Is Social Networking a Waste of My Time?
“How in the world am I supposed to keep up with all of the Social Media stuff, I don’t have enough time as it is?” I hear this question just about every time I present on the subject.
I just finished a great webinar with sales agents about social networking and building communities while building a powerful personal brand. Sure enough, during the Q.A. portion, someone asked it again.
I think it is an extremely valid question. The last thing you would want social networking to be is a time sucker, especially if it replaces critical business development opportunities. My standard answer is don’t spend more than 45 minutes a day of your “business” time.
Let’s face it, I have yet to see someone be 100% efficient from 8-5 every single day. So take some of that spare time and engage in your digital network. On that same note, don’t get caught in what we call “digital quicksand” where you emerge hours later and realize you have been doing nothing but playing Mafia Wars.
It may look like I spend more time on these sources than others, but I follow my own advice. I have a few tools that allow me to be efficient. (tweetdeck, hootsuite etc) but my swiss army knife is my iPhone loaded with all of my social networking apps. Because I am connected, I can use my “down time” for connecting with others. Yes, you will have to trade in your “dumb” phone for a “smart” phone – I talked about that in a recent post.
Think of all those times you are waiting around. Maybe you are getting your oil changed, stuck in traffic, waiting for the dentist, sitting at the mall waiting for your wife to finish shopping at the Gap – you name it. This is a great time to pop on Facebook and talk to a few folks, send a retweet or comment on a LinkedIn discussion.
If you are committed to using social networking to build your business, this is how you can do it without wasting time. Or you can just stop watching American Idol and use that time to build your brand – just a thought. Some call that being a workaholic; I just call it smart business.
I shot this video on my iPhone waiting for my oil to get changed. (I was a bit under the weather, sorry for looking so rough)
7 Phrases for Setting Appointments
Leads are great, but what value do they have unless you can convert the prospect into an appointment. Too often, a sales executive will assume that they are the only game in town. They say to themselves, "Hey, I have this great prospect talking to me via email or the phone, they are so close – this deal is in the bag." With this mindset – they give great information (sometimes too much) and have the attitude that when they are ready they will call back or email to set that appointment. Thinking to themselves, “Where else are they going to go? I am the only one working on this listing/community/home.”
Remember, speed wins and in many cases you not only need to be fast with your responses but also fast to get them to meet in person.
I believe every interaction with a lead, either on the phone or by email, should have the end goal in mind of setting an appointment.
To do this you need to be armed with some great "closing" scripts. In the lead management process your first opportunity to "close" is by setting the appointment. Here are 7 phrases I have tested that work extremely well.
- The Assumptive Close: "It seems like you are interested in this home. The next step would be to meet in person. What time would work for you?"
- The Soft Close: "Thank you so much for taking the time to talk. What do you think about meeting in person for a VIP tour?"
- The Trial Close: "Do you feel like you have enough information to take the next step and meet in person?"
- The Hard Close: "What are we waiting for, let’s get together today!"
- The "No means yes" Close: “You wouldn’t mind if I asked you to set a time to meet in person, would you?"
- The Tie Down Close: "I think an in person meeting makes perfect sense, don’t you?"
- The Alternative Close: "I would love to set a time for a VIP showing. We have time during the week or on the weekend, which works best for you?"
In most conversations your prospect will give you all the chances you need to ask for the appointment. Remember, the appointment is merely the natural end to a great interaction. What is the worst they are going to say? No… Go for the no every time. But don’t give up. If they don’t set the appointment right away be sure to have another reason to follow up with them and keep the conversation going.
So what is your most effective way to set an appointment?
Follow-up is the Critical Precursor to the “Close”
Is your sales process truly centered on lead generation? Is your lead-to-conversion rate as high as it could be? According to research conducted by Marketing Experiments , up to 80 percent of sales leads are wasted on a regular basis. Lack of correct follow-up is one of the key culprits.
Follow-up is a critical component of the sales process, but it is often overlooked by the sales executive. Surveys, studies, and secret shopping tests have revealed that many new home sales executives are giving less than stellar performances when it comes to following up with leads. In one “secret shopper” study conducted last year, 64% of the sales executives failed to follow up with a prospect that walked into the model home. My own secret shops consistently show that less than 50% of sales executives will respond to an email inquiry, and the ones that do take entirely too long to get in touch. In any market, but particularly a highly competitive one, can you really afford to be so casual?
