Sandi ranked No. 21 in the LORE/Wall Street Journal 2008 Top 50 individuals by transaction sides.

Faced with selling real estate in an area where more the number of people moving into the area matches the number moving out, Sandi Pressley knows how to put here 31 years of experience to work. In this on-going series, LORE will interview top teams and individuals about the challenges they face and what they see as the future of the industry.

LORE: What challenges do you face today?
Pressley: The biggest challenge I have is finding buyers. Sellers are the easy part. Getting listings is no problem and having great inventory is no problem. We’re in a city that not really growing so we need to capture buyers. People are fearful about buying and that, of course, makes it hard to get them to commit.

LORE: What are you doing to overcome these challenges?
Pressley: I have really gone nuts on the Internet, as that’s the way of the world. I’ve invested a tremendous sum into a new Web site to bring in all the things that are working to generate buyers. My new Web master said I should do Twitter and Facebook, but I’m hesitant because of the scams. I’ve been the victim of a scan on Craigslist where someone posing as me was collecting rental money in my name.

It’s a challenge to keep up with latest and greatest technology. My goal is to get the very best placement on the search engines because that’s where the buyers will find you. I’ve developed a lot of very rich content and offer a daily blog. I’m doing what I can to keep people on my site, such as video.

I have searchable listings and they’re free searches. I have two sites: Sandipressley.net and sandipressley.com. I have different designers with differing philosophies figuring I can capture more buyers if I’m appealing to different audiences. Google changes its mind on a daily basis on what gets you placement.

I really work my sphere of influence and past clients, I mail to them every month. I send inspirational postcards. In fact, I went to list a house last week for an 84-year-old man who I sold a house to some 30 years ago. When I walked into his den, he had a wall college that featured all of the postcards I had sent him.

I also did a “Grace” campaign. For my top 50 clients, I did a one-week campaign where I sent different messages and clues to them about how these are tough times and everyone deserves grace. On the last day, I hand delivered an eco-friendly green tote bag filled with candy and wine along with a letter about how much I value their business.
I received both listings and buyers from that. One of my top clients called to tell me about a new executive coming to town. I started working with that executive.

LORE: How have you revamped the business to meet the current needs of clients and customers?
Pressley: I’ve done a couple things. For listings, I use feedback.com and it’s been awesome. One of the greatest frustrations for me is getting feedback to sellers. They’re hungry for anything you can give them. For agents, they have 15 listings and they need to give feedback on all of these and that’s time consuming. This is an electronic way to do it and ties into the MLS lockboxes. When the agent enters a lockbox key, info downloads and syncs daily. An e-mail is automatically sent to that agent with an interactive easy form to fill out. The agent can just press send to both me to seller. I used to get one out of every 10 feedback forms back. Now, I get 8 out of 10 because it’s so quick and easy. That costs about $70 a month.

I’m also using Settlement Room—having the entire transaction online. Now clients can see how much work I’m doing for them. They see the amount of time you’re spending organizing home inspections and more.

LORE: What do you see as the successful sales associate of the future?
Pressley: I’ve been in the business for 31 years. I’ve been through the worst times. I laugh when I hear a buyer say, “I’m not going to buy now because rates have gone up.” I remember my office having a party in 1979 because FHA rates dropped to 15 percent.
The biggest difference in this market is that we have too much information.

The agent of the future will stop believing the negativity and start combating it with positive information. We’ve got to tell people the sky is not falling. The market will come back. Make it your mission to pass it on that now is a great time to buy.

Are you a LORE/Wall Street Journal 2009 Top 400? I'd love to interview you! Please e-mail me at tracey@traceyvelt.com to schedule an interview. I'll feature you on a future blog post.