All posts by Bettina Settles

My clients appreciate my compassion, empathetic nature when dealing with them and their transaction but more than willing to educate in a simple way to make a complex transaction understood. Being accessible and cooperative when it comes to dealing with clients and cooperative agents has earned me high praises from both. They have learned that I am dedicated, honest, and knowledgeable and can become very persuasive when it comes when working a transaction for my clients.
commitment, Inspiration, tips

Our office does not pay a referral fee!

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Reading my emails I came across a posting from Peggy Chirico called “I Don’t Take Referrals!” and it reminded me of several conversations I had with REALTOR’s that where located in an areas I had a referrals for.

 

As I called and talked with the Principal Broker, to find out which of her agents to send the referral too, I was surprised to hear her say that her office is not paying a referral fee for referrals. They never have and never will. She informed me that it is not necessary for her office to pay a referral fee; they have enough work coming in to keep them busy.

 

OK…..I understand….and I moved on to another office in the area, which was happy to pay a referral fee for a listing referral in the area.

 

In our office we love receiving referrals and we do pay a referral fee to the agent who gives us the referral at the time of closing. I do not see anything wrong with this. When we have a referral for other areas, I am gladly willing to send the referral to a more local agent.

 

I see a referral given or received a chance to build a relationship for live and a potential for future referrals and that is the true value of a referral.

 

There are so many men who can figure costs, and so few who can measure values.  ~Author Unknown

commitment, Communication, Team work, tips

Are you truly listening…………..?

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I had several situations this week that made me think…..are we truly listening to the person who is talking with us on the phone or who is talking with you right in front of you?

 

With our busy life and work we all try to multi task and sometimes we forget to focus on what is important right at this moment.

 

…..have you ever had the situation that you where talking to a person, maybe at a meeting, and they checked their phone for messages during you conversation with them and not even ten minutes later they asked a question that you had covered with them not even ten minutes ago?

 

…..or where you ever in a restaurant ordering food and the server wrote down your order but had side conversations while taking your order and as you received your order, it was not correct?

 

….or have you ever been given a message from an email or phone that someone else took for you while you were out and as you followed up with the message it was not what the messenger told you or assumed  it was?

 

Things like this happen more and more often. We trying to do too many things at once might be the culprit. The more we try to do at once the less we accomplish and create re-work for ourselves and others.

 

Here some ideas to make certain that the person you are talking with understands and has listed to you.

 

On the phone:

 

  • Ask them open ended questions about what you just presented
  • Ask the person to paraphrase the information what you just told them
  • Find out if there are in the car talking with you, when they are, reschedule the conversation to a time when they are not driving or being driven. Cell servicer in some areas is not 100% and important parts of a conversation could be missed
  • Send an email with all of the discussion points and ask them if there are any more questions about the task at hand and ask an open ended question to make certain it was understood and they have to reply.
  • When they put you on hold during your phone conversation, reschedule the conversation after they return to your call.

 

When it is a face to face meeting;

 

  • Ask them to please put the phone down
  • Do not sit behind the desk, use a more casual conversation group

 

When it was an email message that was taken for you

 

  • Ask to have the original email forwarded to you
  • When something is unclear contact the original sender to clarify

 

Politeness is the art of choosing among one’s real thoughts.  ~Abel Stevens

Communication

Emails with a blank subject line

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….so….finishing up another day at the office and I am going through my SPAM folder at the end of the day and here I see again ton’s of emails with a blank subject line.

Granted 50% of them are possible junk or emails with a link to a virus, the other 50% are legitimate emails that I need to respond to in the morning.

…why is this so frustrating you wonder….simple….!!

By most SPAM filter definitions and email without subject line is considered SPAM and will be held back no matter who sends the email.

Senders with no good intentions send most of the time emails, which include a possible virus or links to viruses, which have not subject line.

Someone from your contact list had their account hacked into and the hacker used the contact list to send out emails in a person’s name without subject line…..again a possible virus or links to viruses.