It is time for sales executives to stop blaming lack of sales on “traffic” and start maximizing every opportunity you have to follow up with a potential prospect.
You could be the absolute best “closer” on the planet – but if you don’t follow up with an email inquiry or phone call, you will never have your chance to work your magic. That’s the bad news – the good news is that there is a tremendous opportunity for you, right now, today, this month and this year in this economy! If you choose to implement and execute a follow-up process, you will crush your competition because they aren’t following up. The Marketing Experiments study estimates that you could boost your conversion rate by as much as 375% by working your leads more effectively.
After a seminar I presented at recently, a well meaning sales executive came up to me and said, “Mike, I have a 1,000 new leads in my CRM system in response to a marketing blitz, but I don’t know where to start.” My first reaction was, what a wonderful problem to have! I talked with her more and discovered that she didn’t have a process to follow up on the leads she was successfully generating. Instead of doing something productive, she did nothing at all. She had what is called “analysis paralysis”.
Now on the surface, it would seem that 1,000 leads is a treasure trove, but statistics show us that only 25-30% of internet leads will move forward in the buying process to set an appointment. That means, only 250 of this sales person’s leads would be qualified to move forward in the buying process. With no system in place for ushering a prospect from initial inquiry to the close, you have left yourself with a formidable task: trying to drill down to the customers who are ready, willing and able to move forward. However, when you create an organized process to manage your leads and follow up, you can quickly find those shoppers that are motivated and ready to take the next step.
Create a follow-up system.
The follow-up process should automatically begin when you receive a lead, which is someone sending an email or calling to ask a specific question or take some form of action. Here is the ideal opportunity to engage with a prospect. The absolute best thing you can do to increase the conversion rate is to respond immediately. If you don’t have the information required, at least establish contact by acknowledging the inquiry. In fact, a recent MIT study shows that you are 100 times more likely to connect with a prospect if you follow up to their request in five minutes or less. Worth the effort to check your messages continually, isn’t it?
Once you have quickly responded to this request, your potential prospect will fall into one of two categories: Response or No Response. If your prospect does not respond, switch to a short-term, follow-up campaign. This effort combines phone calls and emails. Plan to initiate seven to nine contact opportunities in the first month. Your goal is to invoke a response from the prospect, either by email or by phone.
After completing the short-term campaign, move the lead into long-term follow-up, intended to maintain contact and keep your name in front of the prospective buyer. Once a month, email new and helpful updates to the lead. The long-term effort is where you can outshine your competitors: 95% of them won’t continue to follow up after the first flurry of contacts. You never know when the customer’s current situation will change from curious looker to aggressive buyer. You need to maintain a digital presence so that you are always visible when the customer shifts into full-blown buying mode.
Your goal is the appointment.
The follow-up process requires a systematic approach. You have short- and long-term goals in this process. The first goal is to extract a response. Once the prospect does respond, you’ve passed the first hurdle.
You’re now ready to proceed with your process, but remember; the next goal of working with a lead via phone and email is not to sell a home, but rather to set the appointment. Let me reiterate, the goal is to set the appointment. Selling a home is a touch and feel process; the customer has to experience the home and community first hand. You can’t accomplish those things by email or phone. However, you can still learn more about their needs, ask qualifying questions, help them to select an area, community, or floorplan, all while conveying a sense of urgency and excitement.
When you sense heightened interest from the customer in these conversations, ask for the appointment. Half of the time, they will agree and set a time; the other half will provide a standard list of objections. Similar to the traditional sales process, you must be ready with your scripts in order to overcome the objections. Let them know that a brief visit will be the best use of their time in this process. Use your enthusiasm to excite them to react positively. Remember, if you can’t express excitement, how can you expect them to do it?
Ultimately, the perfect end to great follow-up and quality conversations is the onsite appointment. If you manage this correctly, the process will be smooth and streamlined and you will be able to close more sales each month while your competition still fumbles around in the dark. Create your follow-up process. Set goals for yourself. And go where many others have failed to go!
