Home finder sales training jen 2011

HomeFinder.comSales Training 101

Who is HomeFinder.com?

We are similar to Realtor.com and other real estate listing sites, in that we strive to provide a world-class home search and effective online advertising solutions to for agents and brokers.

HomeFinder.com offers 3.5 million homes for sale, was one of the fastest growing real estate sites in 2009 - according to ComScore, and has an average of 2.4 million monthly visits and 24 million monthly page views in 2010.

Our suite of products offer month-to-month flexibility and 100% trackability (including true phone call leads) with on demand ROI reporting. 20,000 of your peers are currently seeing measureable results.


3 Investors 1 Media Network Top 10 Real Estate Site


• We power 200+ newspaper sites

Welcome GateHouse Media!

• With the inclusion of GHM, we have added roughly 200 plus sites to the HomeFinder network!

• This is a great selling tool for you• Agents and brokers will want to use this information in their listing presentations• Updated marketing materials: TBD

Competition

The undisputed leader in the category based on traffic and revenue, REALTOR.com is the official site of the National Association of REALTORS and gets all of its listings data directly from MLSs across the country.

Annual Revenue: $125M (Move.com does $216M total)

A web 2.0 media darling, Trulia was founded in 2005. They operate a listings search site and get their data from a mix of MLSs, Brokers, and listings aggregators.

VC Funded ~$35M, Annual Revenue Est.: $10M, Unprofitable

Founded in 2006 by travel industry innovators. Their main goal is to help consumers understand what their home is worth through their popular Zestimate tool. They have been stepping up their efforts to acquire listings.

VC Funded ~$87M, Annual Revenue Est.: <$10M, Unprofitable

An extension of what was formerly branded Harmon Homes magazine, they have largely been a quiet competitor, however they have significant traffic and a natural upsell advertiser base.

Owned by Dominion, Annual Revenue Est.: $25-30M, profitable

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Site Competition:Who Are the Primary Competitors?

Site Competition:What Products Are They Selling?

Our competitors offer media advertising to real estate professionals as their revenue model. Across all three types of advertisers, these products have many similarities

Agent Package

Featured Videos

REALTOR.com

Trulia.com

Zillow.com

HomeFinder.com

Single Property Websites

Broker Package

Community Package

Town Sponsorships

Featured Properties

Site Competition:Showcase Packages - Features

HomeFinder.com Realtor.com Trulia.com Zillow.com

Priority Sorting Rotated in the top 4 slots

Real Time Reporting to Advertisers

Unlimited Photos / Virtual Tours/ Media

Limited to 25 Photos

Leads

Traffic to Website

Trackable Phone Leads

Site Competition: HomeFinder vs. Realtor.com

Site Competition:HomeFinder.com’s Unique Audience

Source: ComScore MediaMetrix, July 2010

Results-driven: We send an average of 35,000 hard leads (phone + email) to enhanced advertisers each month and 145,000 clicks to agents/broker Web sites.

Unduplicated audience: Extend your reach – our audience isn’t searching on other sites

Cost effective: Month-to-month flexibility with a diverse product mix to meet your individual needs & goals

Products: 2011

How do we get those listings?How do they display?

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HomeFinder.com aggregates data from various sources:MLSs, Brokers, Syndicators, Newspaper Classifieds & more.

HomeFinder.com displays enhanced (paid) listings first from high to low price order.

These enhanced listings are the core advertising products in conjunction with SPW’s.

HomeFinder.com displays basic (free) listings second from high to low price order.

Basic vs. Enhanced Listings

Broker, Agent, and Basic

Enhanced listings: upsold listings

Broker package – leads go to one centralized location

Agent package – leads go to the agent directly

Basic listings: one photo, no lead info, sorts to the bottom of the search

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Broker Showcase Package

A Broker Showcase Package is designed to drive all traffic and leads directly to the Broker office!

Benefits:

Includes all properties in broker office Priority placement in search results Broker logo on search results and details

page Unlimited property photos and virtual tours Detailed email lead form drives qualified

traffic to YOU! Trackable toll-free phone number Direct link to broker Web site Ad Center: Monthly reporting available plus

easy access for updating listing details, photos, Open House info ,etc

No display ads on details page

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Agent Showcase Package

An Agent Showcase Package is designed to drive all traffic and leads directly to the agent, putting agents in control!

Benefits:

Includes all property listings Priority placement in search results Upfront agent photo/branding with broker

logo Unlimited property photos and virtual

tours Detailed email lead form drives qualified

traffic to YOU! Trackable toll-free phone number Direct link to Agent Web site Ad Center: Monthly reporting available

plus easy access for updating listing details, photos, Open House info ,etc

No display ads

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Builder Showcase Package

A Builder Showcase Package is designed to drive all traffic and leads directly to the Builder or Community Sales office!

