50 Lead Generation Ideas to Achieve 100 Leads a Week

Provided By: KW.com


Sometimes, we tend to over-complicate the lead generation portion of our business. Sure, technology and social media that have allowed us to be more creative but at the heart of it all, the simple fact is that wherever people are, there’s an opportunity to find a prospective customer. Successful real estate agents know this and are always on the look-out for a good lead – even if it’s not the most obvious place.


In KW MAPS Coaching’s BOLD Experience, students are challenged to think outside the sacred three-hour lead generation time block and make 100 contacts in a week. Those who accomplish the challenge become members of the “BOLD 100 Club” – which, today, is made up of hundreds of agents across North America.
Does making 100 contacts in seven days seem like a daunting task to undertake? It might if you aren’t armed with lead generation ideas. Thankfully, we stumbled upon 50 from a Family Reunion presentation taught by KWU Master Faculty Instructor and team leader, Gene Frederick.
Some of these lead generation methods may already be on your radar. Some you might never have thought of. Others may sound a little silly at first.
But consider the possibilities. Ask yourself what 100 contacts could do for your business. And give it a go!

The best way to start is to choose three lead generation methods to focus on. Set goals for each, create action plans and track your results. Then find someone to hold you accountable to your goals.
Happy hunting!
1. Garage Sales
2. Car Dealers
3. Financial Advisors
4. Airlines
5. HOA Associations
6. Running Club
7. Gym/Personal Trainers
8. New Home Builder Reps
9. Building Co-owners
10. College Alumni Associations
11. Weddings
12. Move In Parties
13. City Holiday Celebrations
14. Marriage Counselors
15. CPAs
16. BNI: Business Network International
17. Mortgage Companies
18. Title Companies
19. Inspectors
20. Appraisers
21. Moving companies
22. Chamber of Commerce
23. PTAs
24. Volunteer for School Trips
25. Band
26. Choir
27. Sports/Booster Clubs
28. Teachers
29. Principals
30. Judges
31. Charities
32. HOA Associations
33. Relocation Companies
34. Country Clubs
35. Realtor Seminars
36. College Alumni Associations
37. First-time Homebuyer Seminars
38. Before-Market Preview Properties
39. Apartment Representatives
40. Places of Worship
41. Radio
42. TV
43. Back of Your Laptop
44. Stockbrokers
45. Door Knocking
46. Veteran Associations
47. Hair Salon
48. Realtor Associations
49. Singles Organizations
50. Meet-Up.com
Which three will you choose?

5 WAYS REAL ESTATE AGENTS FAIL AT SOCIAL MEDIA

Provided By: sem-group.net

The way we communicate on a daily basis has changed radically over the last ten years. In our ever changing world of communication, social media is what’s in vogue. Everywhere you turn you can’t escape it whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin or one of the many others that are cropping up daily. Social media is a way of keeping in touch with the world around us just like reading the daily newspaper used to be. How many people actually sit down and read a newspaper cover to cover anymore? Probably not nearly as many as there were going back even five years ago. How we deliver news is no longer the same.

 

With new forms of communication, come new rules of the game. While social media is an information delivery mechanism, it is also a way of socializing as well. Those that are really good at social media will tell you being “social” is what matters most. Building relationships is a big part of what social media is about.

 

REAL ESTATE AGENT SOCIAL MEDIA FAIL

 

There are countless industries that are really lacking when it comes to social media skills and Real Estate has to be right up there at the top. Having been a Massachusetts Realtor for the past twenty six years, I was immediately intrigued when social media started to catch on. This new way of being able to capture an audience fascinated me.

 

In fact I was one of the first Realtors in Massachusetts to have a Real Estate blog. Seeing some immediate success only enhanced my desire to use social media as it should be used. One of the best ways to do that was of course to emulate what other successful people were doing. By trial and error I could see that those that were having the most success followed some very simple rules of etiquette. They were not necessarily in the Real Estate industry but clearly had a grasp on making it work for them.