This article originally appeared in Sales & Marketing Ideas Magazine
Think like Nike – Why hyper-local marketing is important
I recently listened to an interview where experts discussed the shoe industry and how the economy has taken its toll on the apparel market. But unlike clothing, the shoe industry is still selling. But there are challenges. One of the biggest challenges that companies are now facing is the inability to market the way they used to. They no longer have the marketing budgets to handle large, national media buys. They know the importance of advertising, especially now, because in a recession consumers become even harder to reach.
To solve the problem, some shoe companies are employing hyper-local marketing to reach their core markets. Take Nike, for example. They recently released 300 shoes at $250 a pair and had customers lining up outside their local stores in eager anticipation. They were marketing to fans that Nike calls, “sneaker heads” and knew that this hyper-local market would be excited about Nike’s message and brand. The sneaker heads would help spread the message about these new Nikes.
We can do this in the home building industry, too. National home builders are doing whatever it takes to maintain profits, like taking advantage of the current $8,000 incentive for first time buyers. But without a marketing budget, they’re falling short. They are being forced to look at different alternatives for builder marketing. What about these hyper-local markets? Do national builders even know how to market locally?
What are the big boys doing to customize their marketing to the localized economies? How much power are they giving to their local divisions? These are the people who will spread the marketing message and brand. In real estate, referrals are one of the largest sources of sales, so what can home builders do? They need to shift their marketing power to their local teams who understand the local culture — the people on the ground who can energize the local market (that might mean your sales team)
Hyper-local marketing. It’s working for Nike, and it can work for any builder in multiple markets. And social media and the Internet has become an integral part of the marketing mix. Marketing guru Seth Godin talks about building communities in his book “Tribes.” He says you only need a tribe of a 1,000 to be successful. I would say in a local market, you only need a few hundred people buying homes, getting excited, and telling their friends, to be successful.
So what are you doing for builder marketing on the local level? How are you becoming hyper-local in your thinking. What are you doing to change your culture?
Swimming in the Web 2.0 stream
Something extremely unique about social media is the flow of information in real time, whether it’s tweets or status updates on Facebook or LinkedIn. You might even say it is more like a “firehose” of information as opposed to a stream. It can be tough to keep up with all this information – almost like drinking from a firehose. Wonder what that is like, just watch this classicvideo example.
And what is interesting is the difference between “traditional” Web and Web 2.0. The traditional Web is more permanent. Web 2.0 is transient, or Sarah Yaussi from Big Builder recently said: “New media is like a paper cup – you use it and then you throw it away.”
For example, if you miss a tweet on Twitter, it’s soon fades away. As newer tweets pop up, the others get pushed farther down in the stream and eventually off to the next page, or the post is pushed out past your 100 updates on Tweetdeck. Gone.
Such fleeting moments are the social aspect of Web 2.0. It’s like walking into a party. You don’t walk around to everyone and ask, “What did I miss?” On Facebook, the same holds true. You’re not going to go back every 15 days to see what you’ve missed on every single person. You may go back and look at the interesting people, but you’re really only interested in what’s happening in the here and now. Anything older than a few days is ancient history. The same holds true for Twitter. What is happening today? Are you showing up in the “here and now”? You should spread out your posts so you’re not posting too much. And you do want to post insightful information and ideas that prompt other people to talk about it and comment back. This is the foundation of Internet marketing and PR at its finest.
What gets the conversation going in “Real Estate 2.0”?
1. Create interesting, informative content. Piquing interest is the easiest way to increase exposure.
2. Stay relevant and noteworthy. While some readers might find it fun to hear about your pet’s last trip to the litter box, avoid the temptation. Stay relevant and on focus with your audience.
3. Time your updates. Just as there is a good time to send an email for maximum visibility, there is the best time to update your status or send a tweet. Saturday at midnight is not good because your readers aren’t online. What day and time will your audience be looking? Send your information then.
4. Engage others. You will get more “action” when you hold real conversations online. More people will talk about and promote you if you are practicing the golden rule.
5. Put the conversation first. If your sole goals are marketing, traffic, and exposure – you’ve missed the whole point of social networking. This is Real Estate 2.0 and it starts with the conversation. Chat now. Sell later.
Just like attending a party in a physical location, at a digital party, it doesn’t matter if you show up late, but you need people to be part of the buzz all the time.
