What to do when business is slow.

Lots.

There are lots of things you can do when business is slow.

However, there are probably things you should do when business is slow. Today, I'm going to share with you just a few things you should be doing. So, let's get started, shall we?

1. READ. And I don't mean the daily newspaper. It's news that is over a day old and probably with nothing good to say anyways. Start reading books, articles, magazines, and even blogs about success, marketing, business and, of course, real estate. (If you're reading this and you're not in the r.e. business, then read up on stuff pertinant to your industry/profession) Why? Ideas. There may be little things these folks will suggest or present that you may not be doing right now, that maybe you should. For example, if you're thinking about having your own blog but don't know what to do then reading Chris Brogan would be a brilliant start.
2. GIVE. Your time, resources, and especially expertise. My friends, Tim Sanders and Sameer Vasta have recently talked about giving. Remember, what goes around comes around. Give and it shall be given unto you.
3. COMMUNITY. Or you can say, associate. Whatever term you use, it is more important now to seek the counsel of your manager, associate, mastermind group and/or mentor. Thousands of successful entrepreneurs have already survived and thrived through a recession. Find out what they did. Inquire about there thought process on what it takes to succeed in today's marketplace. There is strength in numbers!
4. WORK. But you knew that already, didn't you? Then why aren't you? Continue to market yourself. Continue to make phone calls. Continue to plant seeds so that you will have something to grow and harvest. Hundreds of people are leaving your industry today. There will be less competition tomorrow. It's up to you if you want to win.

Please don't consider this the extent of what you should be doing. It is far from that. However, I believe that if you follow my suggestions you will have a brighter tomorrow.

To your success!

(picture courtesy of www.musicforchange.com)

Guest Column - Stan Albert - Yellow Pages canvassimg and other wacky ideas

Years ago in the mid ’60s, I became involved in a partnership to buy up properties in my home territory in the Belleville/Trenton area. I had the task of finding tenants for a nearly vacant commercial building in downtown Belleville, without a clue as to how to do it! My partners gave me the area phone books, the Yellow Pages, a desk, a phone and lots of coffee, and told me to canvass the surrounding area from Cobourg to Kingston to Peterborough. Within two months of solid canvassing the firms listed in the Yellow Pages, we found enough tenants to completely fill our building.



This memory of marketing/canvassing came to the fore during the first recession that I faced in the mid-’70s, after I’d received my broker’s licence and opened my first brokerage. If you think things are bad now, you should have been around then!

Anyway, here’s what I taught my agents then and am practising now in the 2000s.

I called the largest advertisers in the Yellow Pages and asked a series of questions, not unlike what we would normally do when seeking listings on the residential side. When phoning, always ask if it’s a good time to call or if there’s a more convenient time for the discussion.

“Hello (great opening!), this is Mark Sales from Bigreal Estate, is this the owner? Great, I just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to let you know that I’ve decided to add your name to my list of investors.”

Wait for answer – usually it will be, “Really, what do you have in mind?”

“Well, although we all know the marketplace is down, there are still opportunities for investors like yourself perhaps, who will take the time to view some of the properties that may interest you.”

If the answer is positive: “Great, when would be a good time to drop by to visit with you, or could you come to my office for a coffee so that we could chat informally and get to know each other?”

If the answer is negative: “If investing in real estate at this time is not in your plans, do you need a CMA for the future?”

Some other questions you can ask:

Do you need re-financing?

May I send you a list of some real estate opportunities that may be of interest to you?
Would you like me to send this by email or should I drop it off?
Are you interested in meeting with other professional and/or business-minded people like yourself?

Would you be interested in attending a real estate investment seminar with noted business people in our market area?

Not all of these questions will lead to a positive result, but sometimes they turn into a success story, like this one that recently happened in my office. One of these calls went out to a business person who by chance had just sold his business and building. He had a substantial amount of money to invest. A meeting took place and the new client paid for lunch and presto, my agent had a new client. It doesn’t all come together at once, but most marketing of any kind is a numbers game.

Once you establish a rapport with a new client, you can proceed to develop your relationship. If it is a rental property, commercial/residential, you can offer your services to the client to manage the property for five per cent of the monthly rental. (Note that after three years of doing this, I had 14 properties that I was managing and supplementing my income by several thousand dollars annually).

So, start at the As for Accountants and work your way through until you get so busy, you will never have to pick up the phone again. The successful people you meet through the Yellow Pages system usually have equally successful people as their friends. Some of them may have relatives out of town that may use your services as well. As stated so many times before, “Do a good job and your actions speak volumes!”

