In the course of holiday gift shopping, I found a site that sells t-shirts with this pearl of wisdom from London, back in the Blitz:

And so I finally found my mantra.  Stiff upper lip, do what you know how to do, back to basics – carry on.

So many of the agents I work with know this instinctively: now is the time for fundamentals – knocking on doors, coaxing real buyers off the sidelines, moving unreal sellers in the other direction.  They are organizing their markets, shifting to quality, and kicking the riff-raff out.

As a technology vendor, you need to think constantly about this: if your product doesn’t make intuitive sense within the conventional business practice of your customer – in our case the professional real estate salesperson – it becomes an option. Technology has a naturally contrarian, assertive, energetic ethos, but it is therefore also prone to arrogance, inattention, and folly.  The best innovation, in my experience, is inspired, not inspiring – born from watching your customer, tuning in, and an eagerness to make things work a little better, with a bit less friction, an unexpected ease that is delightful.

So here at Cyberhomes, we’ve been watching the millions of folks who have come to our site, and the millions more who look at real estate information online each day, and we have come to a simple conclusion – one that has probably been under our noses all along as an industry, but has only been uncovered, made real, and become essential in this moment of national fear: there is nothing new, unique, or different about the online consumer.  He is not more likely to be ready, serious, or motivated.  He is not a buyer, and he is not a seller – any more so than anyone you encounter in your market on any given day.

But he and others like him come in a deluge, and they come often, and spend an enormous amount of time looking around.  So the question for you, as a serious practitioner is: does this audience have any value for you?  Really – does an audience of casual, curious, meandering information-seekers have real value to you?

I would encourage you to connect this question to the goals that you have set for your business today.  Do you see it as your job to look for buyers, or manufacture them?  Do you work with, or for, your sellers?  From our perspective, the online audience that we – and our competitors – deal with is no different than the entire community of people who live in your neighborhood.  And you should engage them online no differently than you would ordinarily.

At Cyberhomes, we have completely oriented ourselves around this premise.  If you believe it has value to you, we are eager to show you how to put it to work, both on our site, and as you think about how you engage online in general.  And if you do not, we are likewise interested in talking to you about why.  We will learn from that, and that will help us help you.

A separate thought, in closing: I was astonished to learn recently that about 70% of homeowners in foreclosure never once attempted to contact their lender to even attempt to understand the workout process or what their options might have been.  You already know where these households are in your market.  Would you reach out to them?  Do it in the spirit of the holidays, if not for these individuals, then perhaps more importantly for your market and for our nation over all.