So now the major portals are putting you on an upgrade path to ‘help’ you become more successful. Well here is a news flash, they know all about your primal urges to be better than the agent across the street (your competitor).
They know that if your competitor buys a premium package that you will too, they tell your competitor to inform potential vendors of their “special listings”.
My advice is to stop, take a step back and look at what you are getting into and what you are getting for your hard earned dollar!
For an extra few thousand dollars you get some pathetic upgrades allow you to display your logo alongside listings, this is complete and utter rubbish and Real Estate Agents should reject these en-masse.
What you must do
1. You must have your listings with the two major portals – no questions asked.
2. You only need the basic package.
3. Spend the money you save on meaningless upgrades to educate potential vendors of the value of your ‘spread’ of Internet marketing.
4. Spend the remaining $’s on marketing your own site on search engines such as Google, Overture (Yahoo, MSN) and Sensis.
What you must not do
1. Get into a ridiculous cycle of competition.
1 Comment
Nick
In my experience agents are the most inclined to negotiate on price of all breeds of client, its in their nature after all and if they can see a saving of even .5%, they’ll be thrilled that you played their little negotiation game. Likewise most agents I’ve dealt with will be outragously offended if you only offer them RRP.
I once had an agent break down and cry (litterally) because we couldn’t cut our quote any further – even though we were already $4,000 LESS than the nearest alternate quote.
However agents are also the most competative people on the planet, also by nature. They might sell their own grandma if it’ll get them a hundred bucks off the bottom line, but they’ll be just as happy to pay through the nose for anything they believe makes them that little bit more than Agent Jones up the road.
You can’t blame portals for taking advantage of this fact, but yeh – I really think they should come to their senses. Platinum membership for double the price, just so your logo’s on the listing summary? WTF?