Every Listing Is Won Before You Ever Step Foot In The Seller’s Front Door

Every Listing is Won Before You Ever Step Foot in The Seller's Front Door

Sun Tzu said over 2,500 years ago in the ‘The Art of War',  “every battle is won before it is ever fought.”

Before you ever step foot on the battlefield the battle has already been won.

If you want to be a listing agent or want to be a better listing agent reading Sun Tzu's ‘The Art of War' is a must read.

The battle is nearly always the one going on inside your own head. 

The first step to winning the listing is to “know thyself”. You must know who you are, what makes you tick, what keeps you up at night and what you want to jump out of bed in the morning for. You must understand your limited beliefs, where they come from, deal with them and then, let them go. You must get out of your own way. 

If you have any sabotaging behavior ( and all people do) ~ I can assure you that you will lose the listing before you cross the door's threshold. 

I get calls from agents who are concerned about going on listing appointments only to lose the listing to another agent. When we work on discovering what is it that creates this reality for them, in most instances it is all about that inner battlefield. 

It rarely is about the listing presentation itself. 

Even if we can trace the losses back to points in the listing presentation inevitability those points being missed or being made are connected to the agent's mindset. It always goes back to this one pivotal point: the conversations going on inside your head and what your subconscious wants to create for you. 

The second step is to know the seller. You must know the seller. Have you done your research on the property? Have you looked up the tax appraiser's report on this seller? Have you checked to see if there are any liens on the property, are they in lis pendens status? Have you checked on the MLS to see the property listing history and sales data of this property? All of these are critical to you knowing how to discuss listing the property. 

Have you checked out the seller on social media? Have you checked their facebook page, twitter, linkedin and online? Finding out every single detail you can about the seller will help you connect with the seller. 

The third step is sincerity. Does the seller feel like you just want a listing or does the seller feel like you care about their problems, pains and issues? Connecting with the seller on common ground is the key to building trust. 

We all know that people only do business with those they know, like and trust. Be that person. 

The text of The Art of War is in the public domain.

Here is a link to a downloadable pdf file of the book. Just click on the download link on this library: http://www.paxlibrorum.com/books/taowde/

Many people will take works and text that is in the public domain and add commentary to it in order to copyright and publish the works in book form.

You can buy one that is annotated on Amazon The Art Of War
 from $3.99 to $7.99 for a paperback book, the audio version is $1.99 and the Kindle version is .99 cents.

If you would like the simplified text file,  the MIT has one here: http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.1b.txt.

Listing Experts Academy is the perfect program for agents who strive to be the best listing agents in their markets. 

Win the battle by becoming a member today. Text me at 561-502-1577 to get started today. 

Real Estate SEO | Google Maps | Red Square Boxes

Real Estate SEO | Google Maps | Red Square Boxes  

If you do a search for your keywords and you get the local google 7-pack ( or 6-pack or 4-pack:)) on page one on Google you may have noticed that there are red squares on the Google local map. 

The red squares with the white squares in the middle of them  are the top search results for businesses that match the query for the results on the page you are on.  So for instance, if you are on page one, the red squares will be the businesses on the map that show up in the top 10 businesses ( local). 

You may also notice there are symbols ( icons) inside of some of the icons and some have a star. Google does not have a lot of icons for all the different types of businesses out there so they will use a little square inside of the circle if there is not an icon match. Some of the icons are shopping bags which obviously are used for retail and a knife and fork would be used for restaurants. 

But not all searches will show the same. A lot of google local search is determined with personal search. If you are logged in or logging on from different areas, your results will vary. 

The red markers with a white square in it are the top results. The little tiny red squares are the rest of the results. And the gold markers are for the paid ads. 

This applies if your search pulls up the local 7-packs or not on your results page. Now tomorrow, as with everything ‘google local' this could all change:). Google continues to tweak ‘google local'. 

Salt Lake City Utah- Temple Square

Salt Lake City Utah- Temple Square 

The last part of our vacation was visiting Temple Square in Salt Lake City Utah. 

