We can build on this! We can build on this!
In part 1 of this series, I discussed the First Principle of real estate insurgency: Never Fight on Their Turf. The extension of that principle meant that insurgents have to figure out how to outmaneuver then neutralize the primary advantage of Big Brands: breadth of brand (aka, brand recognition).
So let’s suppose you’re an insurgent and you have managed to outmaneuver and neutralize the Big Brand advantage. Now what? Since I’ve been watching some NBA Playoffs the last few days, I’m afraid you’re in for a lot of basketball analogies people. 
Now that I have recovered, more or less, from RE Barcamp Philadelphia (great job, by the way, Bill Lublin, Kim Wood, John Lauber, and the rest of the REBC PHL gang!), I wanted to ask a question:
Are presenters at conferences owed any sort of deference by attendees?
I also present at various events and have come to realize after Philly why it is that I tend to enjoy presenting at REBarcamps: audience participation. I love the energy of the room at REBarcamps, especially when the audience gets feisty. When the disagreements and the sharp questions start, that’s when I start having fun. True exchange of ideas and real learning seem to happen more when there is a bit of debate and disagreement, rather than when there is uniform head-nodding going on.
At REBC Philly, I had a great time doing an impromptu “debate” session with Eric Stegemann of Tribus. People were interrupting both Eric and me, challenging our assertions, making us explain ourselves, and I’m pretty sure most of the room left disagreeing with me. What a great time! Total engagement, excitement, and energy.
In contrast, at other events where I’ve presented or spoken on panels or whatever, I often get the feeling that the audience mostly sits there passively hoping to learn some great piece of wisdom from the experts gathered on stage. Even the setup at non-barcamp type of events is conducive to the notion that those who are presenting or speaking are teachers lecturing a bunch of students.
But what if the presenter is talking out of his ass? Is the audience supposed to sit there deferentially?
Just posted on the 7DS Blog — Leadership in a Time of Cholera:
If you are the CEO, broker/owner, team leader, managing partner, or otherwise in charge of a real estate company today, this is an absolute must-read. In fact, if you read nothing else this entire year, I recommend you read this fascinating article from A.G. Lafley, Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble.
The article is entitled “What Only the CEO Can Do” but the insights and lessons Lafley lays out are really about leadership in time of trouble, when enormous changes coupled to internal lethargy are threatening to pull you down. I think his advice, based on his hard-won experience as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, widely admired for their marketing and product management expertise, is timeless and applies across all industries. But right now, today, in the real estate industry, I think his advice is particularly timely and particularly relevant.
Read the whole thing; you won’t regret the time spent.
The following are our observations about the lessons that a real estate company executive — particularly the CEO/owner of a real estate brokerage company — can draw from Lafley’s article.
I thought it worth cross-posting, since I know quite a few of you are interested in management/strategy issues, and that quite a few of you are CEO/owners/leaders in real estate organizations.
Continue on to the post on 7DS.
-rsh
I'm not a Realtyman, I'm a Realty, Man!
So earlier tonight, I asked a simple question on Twitter:
Question: How many of you Realtors have a business plan? How many years does it cover?
The answers I got were somewhat amazing. The replies ranged from “I have a 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year business plans” to “Business plans are too complicated”. What an amazing variance!
So I ask a follow-up question:
so for those who said they don’t have a business plan, or a bizplan that is defunct, how do you know you’re successful at any given time?
The answers were as follows:
Such interesting responses there as well!
Realtors, it appears, have inverted the classic Jay-Z line, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!” A realtor is not a business, man, he’s a businessman.
This… has consequences.
Back in April, I took part in a really fun panel discussion about social media in real estate hosted by GreenPearl, and moderated by Allie Herzog of Quinn & Co. She put up a post describing the panel, and put video footage of the panel.
Here’s the first part of the video (from GreenPearl’s YouTube Channel):
So as you can see, there were four serious business people, and this one random guy at the end of the table spouting random stuff. Note that among the panel, only one person is consistently drinking throughout. Was vodka & tonic. Very yummy.
I had a great time, and thought you might get a kick out of the panel. The entire panel is posted on GreenPearl’s Channel.
The one thing I do remember from the panel — and this I do think is worth thinking about more — is when an audience member asked us what the “next big thing” in marketing technology will be. The wise panelists gave various answers, like mobile, video, and so on.
My answer (around the 1:00 mark):
Just something to think about.
-rsh
So now that I’m a member of the Unemployed Consultants Union, Local 182, Dustin Luther (@tyr) and I are chitchatting one night about all the fun things we might do. Lack of corporate respectability does wonders for one’s creativity, y’know.
We come up with a truly wacky concept that as we keep talking about it sounds less and less wacky. The basic idea is “sports talk radio” for real estate and tech and marketing and all that good stuff.
Thus, RE: RnD is born. From Dustin’s announcement on 4Realz:
We’ve decided to launch a weekly radio show starting this Thursday morning!
Are you curious what the show is going to be like? So are we!
