Education, Real Estate, Internet, Information, Technology and more.
ICIWorld Executive Member Orientation
ICIWorld is a society of real estate brokers and salespeople.
It is one thing to have an information tool, but it is another to know how to use it.
Our Pledge.This is a way to measure your success using this service. And if you have not done a deal in the last 90 days or at the very least triggered a lead or leads that you feel will lead to doing a deal you must make an appointment with us and give us a chance to help.
Orientation PDF File. A professional pilot uses a checklist to fly a plane. This is our checklist and instructions for all Executive Members.
We find that there are some members who have not made money. When we go through the checklist orientation file, we find things such as they do not have the Widgets of Listings on their website that are absolutely inevitable to trigger leads, some do not have a website and for $16.50 shame on you, and it must be mobile, and you should learn how to promote it (we have a video for that), every customer should have your mobile website on their mobile phone as a shortcut, you should have fifteen Haves and Wants on ICIWorld, if not you probably have not learned how to work exclusive real estate Have and Want information that is helping brokers make tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The great news is that all this is a one-time 60-minute orientation program for new and renewing members. We provide this in a one-hour appointment conducted in your home or business office over the Internet.
Make an appointment. The great news is that a one-time appointment is basically all that every member needs. If you need more, make an appointment.
There are 4+ billion people using the Internet.
And many of the information tools we teach work full time on your behalf even though you may be part-time, retired, or busy full time doing other things.
Your information can be placed by you within a few minutes. It is in one sense like classified ads in a newspaper.
Don’t be a secret agent, get your information working 24/7.
Make an appointment for questions, answers, solutions.
Gary Nusca, CCIM, CIPS ICIWorld.com 416-777-2633
Have a cup of coffee and become familiar by listening to an orientation video of us helping a member. Make an appointment and we appreciate the opportunity to help you as well.
Principle and Principal are easily confused.
It doesn’t help that they are homophones, which means they sound alike. Here’s a guide to what they mean and how you can tell them apart.
Principle
The word principle means a standard, a law or a rule. This means you can have:
the principles of economics, which are the laws that govern economic theory
moral principles, which are the rules and standards that govern your behavior
Principal
The word principal usually refers to a person. Remember that it ends in ‘pal’, which is a person. A principal can be:
the head of a school
the head of an organization
the main person involved in a contract or financial negotiation
Putting It All Together
If you remember that principal is a person, then you can easily make sense of this sentence:
The principal taught us the first principle of social responsibility.
Principals Only in the Subject Line of Haves and Wants
Agents Only, etc.
There is a solution for these situations.
Understanding why can help you deal with it and make money.
This causes frustration for some in the industry. Learn on this page the reasons why others do this. And then learn how to deal with it. Properties up to $75M have been sold convincing people that the information placed on ICIWorld is real, they have a real buyer, etc.
Information is the gold on the Internet.
Sometimes you have to dig through a little dirt to get to the gold.
Gardeners love dirt. They plant and grow beautiful flowers. Builders love dirt because on the land they build beautiful homes and buildings.
In a newspaper you will sometimes see a real estate broker advertising a property with the words Principals Only.
There are a few reasons why real estate brokers do this.
There are also ways to approach these brokers and work with them to do business.
This is a free market enterprise service of information and much of it confidential. One great thing about ICIWorld is all this information is filtered through the hands of licensed real estate brokers and salespeople since they are the members. The public can not join ICIWorld. They can post in Database 2 FSBO area, but it is only the broker members who can read their contact information.
Licensed real estate brokers and salespeople have responsibilities on how they conduct themselves according the various licensing bodies in each state in the USA and each province in Canada such as RECO in Ontario. There is protection for the public provided by members of NAR and CREA and standards, and codes of conduct and ethics. Most companies also have their own standards as well to serve the public.
There is a lot of money to be made finding the right property for the right buyer and . . . at the right time. There is a saying, you don’t know what you don’t know. So true here. You can easily be missing doing a deal and not even realize it.
And if you are a broker who has confidential information and you only call a few people you know, then to all intents and purposes you are a secret agent. You are not using the power of the Internet and ICIWorld designed to maximize your opportunities to find the right match.
And if you are an owner and only shop your property to a few people, how can you know you have not achieved the hightest and best price and terms? There is a way to do it confidentially.
Timing is everything. Isn’t it better to find out about real estate opportunities to do business that not find out about them at all.
