You Can't Just Plant a Sign

The challenge after attending a conference like the Tom Ferry Success Summit is to process all the information and figure out what’s applicable and practical for your own business.

One message came through loud and clear, though. The old way of doing things; the strategies and approaches that worked just a few years ago are not going to be enough in the years ahead.

Open houses, print advertising, mailings, and phone calls will always be part of the equation. But, more is required to successfully represent buyers and sellers in the 21st century.

Think about it. Before any of us make a purchase, what’s our first step? We go on line.

When clients call us today asking to tour a home, chances are pretty good that they’ve already seen it on a website.

It’s also not unusual to visit potential sellers and be told that they already know about us, because they’ve visited our website or seen the videos we post on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere.

If you’re not on line, the saying goes, you don’t exist. We know that to be true, as well. Sellers have also told us that they selected Mari Sennott and Associates to represent them, because we had an on line presence and our competition didn’t.

To insure a successful transaction, potential buyers or sellers need more from the agents they’re interviewing than anecdotes about past successes; a list of what social and civic clubs they belong to, or who their important friends are. What they really need to be clear on is what the agent is doing now to be effective and what they’re planning for the future.

The days of planting a For Sale sign in a front yard and waiting for the phone to ring are over.

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Another advantage to attending an event like the Ferry Summit is the opportunity to meet other agents from around the country and the world.

We made connections with agents from Israel, Italy and British Columbia, in addition to several states including New York, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Hawaii and Florida.

What this means for our clients is that our network of contacts is broader than just Cape Cod. We can reach out to colleagues in other parts of the Ferry ecosystem to discover how they have responded to particular challenges. They can also refer clients to us, who are looking for summer/retirement homes on the Cape or maybe investment properties. In turn, we can help our customers, who need to relocate, find top notch out-of-state agents.

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The Anaheim Convention Center, where the Ferry event was held, is a short drive to Disneyland. While we didn’t have a chance to visit the Park itself, we did go to Downtown Disney. In short, its counterpart in Florida is bigger and has many more options in terms of activities, restaurants and shops.

Before arriving in California, we spent a few days in Reno/Tahoe. Next to a Cape Cod sunset, there’s nothing more spectacular than the Lake and surrounding Sierra Nevada Mountains. (Pictured below at 7:00am)

Mari and Hank