Real estate closing gifts are not a new phenomenon, but sometimes real estate agents aren’t sure what to give. Let’s face it, our clients are all our businesses really have. Showing appreciation is not just polite but critical for keeping and building upon those relationships. Over the years we’ve learned a lot from our many friends in Real Estate, most of whom have built hugely successful practices, and we’d like to pass that wisdom along. Below are some important guidelines and some great ideas for your next closing gift.

How Much To Spend:

We suggest you spend between $40 and $100 on closing gifts. Spend more for big, complicated sales and less for smaller and simpler sales. When my husband and I sold one of our houses over the summer our Realtor gave us a simple, inexpensive, but very thoughtful gift. Our family has worked with this agent for over 20 years and probably bought and sold 20 houses with her. This particular sale was small, simple, and very fast so a small thoughtful closing gift was perfect. She hand-wrote a thank-you note with a $25 pizza gift card and also brought us a soft cooler full of water bottles. Every time we take the cooler to one of our daughter’s swim meets we think of our agent and how she even kept in mind the season when showing us her appreciation. It was a small token but had a big impact – nothing more was necessary.

However, if spending more is in your budget or fits your market better, go for it. We know an agent who spends $100 every time on fancy closing gift baskets and another one who always mails a $50 restaurant gift card and a bouquet of flowers. Both agents do this consistently regardless of the size of the sale. We also know an agent in the luxury market who will take the homeowners (or sellers) out for an expensive dinner to celebrate. Each sale brings in quite a bit of commission, so spending a few hundred dollars and a few hours of his extremely precious time makes sense. Most of the time we see agents spending more money on larger sales or sales that took longer or had more set backs. Whatever you do, don’t go too cheap, especially if the closing gift is generic. Generic gifts are easier to forgive if they’re pricier.

What to Give:

Buying a home, either for the first or umpteenth time, is a deeply personal task for anyone. Be sure that your closing gifts represent not only your personal relationship with your client, but also represent how building a personal relationship with your clients is something you always do. The gift should provide your client with a lasting impression of how much importance you place on your client relationships. Because your clients are your best source of new business, your closing gifts should say: “I know you, I care about you, and I’ll get to know and care about your friends and family just as much.”

Be Genuine and Thoughtful. This one is crucial, and happens long before closing. After all the time you’ve spent with your buyers or sellers, you probably know a lot about them. If they don’t volunteer personal information early on, be sure to ask. Ask about their kids and how they spend their weekends. Are they the indulgent type, or more practical? Religious? Artistic? Are they into wine, coffee, beer, sports? Are they gaga over their pet, or perhaps expecting a new baby? Tailor closing gifts to your client’s personality, stage of life, and preferences. For example, my husband and I are practical people with a bunch of kids, so pizza and a soft cooler resonated. My single, fun-loving sister, however, received gourmet coffee, a funny mug, and an Amazon gift card when she bought her first home, which was perfect. 

If you have a good sense for your client’s personality, here are some creative ideas:

Young families:

Think about closing gifts that will become part of the household, so you are thought about often, or things that make the hectic business of raising kids a little easier. You could also go the kid angle; parents are really moved when someone goes out of their way to make their kids happy.

1. Game Night basket; this is a great idea that we stole from an agent we know. You’ll have to put it together yourself because I’m not aware of a retailer who offers this. Load up a big basket with board games, Pringles, a sixer of IBC, and a gift card for pizza delivery.
2. Movie Night basket; this you might actually find online. A few family-friendly DVDs, a bucket of popcorn, and few movie-theater candy boxes.
3. Personalized Door Hangers; get Mom and Dad and each kid a personalized nameplate to put on the door to their room. This can be a nice-looking sign or a doorknob hanger they can flip to “Do Not Disturb.” You can wrap them in a gift box and present them with a nice housewarming bouquet.
4. Holiday ornaments; select a special ornament for each family member and wrap in a beautiful box. This gift will make a very sweet impression, and perfect if your client is the sentimental type.

