Realtors wanna have FUN!

And Obeo...the experts in buyer behavior...invites them to play!

EXCLUSIVE TO REMAX FOR A LIMITED TIME-THROUGH JANUARY 21st!

Obeo StyleDesigner and Obeo HomeSite take virtual tours to next level.

Don’t like the exterior paint you’re viewing on line?

Obeo StyleDesigner changes it with just the pick of a color
-and a click of your mouse!

Interiors- change carpet, hardwood, linoleum to tile floors-or swap counter tops.

..and change paint color on walls and trim-just pick and click!

Obeo HomeSite has all the great features and tools of an Obeo virtual tour in a freshly designed, easy-to-use format.

The new tool bar lets you choose what you want do as you mouse over the icons:

View a full-screen tour, email the tour, print brochures or schedule a showing

-just a few of all the Obeo options.

and The Home Theater feature

...is a great way for buyers to dream their way into their new home!

Obeo HomeSite goes active January 21st nationally- with no price increase.

Add on the Obeo StyleDesigner - the first two scenes $39.95.

Each additional scene is $19.95.

LINKS:

Obeo StyleDesigner

Obeo HomeSite

Contact your Obeo Consultant:

Minnesota and Western Wisconsin

kiki.wanshura@obeo.com
612.599.5642

Eastern Wisconsin

steven.stearns@obeo.com
262-325-8687

Obeo Customer Service, Orders and Tech Support
800.729.6236

3 REAL Reasons to Blog and 10 Wesbsite MUST HAVES-FREE!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Okay gang - we are all faced with the MONSTER OF TECHNOLOGY-AUUUUUUUUUUGH!

But here are some more great tips on why blogging and social media work and I can give you three real results that my blogging has produced:

-Blogging has gotten me in touch with Realtors and brokers who are too busy to return a phone call. I looked for their blogs and commented then got engaged in their on line conversation, widening my network.

-Blogging has added value to my company's' name as I have on line relationships with opinion leaders, leading bloggers and early tech adopters-allowing them to create buzz for us about what we have coming-interested?

-Most importantly, blogging has created professional relationships for me - especially at Wannanetwork where Obeo will soon be featured for the value we add to the community-and that will continue to grow!

Call me on Jaxtr or wire me back - and get ready for Wisconsin Blogger Meet-Up! You can come to meet and talk with other bloggers about what works for them! Of course, fun is on the agenda as well...

TEN FREE WEBSITE TIPS THAT WORK!

-Be the local expert on the community and how great it is to live there;


-A deep search program, so readers and viewers can get the info they want;


-Interactive Mapping, so visitors can see where they want to be;


-Compelling and relevant visual content -start with the BEST PHOTOS;


-Now, click here for the rest of these FREE website tips from Jonathan Nicholas of Obeo, my boss and Senior VP of marketing and sales.

And

Sell Happy!

Obeoman

steven.stearns@obeo.com

Break out , Stand out AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!...

(Photo borrowed from Ontario Archives)

In China, if you are one in a million, there are 1,300 of you.

Today, we are going to talk about why you milk the cow, get the cream and

how this keeps you moooovin' in the market.

Where to start?

Break out!

Of the old marketing habits. Remember, this market moves so fast, you have to ! Take a look at what you are doing and turn it upside down and shake it out!

Review your budget today and put your money where the consumer is: Better put most of it into your website, virtual tours and if you do use print, make sure you have your website featured prominently in your newspaper ad. Eight out of ten buyers are looking online for their home - realign you budget to reflect that reality! Use some of that money to make sure you can get and send email from where you are and capture client information for leads.

Standout!

Redo your biz card: so they are consistent and high quality. CD business cards with your listings on them? A great way to replace the old biz cards - and keep the Internet empowered consumer engaged.

Renew your information, news and industry education: Be an E PRO - run, do not walk to this Realtor designation! Remember, you have to be ready for the on line consumer and they are going to prefer the E Pro because that's basically where they learn, look and live with their information - on line! YOu should be reading Inman News and RISMedia every day - delivered to your email and for FREE!

