Anne Marie Malfi, Real Estate Marketing Consultant/Virtual Asst, Bucks County,PA

For many, myself included, baseball is much more than a sport or game, it's full of life lessons. Many movies, books and stories have been told that cause us to reflect not only on the stories being told and experiences shared but cause us to reflect on the things that truly matter in our life. More often than not, you will find great examples of courage, strength, passion and true human spirit.

The game of baseball can teach us a lot about the game of life. Baseball has a way of bringing out every possible emotion in us whether we're playing on the team or we are simply a spectator.

Like many of you, baseball has been and still is a big part of my life. From watching my dad coach several teams, to attending the Boston Red Sox games with him at Fenway Park to now enjoying the game with our daughters and watching my husband scream at the tv as his team does something either really great or something completely frustrating.

I think great similarities between the game of baseball and the game of life and yes, even real estate can be drawn:

The Team

Baseball and real estate create interactions. Many of us are on a team - brokers, work with other agents, our clients, stagers, mortgage consultants, marketing and social media consultants. Just as a baseball team requires working together towards common goals and towards your dream of helping people realize their dreams, being a part of a team requires great commitment from everyone.

Being a Real Estate agent gives you the opportunity to affect someone's life in a very positive way. The game of baseball can teach us many lessons and serve as an inspiration to us in everything we do in helping clients realize their American dream of owning their own home.

The Slump

Just like some of our favorite baseball players, we find ourselves in a slump. Perhaps our markets have not rebounded as other areas have. Everyone hits a slump at some point or another. We can learn a lot from baseball players who find that despite all the practice, commitment and desire they have, sometimes they just won't connect that bat to the ball. Do they give up? Follow this advice:

"Whenever I went into a slump, I went back to fundamentals. Wait on the ball, be quick, use a light bat and choke up." ~Ted Williams~

Change some things up, tackle some of the small, more manageable tasks on your overall marketing plan and perhaps you will come out not only swinging again but getting those hits.

Hitting one out of the Park

"Hitting one out of the park" has to be an amazing feeling for a player and can be related to real estate - getting that home sold or finding that dream home for your client.

Handling Defeats

Sometimes we find nothing is working the way we want it to just like in a game. The team practices and has been playing well only to have everything fall apart in front of the fans. Even the great players strike out some days. Sometimes a deal falls through, the financing doesn't work out, a seller doesn't accept the offer, or a client changes their mind. We must remember:

"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game!" ~Movie - A Cinderella Story

Not just a physical game.

Baseball is not just a physical game but a game that requires great thinking and concentration. Things are happening fast, one play or mistake can change the game entirely. The same goes for real estate. Like baseball it's physically demanding - running from one listing to another, open houses, and just being on the go constantly. It also requires great thinking and concentration. Are you able to think outside the box, do things differently if they're not working, and change things to meet the needs of each individual client? The market is constantly changing, the players are always changing and you have to be willing and able to adjust to all those changes.

Baseball even encourages us and dares us to be different. Ever hear of a rally cap?

A Rally Cap is a baseball cap worn inside-out or in another unconventional manner (backwards, sideways) by players or fans, in order to will a team into a come-from-behind scenario, as a sign of good luck and usually occurs late in the game.

While a rally cap may be primarily associated with baseball superstition, I think the real estate industry and many of us dealing with things in our own lives, can benefit from wearing a rally cap. Who knows perhaps it will spark a comeback for us all!

Throughout my childhood I watched my dad coach many baseball teams. He always taught and insisted his players do three things:

1. Play to the best of their abilities (even when losing)
2. Have fun
3. Be a good sport whether they won or lost

In his mind, there was no place for crying in baseball and so I find myself taking my dad's advice, wiping away my tears, putting on my rally cap and hoping that my dad's outcome in his "game of life" has a positive outcome. This post is dedicated to my father, my mentor, my hero and the strongest man I've ever known. I love you dad and I'm wearing my rally cap with the hope that I can turn the outcome of your game around.

