We have had our larger franchises here close offices and consolidate.

Interestingly our local limited service rep company has been going gangbusters. He has tons of listings. Maybe since we in Oregon weren’t “hit” like other parts of the country our limited rep guy is holding his own.

Barry,

If the fish likes your bait you have great marketing. If the fish bites the hook consider yourself prospecting…

In one master planned community here, one agent in particular has been door knocking since 1987. in a reader’s poll, he was voted the #1 recognizable business in the community. Most of the 20k in the community have met him face to face. His prospecting is his marketing.

The flip side is the call I got from someone relocating from Scottsdale last Friday. I asked him if he had a hired a listing agent yet. He said no, but that he knows several. I asked him if he knew Russell Shaw and he literally roared with laughter and then quoted Russ’ commercial. He said everyone in Phoenix knows who Russell Shaw is.

Effective marketing is getting the consumer to think of you or your product in a certain way – owning shelf space in their mind, if you will. Although it can be accomplished by talking to someone one on one, that isn’t possible for a national company when they want to reach millions of people. So they market to those people. So when referring to marketing I am really not talking about calling people or stopping by to talk to them – for me that falls into the prospecting category.

This isn’t to argue about words but to clarify thinking. If there is confusion on these particular terms it will make it impossible to take the discussion further as we won’t be communicating. If one wants or has “a job”, then it makes no difference what they think those words mean. If they intend to “have a business” (continues to make money if you are there or not) then it becomes vital that one correctly grasp the distinct meanings here. Not just “a meaning” but to have a *suitable* definition for both of those terms. In the long run it is necessary to have a marketing based operation (unless your goal is to run a boiler room) if one is going to have a “big business”. It just isn’t physically possible to wind up doing hundreds and hundreds of transactions if the only way of getting business is prospecting or asking for referrals.