 

Some of the common denominators of success include thinking of social media as a way to form successful partnerships with others by providing information that could help them learn, laugh, think and possibly reciprocate. Those that do social media well are givers not takers. They do not look at social media as an advertising billboard. The it’s “all about me” mantra does not work well in social circles.

 

Real Estate agents unfortunately are some of the worst violators of many of these simple social media skills. There are many popular social media channels that Real Estate agents are using improperly. I am going to illustrate some of the more common social media blunders below and hopefully if you are a Realtor reading this you will adjust your thinking. It is also certainly possible you are not even in the Real Estate industry and have made the kind of mistakes illustrated below.

 

Facebook Social Media Fail

 

Facebook has to be one of the top social media sites for Real Estate agents making silly blunders. Social media failure here comes in what can best be described as SPAM! One of the more popular Facebook features is the ability to invite people to an event. This of course is terrific if there happens to be a local event that those who ARE LOCAL to the area will want to attend.

 

A good example of the proper use of a Facebook invite would be a band asking those in their local contacts to come check them out. Using Facebook in this manner is a big win for the band to get the word out and also great for those on the invite list who may enjoy good music.

 

A Facebook invite however is not for your entire list of Facebook friends! I can not even tell you how many times a week I get the most silliest invites from other Real Estate agents. Hey Bill please come to my pancake social next week in California. Sorry Jeff I am busy selling homes and will not be able to make it. While I am sure the pancakes will be delicious, I won’t be flying from coast to coast just to try them.

 

Kids birthday parties are another Facebook failure that agents just love. Hey Molly the Realtor I am sure your daughters birthday party at some Virginia bowling alley is going to be a blast but Bill the Realtor from Massachusetts won’t be able to make it. Seriously folks it doesn’t take that much longer to invite people who will want to attend your event. Do you know how absurd you look when you don’t think about your actions in social media?

 

Guess what happens after people get tired of constantly seeing your foolish invites? If you guessed people hit the blocked button it’s Bingo for you! The thing is you will never get a notification that you are blocked it just happens. Obviously this is not something you want!

 

Another thing that Realtors love doing on Facebook is boasting about how busy they are. It goes something like this “OMG I am so busy out showing homes for the third time this week blah blah blah.” A quick check of the agent boasting how busy they are reveals they have sold 5 homes all year and it is September. Please if you are going to talk about how wonderful you are doing, at least have the stats to back it up! Other people certainly will and show your competitors to boot.

 

Google Plus Social Media Failure

 

Google plus is the newest social media site on the scene and rapidly becoming one of the most popular. One of the neat things about Google Plus is how you are able to create “circles” for those that you follow. A circle is just another name for a category or group of people. If you are a Real Estate agent you could have circles for a number of things including other Realtors, family and friends, people who share an interest and any number of other possibilities.

 

What is really neat about Google plus is that not only can you share something “public” which will put your post into anyone’s stream who happens to follow you but also directly to a circle as well. As an example let’s say I want to share a fantastic post about why Realtors should claim Google authorship. It would make sense if I had a group of Realtors I knew well and interacted with daily, they may want to see a helpful article like this. Google plus allows me to send this directly to them. Since those in my circle know me, it is not unusual for them to get notified of a post I have created. You could certainly call this an instant notification of content worthy of viewing.

 

One of the ways sharing posts directly with someone in Google Plus can be considered a no-no is when you do not know them. It is not appropriate for one Realtor to send another Realtor their latest and greatest “share” if they don’t know the person. Even worse is when a Realtor sends someone outside of the Real Estate industry a direct posting.

 

It is really a poor assumption to think everyone wants to read or look at what you have posted. There are tons of people who could care less about Real Estate and don’t want to see pictures of the home you just sold or what is happening in your town USA. So many Real Estate agents just don’t get this. This would be akin to a dentist sending a bunch of Realtors pictures of a cavity they just filled. Most dentists wouldn’t even dream of doing something so stupid. Realtors on the other hand, make mistakes like this all too often because they think of social media as one big advertising bulletin board.