Obsessed-with-the-pet People:

The fastest way into the heart of people who treat their pets like their children is through… their pets. Pet-related gifts should always be given with something else, like flowers or a restaurant gift card. Write in the Thank-You card how you wanted to get a little something for Fluffy because you know this will be a big adjustment for him.

1. A box of gourmet dog treats; some specialty pet stores or online retailers sell cute treats that look so good you’d want to eat it yourself
2. A personalized nameplate they can put on a doghouse, if they have one
3. A dog or cat bed monogrammed with the pet’s name; this is especially appropriate since they are moving into a new home, and the pet will have their own special place

Expectant parents:

If clients have their first baby on the way, this is a great opportunity to personalize your closing gift. Soon-to-be new parents are usually pretty over the moon about their little one, so anything baby related will be a hit. But like with pets, be sure to also give something for the parents or household, even it it’s just flowers. Warning: stay away from baby gifts for clients expecting babies number 3 or 4; for these parents, think of gifts that will help them to relax and unwind.

1. Monogrammed baby blanket; before selecting, be sure to ask about the nursery colors and try to find one with a “Home Sweet Home” or “Welcome Home” theme to tie it back to their new house.
2. Growth Chart; look online or at Babies R Us for a wall-mounted cloth that records the child’s height over the years. There are some you can stick photos in, and you may be able to have it monogrammed too.
3. Don’t get: baby clothes. They will never remember who gave them what outfit because they’ll receive so many, and the baby will outgrow the clothes in about five minutes.

Empty-nesters:

If you’re helping an older client whose children grew up long ago or a couple whose last child recently moved out, sentiment and thoughtfulness are probably more important than practicality. Think of gifts that remind your client of the important things in life, or helps a couple reconnect after years of rearing children.

1. Romantic evening out; give them a gift card to a nice restaurant with a heartfelt letter expressing how much you hope they enjoy this next chapter of their life together. For the right couple, something fun like a ballroom dancing lesson or couples massage might be appropriate.
2. Gardening gift basket; assuming they like gardening, fill a basket with seeds, a colorful book on gardening tips, tools, gloves, and maybe a watering can or lawn ornament. This is doubly appropriate since it relates to homeownership.
3. Personalized mantelpiece with a family portrait and picture of the new home; this may be tricky because you need to stealthily get a family portrait. You may find one on your client’s Facebook page, if they have one and shared it with you, or you may need to ask. Simply tell them you’d like to frame a family photo for their new home. You can do a side-by-side of the new house and the family, or have a picture of the old house with the dates they lived in it, the family in the middle, and then the new house with the move in date inscribed below.

Compassionate bleeding hearts:

People who live to make a difference are often turned off by flashy presents and sometimes even feel guilty accepting them. You can spot these types by their modest home decor, church involvement, and how often they talk about others.

1. Donate to a charity in their name; we got this idea from an agent in Ohio and she says her clients are usually very touched by this. Make sure the charitable cause is something they believe in – or, better yet, a charity or church they are already involved in. Make sure they have a plaque or another physical item to commemorate the donation, and we recommend you also give them a small gift.
2. “Adopt” a family (or child) in their name; be sure to get a photo of the family or child being helped, and also make sure they know how much money or what items were given to them on their behalf.

If you really don’t have a sense for the client’s personality, here are our favorite standbys:

1. Welcome mat; this can be customized with the family’s last name
2. Treat basket; everyone loves a basket of goodies and there are thousands of retailers out there putting together great baskets. Warning: be sure you know about any food allergies, or if your client is vegetarian or vegan, a super health nut, or avoids gluten. If you’re including alcohol or coffee, be sure to first ask if your client partakes.
3. Restaurant gift card; all you have to do is ask where they like to eat. You should always accompany a gift card with something tangible, like flowers or a box of cookies.
4. Edible Arrangements. Yum! Fork over some extra cash to get them one with lots of chocolate-covered pieces.

A Final Caution:

 Now that you know what to give, here are a few “Definitely Don’t” gift ideas:

1. Cheap branded stuff. You know what I mean. It’s fine if you want to give them a refrigerator magnet or a $2.00 calendar with your face all over it, but stick stuff like that in with the closing documents and also give a real gift.
2. Nothing. Bad bad bad. You must give a closing gift.
3. Babies. They are cute, but not practical. Plus, I think it’s illegal.