And again-Get your BLOG on, and join an online community: Get started by reading blogs! Remember, a blog is a conversation you have with the readers. Respond to blogs-anyone who has one is dying for a comment! Join a community like activerain.com or wannanetwork.com - post in the forums, ask questions and learn from your peers. This is the leading edge of the future, and those who choose not to participate in social media do so at their own risk.

NOW, MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Watch this REMAX realtor Powerpoint - all the reasons and everything you need to know is right here!

Well, call me on my jaxtr at the top of the page if you have any questions, and I will get back to you!

Shake it up and have fun!

Obeoman

Want Cream? Milk the Cow !!!

(Free Cash Cow ! - found at istockphotodotcom)

Okay, ReMax North Central and all other Realtors: for the next couple of days, the blog here will offer a summary of great ways to get your marketing program moving - all crazy and most for FREE!

Start out knowing if you want the cream, ya gotta milk the cow:

-8 out of 10 buyers are on line;

-10-12 months-the amount of time people spend looking on line when they are getting ready to move;

-Right now - 2 hours from now-the amount of time the empowered Internet consumer will expect to hear from you, the Realtor when they find you on line.

-Realtors are Number One - with the Internet consumer - 80% of on line consumers will use the first real estate professional they talk to

Be ready for the empowered Internet consumer:

First, get your listings online at Obeo: 1 million visitors a month can't be beat - the first-class on line statistical reporting and photos you can keep using! -And don't forget to link your own website to Obeo for maximum traffic!

Second, distribute your tours on free sites using postlets : create a flyer with your great Obeo photos and spread the word about your listings at these other key sites for FREE:

backpage.com
craigslist
edgeio
Google Base
HotPads
LiveDeal
Oodle
Propsmart
Trulia
Vast

Third, start blogging and be the neighborhood expert: for free at blogger.com .

Blogging is how you tell your buyers about where you live, the fun you have there, who else lives there, where they can live around where you are and why they should buy a home there. Blogging is a conversation - so talk to these people in your blog like neighbors over the fence about what is going on where you live - after all, they will be your neighbors.

Fourth, get in an online community and get engaged : like activerain or wannanetwork. You'll find other Realtors at these sites, ideas for your blog and better yet, buyers and sellers looking for information from Realtors!

Get another bucket-this one is full - and check back tomorrow and the day after for more FREE marketing tools and ways to make the market happen for YOU!

Obeoman

steven.stearns@obeo.com

RE-ally RICH!: Chinese RE Developer Tops in Billionaire Boom !

From just over the dateline and into tomorrow:

Yang Huiyan (right) and her (LUCKY!) husband at their wedding.

(photo borrowed from the Mangalorean)

...she is worth 16.2 billion and is an OSU grad-

not a bad start for someone who is only 26.

Once more, real estate is Number 1!

and speaking of rich chicks- no sexism intended - if you work for REMAX in Wisconsin, you can get an edge on your RE earnings by going to the:

Rich Chicks: Financial Planning for Women

session at the REMAX North Central gathering

in Brookfield, WI Oct. 16th.

This is just one of over 15 breakout sessions with great ideas for powerful listing presentations, balancing your life and blogging for your business.

Of course, if you can't make up your mind, here is an easy choice:

Technology: Cash Cow or Mad Cow

Obeos' Jonathan Nicholas will be speaking at lunch.

(a star with REMAX, now on our team helping all Realtors)

Jonathan will be there at North Central to make sure you know how to:

meet the consumer expectations, capture the clients,

and help you:

find out where all this technology is taking us !

All for now - pass the steak sauce, please...

Obeoman

steven.stearns@obeo.com

RAVE ABOUT OBEO!-THANK YOU, ELIAS PAPADOPOULOS OF REMAX!

More great results with Obeo we like to hear about - from his blog at activerain:

OBEO will give you an edge on your Listing presentations....
For RE/MAX agents:
I started to use OBEO listing websites about 3 months ago and it has helped me secure my last 5 listings. Now most of the agents in my office are using it too. Go to www.obeo.com to check it out.
For under $200 you get a professional photographer to come out and take high resolution pictures and 360 panoramas, a street.com website for your listing, a realtor.com upgrade and 10 mini diskettes of the tour.
If you go the extra mile and provide them with a floor plan you can even drag and drop furniture in to the different rooms of the house!
Check it out, you'll love it and your sellers will too.