"Life will always throw you curves, just keep fouling them off... the right pitch will come, but when it does, be prepared to run the bases." ~Rick Maksian

Did you see any similarities between baseball and how you approach real estate?

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Ready to take your Marketing to new levels? Anne Marie Malfi ~ Malfi Marketing Solutions.com ~ Copyright 2009

Perhaps you've heard this saying before: "if you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk." In other words "actions speak louder than words." What it comes to for most clients is that your services go beyond your words and promises but are actually seen and felt by them.

Whether we like the idea of it or not, every day we interact with a prospect we are essentially on a job interview. These potential clients are researching us and determining if we are the right fit for their job whether they are selling or buying a home. Can we honestly say with complete certainty that we are providing relevant information and resources that highlight our expertise that shows we are the best solution for our clients?

Are you prepared to answer your client's tough questions with solid answers and solutions and will you - can you ~ deliver?

When it comes to interviewing for a job there are 3 important areas to consider:

1. Research the company
2. Review your experience and qualifications
3. Review your resume to be sure it emphasizes your experience and qualifications that are pertinent to your potential employer's needs.

When it comes to real estate here's how you can make sure you're covering those three areas:

1. Research - that's right research the home of your potential seller so that you can effectively lead them through the process of placing their home on the market (setting the price, how to market their particular home, staging and repairs, etc.) Think of how much more effective you can be if you know that home, that area and by truly listening to that prospects questions and needs that they share with you when you initially speak. Listen well and use this information to best show how you can benefit this client.

• • It's also important to research a prospective buyer - learn all about their needs when it comes to what they are looking for in a home. Is location important, # of bedrooms, amenities, etc? Listening is the key to taking this prospective buyer to an actual buyer you can represent. If you're not listening to what they're saying they will know it and feel it and will easily find someone who will provide this for them.

2. Review your experience and qualifications - have you kept yourself up to date on the latest real estate trends, your education and marketing strategies that you can offer your potential clients?

3. Review your resume - Make sure it's up to date and includes and highlights some of the great services you are able to provide your client. Perhaps you are involved in a local community organization and that will speak volumes to a potential client.

Advice for Consumers:

1. 1. Research and hire a Realtor that will mesh with your personality and that you feel will meet your needs. Visit their blog and website. Review their testimonials and whenever possible seek out referrals from friends and family that have worked with that Realtor.
2. 2. Think about the qualities and strengths that are most important to you. You may prefer someone who is calm, cool and relaxed to lead you through this tough process or maybe you need someone that can push you along. At the very least you need someone that is knowledgeable, professional, knows the area you are interested in and will follow up with you in the way you need them to.

3. Research that Realtor online. In particular you want to Google their name and see how often they come up in the search (you can do this in any search engine.) Check out the sites they are listed and marketing on. Can you see this Realtor marketing your property? Do you like the way they market their current listings? Look at their website in great detail. Do they explain the process and what they offer their clients throughout the process? When it comes to their blog are you able to connect with them and do you feel the information they're providing is relevant to you?

4. Hire them & work with them. Once you choose a Realtor it's important to remember to work with them, rely on their expertise to guide you through the process and trust that they have your best interest at heart.

Advice for Agents:

• Be yourself
• Be in touch with what consumers want and need by the interaction you have with them both online, on the phone and in your community.
• Don't promise things you can't deliver. Share what they can expect from you and then exceed that expectation.
• Have a strong online and offline marketing presence. Use key sites that will showcase your listings and show your prospects that you do in fact have an online presence, especially if it's something you are promising in your PreListing Presentation.
• Update your website, blog and materials regularly with great and relevant content. Consumers are reading it all even if they're not ready to make contact just yet.
• Stay in contact with your sphere of influence and provide them with continued great service and contact. (You may be asked by a potential new client if they can contact some of your past clients.)
• Establish and maintain contact with your new/current clients

As someone that not only works with agents to assist them with their marketing presence but as someone that researched extensively to find a realtor to represent me in the buying and selling process, these are the areas that were important to me to ensure I hired the right person. It's very easy to forget what's truly important to our clients and we can be reminded of that by thinking about the process as if we were in their shoes. Ask yourself often as you look at your website, your blog, your social media sites and your marketing efforts - is this what I would want and expect if I were buying or selling a home? Can I relate to this person?