 

Linkedin Social Media Failure

One of the terrific features of Linkedin is the groups that you can become a member of that regularly share great information within a certain niche. Real Estate being no exception. There are quite a few Real Estate groups where fantastic ideas for growing your business are shared. As a Realtor looking to gain a new method to grow your business or finding some cool new technology, some of these groups can be a great place to visit. This of course is the case until some agent comes along and drops a bunch of his or her listings into the site.

 

Groups on linkedin are NOT for Real Estate listings! Seriously why on earth do you think someone in Massachusetts or anywhere else for that matter would want to see your 3 bedroom Ranch in Oregon? THEY DON’T. A professional group where you discuss ways to improve your business is not an open invitation to SPAM your listing. This again goes back to the billboard mentality that many agents have engrained into their head.

 

Unless you are marketing a Hollywood superstars property or some other extravagant home owned by a famous millionaire nobody cares about your dam listing. Stop putting listings into a professional Real Estate group unless of course you want to continue looking unprofessional to everyone else!

 

Twitter Social Media Fail

 

Twitter is another place that some Realtors fail miserably at. The problem here is that Realtors far too often just drop in content and then don’t respond if someone has a question. The best example again is the Realtor who will drop one of their listings into the site via a tweet and then when they are lucky enough to get someone to respond it goes unnoticed.

 

The thing about social media is that you need to use these sites daily if you expect them to work as intended. There is no point in dropping a link into Twitter if you are not going to respond in a timely fashion or at all.

 

If sharing your listings on Twitter is what your focus is then I guarantee you have failed at this social media site. Twitter is for providing great content that others can use. It is not about YOU! Your focus on Twitter should be sharing valuable information that others can benefit from. The content doesn’t necessarily have to be your own either. Sharing other peoples articles on Twitter is what builds relationships and increases your following!

 

 

Share Button & SEO Social Media Fail

 

Real Estate agents are notorious for using social media sharing tools that are embedded into their websites as plugins to send their content to various networks and then doing nothing else. Social media is about being social! It is NOT about personal promotion. Stop dumping your content and doing nothing else. Interaction and reciprocation is what makes social media work! All of the social media sites mentioned above are tools to build relationships with people. They are not link dumps! So many Realtors confuse the benefits of social media by thinking it is some kind of exercise in SEO.

 

In fact one of the more awkward things that you see from Realtors is posting their website address like this —> http://www.sellmyhomeinmetrowestma.com <—- as part of a signature in various social media sites when they make comments like there is some kind of magical SEO benefit for doing so. This is incredibly stupid and does nothing for you other than making you look like a buffoon.

 

Most Realtors know very little about SEO. This is illustrated very clearly when those in the industry add widgets from sites like Zillow and Trulia to their websites effectively helping those sites outrank agents for their own local keywords. For those that don’t understand what I am talking about here is an explanation of how Realtors help Zillow and Trulia gain better web position. SEO is actually a vital part of any Real Estate agents marketing arsenal. There is no doubt what so ever that having your website appear on the first page of Google for competitive Real Estate search phrases is going to help your business!

 

If you are a Real Estate agent reading this or anyone else in business for that matter, I hope some of what you have discovered here about social media to be an eye opener. Keep in mind that successful use of social media starts with engaging others. Provide great content of your own and share others content as well. Make sure you reciprocate and say thank you to those that help you become more visible. Do these things and you will see the long term benefit of business growth!

Development group buys large tract near Rockwall

Provided By: DallasBusinessJournal.com

A group of undisclosed investors through Southstar Woodcreek Developer LLC has bought a large 850-acre tract of residential and commercial land within the Woodcreek master-planned community in Fate, a suburb about 35 miles east of Dallas.

The tract of land was the last remaining undeveloped piece within the community. Terms of the land deal were undisclosed. Andrew Prine of Stratford Land brokered the deal.

Southstar plans to continue developing tracts to regional and national homebuilders. Currently, the master-planned community has more than 1,500 homes. The Woodcreek development has the potential to house more than 4,600 residential homes.

"Our group of seasoned real estate investors and managers are very excited to be a part of this thriving Metroplex community," said Patrick Sessions, a managing director with the investment group, in a written statement. "We plan to enhance the community even further by adding a new amenity center, making some improvements to the current center and improve on-site signage and reinvigorate the marketing program."

