I’m constantly baffled at the horrendous sales skills displayed by real estate agents across the country. While most of them are crying about the housing crises, mortgage defaults, and too much competition in the market, there are a few select agents cleaning house despite the afore mentioned problems.
I remember one time I was about to sell a piece of bare land that I owned and a agent said… “you can’t get any more then $45,000 for that piece of property”. I laughed. Then took some pictures, wrote a direct response ad, posted it onto Craigslist in “Rich Cities” and had a dude trying to escrow me a down payment on a $65,000 sales price in the first two hours the ad was live.
Real Estate agents only know what they are taught in their little real estate world. I remember one of the largest firms in Oregon wanted me to work for them, but wanted me to come into their office and train with their leaders. I laughed and said… “I’ll only work from home, on my time, and with my methods, and I’ll sell twice what your best agent is doing now”.
Of course they wouldn’t let a arrogant little bastard like myself create the rules. They said they couldn’t employ me without me showing up to the office each day. Idiots.
I never became a real estate agent because ultimately I hate being on other people’s time. And it’s WORK. But I have no doubt I could become a best selling agent in any area, at any time. No doubt in my mind.
Case in point…
Right now Ed McMahon (former co-host of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) is having financial problems and his house is going into foreclosure. Apparently he broke his neck a while back, and is about $600,000 behind in payments. You can read the yahoo story by clicking here.
Anyhow, here is a snippet of that article and it just proves to me that real estate agents are just as clueless as a blind man playing Nintendo…
“The six-bedroom, five-bath house is in a hilltop gated community overlooking Mulholland Drive called The Summit and is listed for sale at $6.25 million. It has been on the market two years, according to real estate agent Alex Davis, who has the listing.
The house is near that of pop star Britney Spears, which doesn’t always work in its favor.
“When we were trying to sell the house one time, there were about 100 paparazzi there,” Davis said.”
So you are telling me you can’t sell this house in 2 years? You gotta be kidding me? And saying that the house in near Britney Spears is a bad thing? Surely it depends who you are talking to.
Here’s what I’d do instead of trying to shield the fact Britney lives next door and the paparazzi is swarming 24/7.
I’d sell the place to a narcissistic rich person who is crazy for attention and the spotlight. My ad would probably be something obnoxious like…
“Who Else Wants To Live Next Door To Britney Spears While Basking In Ed McMahon’s Cozy Hot Tub”
Dear Future Neighbor of Britney,
If you want to have direct access to the top Hollywood Stars, live in the most exotic area of Los Angeles, and have Paparazzi shooting your photo for People Magazine then this is going to be the most important letter you’ll ever read.
Okay, it’s a little bit over the top, but you get the idea. Instead of shielding the fact Britney lives next door, find someone who wants exactly that. There are tons of rich people that would die to have the paparazzi follow them around so they would feel important.
Obviously whatever method they were employing for the last 2 years to sell this house hasn’t worked. I bet you anything I could sell that house in 3 weeks max!
But most agents have no clue how to think outside the box, craft a USP (unique selling proposition), and are dumbfounded by most of the things that us direct response marketers and copywriters do on a daily basis.
A few months ago I almost bought a Yacht just for the purpose of boating real estate agents out to Catalina Island and give advice along the way. Every single time I talk to a agent they are simply amazed at how a tattooed skater boy could know way more about selling houses then they received in years and years of on the job training.
But that too sounded like … WORK.
So, screw that. Instead I’ll just be a Monday morning quarterback and give these agents a quick tip on how to sell Ed McMahon’s homestead.
Dude… Totally.
Real Estate agents somehow never grasped the concept of showing the most appealing truth.
And I still think you should buy that sailboat… Or timeshare mine 😉
Wanna get together this weekend?
LOL priceless. You should buy that yacht though and take those real estate agents out for the day. Just don’t bring them back though 🙂
Ha ha nothing like a little JMo rant to start my day 🙂
Dude someone should JV w/ Ed to stick a webcam on his roof, aim it at her house, upload the live feed to ustream or a website e.g. livebritneycam.com and make money as an affiliate for Britney products.
Great stuff. Not only do most real estate agents not get it, but most of them are arrogant as hell.
Just like in internet marketing the ones that get it and are successful are willing to listen, learn and implement.
Doug
Hi Jason,
Good hearing from you again.
You are so very right. People go around in their own mind fog. They build walls around their beliefs and then point out all the ways they can stay the way they are. Ignorance is bliss!
My mind goes to plenty of other cliches describing the realtor’s justification for their failure.
I’ll bet after all this publicity the listing creates a bidding war.
Nice example, thanks,
Marc
Truly awesome post. One of the best I’ve read in a while – certainly made me laugh! (Heck, I’d even laugh to see it in an email subject…)
Just blasted your link out to 1000+ people on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ericabiz/statuses/827085502
Honestly… that was brilliant! When you’re down and out it seems that “copy” will save your life.
Love it! Great post dude…
Chris
P.S. too bad we couldn’t meet up in diego to go surf. Went after the conference and damn was it cold!
J-Mo, you are the bomb.
All professions that have “secret” lingo and info (like real estate) lure members into thinking that just because they know these secrets, they must therefore automatically be “good” at the gig.
Not.