Elias.
(Elias Papadopoulos Boston, MA-REMAX )

Cold Pizza, Bad Weather,Warm Hugs and Hot Ideas....Day 3

...waking up early in Waukesha is pretty easy if you have an alarm on your cell phone, a wake up call and an alarm clock all synched to go off at once. Ten minutes apart, and it's cold pepperoni pizza washed down a warm raspberry Dasani for breakfast instead of a yummy malted waffle.

Down in our meeting room at the Milwaukee Marriott West, we agreed the weather was pretty crummy. Well, beyond pretty crummy , and we looked out the window and wondered who would make it:

(Mother Nature knows how to brrrrrrrr-ing it on...)

...but by 8:35, we had nearly a full house of 45+ Badger State Realtors, and the mood was celebratory, partly because all had arrived safely despite the spring blizzard, and Realtors are generally a pretty social bunch of pastry and coffee-seekers who find their friends pretty easily in a crowd:

As we got down to business, I got some major help from Gary Gerhardt :

...from RE/MAX 100 who could explain - in detail - exactly what an enhanced membership to Realtor dot-com means and how it is handled. I had an IDEA, but Gary had the right answer. It was so detailed I can't even remember it, really-but the nodding heads of all the Realtors in the room reassured me I could still learn and talk at the same time - as long as I remember I have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

And Jean Henning really grilled me hard about why I was blogging and what good is it:

...and why does it matter and should she pay for it or could she do it for free - I just wanted to ask her how she manages 72 listings at once. I expect to see her blogging soon over at activerain.

...then the RE/MAX crew escaped Waukesha and made it to Wisconsin Dells:

Under less than ideal traveling conditions:

realizing an early bedtime is a great idea.

(...probably only Leonardo DaVinci had great ideas after midnight,

anyway.)

More tomorrow and glad for it,

Steve

steven.stearns@obeo.com

You can't cut a donut with a laser pointer...

...and nothing is harder to sell to a Realtor than technology. They are a tough crowd. Example:

You have to soften them up with donuts, cupcakes - a LOT of coffee -and they appreciate it:

Anyway, the ReMax Wisconsin technology tour kicked off pretty darn early , too darn early in Neenah - over 60 Realtors wrestled for donuts, other assorted yum-yums, and a chair to sit on as a way-to-sunny-smile and hearty "WAKE UP!!!" from Elizabeth Kuhn of ReMax-North Central opened the day-one, half-day seminar:

"In this free half day session you will come away with a clear understanding of how the RE/MAX Brand is helping you get to the next level. Your Regional Promotions staff and special guest speakers will educate you on a variety of tools available right now, that will assist you in growing your business. Whether it be the new Agent Training on Demand in RE/MAX Mainstreet, Learning about the 2007 Advertising Buy, LeadStreet Education, Cause Marketing and PR Strategies, RSN Training, Free Regional Services, or seeing the fantastic new enhancements to the RE/MAX Design Center...we will cover it all...and then some!"

(...whew...see what a sugar buzz does to ya? )

It didn't stop there...Michele Brenegan talked about something sweeter than donuts- Cause Marketing - you know, not marketing 'cause you have bills to pay, but the really great kind where everyone pulls together for something like the Children's Miracle Network and the Susan G. Komen foundation - technology with a heart:

Michele pointed out cheezehedz, especially ReMax cheezehed Realtors, ain't no slouches in giving it up to make living easier for those who need help - of course, we beat ReMax in MN. But hey, the North Central ReMax Team is 5th in the nation - and of course, there are bigger states with more Realtors in them.

Jill Kelsey backed her up by saying how ReMax has an extremely positive image with the public because of relationships like this and advised the regional Realtors to call her and ask for advice on how to smile nice so newspaper editors will write nice stuff about you:

Here we see Jill with a great smile and several name tags she authored. Actually, Jill nailed it with the advice that if it isn't timely or does not involve a 40-foot red-white-and -blue balloon, you should call her for some tips.

