At one of the large Real Estate company conventions I attended in Las Vegas this week, I came to the conclusion that this company has adopted social marketing/social media as the primary method of how they expect their organization to do business. If this wasn't the exact philosophy that they've adopted, they sure gave most of the attendees that impression ... and that's fine, it's their company.
To start the convention, they did something very interesting on the stage in front of their approximately 2,000 attendees. They actually had a debate take place between me and the fellow that is their social media guru ... It was very interesting to say the least. I was defending the position of running Real Estate like a business, meaning that we do the things that The Mike Ferry Organization teaches to develop and build a predictable, duplicatable, profitable Real Estate sales business. It was an interesting and fun little debate, which I'm sure both of us felt that we won, although I will say the response in the audience was leaning heavily in my favor.
Here's what's interesting after listening to everything they talked about regarding social media/social marketing:
The real estate company I am referring to has approximately 90,000 agents. Through email campaigns, twittering, blogging, and any other social media devices they could use, they were able to sell 2,000 tickets to their convention.
The Mike Ferry Organization has 90,000 customers in our database. Through thousands of phone calls and office presentations, we sell 5,000 tickets each year to the Superstar Retreat. From a sales perspective, you tell me which makes more sense ... 5,000 or 2,000?
The other speakers made it very clear and were very loud and adamant about the fact that I've completely missed the boat ... that I'm completely old fashioned, and completely out of touch with reality when it comes to building a business because I'm not endorsing things like Facebook, which was one of their other methods of achieving their attendance.
Remember, there are no magic answers, and we are in the communication and people business. Communication revolves around conversation, and conversation revolves around talking to people ... not responding to the fact that they're “going to the gym to workout for a couple of hours,” though Facebook.
Oh by the way, I had the biggest attendance at their Breakout Sessions ... not surprising that good salespeople like you want good information.
Please be sure to download a copy of my Social Media Report here:
http://www.mikeferry.com/main/files/SocialMediaReport_0311.pdf
