Yippee! I got the loan!

Friday nights with good friends and a good wine is a great way to end a busy week.

And as you do with like minded entrepreneurial friends we were bouncing around our “take over the world ideas, million dollar breakthroughs and world changing ideological schemes”.

By the end of the night I’m sure we’d pulled at least 17 million dollars and solved all the worlds problems, it was hard work but obviously worth it.

The particular friend we were visiting is in real estate and although he’s not been in the industry that long he’s pulling good listings and sales and carving out a healthy career even against all the odds of the market being slow. A man of action and a quick learner and certainly open to innovative marketing stuff.

It turns out that he subscribes to my e-marketing newsletter so I started talking about my recent post on testimonials. He hesitantly confessed he hadn’t read the recent post knowing full well that I would get on my pedestal and rant… “What, you didn’t read my stuff?”

Even when I wrote the post I had visions of real estate agents with photos of ecstatic home owners putting ‘Sold’ stickers on the ‘For Sale’ sign out the front of their house with a big ‘thumbs up’. What a better way to show prospects that you get results… right!

(What, you didn’t read my previous post too?)

Or a photo of the buyers… with the agent, beaming smiles, keys in hand at of the front door of their new dream home.

Why would you go to all this bother? People look at pictures, hello!

Don’t you think an ‘imagery’ style testimonial is a lot more powerful than a whole heap of text? I’d like to think everyone reads my stuff but the reality is we’re all busy and you know the old adage ‘a picture tells a thousand words’.

Why do you think I place a picture in my posts? To try and get them read.

I heard a fellow marketer coin the expression – ‘results in advance’. Using picture testimonials in this way is exactly that. Use the right pictures and you are showing your prospects the outcome they will achieve by doing business with you.

With any transaction there is the process but it’s the outcome that people want – focus on the outcome. Get a mix of testimonials and photo’s.

Another point that needs to be made is that of ANY marketing idea you read or hear about the question should never be “Can I make that work for me?” but rather the question should ALWAYS be “How can I make that work for me?” Most ideas can be adapted so use your imagination.

If you add a twist to any marketing idea it is sure to make you stand out over all the other brokers… and isn’t that what marketing is all about? Standing out! Differentiating you from the ‘pack’!

So to subscribers… be warned… I will find out if you don’t read my stuff. We have ways…

Seriously, we all want the one idea that will bring us 100 new clients but the reality is… it’s probably going to be 20 ideas that pull 5 clients each time… but we still end up with 100 clients.

A side note… the marketing stuff we do and advocate can be systemised meaning that once it’s set up… it’s an auto-pilot lead generating prospect converting money making marketing machine… works for me!

PS: A colleague and friend made a comment on my last post… you can too. I’ll tell you why it good for you in my next post. Click on the blue headline in the post or right here to have your say now.

Committed to Generating “Highly Qualified” Leads and Making You More Money,

Peter B Butler.

Finally: A lead generation and marketing system that generates a stream of “highly qualified” clients for small business owners and retailers that’s self managed so they ‘own’ it and it positions them as the experts in their area and ends all lame and frustrating and sometimes costly advertising and marketing methods.

All those in favour of that say ‘AYE’!

To find out more go to Peter B Butler on… Direct Response Marketing, Websites and Lead Generation!

Was that your take on 2008 for you? I know it was for a lot of friends and family.

It turned out to be a tough year though- economically and emotionally it was a tough one… for a lot of people.

Here’s the thing though.

What are we going to do differently this year to actually make it different?

At a business ‘connect’ group that I’m a part of we have an equation, I’ll draw it for you.

Responsibility
—————————–
Lay Blame & Justify

This is what most people do – find a reason why things are the way they are and lay blame for that and then justify it.

If things are so tough then how come some people in business are doing fine?

You do know that don’t you? Not everyone is suffering; In fact, some people have positioned themselves well and are actually prospering as a result of these ‘bad’ times.

The short story version without being all soft and fluffy is because they took responsibility for their affairs and business and took some action and made it happen.

We really are masters of justification us humans. So many times we’ll find a reason for ‘why this happened’ or ‘why that didn’t happen’. We’re good at it, like I said, masters. By the same token there’s no use beating ourselves up about stuff. We just need to recognise it and be prepared to do something about it.

It’s like the definition of insanity – doing the same thing and yet expecting a different result. We all know this definition right? Thing is… most of us still get caught.

So what’s your take for 2009?

Are you going to operate on the definition of insanity model? Where do you stand with the

Responsibility
—————————–
Lay Blame & Justify

ABOVE the line? …or

BELOW the line?

You know what the ‘correct’ answer is right?

Obviously above the line because you know damn well it’s the only way that you will come even close to making 2009 the Year for YOU!

But what are you actually prepared to do to make it happen?

I just want to backtrack for a moment on the last few years for me.

In mid 2006 I’d sold a business that I’d built up over the previous 10 years and I did well out of that, I was a happy chap but it was time for a new quest, a new venture. I knew what I didn’t want to do in business but wasn’t 100% sure of exactly what I did want to do.

I spent 2006 and 2007 checking out a few different options, managed a few projects for people in different businesses and created a business marketing system. I started to see a few gaps in the market place.

There was a definite need for niche lead generation in certain industries.

So I started laying down the tracks as it were and I gotta be honest here, a couple of hundred thousand dollars later and a couple of years of some really long days and nights of hard slog, study and sharp lessons on direct response marketing and creating business building products and it all started to come together.

I’d found my niche. Lead generation that would work in pretty well any business. But I knew the power was in specialising to a specific industry or niche. A niche within a niche as it were.

The second revelation for me was that in my previous business I could very well have created this niche within a niche and achieved a new business which was my original goal.

The moral of the story is like the story of the diamonds in the field. Don’t go looking too far from home before you change what you do. Maybe you just need to change how you go about your business rather than change the business too much.

That’s why the business owners and mortgage brokers we help are rapt. With all the changes that have gone on in 2008 most are feeling discouraged and totally frustrated, some are seriously pissed off even.

It’s time for a breakthrough and with direct response marketing and the right lead generation techniques there is no reason why you can’t take that command position in your area.

To find out how you can apply those same principles in your business right now so you get off to the best start ever This Year click here to find out more.

Don’t go insane and make sure YOU stay ABOVE the line for 2009!

With the right amount of focus, new knowledge and the right systems in place you can most certainly make 2009 YOUR YEAR!

What action will you take?

If you apply the concept of ‘monkey see, monkey do’ then the real estate industry has to be the leader of all industries. The variations on the “Free Appraisal” model are far and few between and the very few I have seen are pretty ordinary. “Cause the results vary the rare agent who does ‘try’ something different very rarely follows up with a tweaked version.