Benefits:

Includes all property listings Priority placement in search results Branding of community and builder Unlimited property photos and virtual

tours Detailed email lead form drives qualified

phone and Web traffic to YOU! Trackable toll-free phone number Direct link to Community and or builder

website Ad Center: Monthly reporting available

plus easy access for updating listing details, photos, social networking, open house info ,etc

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Featured Properties

A Featured Property Ad offers the opportunity to guarantee consumer focus directly to a top property – by placing it at the top of the Search

Results page!

Featured as one of the top positions on Search Results page

Relevant to consumer’s search based on geographic location — position your property to buyers searching in YOUR area!

Increased exposure to your spotlight property improves opportunity to sell quicker

Less time on the market will ensure seller satisfaction

Benefits:

Grab the spotlight for your top properties!

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Targeted Town Sponsorship

Benefits:Your company will be seen by every buyer in your area with guaranteed placement in your

town for all searches performed! Exclusive ad positions

Complete local penetration and coverage in the desired city, town or neighborhood

Communicate with the local market without being surrounded by the competition

Your message is fixed on the page, whether or not your listings appear in the search results

Featured Video• Automated property slideshows, completely integrated throughout

HomeFinder• Videos play on HomeFinder.com property details pages, and on

widgets hosted by the newspapers (optional)• Reporting is available directly through Advertiser Center, which also

offers real-time editing capabilities, including caption text and voiceover

• One-time wholesale fee

Featured Video

New Product! Single Property Websites

www.3945northtripp.com

Single Property Websites

• Impress Sellers—Win more listings and keep clients satisfied with professional websites for their listings

• Leverage Facebook and Twitter — Single Property Websites give agents, and their clients, the perfect thing to share across Facebook, Twitter and other social media

• No maintenance – auto-created and updated through the MLS daily!!!!!! No hassles for you the agent.

• Super easy to create

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More than just a pretty website…a more efficient SEO Investment.

Boost SEO — Each single property website is not only SEO-optimized to rank for the property address, but will contain SEO-boosting links to your website and your broker’s website!

Google Likes Deep Links, Domains and Social Networking Three key things Google looks for:1. The number of total links that point at a website2. The number of unique domains that point at a website3. Posting on social networks

Demo: www.homefinderwebsites.com

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Who are the Competitors? (SPW Category)Who are the Competitors? (SPW Category)• AgencyLogic

– The best known national provider of single property websites– Agents get domain name for 12 months– Integrates with Facebook

• ListingDomains.com– Nationally sells single property websites geared towards agents– Agents get the domain name for 12 months– Facebook Integration

• GoDaddy.com / Broker-Built Solution– GoDaddy.com is a domain name registrar– The domain name will point back to a property details page on the broker’s website.

• Other competitors– There are a wide variety of single property website providers– While there may be some in your local market not included here, we are focusing on the three

main competitors we will face nationally.– Many brokers will tell you they purchase domain names from GoDaddy.com

24Affiliate Sales Kit

Competitors at a Glance (SPW)Competitors at a Glance (SPW)

• No competitor of Single Property Websites has built the product in the way that HomeFinder has.

• Utilize these points to sell the product and get past objections from the customer


Competitive Pricing (SPW)Competitive Pricing (SPW)

• Different pricing models exist in the market however most end up working out to between $30-50 per site

• Keep in mind that for solutions such as GoDaddy.com the customer needs input all of their data manually and/or just point the site back to their Broker’s web page which isn’t a great experience or unique enough to help their SEO

• Contact your Manager to determine your local pricing which likely will vary from market to market


How HomeFinder.com Competes (SPW)How HomeFinder.com Competes (SPW)

• Hassle-Free– Advertisers don’t need to manually build their listings– Changes made to the listing automatically appear on the Single Property Website

• Optimized for SEO– Many single property website providers do not provide a unique domain name– Our domain AND entire site is OPTIMIZED for SEO to ensure maximum efficiency

for our advertisers– Those who purchase domains from GoDaddy.com or other providers generally

point the domain back to their own website. Google and other search engines don’t rank this as highly as it would a Single Property Website from HomeFinder.com

• Integrated into HomeFinder.com – We are the only provider to also have one of the top ten real estate search sites in

the country– Lead and traffic reporting is automatically integrated into our customer’s

Advertiser Center Account


Overcoming Objections (SPW)Overcoming Objections (SPW)

Having sold this for over 10 months now we have heard and handled most of the objections around this product. As with any sales process there will be objections, however in this case we feel that we can handle these and move on to the close:

O: Why does it matter that I rank well for an address search, who actually searches by address? A: Actually, its surprising but 50% of the visitors on HF find us from the address level (do a search and show them how many companies are competing for these terms). People google addresses all the time to see what kind of information they can find out on a property. These address searchers are serious buyers digging in to find more information. SPWs help you to capture those visits.

