In an ever-changing market, sometimes the best prospecting involves handing it off to the professionals.
By K.K. Snyder

With the fierce competition in today’s real estate industry, Realtors and marketing professionals have to stay on the cutting edge of this ever-changing market, using advances in technology to keep the upper hand. As is the case with most developers, knowing how to market a new real estate product is a task best left to the marketing professionals.

Americas Media Group Worldwide (AMG) specializes in marketing, communications and public relations for developers and luxury brands. AMG has a large number high-end of real estate clients and is quickly earning a sterling reputation.

In addition to its centralized Miami location, AMG offices are located around the world in New York, Chicago, Cancun, Panama, Caracas, Florence, Amsterday and, soon, Santo Domingo. Prospecting for new clients is wide open, as nearly everyone has something to sell.

“Anything you do in business involves marketing,” says AMG President and CEO Edward de Valle about “limitless” prospecting possibilities. “If you’re a sales person, you’re marketing yourself. If you’re a developer, you’re marketing your product.” Unfortunately, he adds, developers often create products that are not right for their markets, which makes selling those products challenging. Enter AMG.

Defining the need
Among their many professional services, AMG brokers the price of media and develops the strategies for developers or their sales and marketing teams, including creating the communication plans and general public relations. But don’t confuse AMG with your run-of-the-mill agency.

“We don’t do creative. The big difference is that we’ve created a network similar to a big worldwide agency, but specialized for developers so they can have a local service with a global perspective on what is happening within the local or regional market,” says de Valle, formerly a senior sales executive for Conde Nast magazine group.

AMG’s success and forward-thinking approach to prospecting in the global market has led to a stage of heavy acquisition and searching for other agencies to purchase within viable markets, says de Valle. “We’re decentralizing our business more and more, with each office becoming more independent,” he says.

“The reality of our success is that, even during challenging conditions in the global markets, AMG worked with the best developers and offered them multi-platform marketing capabilities such as broker connections, global media, events and public relation services,” de Valle says.

When taking on a new client, de Valle knows the client’s first concern is what is in it for him and how AMG is going to help him market and sell his product and secure deals in Florida where the market can be tough.

Devising the plan
“I start by defining the project,” de Valle says. “I’ll try to go in and see what we can do. If there is not enough to offer that client, we don’t pitch it. I don’t sell anybody something that is fluff.

“If we can offer our services to that A-list client, we determine the initial benefit sale, [asking] ‘What are we going to bring to the table during the relationship with this client?’”

Initially, says de Valle, AMG needs to offer something tangible, such as the company’s resource bank of brokers for the client to work with, the best media pricing available in the market and their global communications abilities.

“We’re the only company buying $65 million in media just for developers, so we get a discount up front because of the sheer volume,” he adds.

Deflection
Media reports stating that the real estate market has taken a nosedive make business more difficult, which tends to irritate de Valle, whose business has grown tremendously in the past four years. There are always new clients and new business out there ready for the taking; it’s just of matter of going after it, he says.

“Realtors who understand that have been able to succeed, even with changes in the marketplace,” he says. “They know the product and where the market is heading, and they are prepared for [market downturns]. They have agents working for them who market themselves and don’t rely on developers to market them and their product.”

At the end of the day, no matter the industry, the hardworking professionals willing to go after every prospect, in spite of industry stability reports, will survive.

“The ones who [struggle] are the people who don’t want to work and rely on themselves, but want to rely on their companies to market them,” he says. “There is work available. Hard times come for all industries; it’s knowing how to have skin thick enough to survive it. A lot of people quit, but we refuse to quit.”

To learn more about Americas Media Group, visit Americasmediagroup.com.