Featured news — posted October 12, 2004

Marketing and advertising isn't something that comes naturally to most appraisers. This isn't an overgeneralization. If someone wants to enter a real estate profession and is inclined toward salesmanship and self-promotion, normally they end up as real estate agents or mortgage brokers — people who sell things. Appraisers are the engineers and auditors of the mortgage value chain. Your services and the value you add are often misunderstood even by the clients who give you the most work. We understand that at a la mode and that's why we've developed a new suite of services called XSellerate that makes promoting your services as easy, and effective, as can be. It's marketing so easy, we've put in the overwhelming majority of the effort required when you get XSellerate "off the shelf."

We know whereof we speak when it comes to marketing. a la mode has invested millions and millions into developing the very best software and technology for appraisers for more than 19 years. But we have always devoted time, resources and attention to "fertilizing the soil" with marketing. We know how powerful marketing can be, and how profitable. Marketing is always easier when you have a superior product or service, but it's never unnecessary because of it. And successfully marketing your superior product or service can stave off having to react to declining business by possibly reducing fees. No marketing campaign is guaranteed — but having no marketing campaign is guaranteed to leave you "out of sight, out of mind" if mortgage activity tails off.

If and when mortgage activity wanes, our residential appraisal customers will need not only to differentiate themselves from their local competition to succeed, they will need to successfully communicate that difference to current and potential clients. XSellerate is a comprehensive suite of guides, templates, services and instruction that makes marketing your business as easy and intuitive as filling out a report.

You can use XSellerate's ad campaigns and marketing aids to improve your business communication platform. But you need to take a step back and learn why it's necessary to differentiate, and how to use differentiation to your advantage. Part of XSellerate's suite of services is how-to documents from marketing professionals that explain what you need to do and how you need to do it.

Visit this link for a free nine-minute tutorial on the basics of appraisal business marketing. VCR-like pause, rewind and fast-forward controls mean you can view at your own pace. You'll learn several important things, but what we most hope you take away is that we're serious about helping you understand how to effectively market yourself and your business, and we want to help you succeed.

We've created more than 25 prebuilt ad campaigns to get you started, like "Order Your Appraisals Online," "I Have a New Website" and "Company Overview." Here's an example. In the online, e-mail version of this campaign, your location, company name, website address and phone number would be automatically populated. The most you might want to customize is the "Nearly 12 years ago" part; or, customize it to your heart's content:

Nearly 12 years ago, we started as real estate appraisers in Norman, OK and have grown into one of the leading real estate appraisal companies in the region. At Stone Appraisals we pride ourselves in quality appraisals, incomparable pricing, fast turnarounds and excellent customer care. Make us your partner and see the difference!

Our new website at www.stoneappraisals.com vaults us to a new level of service capability. You get status updates on appraisals and have access to completed reports in a secure login area. We're also giving you features like online appraisal ordering, mortgage calculators and educational videos. And now that we're eCommerce enabled you can purchase our services online making your appraisal experience faster and more efficient.

Visit us on the Web at www.stoneappraisals.com or call us at 405-555-1212 and let us begin your appraisal today.

After you've clicked the link above and seen the sample training video, visit the XSellerate home page to learn more. XSellerate is currently offered as a bundled part of an Enterprise level Appraiser XSite.

We're very proud that our development and deployment of a free EDI appraisal report delivery method ensured that pay-for-play VANs didn't take hold — and take a ton of your money. Now, we're moving to the next phase of EDI, which will be more secure, simpler, more effective, save time and hassle, and generate more business and more revenue for you. We apologize for the inconvenience inherent in changing your e-mail address, but hope otherwise you're as excited about this brave new world as we are.

We've never made any bones about being on your side — certainly not in the pages of our e-Newsletter. Once a week we try to give you the good news about your profession, where most real estate and broader media focus on the bad. We do this truthfully, diligently, and have our facts straight. We're not new to the appraisal industry — we know how it works. We know what hasn't worked. AVMs haven't worked. Pay-for-play VANs haven't worked. And we say so.

Some say we try to scare you into buying from us. Like when we call another company on funneling some of your money to an AVM provider. We tell you you shouldn't be scared of AVMs — not only can you compete with them, you can run circles around them. We're not trying to scare you, or smear anyone who does things differently. We tell it like it is.

The remainder of this tale will be of little interest to most of you, because it involves an "I said, you said, she said" that always makes people uncomfortable. But the October 11 edition of Appraisal Intelligence, a subscription-based newsletter billing itself as "Real Estate Valuation News and Analysis," devoted its cover story to a piece-by-piece critique of a story of ours in our July 27 edition entitled WaMu to undertake "complete overhaul" of mortgage operations, cut more mortgage jobs by a former Vice President of WaMu.

The critique does not withstand serious scrutiny, and we're confounded as to a reason that squares with journalistic ethics why Appraisal Intelligence would have proceeded this way. Appraisal Intelligence contacted us for a "corporate response" to vague "questioning" of the "validity and credibility" of the story. We asked for specific "questions," and were given quotes to respond to. We did. But none of the specific "questions" about the piece's "validity and credibility" were given to us in advance to respond to. Our response never made it into the article. Not contacting us at all and offering "equal time" after the fact would have been one thing, but we were misled, likely so that the article could end by (truthfully) saying they had "talked to us" and would provide details in their next issue.

No need to wait. If interested, please read our original story, linked above; the Appraisal Intelligence story (we offered to provide you with the full text of the story so you could read it for yourself in its entirety and in context, but Appraisal Intelligence did not take us up on our offer, so only subscribers will be able to read the story linked), and then our blow-by-blow rebuttal to the frankly misleading, confusing and borderline libelous piece.

We doubt very many of you subscribe to Appraisal Intelligence and as we said are uninterested in a "he said, she said" story. That's why we've linked them separately. We do have business partners we work with who may have read the Appraisal Intelligence piece and be left with the impression we slam lenders and companies in our e-Newsletter with no basis in fact, and those are damages, if they materialize, that we'll keep track of. Please, proceed with the links above only if interested, and otherwise, be assured that we know who we're writing for, we know our and your business, and we would never intentionally misrepresent or misstate any fact whatsoever to advance some underhanded agenda.