Graduation Had Two Real Estate Lessons

June 4, 2009 (May Edition)
Volume 3 Issue #8

May was a big month for our family. My youngest son, Charlie, was scheduled to graduate from college. Even better, he was going to graduate in 4 years. As a proud father, it also occurred to me that he could be off the family payroll. Life is good.

It is a great event for any family to have a child graduate; it was especially significant in that the bulk of his high school experience was spent “under achieving.” Teachers and counselors were fond of telling him not to bother with college, that he might consider something in the waste management field.

Graduation was scheduled for Saturday. As proud parents, not wanting to miss out on any part of the event or an extra night of college fun, we drove down to Carbondale, Illinois on Friday. The trip was anything but uneventful. It turned out that the storm of the century had passed through the area while we were on our way to graduation.

A tree crashed down on our son’s house, taking off a small part of his front porch and crushing a car parked in their driveway. Trees were down all over town, roofs were blown off, signs were scattered all over and the whole region was without power. It was truly a disaster area. When we arrived at our motel, we were handed a flashlight and a bottle of water and told power might not be restored until Tuesday, have a nice stay.

Oh no! All the teachers and counselors were looking like they might be right. Charlie might never graduate from college. The auditorium where graduation was scheduled was totally dark.

Whew! The university rescheduled graduation and combined 2 department ceremonies to be held in the football stadium complete with partially destroyed scoreboard. A temporary generator for sound, some great weather, text messaging to notify the students and the graduation was on, only slightly delayed. Charlie graduated! Life is good.

Now this could be a story with an inspiration message for real estate agents. Whether you are a student or an agent, do not give up no matter what the market throws at you. Don’t let bad press, bad weather, or a lousy market stop you. Life and real estate are full of obstacles. Obstacles are made to be overcome. But there is more to the story...

With the combined ceremonies, we had two commencement speeches. One of the speakers, a graduate from the 50’s, had maybe the longest resume in the history of man and the other was an extremely successful graduate of the university who had achieved a lot from a humble beginning. Both rambled on about things that had no meaning to the graduates and neither was very interesting. Their talks could be described as standard, uninspiring, and filled with the same old graduation stuff.

The real point of this newsletter has to do with websites. (Hey, it’s our business and everything reminds us of websites.)  The distinguished speakers lost the audience despite their accomplishments. They went through the motions of giving speeches but provided nothing of value for the crowd.

Think about your website. Think about why people come to your website.  Does your site provide something of value for your visitors? It takes a lot of effort to get people to your website; your credentials while important are not the reason people initially visit your website. When people reach your site, are you engaging your visitors, giving them information that is valuable to them, or are you going through the motions? Don’t lose your audience, inspire them, give them something valuable, and make them want to use your site and learn more about you. Before you know it, Charlie and his fellow graduates will be buying homes, and you don’t want to lose them.

Tech Tip- Check the links you have on your website. Make sure they are not broken and make sure that they are valuable to your visitors.