Using the Web and social media to sell real estate

Tomorrow I will have an important meeting with three people that will have a fundamental role in my future professional life. One of them is of course my business partner and friend Daniele, with whom I will be sharing all of my future endeavors in the US and in Europe; the second is Terry Ogburn, a very interesting businessman and chief of business development at Century 21 Grant Realty of Florida, in Seminole. The third is a lady, Karen Selby, the broker.

Terry, Karen & me in one of the best Chinese restaurants in Pinellas

Our story begins about four months ago. My investing career was moving slower than I wanted and, after talking with my wife Maria who is also my personal business coach, I decided to immerse myself in the local market and see how people worked around me. I opened up Craigslist, the most important free announcement network in the US, and I found a posting about two real estate brokerage firms that were looking for new agents. I contacted both of them, and only person who actually returned my call was Terry.

I explained him that I had done my real estate training at a formal Florida school and was considering activating my license as I wanted to see how the market really worked in the field. We arranged a meeting (intended to be a formal presentation) and a couple of days later I was entering for the first time the office of Century 21 in Seminole.

As I stepped into the door, I noticed a message board displaying “Welcome Roberto Mazzone”. Despite the misspelling of my last name, I was impressed by the attention to detail and the positive effort to make me feel like at home. The following presentation was more like a two way discussion and lasted twice as long as expected. At the end I knew very well three things:

I personally liked Terry, he was a real professional who enjoyed his work and who had also a coach vocation

Century 21 was an interesting company with a very detailed and systematic training program for their salesmen

That wasn’t the right job for me: too much time commitment that would have taken away from my other strategic activities..

I pondered on the thing for one day and then I called back Terry to tell him that “no”, I wasn’t going to take on the job with them because it didn’t mix well with my entrepreneurial activity. I was afraid to disappoint him because he had clearly showed interest in me and obviously wanted to recruit me as an agent for the brokerage, but I felt I needed to be upfront and to be bold in my denial even though I saw potential in working together .

The fact of having maintained my integrity in that moment was paramount: I could have participated to a 90 days free training that he was offering and then back off with some excuse. Terry was wise because he didn’t push me into accepting and didn’t drop me off right there, as many other US businessmen would have done.

We kept in touch, in the meantime I went back to Italy and dealt with my visa. We had more meetings at my return to the US but we never actually talked business, as such, we rather explained to each other “how” we wanted to do business, any type, including real estate. That has created a wider and wider tie common view and now we are ready to actually commit to something that we all believe fits with the strategies of our respective companies and that will change the world of brokerage for good. And we have no qualms about it. It is going to be really a powerful project because we the ideas seed and grow and now we are reaping the fruits.

Conversely the average US businessman will ask you if you are going to do business with him within the first five and if you reply “no” the average US businessman will simply go away. If you reply “yes”, he will strike an immediate deal with you but with no commitment. Terry and Karen have proven instead to be “Network ready”. That is they are willing to give and listen before getting into real business. We will therefore implement a whole barrage of Web 2.0 marketing strategies that will catapult us together 10 years ahead of the pack.

Roberto Mazzoni