When you send an email yourself without subject line you are telling the receiver…”Hey my message is not important and I truly don’t care if your respond back to me.”

……so be so good and take just another minute to add a subject line to your email otherwise one day you just don’t receive a responds to an urgent or important email.

Inspiration, Short sale

Reaching the defaulted borrower ……..early…….

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We are still not through the wave of possible short sales that are coming on the market. The new furcated number I have been given just recently is a HUGE scary number and when all of them would hit the REO market…..wow…..

2012 might be the year of the short sale and have you prepared yourself for the huge workload?

Mortgage servicers are still using the Door-to door outreach program and from reading though all of the information I have I can see that the personal face to face contact approach and reaching defaulted borrowers early during their default period is still the way to go to avoid having to many REO’s hit the open market.

Reaching the defaulted borrows is one thing, but are you willing to work with the defaulted borrower early in the ball game or do you just hope they might consider calling you for a short sale?

Are you truly ready for them when they call you up and ask you to list their home as a possible short sale?

Communication

Is your email address as professional as you are?

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You are one of the many Professionals in this country competing for the business of a few. You have spent days or weeks to create your logo. You have pondered many hours over your stationary. You took a long time to create your business cards layout.

Now how much total time did you spend as you picked your e-mail address?

As a Professional, we are relying on our email to keep us informed, such as in front of potential clients with the Blogs’ we are sending out, and to help us market our selves and services.

Our email is our doorway to the world and one of our main sources of contact to our clients, customers, vendors and others we communicate with on a daily basis.

In many cases a FREE email provider is used to set-up the email account with names that really never should be used as a professional communication tool. The email address is describing something that is not even is part of the business that is being advertised in the Blog or other communications.

When you use any of the FREE email providers, who are you advertising for, since their name is also in the address?

It is just like the car/truck Dealership sticker on the cars/trucks….how much is the dealership paying the car owner to have their advertising on the car?

There are so many great, very reasonable priced web hosts out on the internet, which you can register a professional website for very little money that will offer you email services with your new websites address.

Communication, tips

Common sense phone etiquette

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Have you ever been in a restaurant in the evening with your spouse and wanted to enjoy an evening of togetherness?

Now right next to you; you see another couple where one of the parties is on the phone the entire night. Any thoughts to that?!

Maybe I am very old fashioned, but when I am with my clients, friend or family at breakfast, lunch, dinner or in a meeting my phone is silent. Any call that comes in during that time has to wait until I am done and my FULL attention is focused on the person(s) and task in front of me and everything else will have to wait until we are done.

It is not only very inconsiderate to the person that you are with at the time, especially when you are planning on doing business with them, but also to the person you talk to on the other end of the phone.

Here are some tips on avoiding phone interruptions during meetings.

  • Turn your phone on silent
  • Let your office know that you are in a very important meeting and let them take a message as for you.
  • Have your Voice messages emailed or texted to you
  • Change your phone message to reflect that you are in a meeting and that you will get back with the person with in a set time frame.
  • Have a set time when you have meetings, answering calls back and do other work

I have more tips but my main basic tip is; Don’t take phone calls while you are in a meeting.

commitment, Inspiration, planning, tips

I call it the stinking thinking

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As soon as you open the email, or turn on the TV you hear the bad news.

Job loss here, cut back there …..and you name it.

Today alone the last months’ job numbers where posted. Nation wide now at 8.1% unemployment…..

…….91.9% of the total work force is still employed.

Things I hear on the street every day are sayings like

 …..I am not getting my raise this year.

…. I no longer get any overtime.

…. I was told I have to take an extra day off

Think of it as:

….my Company is being proactive so that I still can work in the near future.

I call it as the stinking thinking that get’s us in a bad mood and how we think about things what we are being spoon feed over the news and airwaves every day.

It does not matter what your circumstances are at the present moment. Think positively, expect only favorable results and situations, and circumstances will change accordingly. It may take some time for the changes to take place, but eventually they do.