In addition to focusing on these key areas, also put focus on highlighting your strengths and using them every day to show your clients that you can do the job they are interviewing you for.

To recap: Converting many of your site visitors to clients really is like preparing for a job interview - it comes down to:

Being prepared, knowing and sharing your information and having the confidence that you can do the job.

What are the strengths that you are using every day that you can make a part of your marketing? (take a hard look at your online presence - all the sites you are on - are you highlighting these strengths in all your communications?) And more importantly are you delivering on those strengths?

Feel free to share in your comments, key strengths you feel a Realtor should have and use to benefit their clients. (we learn and improve by sharing)

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Some other helpful posts that relate to this subject:

It's about the customer

Are your clients having a quality customer experience?

Does your client feel important to you?

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Ready to take your Marketing to new levels? Anne Marie Malfi ~ Malfi Marketing Solutions.com ~ Copyright 2009

Join the AR Group ~ Accountability Wednesdays

Go to any company and since I'm speaking about how it affects all of you, a real estate professional's website and you will more often than not see a reference to customer service - how it will be provided and what you can expect from that professional.

We all spend considerable money and time establishing our businesses, so why would we want to undo all that hard work by not providing great customer service/experience? As I mentioned in a previous post "Not everyone sees a situation, your services or even a home in quite the same way. One of the most important things to remember is that it doesn't matter what you think of your business and services- it matters what the client thinks and believes. Their perception is what truly matters."

Service should be the cornerstone of what we are offering our clients. We can have great offerings and promises that will attract new customers, but if we are not sending them away happy we are risking the opportunity to have positive feedback, referrals and a repeat customer.

I actually watched this play out at a local ice cream shoppe this weekend. The hours were posted that they were closing at 9pm. Saturday night happened to be a beautiful night - one of those nights that brings everyone out into a small town like ours to enjoy every minute possible of the warm night and often brings many of the locals to our favorite ice cream shoppe.

Now while I understand people have worked all day and want to get home, why would you turn customers away especially during these tough economic times not to mention many other reasons we could all come up with? They still had a line out the door at 8:50pm and cars still continuing to come into the parking lot. My husband and I watched as the line dwindled down and customers continued to come to the door. These customers were told they were closed and these families, many of them with little kids, turned away disappointed because they had such high hopes of enjoying their favorite treat.

It was sad really for two reasons: when you have this expectation that you're going to get something you really enjoy and then you don't - it's heartbreaking - especially for the kids (or the kid in all of us) and secondly I wondered what the owner of this shoppe would have thought about their employees turning away customers - the money lost and possibly the customers they just lost. We estimated that this shoppe lost over $50 in the span of 10 minutes based on 3 people getting an ice cream cone.

Now, I'm not picking on this business and I don't know if these employees were told to close no matter what, but it just left me thinking about how I present myself and my services.

In another instance and to further my point of great customer service, I visited our local Starbucks. People were coming out and I wasn't paying attention to the sign that clearly stated they closed at 9pm on Sunday nights. The girls behind the counter were putting things away and noticed me standing there and I soon realized they were cleaning up for the night. I quickly apologized and said I didn't realize you closed at 9pm and I turned to leave. They said, "that's ok, what can we get you?" Now that to me was great customer service.

I didn't need to be convinced to love my frequent visits to Starbucks, but this experience left me with such a great impression of this local business and the girls that were representing it - enough so that I contact the owner/manager to let him know the experience I had and the impression it left on me. He thanked me for visiting his location, sent me a coupon but more importantly told me that he would mention this to his employees which is exactly what I hoped to get from this communication with him.

So these two experiences got me thinking:

Do I provide my customers with the ultimate form of customer service? Am I willing to go the extra mile? If I end my day at 5pm and a customer needs something do I find a way to make it happen so they have their needs met and I have lived up to my commitment of providing great customer service while still finding that work/life balance I promised my family?

