Special Report …

Could this story about two farmers and their cows transform your business?

A Simple Lesson That Will Lock Clients to YOU for Life

Dear Fellow Real Estate Professional,

I want to share a story with you that will most likely change the way you look at your real estate business. It’s a story that legendary business-building guru Dan Kennedy tells. It’s a story that illustrates a mistake most real estate professionals make.

It goes something like this …

Two guys decide to start their own farms. The first guy runs out and buys a bunch of cows for his farm because he believes that he can turn the cows into profit.

The second guy wants to buy cows, too, but he realizes that he doesn’t have the proper setup to handle the cows and turn them into profit. So instead of racing out to buy cows, he calls a fence company and has a massive fence built around his pasture. Once the fence is installed, he orders cows for his new farm.

The first farmer’s cows arrive, and slowly but surely they wander away because he didn’t do anything at all to keep them in his pasture. He bought the cows, invested the money he thought would produce results, then he let them all just walk away.

The second farmer’s cows, on the other hand, nicely fenced-in, fed and nurtured by the farmer, stayed on his farm and produced income for many years to come.

Unfortunately, most people operate their real estate business just like the first farmer. Instead of investing in cows, however, they’re investing in leads for their business.

Let me stop for a second and introduce myself. My name is Mark Koestner, and from my years of experience in marketing and consulting for Brokers and Realtors, I can say with 100-percent certainty that most don’t have a real plan to handle the leads they generate.

They’re spending a fortune to generate all these leads, but they don’t have a way to keep these prospects engaged or involved. They repeatedly waste a TON of money by letting these prospects just wander off.

Where does this leave you?

It leaves you wasting time chasing prospects, begging for listings, asking clients for referrals – all with no way to keep your prospects in your pasture.

If you don’t lock clients to you, you’ll be forced to sacrifice your nights and weekends, working entirely on someone else’s terms.

Can you even count how many family events you have missed because you were with buyers, some of whom never even bought? Do you even want to think about how many times you let people you cared about down because of your schedule? The truth is agents constantly bend over backwards for clients, sacrificing time, energy and money, always chasing the next sale. And you do it for one primary reason …

You’re replaceable

It sounds bad, but you know it’s true. Your clients can easily replace you. You sacrifice your happiness to sell a home because you realize that there are many other agents competing for your clients’ business. These agents would gladly fit themselves into your clients’ schedules. If you don’t say “yes” every single time a client asks for something, you feel as though you could lose that client. The feelings are real and justified. Agents do lose clients all the time. Clients are not as loyal as they once were.

So you cater to the whim of every client, holding their hand, kissing their behind, because you know if you don’t, someone else will.

How to finally turn the tables

If a client wants you to be available 24/7, and you’re not, they simply move on to the next agent. But what if you could turn the tables? How much easier would life be if you could simply move on to the next client, the way these clients just move on? The only way this would be possible is if you had clients than you needed.

So what does an agent have to do to have more clients than he or she needs?

Clients come from leads. To more clients than you need, you must have more leads than you need. This puzzle is solved by working backwards, which wasn’t taught in any of your real estate classes. But some agents figure it out and begin testing new lead-generation strategies and marketing campaigns to generate more leads. This is great, but it creates a new problem.

What do you do with all of these leads?

Let’s get back to the story of the two farmers. Smart, successful agents are the ones who put a “fence” around the leads they generate. This is how they become irreplaceable in the clients’ eyes, and how they are able to simply move to the next client and work on their own terms.

After Dan Kennedy tells his farmer story, he always says that the best fence a business owner can build around his customers is a powerful monthly newsletter.

A good newsletter keeps your prospects engaged. It’s a way you can provide them with something of value, establish yourself as an “expert” in your clients’ eyes, and build a relationship that makes YOU irreplaceable to THEM, instead of the other way around. A good newsletter is a tool the best marketers in the world use to but a fence around their leads and convert them to income.

The key word is “good” newsletter. How do you come up with a “good” newsletter?

To make sure your newsletter is read and valued, you need to study other successful newsletters or publications. What publications have the highest subscription numbers? 

First, you would need to study subscription rates. Second, you would need to study single-copy sales rates. These rates would give you an idea of what the market values. You should pay attention to what the market values. What are some of the key components in these magazines? Can you use these key components in your newsletter? Could they become part of your template?

Here are the top 10 subscription magazines/newsletters:

(Circulation Data obtained from Circulation Data provided by Audit Bureau of Circulations - www.accessabc.com)

                                            # of subscribers

AARP Magazine                          22,270,073

AARP Bulletin                            22,270,073

Readers Digest                          10,228,531

TV Guide                                    9,016,188

Better Homes and Gardens           7,268,424

National Geographic                    5,468,471

Good House Keeping                   4,623,113

Family Circle                              4,372,813

Ladies Home Journal                   4,108,619

Woman’s Day                             4,060,610

Here are the top ten single-copy magazines:

(Information obtained from Audit Bureau of Circulations – www.accessabc.com)

Cosmopolitan                            1,945,296

People                                      1,561,386

Woman’s World                          1,407,355

First for Women                         1,262,581

In Touch Weekly                        1,227,350

US Weekly                                   978,285

Family Circle                                867,008

O, The Oprah Magazine                 866,884

Glamour                                      861,006

National Enquirer                         812,686

This is extremely valuable information. Can you see why? 

