STUDY Confirms Calendars Work
– but less than a 1% success rate.

1% of Home Sellers found their Listing Agent through a calendar or fridge magnet. Not good news for a career minded sales professional.

The real big news – 41% of Home Sellers did choose their Listing Agent as the result of a Referral from a friend, neighbour or relative.

The NAR survey also confirmed that 41% to 49% of Home Buyers selected their Agent based on a Referral from a friend, neighbour or relative. And oh calendars - zero buyers indicated having found their Agent that way.

Method Used to Find Real Estate Agent
Referred by (or is) a friend, neighbour or relative 41%
Used Agent previously to buy or sell 23%
Visited an open house and met agent 5%
Walked into office or called Duty Agent 4%
Personal contact by an Agent (phone, mail) 4%
Referred through employer or relocation firm 4%
Saw contact info on For Sale/Open House sign 4%
Internet Web site 3%
Direct Mail (newsletter, flyer, postcard) 3%
Referred by another RE Agent or Broker 3%
Newspaper, Yellow Pages, Home Book ad 1%
Advertising Specialty (calendar, magnet etc) 1%
Other 5%

Bottom Line –
If you’re real good at 10 different tasks and really really like bouncing around doing lots and lots of different prospecting then 32% of the time you may do well.

BUT, when you get serious about Referral Marketing 41% of your business will come to you. And yes, by the way while working a Referral Targeted Marketing Program you’ll be securing top-of-mind awareness with previous clients – another 23% of “come to me” business.

Yes – it’s the New Year and you’ve likely just sent out your Calendars. STOP. Look at the stats – is a calendar enough, or just the start? Make 2008 your year for control, growth and stability - commit to a formal marketing plan.

The Bush Administration has a plan to help sub-prime borrowers that are headed for a crash landing. And that has certain folks screaming mad. The claim by these angry critics – is that ‘it punishes responsible folks’ who didn’t over-leverage, who didn’t jump on the bandwagon and join the ‘spending party’.

Anger by reasonable people who didn’t join the credit party, is more just jealousy, or upset at Democracy & Capitalism joining forces. Markets tend to balance and many segments of the US real estate market are now balancing as prices slide and sales activity slows and in some regions crawls. Compounding and perhaps causing the slowdown is in part the reactive problem of/to the sub-prime market. The Administration is not so much protecting homeowners about to get struck by increased rates, as it is trying to balance, or perhaps more bluntly – support the market in attempt to halt the ongoing slide.

Is it fair? No. Is it a good thing in the overall to intercede and hope to moderate a deteriorated situation – yes. It will help to slow the slide, maintain balance. Is it delaying the inevitable? Likely. But some folks will come out the other end and manage the increased debit servicing down the road. And lots of folks in between will reside in a more stable market as the Government of the day works to add some balance, even if only in small measure, to the marketplace. Governments do it every day with other products – money – exchange rates and interest rates, wheat, milk, lumber.

Will certain businesses win as a result – yes. But we’ve all seen that we don’t necessarily win when business looses. In fact when we business is good – we all seem to share.

So is it fair to responsible people? Yes. Be sure - when others ‘survive’ we all do better. Systems that have only winners and losers make it easier to measure – but even the winners can loose…their heads…when the attitude becomes …”let them eat cake!”