As a small business owner, my answer is yes. What would your answer be?

Have you ever experienced either one of these two customer service scenarios (good/not so good in your opinion?)

The Starbucks experience reminded me of a book I read several years ago. Have you ever read the book, "Whale Done?" I highly recommend it if you manage or oversee employees or a team. In this book, Ken Blanchard, describes techniques that Sea World whale trainers use to get the whales to perform. Now I'm certainly not saying treat people like whales but understand what can be learned from some of the techniques used.

It can be used to emphasize how businesses can use many of these techniques and principles to have a team whose foundation is built on getting along, building trust, and emphasizing the positives in performance and redirecting undesirable actions. It's a book every business whose focus is on customer service should read. It was an instrumental book/practice and technique I fully embraced in helping me put focus on recognizing my employees and their actions and identifying training opportunities to improve our customer's experience with us.

In another book by Gerald Zaltman "How customers think" it revealed customers want people and organizations that:

• Save them time
• Are a resource for new ideas
• Connect with us relationally
• Stay with us on the journey through all its twists and turns (sounds like real estate to me!)

I think this perfectly describes exactly what customers want from their real estate agents/professionals.

Have you ever gone the extra mile to share with a company the great customer service experience you had with them?

In what ways are you providing your customers with this kind of experience and service they can feel great about?

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Ready to take your Marketing to new levels? Anne Marie Malfi ~ Malfi Marketing Solutions.com ~ Copyright 2009

I don't know about you but one of the greatest things about blogging is the comments. It provides an instantaneous affirmation that you have reached someone, inspired them, helped them and connected with them. I've said it before and I am going to say it again, I have the best readers, subscribers and commenters on my blog. I am so grateful to all of you who regularly visit and interact with me.

One of the things I vowed to do early on when I started blogging was to regularly visit my subscriber's blogs after they took the time to visit and comment on mine.

Well my subscribership has increased significantly since I first started so I will admit that I'm not as faithful as I should be to that practice but it's on my plan to improve. I will be posting about that bit of accountability in a new group designed to help me stayed focused on the necessary tasks that will provide me the focus on my business and all the things I need to be committed to - feel free to join in.

So when I'm not as busy with my client's marketing and have time to read, comment and comment back on my posts, I will typically a few times a week visit my subscriber list and randomly pick a few people and visit their blog and yes, I will not only visit but comment. I've even been known to comment on a listing postespecially if it captures my eye and those are the kind of posts that blogger puts out. The point is I want to connect with my subscribers and let them know that not only do I appreciate their coming to my blog but that I want to get to know them more. How are you doing with commenting?

Another great way to connect with your readers and subscribers is to email them directly.

I have received some many great emails from new subscribers letting me know how much they've enjoyed my blog posts, both on and off the network. I received a wonderful example of this from our own Lisa Udy. She so appreciated my subscribing to her blog that she took the time to email me. It was a great feeling to be appreciated in that very personal way and I highly recommend doing it because being on the receiving end of that appreciation taught me that it's something I need to be doing to continue building the relationships with all of you and my readers. Thank you Lisa for being a wonderful example of this!

For those of you that are new to blogging the one important thing I can share with you (because I did it) is this:

Visit blog posts and commentand more often than not you will encourage bloggers to visit your post and comment - that's how you build your readership and page views. (Don't keep yourself a secret.)

Need more convincing? Think of it in this way:

Commenting on blog posts is like writing your own "mini blog." We've all seen countless examples of how the search engines are indexing our comments. Imagine having some of the keywords in your comment picked up by the engines. Someone sees it, it prompts them to go to your blog, check things out and what do you know - you may just have a new reader/subscriber. If you're not regularly commenting you're missing out and we could be too! (Right Brad?)

Ok, so to recap what I've learned from this task and what I will be doing because of it:

• At least once a day visiting a few of my subscribers/commenters on my blog to check things out on their blog - and yes, I will be commenting.
• Emailing new and old (not referring to age) subscribers to thank them for interacting with me on my blog as well as commenting on their posts and sharing information that might be helpful to them.
• Remaining Accountable to myself and my readers to providing relevant content
  • Remaining Accountable to doing these 3 things every week.