O: I’m already using a similar product with another competitor.A: Do you have to do any data entry for them? Are they search engine optimized? Give me a listing example and lets see how it ranks on Google (chances are it won’t). Dig into the data entry and then demo one of their listings using our service, the speed will wow them.

O: My Lender or Title Company or Broker already provides these for me? A: What are they doing for you? Are they search engine optimized? Do you have to do any data entry? Again, do a search for the address on Google, then get into a demo – you can convert this objection.


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Overcoming Objections: Beyond SPW’s

BEWARE OF THE “BIG BUT” Yes I’d love to advertise with you, BUT….

I’m already on Realtor.com I’m on trulia Craigslist works for me I’m on so many other websites

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Show our Audience

We reach a different audience Use the sell sheets on the extranet

“I’m not familiar with HomeFinder.com. What do they offer?”

Let’s Comparison shop:

Search your town $150,000 - $200,000 on all the below sites:HomeFinder.comRealtor.comTrulia.comCraigslist.org

Side by side comparison

HomeFinder Realtor Trulia Craigslist Zillow Homes

Priority Sorting in Search Results X

Unlimited Photos & Web links X

Open House Scheduler & Search X

Agent Name & Contact on Results X

Free 800# Provided to Advertisers X

Company Logo on Results X X

Online & Real-time Reports X X X

Listing Presentation Help X X

In-office Training & Support X

Print Advertising Combo Buys X

Automatic Data Feed X X X X

“Talk to my agents, I don’t buy any marketing”

Great! Bring the donuts to the next meetingGetting in front of the agents after their meetings is the best way to get them all hooked!Offer a one day discount if they sign up today! Create a sense of urgency.Buying multiple SPW’s in one office will boost that brokers SEO – this will encourage the broker to encourage their agents.

Internet leads never pan out

Show reports from other customers

Our calls average 2 minutes

Hold the customer responsible

Do you have a blackberry/smartphone?

What is your email turn around time?

You have 15 minutes to return a call or the buyer will go onto the next agent.

“We cannot afford it – it is too expensive”

Did you know?

Enhanced listings appear in search results 6x more than basic listings!

Enhanced property details are viewed 8x more than basic listings!

HomeFinder.com offers flexibility with robust benefits – for a minimal cost.

You can’t afford NOT to do it. Look at what your competitors are doing. This breaks down to X per listing for you…

How are your competitors doing on our site?

• Get comparison reports from the prospect report

Enhanced listings (highlighted in yellow) have 6 times the visibility/traffic compared to unenhanced listings

Whatever the objection…

Ask more questions to uncover the real issue I can help to meet that need Good tools are:

Reporting Ad center: Show them their leads/traffic No long-term commitment Show them their SEO benefits

Reporting: Prospect ReportsAdvertiser Center

Extranet

HomeFinder.com Confidential

Prospect Reports

• These reports can be run by HomeFinder Quarterly• Use them to prospect and to sell• Takes about a week to compile • Includes all of your active listings/data on our site

Agent Name Broker Listing Count Package?Search Results

Impressions

Details Page

ImpressionsBen Caballero Homesusa 531 N 7957 166Michelle Brown Synergy Realty 286 N 1644 5Cindy Frey Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage 232 N 844 7James Striegel Coldwell Banker Real Estate Solutions 214 N 3428 106Pam Knieper Knieper Realty, Inc 166 Y 7576 160Jim Bransom Bransom Real Estate 148 N 1603 29Jack Mclemore Broker Direct Mls 142 N 2881 96Everette Newland Newland Real Estate, Inc. 121 N 1271 12Leah Dunn Coldwell Banker Encore Dunn & Elam 119 Y 8341 144William Nelson Real T Team Dfw 119 N 1987 76Matthew Borges Wendell Miller Realty 118 N 1930 19

HomeFinder.com Confidential

Prospect Reports

Utilize prospect reports in sales calls

Enhanced listings (highlighted in yellow) have 6 times the visibility/traffic compared to unenhanced listings

Advertiser Center:www.Homefinder.com/advertisercenter

• Advertiser Center

• Provides Real Time Reporting to any agent, broker or builder

• Ability to make edits, upload photos, virtual tours, share listings with social network sites

• Multiple-office access for a broker’s corporate office

• Advertisers sign up themselves • It’s a do-it-yourself tool

Advertiser Center reporting:www.Homefinder.com/advertisercenter

Trackable, on demand ROI Reporting:• One-stop shop for your clients to update and

edit all of their listings, anytime! The can also access industry news and your detailed reports

• ROI reporting includes email, phone call and listing traffic (plus Featured Video stats) for each property

They can also easily send and customize reports to their seller clients to provide helpful feedback!