Dallas-based Provident Realty Advisors will manage the community's day-to-day operations. United Development Funding provided the financing the land acquisition and project development.

The master-planned community includes an amenity center, oversized gourmet kitchen, media and conference room, outdoor patio, fitness facility and children's play area. Woodcreek includes a community lake, sports field, splash park and pool and two elementary schools.

Keller Williams Realty Becomes Largest Real Estate Franchise in North America!

Provided By: http://moving-careers.com/keller-williams-realty-becomes-largest-real-estate-franchise-in-north-america/

Keller Williams Realty Becomes Largest Real Estate Franchise in North America
Company reports record growth, productivity and profitability gains;
announces expansion into the United Kingdom.

 

AUSTIN, TX (September 16, 2013) - With a net gain of 12,000 associates in the past year, Keller Williams Realty is now the largest real estate franchise in North America. The announcement, based on publicly available agent count data as of September 9, 2013, was made during Keller Williams Realty’s Midyear State of the Company presentation. Keller Williams is now home to more than 90,000 associates around the world.

 

“We are not a company of complacency,” CEO Mark Willis said. “We have the best business model in the industry and it’s leading to increased productivity, profitability and profit sharing that are at all-time highs for our company and unrivaled in our industry.”

 

In recent months, Keller Williams Realty has shattered its monthly records for listings taken, contracts written, commissions earned, owner profit and profit share:

 

• Year over year, units are up 8 percent, closed volume is up 17 percent and gross commission income is up 18 percent.
• Ninety-five percent of the company’s offices are profitable year to date – a figure that far outpaces the standard for franchise businesses.
• In the past 12 months, the company has distributed $58 million in profit share to associates, a 33 percent increase over the previous year.

 

Features for consumers include:

 

• The ability to search for homes based on criteria or by custom drawing on an interactive map;
• GPS localized data displays homes in a given area that match the consumer’s price range;
• The ability to easily swipe through galleries of photos to decide whether a home fits one’s needs and then add it to saved searches for convenient reference on the app or via the agent’s website, where the saved searches are synced;
• The ability to save notes on properties for future reference; and
• Faster communication between agents and consumers via call, text or email.

 

The strong growth, productivity and profitability gains follow a year of milestones for the company:

 

• The release of the Keller Williams mobile app – personally branded for each of the company’s 90,000 associates. In the past 30 days, more than 58,000 consumers have downloaded the app to their Apple and Android devices.
• Publication of co-founder Gary Keller’s new book, The ONE Thing, which has appeared on 117 bestseller lists, including The New York Times, where it has been on the business bestseller list for 5 months, and The Wall Street Journal, where it earned the #1 spot.

 

Willis used concepts from The ONE Thing to illustrate his presentation, which took place at Mega Camp, the real estate industry’s premier educational and networking event for top producers. “Keller Williams leaders, what you’re doing is lining up a perfect domino run,” he said. “Being #1 in agent count in the United States was our first domino. We’re on our way to knocking over bigger and bigger dominos until we’re #1 in agent count, transactions and volume all across the world.”

 

Keller Williams Worldwide President Chris Heller also announced the company’s expansion into the United Kingdom. In recent years, the company’s global division has announced franchise agreements in Austria, Germany, Indonesia, Southern Africa, Switzerland, Turkey and Vietnam. Heller touted the achievements of the company’s regions outside of North America and welcomed more than 100 international guests from countries including Brazil, China, Colombia, Ghana, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland and Russia.

 

“Around the globe, entrepreneurs, brokers and agents are looking for and asking for what we offer,” Heller said. “They crave our models, systems, training and technology. And because Keller Williams can offer all of those at a level they have never seen before, we are attracting tremendous talent and gaining momentum.”

 

“Success leaves clues,” Keller Williams President Mary Tennant said during her State of the Culture update. “And your unprecedented achievements this year all flow from the culture of success, caring and opportunity you created and are enhancing every day.”