In fact, most of the time, the second you get cozy in any profession, you’re toast. You drink the Kool-Aid, and believe the myths, and suck at the tit of The Great Whore Of Common Wisdom.
You crawl into a tiny little box, and lose the ability to think outside of it.
(This is also, by the way, what has happened to the Mainstream Political Media in this country — they’ve been co-opted by the moneyed jerks they’re supposed to be reporting on.
Bloggers will save the world from itself by continually knocking the comfortably dumb on their heels. Long live the Web revolution.)
These real estate yahoo’s you’re discussing are of the same DNA as the studio honchos who poo-poo’ed American Idol at first. Who, they wondered, would possibly want a shot on national TV to sing? No one THEY knew. And because they live in such rarified air, and are obviously so smart (how else could their good fortune be explained?), they MUST be able to see the Truth more clearly than everyone else!
It’s fun to toy with brain-dead fucks like that, isn’t it.
Keep stirring it up, Jason.
John
I disagree with this particular angle.
I live in a very well off area where multi-millionaires are common, and I’ve spent enough time to notice some commonalities.
People with wealth don’t want that kind of attention–it gets old–unless they are average folks who have just suddenly won the lottery or recently been discovered and thrown into a new hit boy band with more money than sense.
I can assure you, “You wanna be Britney’s neighbor and have lots of attention” is probably not going to attract most with deep pockets. The RE agent was right about the point in that it is a liability.
Another approach would be in order.
I will however concur that most RE agents are worthless blobs that are too lazy to do anything except have their hair done and pose for mink stole studio shots for their Sunday newspaper ads.
There are many fortunes to be made selling marketing/copywriting services to regular brick and mortar businesses like real estate agents.
Most business owners know next to nothing about marketing (when you study their businesses you’ll be appalled at some of the really basic marketing errors they make).
And they’ll see you as a living, breathing genius just for sharing information that is common place on blogs like this one or on internet marketing/copywriting forums.
Where there’s ignorance there’s also enormous opportunity.
Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
Hehehe… sensationalism sells, period! It’s a more lethal force than just raw salesmanship per se…
As a real estate broker, myself, I can appreciate where you are coming from… but as Scorpion mentioned above – I don’t think your approach will work with the target market.
Additionally, we don’t know what the agent is dealing with – he might have done many things properly… but the property could be seriously overpriced. I see it every day.
A recalcitrant seller can be very delusional when they want X for their property which is only worth Y. Also, the market could be falling there, which makes finding a ready, willing, and able buyer that much more challenging.
From being a full-time direct response marketing student for the past 7 months (12-14 hrs per day studying), i completly get what Jason’s talking about.
I am currently putting together a marketing plan b/c i will become a real estate agent in sept. and i plan on kicking some serious *** and putting all the “experienced” agents directly out of business in my area.
There may be singers, rappers, up and coming entertainers in general who’d love to have that spotlight. The people who’d want that attention and could afford to live there would be endless.
Even if an artist couldn’t afford it, maybe a record company would be interested in financing it for their artist to get them exposed because we all know that nowadays people are pulling some extremely shameless stunts for publicity.
Just some thought off the top of the head.
Haha, lol, yo have an unique sense of humor. Thanks for this entertaining post. I am sure that house will be sold sooner than later, whether or not your post helped.
Wow this hits home.
After a horribly failed product launch.. I’ve decided to sell cars.. knowing with my IM learned skills I can probably sell a lot.
Really hits home..
I gotta get John Carltons course already.. Maybe I’ll do that with my earnings.
Your Friend,
Dan Sweeney
PS start recording your live shows
Yeah, no kidding… agree 100%.
One commenter said the well-off people don’t look for that kind of thing.
Well, if that’s so… why insist on selling to that majority?!
How many people do you need to sell that house to?
Ultimately, ONE. One that matches what you’re selling. Who CARES about the rest?
It’s amazing how that simple fact escapes the people in that business…
Hey Jason
Great post. love it
Man it is a universal thing with Agents in fact most sales people!
Hope your getting some great waves.
Just copped decent swell over last 2 days down here in Avalon Sydney
Rich Muir
Love your post Jason. It really gets you thinking in a whole different way. Thanks a lot!
Doug Quance (the broker above) said it perfectly.
If your house of cards isn’t stacked right (and PRICED right), you won’t sell it.
I’ll bet Mr. McMahon was holding out for too much for his McHouse.
But we of course don’t know that. Nor do we know what efforts the broker/agent went to in order to sell it (which could have been extraordinary given the price range). It’s easy to hypothesize when you can create your own sales conditions that aren’t constrained by real world limitations. So all this theory is simply entertainment.
To put it another more obvious way…no sales message in the world will convince someone to pay $20,000,000 for a potato (unless perhaps it also entailed a hostage release).
Great post- I don’t see why Ed McMahon can’t pay off his house with all the millions he’s made, or borrow enough from his rich friends to do it.
The media would rather spin it like he is a victim of some evil bankers.
In many states you couldnt run your kind of campaign without setting yourself up for many problems. You dont want to promise a certain exposure level, a certain lifestyle, or in reality promise anything that isnt a hard material fact because it can easily be used against you later since it was too arbitrary of a promise. That’s just like California DMV busting dealers for obviously common phrases like ‘will run forever’. Sure, great marketing phrase but they consider it wrong and has severe penalties.