We hope you’ve found this useful! Please share your thoughts and what gifts you give.

How Real Estate Agents should measure Marketing ROI: the Right Way and the Well Intentioned Way

As Agents work to pivot and re-group, we’re seeing an influx of new agents and a resurgence of effort from existing agents. With so many realtors in the game, carefully selected marketing has become a key differentiator of the best agents. And when it comes to marketing, there have never been so many choices… so knowing what works for you in your market has never been so important.

So let’s talk marketing ROI, and why we should be a little more careful in how we analyze it.

ROI is just “return on investment.” In the real estate business, this usually refers to the amount gross profit off of marketing-generated leads (less marketing expenses) as a percentage of marketing dollars spent in the same time period. That’s:

But beware!

Oftentimes it is this very equation that causes an agent to abort good efforts in the name of “business sense.” Why? Two reasons: first, a marketing effort by itself might not work. Your marketing plan should be a concert of several different channels playing in harmony with each other, delivering a consistent, top-notch message; and second, marketing programs often need a year or more to truly build traction, especially for agents with less than 5% market share. The standard marketing ROI equation ignores these truths.

So, we’d like to offer a slightly modified ROI equation with the big caveat of be prepared to wait. For this equation, we let the marketing do its magic, then we calculate.

First, let’s define the pieces of the puzzle:

• Average customer commission. This is how much commission you earned in total last year divided by the number of sides you completed.
• Lead conversion rate. This is the percentage of leads that become customers. Do you track this? If not, take an educated guess.
• Marketing cost. This is the total cost of the marketing program you are honing into. This can be actual or anticipated and must span a specific time period. Include a percentage of staff time dedicated to helping with this type of marketing.
• Leads generated. How many leads did you receive from the marketing program you are honing into? This must be measured over the same time period as your marketing costs.

Next, you’ll want to determine your Time to Break-Even. Because so much of your marketing is intended to communicate what you’re already doing, the more active you are now, the quicker you will get results from new marketing efforts. So if this is a new plan, or one you are considering but have not yet tried, put a deadline on the break-even and discipline yourself to wait until that date before you decide to measure marketing ROI and being running calculations.

In general, your Time to Break-Even should be set based on what the industry declares, and then adjusted based your market share. It is simple to figure out your market-share:

If you’re unfamiliar with housing turnover, it is simply a measure of how often people in your target market move. If 100 homes sell in your neighborhood of 1000, your turnover rate is 10%, and there are 100 listing prospects in your area per year. Here is a great article from Joe Manusa on housing turnover.

A good baseline on any new channel, especially direct mail, is 1 year (if you are hitting your farm with quality mail at least once per month). If you have greater than 20% market share, you might expect results a little sooner, and if you have less than 5% market share, you might be waiting 2 or more years. You should also adjust your time to break-even according to the turnover in your area. If you’re marketing to 10,000 homes with a 5% turnover, you should expect to wait longer (paying more in marketing costs) than if you marketed to 5,000 homes with a 10% turnover.

Now that you have established your Time to Break-Even, here are two ways to look at your marketing efforts. The first is a way to see what the performance of efforts should look like after they have already broken even. The second is a way to “spit out” how many leads you need to generate from the marketing channel for it to pay for itself, so you can gauge how realistic the new method is. If you only need a few leads a year to make it break-even, you might adjust your Time to Break even.

Measure Marketing ROI after Break-even:

Number of Leads needed in 1 year to Break-Even:

We hope this helps as you forge ahead this year. Best of luck, and never hesitate to reach out to us here at Discover if you’d like feedback on any of your marketing decisions. Please click below to download a complimentary calculator.

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Remember the “big book of listings?”

How about faxing spec sheets to prospective buyers. Single page summaries with one grainy photo and a lot of numbers were all you had. Well, those days are gone for good. New rounds of technology, specifically 3D and drones, are revamping the industry. I’d like to highlight two of the latest innovations that seem to be gaining ground with every passing month.

