I received a call from a telemarketer on yesterday. For some reason it caused me a lot of unrest during the night. I would rather go to sleep and wake up with the same person on my mind who has been on my mind for the past couple of years. And the one day he was no longer on my mind he called and was back on my mind again all over again. It's so bad I asked him to pray for me. He's a good guy so I don't mind him being on my mind.
Moving on. Back to the telemarketer call which is apparently all over me for some reason. It actually seemed like the dude who called me got an attitude at the end because I told him I was not going to pay for the services he was offering on any level. I already pay out enough money each month on different portals. What he was offering wasn't even a nip in the bud for what I'm already receiving at about 10 times less the cost.
Thankfully I received a good call and a bad call yesterday from telemarketers. Another portal calling asking me to sign up for their expanded services for half off and the guy was very pleasant when I told him I just couldn't afford to commit at this time my bank account was drained from all the other services I am paying for. He was very polite and let me know they could work with me on pricing in the future and the special they had emailed me in regards to three days ago was only good for three days and it was the last day I could take advantage of it. Have a nice day type ending.
Well getting back to rude dude. He had different tiers of services. Little did he know his stats were not impressive. My personal websites get more activity than his portal in this region based on the net meeting we had where he controlled the presentation and screens from his end as he pointed out stats which are typically of interest to real estate professionals.
At the end of the presentation he offered the higher service first and went down. He ended up asking me something in the neighborhood of would I want any of the services. My reply was "no, the prices are way to high." I was looking at the prices on the different packages right on the screen he was displaying. He seemed to take offense to my response. I was just being truthful.
I am really thinking now it would be nice if the different real estate portals could do a price comparison chart. Similar to the price comparison chart when you are comparing prices to buy domain names and it has a button to click on to compare prices just like when ordering books online or products from other portals like Amazon.
At bare minimum you would expect a telemarketer calling from the West Coast to have done their research as to what agents are generating in this area, what would be a fair and reasonable amount to pay in this area. Especially when your offices are headquartered right here. Least do your own little comparative research before offering a service that can be obtained from other sources. It is a new day. I can set up my own dashboard with my own Google gadgets. I don't need to be out any good money every month to do that. I know about enterprise log ins. Log in once and it automatically logs you into all your social media accounts, email, etc. I also know how to click the "Stay Signed in Button" and the "Save Password" button offered for a lot of portals which costs me about one or two seconds of my time to click on the check box. I'm not new to computers I am one of those who are true to computers and actually try and use them to the full potential of my aptitude to serve my purposes.
The website presented was nice. I would love to be making the kind of money where I could just say sign me up. I am single and I am self-employed. Unfortunately I am not rolling in dough. Anyways, it just was not worth the price he was asking. I didn't set the fee schedule I just declined it.
Based on his reaction I doubt if I ever will use anything more than the free service the portal provides. The reason why I am using the free service is because my information is cached from when I paid for their services before. Rather than have my information cached with old data I use the free version to keep my profile information updated. Often their portal comes up on the first or second page of Google when I search my name.
As I told him on the phone I was paying for their service monthly before and they showed one thing on the interface as my receiving all the leads from my efforts. However, they were not even savvy enough to realize it showed on one of their own screens who was actually receiving my leads on the back end. The local MLS had my leads redirected to someone else from the feed information they were displaying. I emailed them about it and nothing changed. My leads were going to another agent at another company.
He says their new system doesn't allow things to be done the old way anymore. Great! My biggest concern has been resolved. But the other concern now is your prices are at least four times higher than they were before. It seems the only massive change was an update to the version of the dashboard utilized to make it interface with Google gadgets and other newer technology apps. The new dashboard features is impressive, however, the price is oppressive.
I don't know too many agents who could afford to chunk out a big chunk of money each month in this market. Yes only 23 agents signed on in this market for the number of agents in this area speaks volumes. We have an area of very intellectual folks here. The statistics on the number of agents who signed up says it best.
My challenge to rude dude is to come off your west coast high horse and take what I said to action to devise a viable solution on increasing the number of participants to your system in this area. Key component "pricing".
The portals with effective pricing for the value they offer are booked up. I can't even buy zip codes, featured home listings, etc. because they are sold out of the areas I want at prices I am willing to pay.
I would rather take my money and pay for the more expensive zip codes and cities on their portal if I had a couple extra hundred dollars to spend each month and buy up some stuff I declined for the higher priced tiers on theirs. Apparently based on my stats from their portal my own personal stats are higher for number of views on one of my listings than your portal receives for the region here amongst all agents on rude dude's site. Maybe I should have shared my stat reports with him, they are more impressive for me as a single agent than all of the views combined for the agents in the area receive on his portal.
The component on his site which I would really love to have if the leads were going to actually come to me is the lead generation tools. (at a reasonable price only though).
It is nothing personal it is just business. Being self-employed is running your own business and I have to stay mindful of that. Part of running any business is making decisions. The decisions of the heart I wish I had more control over. However, the decisions where the stats, facts, and figures I try and base on logic. It is just not logical for me to opt to pay for something where I will not be receiving more bang for my buck. I could eat at the seafood restaurant I like in this area several times in a month for the cost of your service. Hey, I could even take all my grandchildren once a month if I was just looking for intrinsic value for my money. When I pay out money for business purposes I want business value.
If you were to take time and shop the prices of what others have to offer you would be dropping your prices about 75% dude is what I should have told him. I figure I probably would have gotten cursed out that point. Good thing I had to bring the call to a close because I was waiting on a customer to get in contact with me on his lunch break. But I don't regret not having told him that because it probably would have ensued into a heated debate over nothing. And I say over nothing because I still wouldn't have signed on at his prices.
Time to get up and get going to see what today has in store. Have a blessed one everybody! Please but please handle your telemarketing calls a lot better than me and don't let the stuff linger on your mind. As my grandma use to tell me "It just don't worth it!" No matter how broken the English.
Lynne
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