Why Successful Sales People Need To Sell Themselves First.
The Value of Your Offer. The foundation of SEO online content.
When you set out to write content for the internet, you need to have a clear sense of purpose. You are writing content for a reason. And that is to communicate with the world at large your unique and valuable skill sets that are available for sale. If you do in fact offer valuable skills at a fair price, someone somewhere wants and may even need to purchase your services. But there is an old axiom in advertising. If they don't know you exist, they can't buy from you. So your job is to become visible. It is your job as an internet marketer to exist in the mind of someone who wants to buy what you have to offer. Or you need to exist in the mind of someone who can benefit from a networking relationship with you. It is no more complex than that. But there is a problem. In fact there are many problems.
The mistake of an unclear message. What Realtors should avoid.
In order to quickly communicate the value of your offer, you need to know exactly what you offer. This is not as easy as it sounds. If you are a real estate agent, then you will need to let others know that this is the category you belong to. But their first question will be, so what makes you a good realtor? If I let you list my house in the Lake Minnetonka area, how long will it take for you to sell it as opposed to that other guy from that Edina real estate agency or that Coldwell Banker real estate agency? And will you be able to help me get a better price for my home in Wayzata? Are you familiar with the real estate market in Minnetonka?
Do you have special skills and the motivation that will allow you to get higher offers for my Distinctive Wayzata home? Or will you quickly fold just because you want to sell it quickly to collect your commission check? So you can see that it is not so easy to clearly define your message. You need to consider all of the objections your prospective customers can raise about you, and you must have a good answer in return. Therefore in order to develop a clear message, you need to do some honest self- examination about the skills and abilities you are going to offer. By completing these exercises you will have a clear understanding not only of what the market needs and wants, but you will know your own strengths and weaknesses in satisfying the needs of that market.
The problem with an un-believable message.
We are all bombarded by advertising. And we all listen to one ad after another make extraordinary promises. And there have been too many times that we have bought into the marketing hype only to discover that the product did not come close to delivering on the advertised promises. This creates a problem for you. It is a tall hurdle to overcome. But you need to succeed or your message will end up on the junk pile. How would it feel if you could watch all the money you spent on advertising go into the trash? What would you think if you could read the thoughts of those who read your ad? When you communicate to your audience you should only promise what you can deliver. You may not get every sale. But customers that are willing to buy from the real estate agent that makes unrealistic promises are customers that can damage reputations. They are the ones that will complain that you did not have the skill to sell their home. But the truth is that no one could sell it at the price they were asking or the condition the home was in when they were showing it. Make a list of the tasks you are able to complete.
Define your business system and let people see how you do what you do. Show them one step at a time and they will discover what a methodical real estate agent does to sell a home. When you put this list into writing, your customers will be able to see that your business system is nothing extraordinary. What they will see is an agent that will accomplish the task of selling a home one step at a time. After they see how you do what you do, then you can show them the statistical results of your efforts. If you just say you have sold one thousand homes, they may think you are good at persuading your clients to lower their price so it sells faster. But if you show them that you only reduce the price when the market is not following a predictable path, you have illustrated a good reason and method to your marketing choices.
By writing it down and putting your methods online, you will communicate your business methods and how you will accomplish the task you will be hired to do. And if you add local references to your business methods, then you will show people in your geographical area that you are uniquely qualified to sell real estate in that area. For example, if you sell homes in Excelsior Minnesota, then you would define some of the local resources you use when doing a comparable market analysis for homes in the Excelsior community. Someone from St. Louis Park Minnesota is not going to have the same feel for Excelsior as a real estate agent that knows where to find Excelsior City Hall. Only you know that Jakes O'Connor's, a charming Irish pub, is on Water Street. Only you know that Excelsior was founded in 1852 by a group of New Yorkers as a bustling farm community located on what was then referred to as the "Big Waters", or Lake Minnetonka. Can someone from St. Louis Park say the zip code for Excelsior is 55331 off the top of their head? This knowledge not only will differentiate you as a local expert with a history in the area, but it will also enable you to gain traffic online in ways that you cannot now imagine. So you see you do not need an un-believable message. You just need to communicate who you are and what you do well. When you post this kind of content online, it will only add to your credibility.
