Define Your Brokerage
Signs, Video, Maps, GeoCoding, Mashups, IDX, RSS, Social Media & Twitter …
Next year is going to bring a lot of changes to the real estate industry, and one of the constant conversations I’m having now is – what would your brokerage look like? Here’s my starter list -
- Awesome signage for listings – signs are part of the foundation of real estate marketing, but I haven’t seen anything like this in my market.
- Video tours, photos, floorplans for all listings – simple to promise and systematize.
- Small brokerage, possibly broker-only, perhaps some higher level education component
- Menu-style commissions – let the consumers and the Realtors negotiate rather than rely on the MLS offering – mimic upfront mortgage brokers
- Embrace transparency
- Go paperless, a la Kris Berg
- Get consumers to use our search tool – and only our search tool
- Encourage associates to participate in the Local, State and National Associations
- No print marketing. Ever. (It’s environmentally friendly and fiscally responsible)
- Work as a team – sort of a hybrid of the white label brokerage.
- Have a company blog – internal and external – to ensure that we’re all reading important stuff. Publish really important stuff as well.
- Stay flexible, adaptable and able to re-invent every quarter, if necessary.
- Publish economic analyses quarterly
This is a start – what would your list look like? What tools would you have in your toolbox?
Having just finished Made to Stick, this statement stuck with me -
“We don’t want to be first, but we sure as hell don’t want to be third.”
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This article published on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm | Contact the editor
Topics: Coaching, Real Estate, Realtors
About this Columnist (Full Profile)
Dad, Husband, Charlottesville Realtor, real estate Blogger, occasional speaker – Inman Connects, NAR Conferences – based in Charlottesville, Virginia. A native Virginian, I graduated from VMI in 1998, am a third generation Realtor (since 2001) and have been “publishing” as a real estate blogger since January 2005. I’ve chosen to get involved in Realtor Associations on the local, state & national levels, having served on the NAR’s RPR & MLS groups.
Find me in Charlottesville, Crozet and Twitter.
Email Jim Duncan
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Comments (3)
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- Mark Eibner:
we’re at it again Define Your Brokerage: Next year is going to bring a lot of changes to the re.. http://tinyurl.com/74wsru
Benn Rosales
Conal Campbell
Elijah May
Lani Rosales
Tara Steele
Marti Trewe
Charlene Jimenez
This is an awesome list of ideas! Thanks for posting. I have been working on changing and re-defining my business model over this past year, implementing some of your ideas already. Now it’s time to start building a team of independent realtors looking for a change.
I am always amazed how many brokers continue to limp along without any idea how the real estate business model changed.
They continue to die a slow death and wonder what happened. You offer some great ideas, now only, if we could get them to “act”.