Another example of the success of this system repeated itself in the ’90s, when I first came to the Re/Max organization. A new agent came to my office and she knew virtually no one in Toronto, because she and her husband had immigrated to Canada the year before. So, I set her on the task of the Yellow Pages system. The first call she made was to a glass company specializing in auto and home repairs.

The conversation went as stated above. She asked if the owner needed any additional space or was interested in buying another location. The owner said no, but his sister, who was his bookkeeper, was interested in a condo in North Toronto. She sold her the condo and to my knowledge, she is still using the system today.

Even in a recession, there are still people who need to buy and those who need to sell. Forget what the media hype has to say. Be like the late and great Prime Munster of England, Sir Winston Churchill: “Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!”

As P.S. to my last column, How to market yourself successfully in the recession, you may also want to try this out: Many home owners have received their new tax assessments. So, why not offer your services to appeal them? In Ontario it only costs 75 bucks. Say you will do it for them for free (you have to ask them to appoint you as their agent to do so. Who better to know the property values than us?) So you appeal and the worst-case scenario is that you lose, but you win the respect of the owner, who may just be interested in selling or buying real estate or giving you a referral or two along the way.

I know a broker who canvasses the condos in his area and has offered this service for years. Many units are out of the country owners and obviously not knowledgeable about property values. So, you do your “good deed,” and guess what, you may be listing the property eventually, or starting your own property management income flow!

The newest Brian Buffini 100 days to greatness course offers an eight-week program that addresses this idea in full. However, I’ve been teaching it for years.

I sincerely hope that this system will help the many agents who have written to me over the past 60 days, to put something down on paper.

This system is only as good as your follow-thoughs with emails, information about real estate, and business meetings with other future investors and eventually, “thank you parties” at the end of the year.

With good wishes for a great holiday season and a prosperous and healthy New Year.

For more info, contact Stan Albert for a one-on-one coaching session. Fees to be discussed when you call. Stan Albert is celebrating his 39^th year in active real estate, and is with Re/Max Excellence in Woodbridge, Ont. He serves on committees at RECO and at the Toronto Real Estate Board. He is an established trainer and business consultant and can be reached at salbert@trebnet.com.

(photo courtesy of www.salescareertraining.com)

Guest Column - Stan Albert - The tough get going

Are we recession proof? I don’t think so. As I mentioned about two months ago, beware of the big ‘R’ word.

The cycle has returned – no surprise! Let me see, the last time was in the late ’80s into the early ’90s. It was bad and a lot of agents left the industry to go and sell Amway or whatever. But it wasn’t as bad as 1981 to 1985, where we saw interest rates as high as 28 per cent. Can you believe that? Some of us old-timers can and we survived to tell the tale.

Yes, it was even fun to work the market then, with Vendor Take Backs (you newer agents remember taking this in your mortgage courses, but I bet you’ve never done one).

So, the USA debacle has finally caught up with the staid, stable Canadian marketplace. Is it any surprise that we are not bullet-proof? What happens south of the border usually takes longer to hit us here in Canada. But not this time.

I just returned from a holiday in the Baja Peninsula in Mexico and visited several Realtors and developments. Tourism has been badly hit as well as investment in homes and condos in Mexico.

Some of the Yanks I met were worried about their investments, as we all are. Many were thinking of investing, but shied away due to the Wall Street debacle. However, some of the time share presentations were well received and people were still buying – just not at the rate that they did in years past. This is no surprise.

Is this article all about doom and gloom? No. There’s an old adage: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Yes, it’s a little on the schmaltzy side, but it’s true.

I’ve always been mystified when the market does a downturn, that there are still people who have cash reserves they haven’t invested in the stock market, and they come out of the woodwork to buy and sell properties.

Do any of you think that we’ll have the landslide of foreclosures that we see south of us? Let me know and tell me why.

Who will survive in our industry? Here’s who will:

Those who diligently have been in touch with their sphere of influence.

Those who hold seminars for first-time buyers. Yes, they still want to buy!

Those who read about the recession and how the agents who lived through it managed to maintain their sales. I recently talked to a manager of a large market niche office, and their sales are the same as last year.

Those who investigate the new Accredited Seniors Course – yes, seniors still need to sell and buy.

Those who look into recession-proof prospects (you can reach me on email for these – don’t have room here!).

Those who continue to run open houses on a regular basis.

Those who tighten their belts on spending and resist the urge to splurge.

Those who seek the advice of their manager, not their coaches, because most coaches are too young to give advice on this type of market.

Those who attend mind-building seminars, not the rah-rah type.

Those who take time to read REM, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.

My late dad, Jake Albert, always said to me, “Hard work never killed anyone, only those who were idle usually died poor and miserable.”

