Profiting in Arizona while ‘The Market’ Has Others Floundering

By Mike Parker Print Article

RISMEDIA, February 10, 2009-The state of Arizona has undergone amazing and enduring growth. Perhaps it’s due to the weather, the 300 days of sunshine, the spirit, the availability of reasonably priced homes-whatever-the growth has been nothing short of astounding, there. But this market has brought a more vicious version of hangover than in many states not blessed with such fabulous growth. Arizona is the third leading state in the U.S. for foreclosures. The bubble there was bigger, the fallout harder than in many other spots.

That’s why my recent conversation with Brian Cross of the Keller Williams Krone Team (in the Phoenix suburbs) was such a pleasant occurrence: “I put eight houses in escrow in January. Our team processed 46 houses in 2008 and our goal for 2009 is to close 92,” Cross told me.

In a state loaded with disaster stories in real estate of late, here we have someone optimistic and succeeding; in fact, Cross had his best year ever in 2008!

What is the Krone Team doing that you aren’t doing?

The Krone Team has been in business since 1983. They have now been with Keller Williams Realty for seven years. They are consistently recognized locally and nationally as a top-producing team. As Cross puts it: “Our team’s success can be attributed to the Internet, referrals and to the “three S’s:” specialties, systems, and scripts:

“Specialty” means that we truly specialize in what we do. We have two listing agents, two buyer’s agents and one transaction coordinator. The moment a lead comes in, it is routed to a specialist. Our buyer’s agents have mobile vans that allow them to access the Internet, print, fax, whatever right from their vans. This provides tremendous flexibility when out in the field with buyers. Our buyer’s agents don’t take listings. They exclusively work with buyers allowing them to hone their skills and do a better, more specialized job of representing those buyers and their interests.

“Once a lead comes in, they are routed to a buyer or seller specialist. That specialist then puts the lead on a custom drip e-mail campaign designed to position us as the local market expert. We launch the e-mail campaign and that’s all! A series of pre-designed e-mails is then sent to that lead, in three-day intervals. If a phone number was provided, we call them right away, and set up reminders to call them again. We also have systems to make sure noting falls through the cracks with an escrow.

“Scripts mean we never “waste” a lead, and that we remember to cover all the essentials, the first time. Our buyer agents and seller agent regularly have scripts training. These scripts make it easy to help a client down the right path in order for them to get what they want and for us to get the information we need to do a good job for them. The scripts have been an extremely effective tool in raising our conversion rates,” says Cross.

That’s wonderful, but where do they get those new leads from?

“In the last year, 9,238 people found our website through one of 500 different search terms, thanks to Compass,” Cross told me. “We expect that to continue to increase. Prior to Compass, we really didn’t understand what we needed to have an effective lead generating website. We basically had a company maintain our site, and we thought as long as we had a Web presence we were doing OK. Through the great coaching that is part of our CompassSearch subscription, we have learned to strategically place lead capture opportunities into our site in order to collect information and to change our site from a billboard to a lead collector. So far it has worked far beyond expectations! We sold our first house from the site within 3 months of implementing what our Compass coaches told us to do. Now, we have 15 transactions in various stages of development that came from our site. Because people find us when searching for Buckeye AZ Real Estate or for a Goodyear AZ Real Estate Agent, the Internet has become a great help to us. Before Compass put us on Google, Yahoo, MSN and all the rest, we basically didn’t exist in cyberspace. Now, anyone searching for those specialties finds us right on page one of every major search engine.”

Making this market work for them

“Everything is on sale right now in our marketplace. The low prices have opened doors for many people who otherwise were priced out of the market. Examples are first time homebuyers and investors who can now easily produce positive cash flow. The town of Buckeye, Arizona, is a heaven for investors. We have had a tremendous response on investment properties from our website. A particular investor found us on the Internet, and we closed in December. She wants to purchase another one, plus her sister wants to buy, too. I will probably end up attributing at least three sales from that one Internet lead. Also, we’re getting heavily into short sale listings. Once the traffic is brought to our site through the efforts of Compass, we have a special “Avoiding Foreclosure” area of our website. We have received a lot of traffic to this portion of our website because this problem is currently very widespread in this marketplace. The lead comes in and goes directly to our short sale specialist.

“With our team being Internet Realtors, leads can potentially come in 24 hours a day. Our website is like having a 24 hours storefront. Once we got it up and running properly, it’s pretty much ‘hands off’ so we can focus on lead generating and getting clients. The Compass Search product drives people to our storefront 24 hours a day and the coaching enables us to continually tailor our site to attract the buyers segment that is out there searching. Because a good percentage of our site visitors “sign in” and register, we have prospects working all the time, and as every sales person knows, if you can just attract prospects, you will make sales. Our site now brings the prospects to us, automatically.”

A smart team or agent can succeed in any market

Cross has been an agent for seven years; his team leaders have been in the business 28 years. In a market dominated by gloomy news, he and they continue to thrive-and they look to double the business they did in 2008. They have the right attitude and the right tools to make their local knowledge pay off for them. Even in a market awash in bad news, they continue to be the real story: A team that ignores doom and gloom and uses their knowledge and experience to succeed. The tools are available to all, but it’s on you to bring the attitude that you can succeed. The Internet will help any agent who truly dedicates themselves to making it work for them and for their clients.

© 2009 Mike Parker

Mike Parker specializes in online marketing services for Realtors® and real estate professionals. Obtain a free copy of his booklet “SEO Secrets for Realtors” by writing to seosecrets@compassInternetsystems.com. It will be sent to you free and no one will call you. To request a free review of your website to determine if it can be found by Internet buyers and if it is search engine friendly, click here and it will be evaluated free.

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Tuesday, February 9, 2010