Here’s what we know:
- We’re calling it RE: RnD
- We’ll run it every Thursday morning for one hour starting at 9am PST/12pm EST
- We’re going to use TalkShoe, so you can get all the information you’ll need to call in and join the chat room here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/51093
- We’ve set up a Facebook Page at: http://rernd.com. Become a “fan” to get regular updates on the show
- We’re still finalizing the guest list for the first show, but we know the topics we’re going to cover:
-
- Current news and events (i.e. real estate banter)
- Ways to promote your biz with FB Pages
- NAR’s new code of ethics around social media
- Fun and games (follow @rernd for details on the “games” part)
I have to admit, I’m sorta looking forward to this little experiment of ours. Because it’s going to be pure fun. At least for real estate marketing geeks like me and Dustin.
So come join us, “tune in”, and basically party with us as we take on all topics, try hard to not bore each other (no guarantees that we won’t bore the audience, however), and bring the time-honored tradition of pointless jabber and speculation that is sports talk radio to real estate.
-rsh
Get ready, NAR; there are gonna be some questions coming your way soon.
[UPDATE: The text of Standard of Practice 15-2 has been released. Please see below the fold.]
According to Ben Martin of the Virginia Association of REALTORS over at VARBuzz.com, NAR has released a new Code of Ethics:
Standard of Practice 15-2 was amended and a new Standard of Practice was approved to strengthen members’ obligations to refrain from making false or misleading statements about competitors, including in use of social media tools.
The new amendment includes the duty to publish a clarification about, or to remove statements made by, others on electronic media the REALTOR® controls once the REALTOR® knows the statement is false or misleading. For example, if you’re publishing a blog and someone posts a false or misleading comment about a fellow REALTOR® on it, it’s your duty to remove the post or publish a clarification when you become aware of it.
That was Ben quoting from a newsletter sent out by NAR to association executives, as the actual language of Standard of Practice 15-2 was not available.
Ben goes on to note a real concern:
As I understand it from this article on the Section 230 from the Electronic Freedom Foundation, the more Internet publishers take an active role in editing or publishing content posted by third parties, the more likely they are to open themselves up to legal liability.
Well, you should consult an actual lawyer for a real opinion if you’re concerned about this, but I have further questions from both a legal perspective and a social media perspective.
Vive La Resistance! (Members of French Underground, WWII)
In my past writings, I’ve written about the seismic shift going on in the real estate brokerage industry from the perspective of Big Brokers and Big Brands. You can find those writings here (and the parts linked there), here, here, and here. At the same time, I’ve always wanted to write the other side of the debate, because the victory of Big Brands is so reliant on a major assumption: that they embrace major change, including putting new blood into the top executive positions, and changing the culture of the organization. This is never easy, but nearly impossible while senior management is preaching the message of, “Batten down the hatches and get back to basics!” whatever that means.
While the Big Brands are struggling to figure out a strategy for moving forward, however, the Kristian Soldiers are hard at work trying all manner of new things, new strategies, new thinking, and changing the face of the industry. They are winning far too many battles today, and may ultimately win the war.
This, then, is a series of thoughts on how the Real Estate Insurgency can out-maneuver, out-innovate, and ultimately defeat Big Brands.
Read the rest of this entry »
Just thought some of you might want to check out this new post over on 7DS Associates blog:
The annual Brokerage Performance Report put together by REALTrends is one of the most useful and important studies for the real estate brokerage industry. Unfortunately, the last report was released in 2007, and nothing has been released since then.
The trouble with the 2007 Report, as valuable as it is, is that it uses 2006 data from respondents who submit the information voluntarily. And housing market started to decline sharply really starting in 2007, and 2008 may have been the annus horribilis of the real estate industry. It may be that the respondents of the REALTrends study simply didn’t want to tell anyone how horrible a year 2007, and then 2008 was even worse.
Either way, lacking 2007 and 2008 performance data means that it is nearly impossible to guess what constitutes “average” performance. And lacking information means decisionmaking is at best made in a vaccuum with no baseline, and at worst is haphazard.
I’ve always been keenly interested in tracking as much performance data as possible. And I’m into speculating on stuff I can’t measure. So I figured I’ll take a foolish crack at some numbers.
Continue Reading
Fact is, we as an industry really need some better data on company performance. It’s hard to know how well or badly you’re doing if you have nothing to measure against. Here’s to appreciating REALTrends, and hoping they get back to doing the awesomely useful Brokerage Performance Study series again.
-rsh
Photo: Mick oOo, Flickr
If you’re on the RE.net, then you know that the hottest topic within the community right now is the issue of NAR’s ruling that search engines are no different from scrapers. Even my post on this blog talking about social media process using just the NAR handling of the issue as an example got enormous traffic and commentary. I think it’s fair to say that the overwhelming opinion within the RE.net community is one of outrage, anger, and outright rebellion against MIBOR and against NAR.
So it was a surprise when I got an email from a reader who asked for anonymity expressing a contrarian view. S/he is a REALTOR who actually agrees with MIBOR’s ruling (backed up by NAR) that indexing of IDX listings should be prohibited and MLS members should be forced to block search engines from finding those listings. I encouraged him/her to post the email as a comment, but got a firm refusal, as s/he was worried (with some justification, I think) about possible negative reaction from the RE.net.
In fact, I ended up chatting with this REALTOR and agreed that instead of posting his/her email, I would just understand his/her point of view then write it up myself. While I wouldn’t normally bother, the issue is an important one, and the sensitivities are such that I felt it would be helpful to the conversation to present a contrarian opinion without fear of retribution or accusation of bias.
Read the rest of this entry »
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