Advertiser Center Reporting

• Advertiser Center

• Search results & detail page impressions – HUGE click through rates!

• Media impressions – the # of times a photo or floor plan was viewed. MORE photos = MORE leads overall

• Map & driving directions – are you getting any sign calls?

• Traffic to website, print flyer, email this listing, email leads

• Our average call lasts 2 minutes!

Extranet:Extranet.homefinder.com

•Your agents, brokers & builders use the Ad Center to view their reports

•YOU can find the same information on the extranet in the Affiliate Top Line Report to monitor results

Extras

Widgets:www.Homefinder.com/widgets

• Add a little extra selling power to your real estate channel page or ROS

• Encourage your own clients to put our widgets on their own sites

iPhone App

Free Open Houses iPhone app:• Your home listings and open houses will be

available to buyers anytime, anywhere. All you have to do is add open house info to your HomeFinder.com listings to be integrated for free!

• We send an average 100 phone/email leads to advertisers weekly directly from the app and 200 “email this listing to a friend” alerts weekly

• Our iPhone app receives nearly 600 downloads per week, with the average session lasting 29 minutes!

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Sales Materials (extranet)Product sheets

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Sales Materials (extranet)Competitive Advantages

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Sales Materials (extranet)Email Blasts

Editable, customizable templates

Available in HTML and Outlook

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Monthly Communications—All Affiliate Real Estate Call

All Affiliate Monthly Real Estate Call Attendance averages 50 Affiliates monthly! 3rd Monday of each month – 2 p.m. CST Hosted on WebEx (Tele & Web Conference) Topics included:

Industry News Product Highlight Overview Affiliate Best Practices Monthly All-star Sales Numbers Miscellaneous/Housekeeping Items

Topic suggestions for future calls are always welcome!

NEXT CALL: July 18th at 2 PM CST

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Monthly Communications—HomeFinder.com Newsletter

Monthly Affiliate Newsletter

Distributed by email during the first week of the month

Includes:

Industry News

HomeFinder.com Updates

Product/Technology Development

Sales Successes across the Network

Details on next month’s Affiliate Call

The Real Estate Round-Up (sent every Friday, weekly review of industry news)

Fulfillmentand Support

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Fulfillment Issues:Support.homefinder.com

You sold a package or an SPW – yeah - this is where you turn it onYou need to cancel a package or an SPW – boo – this is where you turn it offYou have a support issue – submit it here, or email: [email protected] (the support site will get your issue resolved faster than sending an email)Toll Free Phone # for urgent issues: 1.888.252.7224

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Once you click on “create a new request” on the main support site, go ahead and fill out the information to the left:

1. Your newspaper info2. Your contact info3. Advertiser type4. Find a listing on the

site that corresponds to the client that is advertising. Copy and paste that URL on the bottom left.

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Click on whichever product you sold.

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Click on “Add an Agent Showcase Package”. You will see the screen on the left. Make sure that you get the agent or broker’s business card so you have all of their contact info – including web address, email and phone that they want their 800 number to ring to. Upload agent photo or broker photo here too. (This screen will be roughly the same for the broker package as well).

Sold an agent package?

Don’t fill in end date

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Click on “Add Single Property Websites”. Enter the information to the left. Did you sell it as a one time fee or recurring billing? Enter that info as well as the number of listings sold.

Sold a Single Property Website?

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Once you have submitted your requests in the fulfillment site, you should receive an email stating that your request was received. The showcase package should be live within 48 hours (if your data is on HomeFinder) and you will get a second email stating that they are live.

Once your number of SPW’s have been activated, also within 48 hours, you will then be able to go to: www.homefinderwebsites.com and build those sites for your clients. If you want your clients to build their own, you can send them this link.

http://www.homefinderwebsites.com/

Best Practices

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Before the client meeting

Always visit the client’s web site before visiting them. Pay particular attention to the sweet spot (above the scroll). This will give you clues on what is important to advertisers. You can use this to discuss Display advertising

Do a google search for [insert town name, state, and homes/properties /real estate etc] . Where does the client , Homefinder, and our competitors rank? Be prepared to discuss

The CTR for listings on Homefinder is about 3%. The CTR on display ads are typically ¼ of 1%. Keep these metrics in perspective when discussing the value of Homefinder

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Before the client meeting

If you’re calling on a franchise broker (i.e. Coldwell banker, C-21, RE/MAX etc) be prepared to conduct a search in another area so you can demonstrate what an enhanced listing package looks like

Conduct local real estate/property searches on Realtor.com, YouTube, Trulia, Homes.com and Google. See who is buying any type of enhanced listing in your market

Does the client you are seeing already utilize SPW’s through a different vendor? If so, get an address and google it. See where it ranks.

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