Top Ten Signs Your Broker Just Doesn't get It.

Home sales are up again. Hooo-rah! More than 6.1% sales jump for May 2009. April and March were strong months too.

It's time to warm up your websites, sharpen your lead generating tools and get ready to start enjoying some sales commissions.

A few of my recent blog posts have been on effective real estate marketing and the dark side of not using technology correctly.

I blame a lot of brokers for being cheapskates and morons when it comes to NOT using real estate marketing tools correctly. For brokerages that have sales of several hundred homes and making sales of $10 million, $20 million and more - I am just shocked and outraged when I see huge numbers of broker websites that all look like they got banged out on the same word processor -- today I am going to tell rank and file agents what to look out for.

Too many brokerages are imploding and going out of business. In their wake, they end up screwing the agent out of their commissions they are due.

In this rant and a few more to come, I will teach agents what the warning signs are. My 12 years as a real estate coach and consultant has given me the wisdom to watch out for these warning signs.

Below is the Bartman's Top 10 Warning Signs that your broker could be soon going out of business.

1.) Does your brokerage have an in house person to shoot your 360 virtual tours?

2.) Does your brokerage have an attractive, built from scratch website?

3.) Does your broker website have a natural, page one visibility on Google for the relevant search terms for your area?

4.) Does your broker actively promote new technology to help you with leads?

5.) Does your broker hire and bring in speakers and coaches to teach the agents what the new lead generating tools are?

6.) Did your broker just sign up for Cendant's Lead Router (or another program) and are they giving you the leads (in rotation per agent) for FREE?

7.) Does your broker do any ACTIVE participation with blogging or any social networking activities online?

8.) Did your broker cut your annual ad spend by 50% or more on newspaper ad or real estate guide advertising?

9.) Does your broker have a Twitter, FaceBook or corporate LinkedIn account?

10.) Is your broker able to schmooze and get any of the million dollar producers at Amazing Realty to come and join your place?

If you answered NO to 5 questions or more... this is not a good sign.

YOU -- as an agent can DO something about this if you like the brokerage you're still with.

1.) Get your agent to DUMP your Keller Williams crap website template. Or dump the other McWebsite template company you're with

2.) Hire a consultant that knows what the Hell they're doing. There's a lot of good real estate marketing consultants out there willing to help you turn things around.

3.) Start somewhere. The journey of a thousand miles always begins with the first step. If your broker doesn't get it... then kick things into gear and YOU CREATE a Corporate presence at LinkedIn.com for free. Then go to FaceBook.com. Same thing. Then start Chirping on Twitter. Just dive in and start getting other agents to help out.

4.) You're already here on ActiveRain. Good start, but get your BROKER here, too. Get other agents to jump on board at ActiveRain. Remember when you invite them, you get Active Rain Points! Hooooo-rah!

5.) Start looking at the competition. Go to Google and enter in the search phrases like: your home town + real estate. (dallas real estate, for example). See who shows up on page one. Sniff their source code by pulling down the Source and looking at the code. See how pretty one website looks when compared to another. Start to make notes of who keeps showing up on page one consistently. Go to Amazon and buy books on SEO and learn what it takes to make small changes to your site that over time -- can make a huge difference in online visibility.

6.) Write Press Releases. Upload them to 1888PressRelease.com. Pay $50 bucks and get them instantly linked into Google and other social media networks.

These top six things you can start today. If your agent is still being a sour puss moron, but you like the fact you have ZERO desk fees and you get good commissions, then go it alone and build your own Agent Website.

The critical things you need to do are:

1.) Build a website from scratch. Forget Z57. Forget Advanced Access, eNeighborhoods, Homes.com and the rest. Template websites are NOT the way to go.

This includes MosterTemplate.com, too. Remember today's next time homebuyers are not stupid or naive. They can spot a cheapskate agent a mile off.

2.) Hire someone who knows REAL ESTATE SEO. Search for that phrase on Google: (real estate seo) and go with a proven leader with a track record of consistent home runs.

3.) Get a good IDX into your site. Bartman likes iHomefinder IDX. It contains a built in lead manager and set up and deployment takes seven days or less. Your monthly fee will be $50 to $79 a month.

4.) ADD two way chat to your site. Go here: www.WebsiteAlive.com. Sign up for the FREE 10- day account. If you like it, get $10 off per month when you use this code: ARE1995

5.) Create a few press releases per year and launch them on 1888PressRelease.com

6.) Go here and buy some one way incoming links for $250 a month for six months. www.Rank4Sales.com

7.) Traffic Measurement and analytics. You cannot trust Google Analytics to give you accurate results. Google's purchase of Urchin combined with the fact they can control the algorithm of Google for AdWords and your Pay Per Click campaings is a pure conflict of interest. If Google needs more money, it is possible for them to tweak the algorithm and artificially report through Urchin (Google Analytics) that your results could be dropping when in fact -- they are not.

So stay out of that tar pit and go with an independent traffic analytics company. Go here: VisiStat.com and sign up. It's $29 bucks a month.

Steps one through seven above are what you need to do to get your site in better shape, impress customers, get instant leads and take control of your destiny.

Do these seven things above and in less than a year, your leads will double... or triple.

With 12 years of doing this kind of work, this is how I boil down the elements of what goes into a successful real estate business.

- bartman