1. Make a decision. The power to decide and
understand that you will have to do something is one of the most powerful
decisions in the universe. The process of deciding that you will be a
success, have a great marriage, strong relationship with your children,
or certain type of business or wealth will cause you to move forward
towards your goal. Most people never decide what they truly want in life
therefore they get nothing. Your conscious decision will cause your mind
to diligently search and create the reality that you have chosen. For
example over six years ago, I decided to work a Monday through Thursday
workweek. That was the most powerful decision of my life at that time.
I made the decision and created the specific plan for me to achieve the
goal of a four-day workweek. By making the decision, I was able to block
out things that were taking me farther away from my goal. This allowed
me to successfully achieve my goal with lasting results for my life.
2. Creating a schedule. Your schedule should encompass your whole life.
Your business and personal life need to be factored in to create balance.
I have seen far too many Agents sacrifice their family to achieve a production
or commission goal. When they finally reach their goal, they have no
one to share it with or they realize what little importance that goal
had compared to their family. I have a friend who tragically lost a child
and now is reflecting on the years of decisions made for the sake of
a few plaques and personal production goals. Those plaques or even the
money earned are little comfort to her at a time of great sorrow. What
a hollow feeling for that highly successful Agent!
The schedule should encompass the “time block” system. By time blocking
I mean to schedule specific time for each daily activity in real estate.
Schedule time to prospect, qualify buyers and sellers, negotiate contracts,
return phone calls, listing presentations, and show property. The better
you “time block” the more effective you will be. The more that you adhere
to the schedule the more success you will have in sales. Remember to
allow for a little “play time” or “flex time.” You will need some time
to relax and decompress. This time for relaxing will enable you to stay
focused and sharp during the “up time.” Give yourself 15 minute “flex
time” every two to three hours. This should be sufficient to break the
tension or catch up so that you are able to stay focused and “time blocked.”
3. Value of Time. To decrease your time worked and increase your production,
you must know and understand the value of your time. Anyone can make
more money if he trades more time for it. Even the ditch digger can do
that. He merely needs to work overtime. The secret is to trade less time
for more income.
People who understand the value of time trade less and less time for
more and more income. You must first know the value of your time today.
What are you worth per hour? Do you know? If you do not, it is a simple
equation. Determine your gross commission for last year and divide it
by the total hours you worked. The total would be your hourly rate or
what you are worth per hour.
Now if you want a more accurate figure of what you are worth per hour,
subtract your business expenses for last year from your gross commission
for last year. Divide that figure by the total hours you worked. Now,
look at you value per hour. Most people don’t have the courage to really
look at this number. For one of my clients, before we began to coach
him he was grossing $300,000.00 per year; it showed him he was making
around $80.00 an hour. With his high level of skill in the real estate
business his hourly rate was about a third of what he should have been
making.
People who know the value of time in their life create masterful lives.
People who do not know have a miserable existence, because they do not
understand the importance of time. Let me give you an example.
If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,000—that
carried over no balance from day to day—that allowed you to keep no cash
in your account…and every evening cancelled whatever part of the amount
you had failed to use during the day—what would you do? Draw out every
cent, of course! Well, you do have such a bank—its name is ‘time.’ Every
morning it credits you with 86,000 seconds…every night it rules off as
lost whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purposes. It
carries no balance…It allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account
for you. If you fail to use the day’s deposit, the loss is yours. There
is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow. You must live
in the present on today’s deposit.
If you and I make the most of our time, it will be because we understand
the value of each and every second. We will learn how to spend our time
wisely.
4. Invest your time in high payoff activities. You must invest your
time and define what the high payoff activities are for you. Once you
have defined the activities, you need the discipline to do them daily.
These are the only activities you can do to pay yourself well. You need
to also understand that these activities will change as your hourly value
increases. For a new Agent, there are a lot of high payoff activities
compared to a top Agent in the office. For a top Agent, who makes $300.00
plus per hour, there are very few high payoff activities. You must invest
the time to define what the high payoff activities are for you. The following
were my high payoff activities when I was a real estate Agent.
1. Prospecting.
2. Lead follow-up.
3. Going on listing appointments.
4. Negotiating contracts.
5. Coaching staff.
6. Planning my business.
These were the only activities I could do and effectively bill the amount
per hour I was worth. You must focus, like an attorney does, in billing
out hours daily. The more hours you bill, the more income you make. The
greater percentage of the day I did these six activities the more income
I earned.
5. Developing a philosophy. By philosophy, I mean guidelines for doing
business both personally and professionally. If you understand your value
per hour and your average commission check, you can determine the type
of people you are willing to work with, i.e. personality types, price
range, and the type of clients to look for. You may not be able to work
in a certain price range or with certain types of people. When a buyer
does not provide you the answers you need, you can refer him to another
Agent or drop him because he does not meet your philosophy. You need
to understand you were not put on this earth to help everyone. There
are people you cannot help. This fact does not make them or us bad people
or you a bad person. It just makes you a business person who expects
a reasonable profit for the amount of time invested. Once I was clear
on my philosophy of what a client was and my expectations for a client,
I was able to work with people who conformed to my philosophy. You must
define clearly your world of business. This definition will enable you
to better select the people to work with. We have all selected the wrong
people. We have spent large amounts of time and money working with people
we should not have and felt awful afterwards. In some instances, we were
never paid or appreciated for our efforts. You will feel much better
turning them down before you invest your time, energy, and money in a
losing cause. By understanding your “core” philosophy, you will be able
to seek out the clients who meet your criteria rather than finding those
that do not. By having this philosophy, you will generally find the clients
you are looking for. You will also be able to quickly dispense with those
clients who do not meet your standard operating procedures.
