads, listings and leverage. Leads always comes first. In this business if one can not generate sufficient leads nothing else will matter. It will make no difference how smart you are or how much you know – if you don’t have any customers to talk to. Lead conversion is obviously the action sitting between having sufficient leads to wind up with a sufficient amount of listings. But just having enough leads is the very first

The iRuss – a Look From the Other Side

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Russell Shaw

This post is in response to my last one. I had no idea it would be so well received. Having surveyed only myself, to me it was a post I tossed off. This post consists of the responses to the questions and points raised. I want an iRuss also! A mini iPod crammed full of Russell Shaw podcasts and videos… You know, there could be some $$ that idea… Go to this page and load yours up. Scroll down to the lower half for the audio and video content. sometimes as we are at the appointment, we learn about things

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