ICIWorld is an industry leader in providing these tips, exclusive opportunities not found any where else in such a large fashion with 50-150 new listings coming in daily. But there is a competent and professional way to handle this information that members learn upon joining.
The bottom line in this or any business is still one of developing good business relationships with others. If you are going to make a $50,000 commission selling a property, should you at least not meet with the cooperating broker over lunch, a coffee and establish a good business relationship.
Brokers can work all year long and some work years to get themselves trained and in a position to make a large sale. The money made can put kids through school, so there is a lot at stake. And then to have the person go behind their back? To prevent this one a good idea is to establish a good relationship with the other broker. After all you will be splitting a substantial amount of money with them.
One of the benefits of joining a CCIM Chapter for instance is the networking that goes on between members, where you can have a certain element of trust and integrity and expertise in dealing with each other. In one survey, we found that 65% of the members of the chapter did deals with other members of the chapter. I should know. I have been the Membership Chairman of a CCIM Chapter for years. And this goes for all CCIM Chapters in the world.
Keep in mind a great deal of information on ICIWorld is not listed but agreements have to be put in place first before showing a property or identifying it. You must protect you sources. It is like protecting money in the bank.
If an owner says, I do not want to give you a listing but I will pay you a commission, this is an opportunity you can handle when trained properly.
Here are several reasons why brokers say principals only in ads and how to handle these situations when you have a buyer:
Principals have instructed them for confidential purposes.Can’t trust other brokers even after instructing them to keep it confidential. Sometimes right after pledging to keep things confidential, a real estate broker returns to their office only to tell someone in their office a certain property is for sale thereby causing problems which were not intended.
It can be bad for business for instance if customers, employees know that a business is for sale. So confidentiality has to be respected.
Possible Solution: Reinforce the fact that you will respect the confidentiality and sign any agreements necessary to ensure that.
Brokers should build up a database of people and keep notes on whether you feel you can work with others without a signed agreement in place. Better yet, have listing agreements. But this is not always possible.
Other solutions: get agreements signed by the buyer.
They have asked another broker for permission to advertise it and will only make money if they sell it themselves;No one likes daisy chains of brokers advertising other brokers listings. However the original broker is to a certain extent a secret agent and many times with very limited marketing abilities compared to members of ICIWorld on the Internet.
So our member gets permission from the other broker to advertise it in the hopes to get his own prospect buyer to buy it. In the Control Option when entering listings there is a choice that says Thru Other Broker. It may be a little frustrating but so is business. The member on ICIWorld is providing a great service because this one tip of this proper for sale can make the difference of doing a deal and not doing a deal. So how should the broker in the middle be compensated. After all he joined ICIWorld and spent money and took his time, care and attentiong to get a real estate license and he sees one person challenged to sell a property and our member knows he has the networking power to find the buyer. And then when he advertises it with permission, another broker who has a buyer calls him for more details.
Possible Solution: The broker who advertises it on ICIWorld should identify that it is Thru Other Broker in the Control option in the message on ICIWorld. That way other professionals in the business know ahead of time what they are dealing with and they can choose not to deal with it or deal with it.
Possible Solution: Offer a small referral fee if successful. A broker does not make money servicing another brokers listing unless you offer a small referral if you are successful.
They have been burned by cooperating with other brokers to only lose a deal when the broker goes around behind their back and tries to deal direct. They are sick and tired of dealing with unscrupulous brokers. They just do not trust other real estate salespeople.Possible Solution: Reinforce the fact you will respect the confidentiality and sign any agreements necessary to ensure that and pledge your confidentiality.
Buyers should insist their broker go talk to the other broker if that is a property you feel will really interest you. Get that broker to overcome the problems of mistrust. Get your brokers of record, managers of the office involved if necessary to help.
Do a referral. Residential brokers who have the buyer in many cases are happy to simply receive a referral. Selling a gas station or a business can be very complicated and time consuming. So doing a referral could work. Listing brokers should give consideration that it can be a close family friend of the selling broker or a family member of that selling broker.
There is a lot of work that has to be done to sell a hotel or gas station for instance. Along comes a residential salesperson who knows nothing about how to sell one of these types. So the listing agent has to do basically all the work yet has to split a commission 50/50. They get fed up doing all the work only to have to split 50/50.Possible Solution: Discuss alternative commission splits.
