Entry by Lester Langdon

More Why?

  5 Comments

One year ago, I had lunch with “Bob” my brother’s real estate broker (Hmmm) who charges $250 per hour to learn more about consulting.

He was ahead of the curve.  For 15 years, this has been his business model. 

“Bob” has no other compensation model, except he does sometimes make a commission when his clients have picked a property to buy. 

His business was down last year, but he is paid something for his efforts because he does not work on contingency of a closed transaction. 

Let me tell you a brief story.

By coincidence, before I switched to the consulting model, when I was still with Mama Coldwell Banker (17 years), I got a referral from “Steve”, a residential agent. 

Steve asked me to phone his friend to help him lease a warehouse on the freeway.  After phoning the referral, I discovered that he wanted to lease a building that I knew was owned by my brother. 

Amazing.  My brother owns 4 properties in Houston and this guy picks his building.  The “For Lease” sign in front (on the freeway) is the consultant broker who charges hourly compensation.

I did not have a task oriented agreement with the prospective tenant. But my brother did have a task agreement with his broker to pay him hourly.

He offered to pay a commission to Mama Coldwell Banker over the 4 years, if the tenant stayed in building that long.  Coldwell Banker did not agree to that method of payment. So I got paid nothing. (My brother, did agree to pay me, but not through Coldwell Banker, so I declined the payment, because I wanted to keep the transaction straight-forward.)

For various reasons, I did not get paid. The story taught me a lesson that helped move me to become a consultant.

My point here is that God or fate told me to hurry to become an ACRE consultant.

WHY? Makes each of us stand out from the crowd

Stories build commitment. They allow us to go on journeys in search of our best self. They entertain, simplify, and inspire. They are easy to share. Great leaders are often great storytellers.

The power of story as a business building and marketing tool is undeniable. A simple story can draw upon our emotional desires in ways that logical data never will.

 While an uplifting story or even a tragic story can capture the listener’s interest, the real power of storytelling in business is that it permits a business to illustrate values and beliefs in action.

I believe that every business must find and tell their core stories over and over again and then they must invite their employees, customers and networks to help build these stories into journeys worth taking over and over again.

Below are four core stories that must live in every business

The Passion Story

The Purpose Story

The Positioning Story

The Personality Story

There is more ..... To read the entire article, go to Duct Tape Marketing

https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2011/09/21/four-stories-every-business-must-build/

 

5 Comments

Love this story Lester. I'll be reading the entire article in the next few days.

Thanks so much for sharing - as I'm reading through a post on Active Rain by Bryan Robertson (who just enrolled in ACRE) Why Realtors Should Charge By the Hour, I was amazed at how many agents said it will never work, will never happen, one said "I have two words for you - Dream On!". (I have 5 words for him - "Watch Us Make It Happen!")

I wonder if more agents looked into their "Why?", then maybe they would get out of their straight-jackets. I'm really looking forward to our brainstorm session Developing and Expressing Your WHY? on October 12th. If you are thinking about your WHY?, I hope you join us!

Yes, I saw the article on Active Rain by Bryan Robertson and I sent him an email and suggested that he become an ACRE.

That whole conversation frustrated me to no end - I couldn't even bring myself to comment. I'm feeling very discouraged about the real estate industry today (it will pass, don't worry) - that if we, as an industry, don't pull our heads out of our a$$e$ and look at the reality all around us, we're doomed.

Change is happening and will continue to happen, with or without "us." We can either embrace it and make it work for us, or continue the old song and dance of "Sounds nice, but it'll never happen..."

Yes, it will. And you can be a part of it... or... ???

That post is how I found out about ACRE. All I can say is "what you focus on expands" and I intend on focusing on transfer my training into reality.

I'm with Jennifer, the whole idea that we can't charge a fee for our services frustrates me.   I don't believe that just because that's the way it has been done in the past that we can't change the future. If that was true real estate would still all be about the book of listings hidden in the office and not posted on hundreds of real estate sites.

I think we will continue to struggle to get consumers to understand the value but when I see the number of listings the local flat fee brokers in our area have I know some folks are looking at the standard commission rate & are willing to take a chance on another way of doing buisness.

This page contains a single entry by Lester Langdon published on September 27, 2011 1:48 PM.

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