Drones:

Drones give you valuable (possibly never seen before) views of the home and surroundings in crystal clear HD video fly-bys. Once only the realm of the adventurous and ambitious early adopters, new regulations have come about to set rules to standardize drone flight rules, operator qualifications, and fair commercial use, while minimizing risks to other aircraft as well as grounded people and property.

These regulations allow new companies to start; and current ones to continue, without fear of costly future unknown governmental intervention. Rules clearly point out who can fly these drones; how and where they can be used.

New companies will help take Drone pictures mainstream, and increase competition. For the moment, drones are used mainly in higher price point neighborhoods, but this could change quickly if costs decrease.

Drones capture footage that was once only possible with helicopters or planes, at a fraction of the cost. Videos created with drone film can be professionally edited to create a dynamic showcase of a property, from a single lot in the city, to an entire estate.

Professional videos add the ‘wow’ factor to listings, impressing prospective sellers and buyers alike.  This positions you on the leading edge of listings. If owning a drone and learning to use it seems out of reach, search in your area for a company that can handle the logistics while you just pay for the finished product.

3D Technology walk-throughs:

Just a few years ago, having 50 pictures online of a property seemed like enough.

(Or even a nifty slideshow, fading from one picture to the next…)

But new technology is letting buyers virtually “walk-through” a property with just a few clicks of a mouse, or swipes on a smartphone. Not just from their own sofa, but from any sofa anywhere in the world.

This new and unique home display has many benefits for your clients.

The visuals are impressive. They deliver never seen before views. Total 360 degree looks that eclipse and run circles around static pictures. This technology not only shows the property spectacularly, but also shows you to be a cutting edge agent who “gets it.” Remember, millennials are coming, and they like their technology.

The camera is placed at various points throughout the property, where it captures a 3D, 360 degree pictures that are seamlessly combined together to form an entire interactive map of each structure. It looks a bit like a dollhouse with exposed sides that can be rotated and flipped in any direction. The effect is an astonishingly real view of the house and it’s contents. It gives the feeling of standing in the house and looking left, right, up or down; a visceral view of the property that rivals, and in ways eclipses, actually being there.

The 3D camera can provide a competitive advantage and a true differentiation of your marketing plan from other agents in your area. The process is still costly, so like drones, it may be confined to the realm of higher priced listings for the near future. But we all know that technology is never static and as more competitors join the field, prices may very well decrease over time.

Learn more about Drones by clicking HERE.

Learn more about 3D Tech and cameras by clicking HERE. 

How Experts Use Open Houses to Generate Listings

We’re sure you’ve heard the buzz about the hot new thing in Real Estate sales! Robot Listing Agents? No. Government-mandated 20% real estate commission? NO. The diesel typewriter? No, no, no.

Give up? It’s the Private House Showing – a strange, new approach to sucking the listings out of neighborhood after neighborhood – and maybe even selling the original listing!

What? You’ve been in real estate for 123 years and never heard of such an outlandish claim? No wonder, because it’s one of our industry’s newest concepts and it’s a great way to harvest listings when inventory is low.

We first caught wind of this new approach several months ago from clients who raved about their success after shifting their entire attitude about open houses. After doing a bit of digging, we discovered that the legendary real estate coach, Tom Ferry, was one of the brains (or perhaps the brain) behind these ideas. We’ve included a direct link to his video presentation on this topic at the end of this article.

Step One: Change your mindset about the Open House

If you’re like most of us, you slightly resent all the tire-kicking nosey neighbors trudging through your pristine listing and grabbing handfuls of your chocolate mints and Reeses-Pieces. Then they take several of your pricey, full-color, multi-page presentation brochures “just in case we decide to move 3 doors down and buy this place…” It’s almost as bad as that poor car dealer watching the family walk in after loading up at Dairy Queen. Grab the Windex!

Now it’s time to forget all about those things and look at the neighbors as home-sellers in your personal Listing Farm, ripe for harvest. Not only do you no longer care about your former angst over their visit, now you actively invite their visit.

