Status Quo is NOT a Strategy

[Brad Hanks]

I was recently talking with my manager about how challenging the market continues to be. He was recounting a conversaton he had with a broker from another office, an 18 year veteran, who was struggling. Doug mentioned that this broker had always done the things that define a successful real estate professional: geographic farming, cold calling, great client follow-up, direct mail, etc. And even though that broker continued to do those things that had defined his success in the past, nothing seemed to be working. His business was faltering.

I feel for that broker, just as I feel for every real estate professional that continues to work hard and struggles to post sales anywhere near their previous years' marks. It's a difficult market, and this is hard work, but do we need to work harder, or smarter? Do we need to continue to do the things we've done in the past, only with more frequency and more energy?

It's time to make a change. It's time to critically assess those things that we do - even those things that have proven successful in the past - and determine if we need to try something different. Mix it up a bit. Because if we continue to do the same things over and over again in the face of a dramatically shifting market, all the while expecting different results (isn't this the definition of insanity? - See my post at http://realestatedementia.com), we'll slowly lose our edge in the market and eventually give up. It's broken, and we need to fix it.

It's time to engage consumers where consumers congregate. Time to provide an experience and service consumers are looking for. Time to understand we're going to have to give up more information for free in order to build relationships with the consumer. Time to enhance the value add we bring to the transaction.

I've been talking for several months now on the need for real estate professionals to engage and interact with the consumer where they're congregating. Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace are where we need to be. We've got to tell our stories through blog sites, building traffic and communities around these tools and allowing the consumer to interact and provide feedback. We have to engage consumers with videos and podcasts that will entertain and inform. In short, we've got to embrace the tools of social media in our business, or continue to slog forward with the methods we've used in the past, hoping and praying the market will change.

For me, status quo is not a strategy.

Brad


** I will be delivering my latest course, "Status Quo Is Not A Strategy: Making the Right Moves in 2009" via webinar in early February. Please watch The Real Estate Network events board for information, or email me at [e-mail] for details.