Posts

What’s In A Company Name? (A Lot It Turns Out)

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JVM LENDING’S NAME About 15 years ago during my loan officer days, I was affiliated with a brokerage with an extraordinarily sweet deal that I never would have abandoned but for one reason. I was tipped off that the broker of record was experiencing severe financial and emotional issues that were putting the entire brokerage […]Read More

Yoga Babble & Pizzas Under Cost – Heading Our Way Soon!

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A prominent mortgage bank posted this employment ad last week in a very popular mortgage blog: The company culture at ****** Mortgage is a direct reflection of the lender’s vision to Inspire Hope, Deliver Dreams, and Build Prosperity. I laughed when I read that b/c I am pretty sure the company really just originates and […]Read More

Predictive Analytics – Why You Need Them

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On Friday I blogged about life events that influence a decision to move and big data and mentioned that I’d elaborate on Predictive Analytics today. I mentioned also that we used to work with SmartZip (the true Predictive Analytics pioneer) and that we have four team members who worked for SmartZip for years. So, we […]Read More

Nasty Fake Yelp Review – Follow Up; Yelp Horror Stories; Poor Yelp :)

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I received so much feedback from yesterday’s blog that I felt compelled to follow up today. The responses were so overwhelmingly anti-Yelp, that I actually thought to myself: “poor Yelp” 😊 Yelp is, however, not exactly “poor,” as they apparently net anywhere from $10 to $20 million per quarter (although recent data was suspiciously hard […]Read More

Your Clients Will Google You, And You’re Losing Them

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We work with an agent who closes 150 transactions per year, and her “Google presence” is practically perfect. While her Google presence is not the only reason she does so much business, it is a major contributor. When people Google just her name (and nothing else), the search results literally dominate page 1 of Google. […]Read More

Why Pixar Made Steve Jobs WAY Better at Selling Computers! It’s All About the Story!

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When Apple launched its “Lisa” computer in 1983, it purchased massive newspaper ads with several columns in nine-point font that set out ALL of Lisa’s features. And – nobody cared. Lisa flopped. And Jobs ended up losing his position at Apple. 14 years later, after Jobs returned to Apple after he had been at the […]Read More

Digital Marketing Is Hard! We Know B/c We Did It Wrong; Wasted $1,000s

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EXPANDING BEYOND THE BAY AREA Last year we decided to expand beyond the Bay Area b/c our value propositions (speed, communication, appraisal quality, etc.) had become so established and effective. DIGITAL MARKETING Our primary goal was to market to Realtors to establish more referral relationships. The only way to do this on a mass scale […]Read More

Five Most Important Things Every Real Estate Agent MUST DO to Crush It in 2018

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27,000 Things Realtors MUST DO… There is literally an endless supply of lists of things every real estate agent “must do” to crush it in 2018. At last count, there were about 27,000 “must do’s”, including writing business plans, reading more books, negotiating better, finding your niche, eating frogs, meditating, etc. Fortunately for everyone, we […]Read More

You Need a Warm, Visual, Simple Website to Build Trust & Retain Clients; Content’s NOT King

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I heard this excellent quote on a podcast yesterday, from a guest quoting her Rabbi: “When I was young, I admired people who were clever; now that I am older, I admire people who are kind.” I love that quote b/c it is another lesson that took me too long to learn. I only now […]Read More

Real Estate Marketing – Tips; Lunch & Learn Wednesday

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We are hosting a Lunch & Learn on Wednesday in Brentwood, CA. Everyone is welcome, and we promise it will be both informative and entertaining (we’ve tested it in front of ecstatic live audiences already :) All of the relevant info can be found here: Eventbrite Link to JVM’s Lunch & Learn on Marketing. Heejin and […]Read More

Marketing Tips from Top Realtor Who Told Us Our “Website Sucks!”

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One of the nicest things that ever happened to me was this – a super successful real estate agent pulled me aside and said, “I have to be honest with you – your website really, really sucks. I am serious. It’s awful…” :) It was so nice b/c it was the impetus we needed to […]Read More

“Dear Ms. Crabapple, We Will Miss You. Love, Herb;” 3 Lessons

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Ms. Crabapple was a Southwest Airlines Customer who complained in a letter after every flight; she didn’t like the lack of meals, assigned seating, first class, etc. When Southwest’s founder, Herb Kelleher, saw all the letters, he penned this famous response: “Dear Ms. Crabapple, We will miss you, Love Herb.” We love this story b/c […]Read More

Patience; Non-Stop Marketing; Long Sales Cycles

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In 2013, Heejin attended a competitor’s (friends of hers) office warming party and of course had her marketing hat on. She befriended a very dynamic title company rep who started to refer Realtors our way in 2014. We had great initial meetings with many of those Realtors in 2014, but they initially remained loyal to […]Read More

Our 136th 5-Star YELP Review Says It All; Yelp Gets Business!

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We received our 136th Yelp Review yesterday, and it pretty much says it all. We have 48 reviews “unfiltered” and 88 “filtered” (that don’t show). We love Yelp b/c it is authentic (we can’t write the reviews), and it clearly gets us business. How’s your Yelp? Yesterday’s Review from Melissa A.: Having the team at […]Read More

You MUST Have a Database – Email, Street Address, Phone Number

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We met with a Realtor a few weeks back who ruefully mentioned numerous transactions that he lost out on because he was not in touch with his past buyers and sellers. It was painful to listen to b/c staying in touch requires so little effort once you have a database set up. We hear every […]Read More

Sell, Sell, Sell; More Sales Cures All; We Are All SalesPeople

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The WSJ had a great article Monday about “Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make.” One woman talked about forgetting to sell; she discussed focusing so much on her current projects and operations that she forgot to prospect for future business. She learned from this, saying: “Sales is the lifeblood of the business. Always sell.” When Mark Cuban bought […]Read More