One of the most amazing drives is driving down off the mountains and into the Salt Lake Valley. 

It is one of the most amazing views. We drove from Jackson Hole Wyoming to Salt Lake City. As we traveled down those mountains coming from the northeast my mind traveled back to the stories of the pioneers crossing the country to arrive in Salt Lake City. 

What we see today as we drive into the Salt Lake valley is nothing like what the pioneers saw. After traveling on foot and with handcarts, losing so many loved ones along the way and then to stand up on the hills looking down into the desert- and hear Brigham Young declare that this is where they were going to settle- I can imagine how I would have felt! There would have been two feelings, one thinking, “Finally, I can stop walking!” and the other part saying, “This is crazy! I walked all this way to get to a dry desert?”. The faith of the pioneers was much stronger than mine, I am sure. 

Years later we see as we drive down the mountain and overlook the valley what an amazing city was built in this desert. It has blossomed and bloomed into a beautiful city. We walked the city- a lot! It was fun to walk around in 70 degree weather when it was 90 degrees at home in Florida! 

I took the photo of the Salt Lake Temple with my iPhone: 

We spend a few hours at Temple Square and then at the Deseret bookstore. My photos of the Christ statue are very old and not digital so I wanted to take a photo of the Christ statue with my iPhone. The photo turned out great: 

Here is a photo I took of Washington Square in Salt Lake City: 

I lived in Utah a few times in my life. One of our daughters was born in Orem Utah. I lived in Salt Lake City, Provo and Orem Utah. 

Every place I lived has beauty and features that I enjoy. I love the orchards of peach, apricot and cherry trees in Utah. Those are fruits that don't grow in Florida. I loved the backdrop of the hills and mountains living in the valley. The snow is fun for the kids and also when you don't have to drive around or go to work in it. 

I had moved to Utah after living in Hawaii for 5 years and after a while I began to miss the ocean. The only negative to living in Utah was dealing with the landlocked feeling of being too far away from an ocean. 

I know a great mortgage broker in Salt Lake City area so if you are looking to buy a home in Utah- contact me for his name and number. 

Real Estate SEO Still Works- RESULTS prove it!

Real Estate SEO Still Works- RESULTS Prove It! 

One of our Listing Experts Academy members is getting amazing results on page one on Google for his new keywords that he is going after. This broker owner dominates the short sale listing market in his geo area. However, since short sales are dwindling he knew that he needed to focus on another niche, this one happens to be property management. 

Property management in most cities is highly competitive and dominated by big box offices that specialize in management of multiple residences and apartment buildings. With that in mind we decided to go after longer tail keywords and focus on reputation management at the same time. 

Reputation management is important to all businesses now however there are some niches where it is vitally more important than others. Property management is one of those niches because one angry tenant can blame the broker for something that goes wrong and then blast the internet with all kinds of accusations along with bad reviews. So setting yourself up out in front on page one for many keyword terms is part of the best practices for managing your reputation online. 

Along with the membership in Listing Experts Academy, Sidney also hired me to do a strategy session with him to work on the best keywords to go after. 

Then he hired our virtual assistant team to help him get to page one on Google for the first set of keywords. 

Within 14 days ( 2 weeks)  he was on page one for 2 of his keywords (first set of keywords phrases)  and within another 14  days he totally rocked out the first page of Google. He has 7 out of 10 spots on page one on Google for the first set of keywords. This is what we teach in Listing Experts Academy because when you are going after the longtail keywords you get less traffic but the traffic is better qualified.

This also means that you need to capture more of the traffic which does land on page one. By dominating page one with all of your touch points and verticals- you are front and center and the odds are in your favor that one of your verticals will get the “click”.

What are the common denominators for getting these results? Listing Expert Academy, Strategy sessions with Coach Katerina and the virtual assistant team to help implement the strategies.

Text to work with me: 561-502-1577.