Toby Boyce

By Toby Boyce

We’ve all seen the advertisements on television. The more Axe bodywash you use, the more female attention you are going to get.

Well, I recently conducted a not-at-all scientific experiment and wore Axe body wash to the library. A couple of girls and guys smiled at me, but I was really disappointed as I expected there to be a line out the door complete with cat fights. I mean, that’s what the advertisement leads us to believe will happen, right?

Ahh, yes. But we know better. We know that isn’t true. We know that there are a lot more things that go into whether you’ll have a female talk to you than what body wash you used this morning.

So how is it that so many of these “real estate gurus” continue to travel the country selling the exact same thing? The magic bullet that will save your real estate career and desperate agents buy into it.

“Those that came here today hoping to just pick up one piece of usable information are just prolonging their failure.” It was the line that got me in 2006. I was struggling and forked over $600 that we really didn’t have for a system that I never really ended up using. Why? Because I needed a magic pill and they offered one.

When teaching technology classes in my office and others, I see too many agents looking for the same result from social media. The most common question is, “How much will blogging make me?” Well that’s hard to answer because it depends on what you do with it and where you take it. But you can do it. Sadly, I can count on one hand the number of blogs I’ve set-up over the years that are still functional and being maintained.

Yet every single agent has access to the “magic pill” for their real estate career — a business plan. I struggled through several years with no marketing direction (and yes, I came from a marketing background) and plan for my actions. So what happened? I never knew where my leads came from or (more often) where they went. I couldn’t tell which of my shotgun approaches were working.

It was only when I formulated a structured business plan with an outlined category for each of marketing initiatives with goals and objectives from each one. If the effort didn’t meet goal over a long enough term, then it was evaluated and potentially stopped. I ran an ad in the local paper for one year  and had two calls off it in that span. I don’t advertise in the local paper anymore. But now I’m on their Web site and seeing good return on my investment.

Without taking the time to evaluate and understand each piece of your real estate puzzle, there is virtually no way that you can succeed and go to the next level.

And that will be $599 please. Checks can be made out to …

Toby Boyce, MBA, is a real estate practitioner with Keller Williams Consultants Realty in Westerville, Ohio. Visit his Web site: www.delawareohrealestate.com.