Step Two: Hold a “Neighborhood Only” Sneak Peak

A few days before your Open House Event, introduce yourself to the neighbors by going door-to-door. Distribute flyers with a large photo of your listing and a prominent price. You’re not introducing yourself to ask if they’re interested in listing their own house – this isn’t a “door knock” in the traditional sense. If you’ve been actively farming with, say, a custom publication (or any “expertising” form direct-to-the-homeowner marketing), the knock won’t be so cold. They will already recognize you as the area’s real estate agent.

When they answer the door, you introduce yourself and invite them to the Von Tuttlesnoogle’s open house for a catered lunch and a private, neighborhood-only sneak peak. Of course they could bring friends too, but the idea is to show the neighborhood how YOU market your listings. And be sure they know what’s for lunch – it’s amazing how good food can bring people together.

Step Three: Set Listing Appointments

When the neighbors show up, many may ask what you think their home would sell for and they hope you’ll guess high. Now’s the time to make the appointment to get their address and offer to bring over a CMA rather than just educated guess, which is, after all, still just a guess. You may even notice that some sellers may be anxious to talk turkey about listing to get ahead of all those other neighbors now milling about the open house!

If you’re hooked on this approach to marketing around your listings, check out the very entertaining presentation by coach Tom Ferry. He does a fantastic job fleshing out this concept:

http://www.tomferry.com/blog/tomferryshow-episode-62/

Thanks Tom, you’re a genius! Good luck with your open houses, agents, and let us know your thoughts.

In most parts of the country things are pretty good in the real estate market, but many of us know that the biz is very susceptible to dramatic cycles and shifts in conditions. Since we’re not unusually stressed-out, this may be a good time to take a look back and be prepared to handle the next Big Party-Pooper.

Most of you won’t remember 1980 when the prime rate hit its all-time high of 20.5% and stayed close to that for over a year. Paul Volcker was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and would not budge even though thousands of influential business people, including President Carter, were begging him to lower the rate and forget about inflation.

Sorry, We’re Out to Stem Inflation

During that era interest rates for real estate mortgages hovered around 18%. That’s right, 18%! How many houses do you think you could sell when the monthly payment for an 80% loan-to-value, 30 year, $300,000 home would be $3,600/mo for just principal and interest! How many folks who needed a home in that price range could qualify? The real estate market, obviously, suffered long and hard.

I remember meeting my Dad at Rax Roast Beef in Oberlin right around then. He had lived through the Great Depression of the ‘30s and had lots of battle scars from growing a manufacturing business and raising eleven children with Eastern European appetites. I needed some sage advice and Stress Relief from a member of The Greatest Generation at that moment, when real estate was slower than a snail crossing a peanut butter patch.

“How did you get through it, Dad, with 35% unemployment, bread lines, soup kitchens, boarded-up foreclosures – how did you get contracts, keep the business going?”

The Secret

He smiled and slowly nodded, and I was pretty sure that he was rather proud of himself and others like him. He took one of his famous dramatic pauses and had a couple curly fries, then said, “The secret is simple: Life does not stop. Wheels keep turning. People still bought Buicks, they just didn’t buy as many of them. The business is still there, you just need to be a lot more clever and work a lot harder than the next guy.” If you look at the picture above, it’s of an ad for a brand new Buick model… in 1932, the depth of the Great Depression.

Just as my Dad predicted, the world did not stop spinning, some people were very clever and did work harder, and the lending industry came up with a thing of beauty: the Adjustable Rate Mortgage aka Variable Rate Mortgage. At first, the specter of ginormous payments down the road scared a lot of people. It was hard to live with the threat of an unaffordable payment when the rates adjusted incrementally upward, usually after 1, 3, and 5 years. But cool heads prevail: we explained that, theoretically, there was no need for these instruments to lead to panic and foreclosure because, if we really had faith that the US economy would correct itself, our buyers could refinance a few years later and have normal, level payments that were truly affordable. And that’s just the way it played out, a proverbial win-win for the borrower and the lender.

