What weighs more…a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?
What is more valuable…creating one lead on the phone or one on the web?
Which philosophy do you subscribe to…the old school or the new one?
If you watch this video that made the rounds back 2011 from the Coldwell Banker Convention in Vegas of the ‘rumble’ between the old school real estate sales trainer, Mike Ferry and the new school one, Matt Ferrara, over the use of social platforms as prospecting tools, you will realize the debate will be ongoing for some time.
Mike Ferry is a moderate legend in the real estate industry. When I became licensed in 1993, he was being pushed by the Coldwell Banker folks heavily (I was with a CB office for my first several years in RE) and thus, much of my initial training came from my exposure to him. His message was a simple one – relentlessly prospect and use scripts. For every objection, he had a response and for every situation, he had a 3-5 sentence script that was generally pretty effective. Some of his best scripts were incredibly brash and others even brasher. He offered tapes and videos and script cards and was one of the first to really push the concept of coaching. In the absence of any other formal training, I internalized the scripts he offered and tried as best I could to make them my own. I still use several today.
Matt Ferrara I am far less familiar with but I find my limited exposure to his teachings interesting. His take seems to be more based on the leverage that social allows and the best practices associated with those platforms. As with all trainers, he touches on the subjects all trainers do…prospecting, scripts and motivation…but spends more time breaking down differences between the different generations in the marketplace and their behaviors. I would argue his methods are a bit softer and a bit more customized.
Who is more effective?
It depends on who you are as an agent.
All of the prospecting script skills in the world will not work if no time is spent on the phone or knocking on doors. Likewise, spending great time, effort and energy creating the an intricate social network with RSS and ‘auto re-Tweeting’ will not work if the site is not updated regularly with applicable and valuable content.
So who is right?
They both are and the goal of the agent is draw from both platforms in the correct balance:
- Recognize the the behaviors of the intended audience…as a 70 year old rarely Tweets and a 28 year old rarely answer the home phone.
- A Twitter account with 7 followers is not overly effective
- Cold calling 3 times month with avoidance behaviors the other 27 won’t cut it
- Posting an article to Linkedin at 5:00 on Friday will not get exposure
- Sending a listing package to an expired listing and never calling them will also not yield the correct results
Prospecting is an integral part of any agents longevity. Creating a program that sustainable and repeatable, and thus one the agent will make a part of their daily life, is the best one, regardless of the age of the school.