Do you regularly visit/comment/email your subscribers? Will you?

Are you new and just reading but not commenting - here's your chance - post a comment - I won't bite!

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Ready to take your Marketing to new levels?Anne Marie Malfi ~ Malfi Marketing Solutions.com ~ Copyright 2009

Join a new AR Group ~ Accountability Wednesdays

Ok, I'm only on Day/Task 4 of the Bloggers Challenge, way behind all my friends who are participating, but I don't care - I'm doing it at my pace and with great resolve to improving my blog and that's what counts, isn't it?

The task for those of you that are following along in my journey to building a better blog, is Learning from other Successful bloggers... and I've certainly learned from the best and I truly mean that. My list would be a mile long if I went through and named all the wonderful people on this network who have inspired me with their writing, experiences and knowledge so please accept my thank you - you know who you are!

In this challenge, Darren suggests watching, listening and observinga blogger from your niche and I can't think of anyone better than Rebecca Levinson, a blogger that I have long admired for her words of wisdom, her knowledge and style. Rebecca not only provides thought provoking content but she does it for every level of blogger whether you're just getting started to someone who has been blogging a long time and just needs some fresh ideas and approaches.

So here we go...here are the areas I observed and analyzed on her blog:

• Content
• Links
• Comments

Content

If you are seeking a blog that is packed full of relevant and useful content, inspiration and even some tough talk, Blogging in the Rain, is the blog you should be visiting. Rebecca covers the following topics regularly: marketing, blogging, social media networking and often sprinkles some surprise topics and different ways of looking at how we can make the most of blogging and social networking time.

Rebecca is also very creative in how she presents her topics. You won't find a page full of just text. What you will find is a blog with images that help tell the story, videos that either Rebecca has stumbled upon or created herself, and voice clips to share her message and encourage you to find your place in the blogging world.

Links

Throughout her blog posts you will find links to all the sites she's speaking about so no need to search yourself - she'll take you there for further reading and exploration on the topic. On the side of her blog you'll find the following links:

• Real Estate Marketing
• Real Skillz on FaceBook
• Blog Tune UP
• Real Skillz on Ezine Articles
• Real Skillz on BrokerAgent Social
• Real Skillz on MySpace
• Social In Wisconsin
• Support Innocence and Freedom
• Real Skillz on Linked In

As Problogger suggested in Task 3, internal links are key in promoting your blog and the services you are offering. Rebecca knows all too well that having these links will drive her readers to the other sites she authors and participates in as well as help with her SEO and increase her page views.

Comments received

Rebecca has quite the following on ActiveRain and she takes the time to interact regularly with all of them (us.) Whether it's commenting back on her posts, visiting and commenting on our posts or taking it a step further and emailing her readers to further assist them with the questions they present her on her posts, she provides in environment on and off her blog that simply encourages you to interact and be associated with her. Rebecca completely engages her readers with her content and solutions she offers. What I really like most about Rebecca is that "she walks the walk." She doesn't simply suggestto her readers to get involved in blogging, vlogcasts and social networking - she does it. Leading by exampleand often giving us step by step guides, resources and reasons why we need to make it a part of our marketing strategy. After reading her blogs I often find myself saying "I can do it!"

I feel so fortunate to be a small part of this amazing and ever expanding network. I learn from each and every poster and reader/commenter on my blog and know you have been instrumentalin helping me grow as a blogger, virtual assistant, and person for all the knowledge and personal stories you have shared with me.

Rebecca, has become not only a great friend (thanks to this network), business associate but has been instrumental in helping me improve my blogging strategy. Thank you Rebecca!

Who's inspired you when it comes to blogging?

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Ready to take your Marketing to new levels? Anne Marie Malfi ~ Malfi Marketing Solutions.com ~ Copyright 2009

Join our new AR Group ~ Accountability Wednesdays