Sure you can not turn the stinking thinking around on a dime and no one expect s you to do this. You need to practice and maybe find a positive thinking partner to help you with this.

Read about the subject; and when you can not buy the book there is always the old fashion library to go to.

Start visualizing you success, smile more even when you have to face it and use positive words when communication with yourself and others.

Last but not least…..as soon as you have one of those stinking thinking thoughts try to replace it with a positive thought. It is not easy at the beginning. We are creatures of habit and habits are sometimes hard to break, but you will get there.

Communication

Improve Your Communications and Build Your Sphere of Influence to the same time

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I kept an article about how to Improve Your Communications Strategy and Build Your Sphere of Influence. This is originally from rismedia.com about how to improve communication to increase business published the end of February of this year.

With more and more business coming from the internet and social media being a crucial part of our business, keeping up with communication has been more than ever a crucial part of our business.

One of my good friends and coach for the Fortune 500 (she is much more than that), Lalita Amos MHRM RCC , Total Team Solutions has put it in great terms in her blog post about Does the nature of our communication need to change to maximize social networking opportunities? 1.0 and 2.0

When someone will give it to you straight …..she will.

commitment, Communication, organizing, planning

Building relationship and Follow-Up

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……so you subscribed to a lead generating program and they are sending you homeowners to contact.

You make your first initial contact, left your info, and you wait….and wait ….and wait…

….I hate to tell you; just with one visit most of the owners will not call you. On the average it takes up to 5 personal visits before an owner will either open the door or call you back.

One of my great friends and Real Estate investors has made it a sport in weeding out the “fly-by-night Real Estate Agents” (his words not mine). He advertises his properties as FSBO when he is looking for an agent to sell his home in states other than mine.  He does not call any agent back unless he has heard from the agent in some form or fashion at least 5 or more times.

He gave me the following percentages from tracking the Agent’s activity over the last 10 years:

40% of the agents will not call or contact him for a second time

30% will contact him at least twice

20% will contact him at least 3 times and give up

9% will contact him 4 times and give up and

1% of the original agents who contacted him will contact him 5 or more times

 He told me that it did not matter how the market was doing. When the market was good, bad, or ugly the average numbers were the same.

 Sobering numbers? ….I think so.

 This leads me into an RISMEDIA article I found, on January 26, 2011, that focuses on how Real Estate companies recognize that relationship building and follow up service are critical components to promoting both customer retention and revenue growth.

tips

Mild Winter has it’s seperate issue…… bugs…….

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I love this unusually mild winter weather, and I know winter is not over and we might still get hit with a huge storm.

One downfall I have uncovered of this mild winter season is the bugs who normally keep out of sight and out of mind until spring. I am now in full combat mode against the little aunts who think they can invade my house. Having dogs in the house I need to be very careful what I use to combat the little pests and where I stick any bait that I choose to use.

Looking though some of the home remedies that I ran across but have not tried many of them due to short timing. I find the infested area and the source or trail where they are coming from, and use household table salt. Sprinkle around window sills, baseboards, door thresholds, anywhere where needed.

Another one would be to mix borax and sugar water to make a trap or sprinkle borax on the ant trail of ants and they take the borax bake to the nest and kill them all.

Yeast Molasses Sugar Mix; Mix together 1 part sugar, 1 part active yeast and 2 parts molasses. Drop the mixture, 1 teaspoon at the time, onto small pieces of paper.

Strategically place the pieces of paper along ant trails or where the ant problem is obvious. This is one of the safest home remedies for ants because it contains no chemicals

When a spray is preferred here is one I have found but not tried is a Garlic Onion Pepper Mix;

Take a quart of water and add 1 clove of garlic, 1 small onion and 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper. Let that mixture set there for about 1 hour.

Next add 1 tablespoon of liquid dishwashing soap. Put the concoction in a spray bottle and spray it around the house where you have the ant problem areas. This is also one of the safer home remedies for ants.

When you have more Ideas I am gladly to post the ideas for you.