Possible Solution: If a person is a residential salesperson he/she could simply send the broker his prospect and receive a referral fee.
Possible Solution: Get paid by the buyer. That way to all intents and purposes you are the principal. The other broker does not have to split a commission with you.
Some owners want to know a little more about the buyer first because they suspect it could be their competition who is enquiring. Competitors sometimes want the Profit and Loss Statements with no intention to buy, only to use the information for competitive purposes;
And if you feel anyone is placing information on ICIWorld that is not real please call me and let me know.
If anyone has a problem dealing with someone please feel free to call me and I can try to help.
If you are going to make $50,000, $100,000+ commmissions with another broker, it stands to reason you should at least meet together for lunch, etc. and establish a good business relationship.
This is all about developing good relationships with other brokers and salespeople and one might find that they will choose to deal with you. I have found many of these people end up cooperating once they are convinced you have integrity and bring that to the table.
We have some very special videos and provide monthly Webinars on that teach our members How To Work Exclusive Information in a competent, professional manner that is compatible with the industry.
We should know. We have been doing this since 1994 and real estate brokers and salespeople have been working confidential information since the beginning of selling itself.
Testimonials So you know you are not wasting your time.
For Licensed Real Estate Brokers and Salespeople
World Wide
Lead Generation and Networking
It is:
real estate concepts provided by a real estate broker with forty years in the business learning from others what works and what does not work
utilizing the full power of the Internet medium for marketing exposure and engagement
utilizing the power of a specialized real estate “information sharing” service ICIWorld
realizing what is on the horizon for mobilization of the real estate industry
understanding networking and trading of information not on real estate boards
more.
“How can I promote my website?”
What good is a website if you have no traffic.
A question we’re often asked is “How can I promote my website?” We can help you to Learn How to Promote Your Real Estate Website.
We know how important a website is because our service places over 14,000 real estate have and want ads on a broker’s website in a way where they are contacted by their leads directly!
Benefits: If a broker receives 10 calls that lead to referrals (five minutes each) and they all go through at an average of $3,000 each, that’s $30,000 for 50 minutes work if you figure five minutes per referral. One broker has now done fifteen!
So driving traffic to your web site becomes a very profitable venture.
Below we’re listed some ways for you to promote your real estate website. Feel free to leave us a comment telling us some of your tips, we always appreciate it. You can also watch our video which discusses some of these methods.
Obtain a Keyword-Rich Domain Name
Pick one that ties your area to real estate (DenverRealEstate.com) to improve your visibility with search engines; for large cities, focusing on a suburb will increase your chance to come out on top (LittletonRealEstate.com). You can have more than one domain name pointing to your web site. You can even have yourname.com
If you need more help with domain names click here for a video tutorial This is a .wmv file and will download to your computer, you can play it with most video players.
Promotional Material
Start handing out more of your business cards with your real estate website address. Inform people you have residential listings with color photos and slide show displays, 20,000 commercial real estate listings with 50-100 new listings per day coming in on your web site! If they want information on any of them, they just have to call you.
Promote the Facts
Put this on all your promotional material including letterhead and envelopes. Tell them what is on your web site: Thousands of residential and commercial real estate ads. Make sure everyone knows you have 14,000 Have and Want ads on your home page. Over $1 Trillion of Buyers, over $8 Billion Properties For Sale and For Lease. In any advertising that you do, let people know you have this information. They will visit your home page.
Let them know there are hundreds of new listings coming in regularly, which will encourage them to visit your web site on a regular basis. By letting people know you have buyers, people may be more inclined to list with you since they see how well connected you are in the market place. How did you gain all of these connections? Through your membership with ICIWorld of course!
Don’t be Afraid of Keywords
Place key words in your meta tags on your home page. The major search engines of the world send out “spiders” to crawl every website on the Internet. They immediately go to the “meta tags” on your web site, take those words, and place them in their search engine index. The next time someone searches those words in that search engine, your page will come up.
If your page comes up as one of 5,000,000 pages during a search, people won’t be able to find your real estate website. However, you can sponsor a link so that you’re on top. Sponsored links in search engines average .15 cents per click to $.50 per click and more. Every time a person clicks on your link you are debited .15 cents.
What should you budget for promoting your real estate website?