You may be wondering if I didn’t know about what happened in the real estate market during the Crash of the 2007 to think that ARMs were actually good things. No, it’s just that ARMs only work if the borrowers are actually financially qualified, unlike the foolishness of government-backed loans to folks who were not.

So enjoy the good real estate climate but be open to innovation in these times of shifting sands – we’ll have to be clever and work hard to adjust to changing lifestyles, demographics, global economic conditions, and a host of other influences on our industry.

It’s here! We know through our own marketing efforts how important it is to stay up on your digital channels. It’s likely you need lots of fresh digital content for your blog, Facebook, Twitter, marketing/content emails, and LinkedIn – perhaps you need content to post to even more places.

Successful agents consistently post content across multiple digital channels. We have many clients with staff dedicated to this very task. A strong, active web presence helps agents stay fresh in their networks and drive up their SEO. The information tends to be: new listings, recently sold homes, events they are attending or hosting, positive client feedback, and helpful info for homeowners (which is usually purchased through a service or shared from another website).

We’d like to assist with this effort. One of the reasons you might be mailing a 12-page Discover publication is because it breaks through the clutter, setting you apart. The content inside your paper can work for you in the same way on your digital and social channels. We are already producing custom, stand-out content for you – two stories about your neighborhood, a featured listing, and call-to-action imagery – so we are now breaking out and packaging these items together in multiple formats for you. You will receive several pieces per issue plus additional pieces with your first mailing, and we will show you exactly how to use them optimally.

This service, included with every publication at no additional charge, includes everything on the list below. Images will be provided in one format: low resolution, which is the ideal resolution for online channels.

• Modified title bar (“header”) in a social-media-friendly shape
• Home Value Report call-out box (if you have one)
• One each of all your additional call-out boxes
• Flip-book URL of entire paper for web use (with working links)
• Thumbnail of the top of your paper where the headline is visible, or of the full front page if you prefer
• Word doc of each article
• Image of Featured Listing
• Image of Sold Stats or “Market Update” box

We’ll help you use these items effectively. Our friendly Discover staff will spend as much time as it takes  to ensure you are getting the most out of your digital content package. These are our suggestions:

• Use on your blog or website (5 posts per month):
  • Articles – post full articles
  • E-Edition – post the modified header image and underlay the flip-book link, which will take them to your whole 12-page publication. Include a paragraph about how you publish a community paper and what to check out this month
  • Featured Listing – post the featured listing spread, discuss the listing, and include a link to the listing itself
  • Sold Stats image – post this diagram and talk briefly about what that data means for the community
• Use on marketing emails (4 emails per month):
  • Articles – use these as stand-alone content emails (2 per month). TIP: include the community name in the subject line so recipients don’t think it’s generic content, and be sure to include a link to the corresponding blog post to help SEO
  • E-Edition – use this in your e-newsletter (with the title bar image as what to click to get to it) or as part of an existing email. We advise not sending this as stand-alone email due to the redundancy with other content
  • Featured Listing – use this as stand-alone email. Include the Featured Listing picture and link it to the blog post about the listing
  • Sold Stats – use this as a stand-alone email with the image, brief market update, and a link to the blog post you created
  • We advise a maximum of 6 emails per month, so keep this in mind when considering other emails you plan to send out
• Use on social media (5+ posts per month):
  • Each item – post all of the above on all platforms by using the image, writing a short description, and linking to corresponding blog posts, other webpage, online form
  • Call-out boxes – use these images, especially the Home Value Report, as images for Facebook advertising or posting. Because it’s pretty promotional, we recommend restrained use of these as organic posts; they are better suited as paid ads. Use your home value report URL, online form, or other URL as the link for the image
  • We recommend at least one Facebook and at least three Tweets post per day. In general, more is better, as long as your content doesn’t suffer too much. Don’t be afraid to post the same article and market update a few times in a month, and be sure to continue to your regular posting

We hope you’re as excited about your digital package as we are! As the season slows, now is the time learn how to take full advantage of all these wonderful digital resources. Yes, there is a learning curve, but we promise it is worth the investment, and that it will soon take little time and become second nature. Please let us know your feedback, and… Happy Marketing!