Mary LaPanta covered LeadStreet, and uttered the wisest words of the day:

"It's technology and it's going to_________."

(Discerning readers may fill in the blank and email it to Mary.)

..and Remax sales leader from Minnesota Mark Bartikoski covered a 10-point marketing program-mostly in the dark so we could see his cool animations on his Powerpoint. He talks with Kevin Dieck, below, during a break. Note the GRANDE cafe':

Mark had 10 great points, covering everything from using direct mail, stealth websites, how to show up at open houses even when you are deathly ill and using technologies like RedX to capture expired listings and Obeo for an online marketing program to be able to just say NO to lowering commissions and working harder but crazier.

Well, what do Realtors like more than donuts and comfy chairs-besides commission checks?

MARKETING MATERIALS!!!

Here we see the Remax throng pushing past the registration table one last time to fill their bling bags and hit the bricks running.

...the ReMax crew hit the road, too, heading south on Wisconsin HWY 41 and now we are holed up in Waukesha, waiting for a blizzard that we hope won't hold us up as we head for the Wisconsin Dells tomorrow afternoon.

For now, we got a few leftover cupcakes, raspberry Dasani water - and some great ideas to chew on during windshield time:

...I think I have to call my wife, if she remembers me....

I gotta go.

Steve

steven.stearns@obeo.com

Zill-OW-OW-0W!...and: road blogging, road construction and flooding.

...with its most recent improvements, Zillow has accomplished what it set out to do: see if others would write more about what it is doing than it is actually doing - the discourse at Sellsius is well worth the read - the very immediate and real issues of transparency, liability, and accuracy are all in the soup. My take - as I predicted last week - Zillow could be moving toward Zill-0w! - …this whole situation with Zillow reminds me of kids telling ghost stories around the campfire, and everybody screaming bloody murder at the end of the tale - but nobody is dead.

It could also remind you of “People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.”
Reliability and liability - this is why Realtors have E&O coverage.
This is also why Zillow goes out of their way to wrangle their content on the World Wild Web - to shed the liability back onto the parties doing business. And to have Realtors work harder, of course - at being local experts and working with their sellers and buyers -which isn’t a bad thing at all.
Remember, Zillow was founded to flatten the market, generate ad revenue, make aggregation easy by having volunteers give up their information for whatever motivation and - just like Expedia - raise the question of why somebody is getting paid "all that money" to do something you think you can do yourself.

Meanwhile, the road calls: the blog is going on the road this week through Thursday!

SHAMELESS CORPORATE PLUG: ReMax North Central and Obeo will be on the road in Wisconsin April 10-12, visiting those Badger RE agents in Neenah, Waukesha and Wisconsin Dells showing off Obeos' new products, ObeoConnect-NEVER miss a buyer!-and Obeo HomeSite. A full slate of top technology trends and savvy speakers from ReMax, as well.

...and a great way to get a finger on the pulse of what is going on out there, RE-wise.

Stay tuned - we promise no further commerical interruption.

...and what else has been going on the past few days?

Minor flooding, in our back yard along the Rock River. BFFL Theresa and wonder dog, Bear, assure us all is well.

...and of course, the OTHER season:
This will likely be the scene in front our home until November of this year.

(Thank you,Wisconsin Department of Transportation.)

...and over at WannaNetwork, one of the meatiest discussions on Illegal Aliens housing ordinances is proving that once people start talking and thinking global, networking takes on a whole new meaning.

...something else missed last week due to the wind howling through the Zillows: RISMedia is out there ready to bleed:from Stefan Swanepoel -"...the real estate industry is still marketing all over the board and really doesn't understand the online marketing channel, says the report's author and trend expert, Swanepoel." This discussion of the Foreign Born Opportunity-the demand in the U.S. for immigrant housing is something ALL Realtors should have on their READ-IT-NOW list. I've been yammering about this global trend to anyone who didn't openly laugh at me for months.-MORE on this later!

Happy-post Hippity-Hoppity to all.

I'm outta here.

Steve

steven.stearns@obeo.com