Stan Albert is celebrating his 39^th year in active real estate, and is with Re/Max Excellence in Woodbridge, Ont. He serves on committees at RECO and on the MLS Rules and Communication committees at the Toronto Real Estate Board. He is an established trainer and business consultant and can be reached at salbert@trebnet.com.

Guest Column - Bob Aaron - Oil storage tank leak a cautionary tale

September 13, 2008

Oil storage tank leak a cautionary tale

A scary tale of an oil leak in an Ottawa-area home provides a valuable lesson for homeowners whose homes are heated by oil.

In early 2006, an exterior oil storage tank next to the residence released approximately 900 litres of fuel oil onto the ground.

The owner's insurance company called in Ottawa-based Canadian Disaster Restoration Group to respond to the environmental contamination.

Not only was the site of the house contaminated, but the leak posed significant immediate risk of contamination to neighbouring properties. The potential liability was a matter of great concern to the owner's insurer.

The lot size was 450 square metres and there were nearby neighbours in all directions. The property was near the top of a downward-sloping street of residential properties. The Ottawa River lies at the bottom of the hill.

A shallow aquifer beneath the property was comprised primarily of sand and so the potential for rapid flow of contamination in the flowing water was very high. The leak occurred in cold weather and the downhill flow of oil through the site was sure to accelerate as the spring temperatures began to rise over the weeks after the leak.

A speedy reaction to the leak was essential. Concentric Associates, a part of the disaster restoration team, analyzed the situation and decided that the owner's young family had to leave the property immediately for their own safety and to allow faster remediation of the damage.

From a practical viewpoint, everyone involved agreed that demolition of the house was the best option and the insurer purchased the house from the owner. This allowed the family to relocate to a new home without delay.

In March 2006, a demolition permit was obtained and the house was demolished. Eastern Building Restoration began remedial excavation the same day.

On the surface, the oil had spread out to cover an estimated 50 square metres or about 538 square feet. Underneath this area, a plume of fuel oil had leaked into the aquifer which was underneath and around the residence and all of it had to be removed.

Over the next two weeks, almost 2,000 metric tonnes (4.4 million pounds) of contaminated soil were removed.

By mid-April 2006, the site had been fully backfilled and a post-remedial groundwater sampling program was undertaken during the following months.

Eventually, the site was approved by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and it was resold for construction of a new home.

Total cost for the remediation came to about $500,000 –plus the cost of buying the house.

Fortunately, the disaster recovery team kicked into high gear fast enough so that the neighbouring houses were not affected by the flow of oil underground.

The insurer's decision to purchase the property relieved the homeowners of a tremendous burden while allowing the restoration crew to get at the contamination quickly.

This protected the surrounding neighbourhood from contamination and the insurer from liability to the neighbours.

Had the house not been demolished, or if the cleanup hadn't occurred so quickly, the costs could have been exponentially higher.

The scary part of the whole tale is that the cause of the oil spill was due to a corroded oil tank. The hole in the tank was about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Jean-François Raymond is the marketing director of the Canadian Disaster Recovery Group. For homeowners with oil tanks – interior or exterior – he recommends checking oil tanks and lines yearly, or even more frequently, especially if they are old.

Strict requirements govern the use of residential oil tanks. Information is available from the Technical Standards and Safety Authority, www.tssa.org, or phone 1-877-682-8772 or 416-734-3300.

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Bob Aaron is a Toronto real estate lawyer. He can be reached by email at bob@aaron.ca, phone 416-364-9366 or fax 416-364-3818. Visit the column archives at http://aaron.ca/columns/toronto-star-index.htm for articles on this and other topics.

The truth

I don't consider myself an expert in things financial. That said, things are very weird today.

Massive financial companies are teetering on extinction. Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch and AIG. What is going on? All of this apparently brought on by irresponsible lending and greed.

And yet, today's PROFIT magazine highlights Canada's Hot 50. The #1 company with a two-year growth of almost 4,000%? www.MortgageBrokers.com.

What does all this mean for regular citizens like you and me?

What are the implications for homeowners, new and old?

The truth? Maybe we can't handle the truth?

The Weakening

I think we can all agree that the Canadian real estate market is weak(ening). It's not that I have an agenda to push or a service to sell as a result of this recent phenomenon. Facts are facts: There are more listings on the MLS, closing times are being increased, and listing prices are coming down.

What does this all mean? In my opinion, it means that if you just bought, you better hold on for the long haul and hope 1) you have a secure job to continue your payments, 2) you have a VRM and 3) that you don't end up with negative equity. If you're looking to buy, RELAX. Wait a while. I guess it depends on your local community but prices are coming down. Your deal is soon to be had.

Are you interested in following some cool articles on real estate? Then follow me on del.icio.us. I'll post articles there instead of links here.

Have fun and stay profitable!

Karim Kanji