We suggest you start with a budget of $50 per month to $200 per month for three months. Each month when your budget is reached your sponsored link will stop and then restart next month. In the case of real estate, if you are specific about what you sponsor, you can get very high qualified leads only. Would you pay .15 cents for a lead where you end up selling a shopping center? This is possible to do with the right wording go to Google Ad Words to learn more. Also visit this search tool, it explains searches and estimated costs, it even gives you suggested search terms.
Use Search Engine Promotions
Home pages and web sites are like billboards. If a billboard is in your garage, no one can see it. If it is on a highway then many people can see it. Promote your web site in search engines and any and everywhere you can.
Utilize your Emails
Promote your web site in the signature files of your email. Every email that you send can contain a signature file that is attached to every email that you send out. Advertise 14,000 commercial haves and wants on your web site with a link to your web site.
Economic Development Agencies are departments that most cities have to promote business in their communities. You can ask to have your web site listed on their site.Develop a list of fax numbers and email address’ of all businesses in your community. Send them a list of Haves and Wants once a quarter, every 3 months, of listings in your area. People love reading real estate ads. Then provide the link to your web site. We suggest you use Winfax Pro to do group faxes. By doing this you are building a real estate practice, not just chasing the almighty deal.
Join Groups such as The Builders Association
Distribute information to them at meetings, etc. and build databases of people interested in real estate. Join other groups, Chambers of Commerce, any groups of people. There are always people interested in investing and dealing in real estate.
Some Quick Ways to Promote your Website
Network your web site to the people you already do business with your lawyers, accountants, doctors and dentists.
Place a magnetic sign on your car or license plate holder.
Take out radio ads, billboards on all the major highways in the USA. You get the picture. Promote it.
Literally invite any and everyone to visit your web site to view haves and wants in real estate. When they are interested in something, they should contact you.
Develop a press kit. Notify them of sales in your area. Include “provided by” information with links to your web site.
Know your Website Inside and Out
Analyze your web site. The basis of ALL search engine rankings is keywords. Users enter keyphrases in Search Engines to get information they need, It is VERY important that you optimize for such key phrases. There’s a tool that provides you keyword suggestions and reports on their monthly search estimates, check it out by clicking here.
As anyone with a Web site knows, you need to appear in search results to get visitors to the site. The higher up in the search results, the better. That’s because most surfers don’t make it past the first page of search results. The process of getting a good ranking in search results is called search engine optimization (SEO). Many people, even experienced techies, misunderstand SEO, or consider it hocus-pocus. Over the years, many people have sought to manipulate search sites’ results so their pages appear high in the rankings. This often involved trickery. Search sites try to weed out sites that use these tactics.
Steps to a better Search Engine Rank.
You need to consider the search terms you will target. Start by picking five relevant terms. As mentioned this tool will help you pick out alternative terms. Be realistic. With really popular terms, it may be impossibly difficult to get a good ranking. So pick moderately popular terms.
Pick five pages from your site. Each should be related to one of the terms. Focus on writing clear, concise content that uses the term throughout the page. The idea is to achieve good keyword density. But don’t overdo it. Otherwise, search sites will think you’re “keyword stuffing.” This is when you cram words into a page. Search sites flag this as trickery.
Find reputable sites that are related to yours. Speak with the owners and ask if they will link to your site. They may ask to exchange links. The more inbound links to your site, the easier it is for search sites to find you. Each link coming into your site is akin to a vote for its credibility. But you want these votes to come from legitimate sites. Link farms, or sites that serve no other purpose than to list links, are bad news.
Key Word Mistakes
People often choose keywords that in their mind are describe the activity of their website. You have to discover which words and phrases the average user is inputting to find your product or service. For instance, if you have a relationship site, you might discover that “relationship guide” does not work for you, even though it has the “relationship” keyword, while “dating advice” works like a charm.
Choosing the right keywords can make or break your SEO campaign. Even if you are very resourceful, you can’t think on your own of all the great keywords, but a good keyword suggestion tool, like the one suggested in this article, will help you find keywords that are good for your site. You might also want to check out the ‘Top ten mistakes’ made in SEO.
These are the best ways to build traffic to your site. Keep in mind that it may take several months to see results. In the interim, you may wish to consider online advertising, if your budget allows it.
ICIWorld.com is a Society of Real Estate Brokers and Salespeople. In business since 1994 we provide a Real Estate Information Listing Service for Investment, Commercial, Industrial and Residential Real Estate Professionals. Visit nreils.com to explore new real estate opportunties.