6. Understand your business. Know what generates your business. What
are the top three income producing activities that you do? Where do you
spend your time daily? Compare those two answers and look at what you
are worth per hour. Do only those activities that earn you the highest
return the bulk of your day. I will give you a hint; high payoff activities
are not putting up signs and lock boxes. These are only high payoff activities
if you want to make less than $10.00 per hour. You are a business owner
of a company that sells millions of dollars in product per year. You
need to know and understand your business. You must know where your sales
come from to enable you to sell at higher volume. Most Agents earn success
by the sweat of their brow. They outwork the competition. Your job is
to outthink your competition. Then outwork them, if you desire.
7. Prospecting. There are as many ways of prospecting, as there are
people. The key is you must prospect daily to bring in the business.
You can prospect via the phone or in person. You can prospect expired,
FSBO, cold call, appointments for buyers, investment properties, your
sphere, and out of area owners. The list is endless. If you are not spending
a minimum of one hour everyday prospecting for new business, you will
have difficulty during stretches of your career. Even calling your past
clients and asking for referrals is an excellent way to prospect.
When you begin to get busy, do not fall into the common trap of letting
prospecting slide. Just because you are busy, do not think you do not
need to prospect anymore. This is the time to focus on prospecting and
bringing in more clients. You have momentum, so keep going. The analogy
I like to use is that if a plane is on the runway it takes a tremendous
amount of energy to climb to 20,000 feet. Once the plane is at 20,000
feet, it can throttle back a little and easily maintain its cruising
altitude. If the plane throttles back completely, it will soon be back
down on the runway. Do not throttle back in your prospecting or you will
find yourself on the runway quickly. By continuing to prospect, you can
then climb higher or do the same production in less time. Consistency
in your prospecting leads to consistency in your paydays.
8. Qualifying the potential client. This step is crucial to success.
I see more Agents make mistakes in this area than in any other. They
are afraid to qualify people to the point of excluding them out. Do not
be like these foolish Agents. The whole goal in qualifying is the exclusion
of the unmotivated. If you do not become skilled at excluding out the
unmotivated buyer or seller, they will waste your time. They will eventually
drive you out of the business, both emotionally and financially.
The most valuable commodity you have in life is your time. We all have
a finite amount of time here on earth. We do not even know the amount
of time we have left. If we choose to work with unqualified, unmotivated,
unloanable, unable to sell people too often, we are out of business.
By properly qualifying all leads, you are saving yourself from putting
them in your car or going to their house to find out they are not a lead
at all. Spending five hours showing property only to find out that they
are working with another Agent, unable to buy because of bad credit,
have no money, or are unrealistic of the value of homes today is a painful
experience. Any one of these people causes us frustration and macaroni
and cheese for dinner. Do not allow these people to control your business.
The majority of the Agents in our industry really need to strengthen
this discipline dramatically. They allow their clients to be the CEO
of their real estate sales company.
To all of us, leads are like security. If we have them we feel secure
and we do not have to find new ones. The truth is a lead by itself has
no value. What is the true value of your leads? What would someone pay
you for all your leads? Why not make them worth something to you and
your family by qualifying them well, and then setting an appointment
or throwing them out if they are of no value (which are most of them).
Leads have little value warehoused in your computer. If you do not follow-up
on your leads, throw them away. You can always create more leads. You
can get more leads than you can handle. Why not pick only the best ones?
9. Create Strong Systems. Systems enable Agents to leverage themselves
while still servicing their clients and prospects. You need to develop
systems that create the desired result without your involvement. The
reason why McDonalds is so popular is not the good food. It is because
of the consistency. Whether you go into a McDonalds in Dallas, Texas
or Tokyo, Japan the fries will be the same. They have developed their
systems and procedures that allow them to sell billions of fries with
the same effort and outcome every time.
As REALTORS® you do not have to be mechanical like McDonalds, but
you do need systems. You need to have systems for listings, escrows,
buyers, sellers, leads, other Agents, presenting offers, negotiating,
follow-up with lead and clients, and the list goes on. You need a step-by-step
process for each of these so you can delegate the tasks to other staff
members.
10. Delegation. You need to delegate the low payoff tasks that need
to be completed to other staff members. You need to teach and train your
staff to replace you in certain functions. You need to monitor their
progress with praise. And finally, you need to get out of the way and
let them do it.
The last step is the most difficult step for most Agents. They hire
assistants then never turn over ownership of the tasks to the assistant.
You need to be able to relinquish control. They are going to fall down
and bump their knee. They will ruin some deals and make some clients
angry. But you have made mistakes, why wouldn’t they make similar mistakes?
Let me give you an example. Your child is learning to walk. How many
times do you let him fall down before you say that is enough? You are
done trying to walk. If you say enough, he will have to crawl the rest
of his life since he will never learn to walk. But you would not do that;
you would help him until he is able to walk all over the room. You need
to let your staff fall down and get banged up. Don’t shelter them from
the storm, but do not create a hurricane in your office either.
It took me years to learn these ten steps. I spent hundreds of thousands
of dollars in time, energy, and money to work through the learning process
of these disciplines. If I had the opportunity you have right now, I
would have taken advantage of it. You have a rare opportunity to develop
and learn and to apply these steps in months instead of years. Instead
of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can invest less than
one commission check to be coached to earn a larger income and create
balance in your life. What are you waiting for? Do not delay; call right
now,
1-877-RECHMPN.
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