Take Reader’s Digest and study this magazine. Now, the reason to focus on Reader’s Digest is because it is one of the largest subscription magazines. This means that consumers pay to receive this each and every month. Also, because this is one of the top-selling subscriptions, you can feel pretty certain that the people receiving it actually read it. This is something you should pay attention to when preparing your monthly newsletter. In fact, you should study and learn from these top-selling publications. They have a formula that is proven. From a quick review of Reader’s Digest, you will note that each issue seems to have the following:

Articles surrounding the following topics:

1)    Finances

2)    Family

3)    Health Care

4)    Stress/Clutter Organization

5)    Celebrity Interviews

The magazine also has the following sections:

1)    Quotes

2)    Jokes/Funny Stories/Comics

3)    Mental Challenges

4)    Readers Comments

In addition, the magazine features multiple advertisements and photos.

Let’s now take a look at TV Guide. Here are the Departments they feature each week:

1)    Moment of the Week

2)    Hot List

3)    You Tell Us! – Comments from Readers

4)    Behind the Scenes

5)    Cheers & Jeers

6)    Roush Review – Review of TV shows

7)    TV Listings

8)    Celebrity Gossip – similar to People Magazine

Both magazines also include photos. These photos are used to increase readership and improve retention. The photos are entertaining. In addition, it should be noted that both magazines feature multiple advertisements, running the gamut.

If you take some time and study these two magazines side by side, you might note a few similar items. For example, you will notice they both feature the following:

1)    Interesting photos

2)    Comments from Readers

3)    Celebrity info

4)    Interesting or entertaining articles

5)    Advertisements

What does this mean for you? It suggests that you should model your monthly newsletter with similar articles and sections.

That’s not to suggest you copy any of their material. You instead can learn from their format. You could lay out a newsletter with various sections. The best newsletters include many of the items outlined above. The reason you should study these magazines is because they are proven winners. They have recurring readership and are read by their subscribers. By following this format, you know in advance that your newsletter will be effective. Loyal readers are loyal clients.

This is what my mentor, a broker named Rob Minton who now coaches hundreds of real estate professionals throughout North America, says about the newsletter that transformed his business:

In 2005, Rob hired me to write and edit his monthly newsletters, and I’ve written more than 60 – all following the successful template created from his original research. This newsletter has been so powerful at building a loyal following that he has received many letters, cards and notes about it from clients who read it religiously. Here is what some of Rob’s clients have told him about the newsletter I wrote for him:

Each month, I poured a ton of content into Rob’s newsletter – feature articles, tax tips, strategies for investing, advice for home owners, real estate news and more. This was a HUGE effort, for which Rob paid me a healthy full-time salary.

The reason Rob spent the money to hire me, a professional journalist, to write his newsletter is because it was such a valuable sales tool. By locking clients to him, the newsletter allowed Rob stop missing family events and re-arranging his schedule around his clients’ whims. Because it touches multiple clients, instead of just one at a time, a good newsletter is a “sales asset” that allows massive time leverage.

Listen, there are only two things to do to build a profitable real estate business. These two things are:

1. Get new clients
 

2. Retain existing clients

For some reason, agents seem to focus 95 percent of their time, energy and attention on getting new clients while past clients walk right out of the pasture. You have to agree – this doesn’t make very much sense, does it?

This happens because newsletters aren’t easy to put out each month. They take a significant amount of time, planning and effort. So even the agents who know a monthly newsletter should be a huge priority in their business just can’t seem to implement this strategy.

What’s strange is that they all read similar newsletters, and see that they’re successful.

Hundreds of agents are reading weekly and monthly newsletters, but they aren’t copying the strategy in their own businesses. For some reason, they experience this, but they haven’t thought of doing the same thing with their clients.

Can you answer “yes” to any of the following questions? …

1. Do prospects view you as “just another real estate agent?”

2. Do you struggle converting prospects into clients?

3. Do you find yourself wishing you had “higher-quality” leads?

4. Are you concerned that your clients will find another agent if you don’t kiss their rear end?

5. If you have agents on your team, are you worried that your agents will steal your clients?

6. Do you feel as if you have a lot of money invested into your database and need a way to make sure you get a return on that investment?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions listed above, I strongly suggest you send a newsletter to your database each month. A great newsletter solves every challenge or problem listed.

You have two choices with regard to your newsletter:

1.  You can design your own newsletter template and dedicate many hours a month to writing your newsletter.

2.  Or you can hire someone else to write your newsletter – like Rob did – on your behalf.

The second option saves you time, but it could be costly. Hiring a freelance writer – even an inexpensive, inexperienced one – to write original content, edit and lay out an eight-page newsletter would probably cost you at least $400. You might be able to get a price break committing to, say, 12 months of newsletters, but even a 25-percent discount is $300 a month and $3,600 per year. Rob paid a LOT more than this for his newsletter.

The first option saves you money but requires a lot of your time. Let’s face it, if putting out a monthly newsletter were simple, everybody would be doing it. It takes time to find topics to write about. It takes time to research articles, and it takes even more time to write them. It takes time to edit and lay out all the copy.

So while a newsletter is a valuable business-building tool, it may also seem like a luxury you don’t have time for. The harsh truth is, however, that it’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity. Especially these days, when your prospects and clients are bombarded with messages from other media, day in and day out.

Now for some better news …

You can now get a powerful monthly newsletter, modeled after the best-selling magazines, “done for you” without having to write a single word of it yourself!

I now work with hundreds of agents all over North America, and I can tell you the one main difference between those who succeed and those who fail is consistent follow-up. It’s that simple. You MUST have a consistent way to deliver your message to prospects and clients … no matter how much time it takes.

So what’s the solution? Have it done for you.

I am now offering a complete, done-for-you monthly newsletter service. You get an informative, content-filled, entertaining client newsletter written by a professional journalist with an extensive background in real estate marketing. In fact, it’s exactly like the one Rob used in his business, but without any of the work. The best of both worlds!

Copyright © 2009. MK Consultants. All Rights Reserved.

31811 Vine Street Willowick, Ohio 44095

phone: 440-721-7603     fax: 440-278-48899