If you sound like an advertisement, you will look like a con artist.
Because people get ripped off all of the time by poor products and services, and if your advertisement sounds just like theirs you will be guilty by association. So you will need to establish your value in writing in a way that is unlike every other marketing message asking for their attention. When you write articles and content online, you can bypass the problems associated with con-artist advertising.
Writing articles and good content not only will allow you to capture a large number of keywords for free, but you will have the opportunity to express yourself in a way that is not like an advertisement. Now this is not to say that there are not an endless number of article writers online using the same old dried up con-artist techniques that have caused all of us to become jaded and cynical. But if you speak to people in a normal voice and just communicate valuable information, they will be more likely to stop and take the time to read your content when they have a genuine need for your services. The right keywords in your article will help you get found for free, but the way in which you write that content will allow people to know, like and trust you. And that is going to be the key to any future success online for the foreseeable future. Tricks and gimmicks will no longer work for a service industry like real estate. It might work well to sell a small fad. But it will not work when you will be charged with selling someone's largest investment. You need to be able to write articles and content that establish your credibility. A small advertisement cannot do that.
What you can learn from your local competitors?
Look at the ads in the local papers. In the Lake Minnetonka area of Minnesota we have several media outlets. If you look at the ads in the Pioneer, the Laker, Lake Minnetonka Magazine and the Times Magazine, you can quickly see at a glance how these magazine ads can only tell the reader so much about the Realtor of the real estate agency. These ads are really no more than glorified business.educationeasy.net business cards. They work well enough for image and branding, but as you can see they do very little to communicate the unique value and experience of individual agents and agencies. And these ads are very expensive and they only run once.
Ask yourself how often you have taken the time to really look at the ads in these magazines. You tend to only glance at them unless you are very close to making a purchase. Then you might look more closely. But even if you spent five minutes looking at the ad, the amount of information is minimal. Therefore if you learn to write very good articles about your unique value and skill sets, and post them online, these articles will keep working for you long after you wrote them. But you need to write them carefully to meet the goals of your real estate agency. The articles will need to follow a standard pattern that people searching online will recognize. The next article in this series will look at the questions, exercises and the step by step approach to writing articles that sell for you.
Designing good content and articles. It will pay off over time.
Becoming aware of the need to get your message out is an important first step in writing good articles for your e-mail campaigns, your web site and article submission sites. If you follow the steps in this series of articles, you will be able to maximize your efforts and eventually see a good long-term return on your investment of time.
The next article will take a closer look at how to define the value of your offering. See part three of this series.
For More Information You Can Visit.
[oconnellhomeinspections.com/]
Steven O'Connell is the owner of O'Connell Consulting and Rare Wood Remodeling LLC. He is currently inspecting homes and offering consultation services in the Minneapolis area and suburbs. He has 24 years of experience in the building trades. He has concentrated on serving high end customers with an eye for detail. His skill sets allowed him to produce some remarkably artistic and beautiful interior transformations. He achieved a mastery of several trades including framing and trim carpentry, fine wood work finishes, beautiful faux finishes and artistic murals, and also tile installation for bathrooms. He also gained expertise at conceptual Computer Aided Design. His sub-specialty was repairing defects and damage caused by water intrusion. He also ventured into the storm damage market for one summer to learn how to negotiate with insurance companies and repair roofing, siding and windows that had been damaged by severe storms and hail.
He attended Kaplan professional schools to gain his certification in Home Inspections. Seeing an opportunity in what is to become a growth industry, Steven reorganized his career goals and began O'Connell Consulting. With a large number of homes for sale, and many in questionable condition, his skill sets will help home owners and investors evaluate their potential real estate purchase. O'Connell Consulting is for Home Owners, Investors and Real Estate Professionals that need a long and ongoing relationship with an experienced information resource.
For More Information You Can Visit.
[oconnellhomeinspections.com]
If you need help with your article writing campaign or you would like me to present a series of workshops to your agents, I am available given enough notice. Visit my website for contact information.
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