In This Issue...

• Words from the President
• Prospecting Expireds – What to Say and How to Say it
• Seven Principles to Successful Real Estate Goal Setting

Words from the President

We can never spend too much time gaining clarity in our life. I realize that one of the most difficult tasks in life is to set targets and goals for ourselves to achieve. It’s not the ability to achieve the goals or objectives, but to set them.

The quintessential question is what do you want? What do you truly want in life? We can have multiple desires and goals in life. There are an infinite number of goals we’ll set in our lifetime. The catch is that you can only work on them one at a time. What I mean is that we can only focus on one goal at any given moment. You can’t hold more than one thought in your mind at a time. You must select and prioritize what you want to achieve.

Once you have figured out what you want, you then have to decide what you are willing to give up to get there. Let me repeat the question: what are you willing to give up? Too often, we don’t evaluate the price that we need to pay. Success ultimately has a price that must be paid. Are you willing to pay for it? When one knows what they want and evaluates or realizes the price to be paid, exceptional results occur.

Let me give you an example. Late in 2000, I knew 2001 was going to be an enormous growth year for my company. I realized that to ensure that specific result, I was going to have to give up something. I also needed to complete the book I had agreed to write with a publisher. I knew I had to acquire some additional time in my schedule to accomplish the goals I had set for the company and myself. After careful thought and evaluation, I realized I needed to give up golf for one year. Now for many people, that would be easy, but I love golf! The problem was, a round of golf takes around 4-5 hours, and I played 2-3 times a week. That was 8-15 hours of time that could be used somewhere else. I had to give up golf, and I did not pick up my clubs once in 2001 – not even to go to the driving range. This newfound discipline and self-control from the clarity of giving up something of value to gain something greater is unbelievable.

What do you need to give up to hit your goals in life? Decide on what you want, and then take the time to identify what you need to give up. We all need to give up something to reach our full potential.


To your Success,

Dirk Zeller
CEO
Real Estate Champions

Prospecting Expireds – What to Say and How to Say it

When you place a call to the owner of a home with an expired listing, you have one objective: To secure an appointment for a face-to-face meeting. Remember, the owners will likely be contacted by dozens (if not hundreds) of other agents, so you need to move quickly and skillfully, following this advice:

· Address their situation. Quickly convince them that, if they choose to work with you, the outcome will be different than the last time. Explain why working with you provides them a higher probability of sales success than they would receive with any other agent.

· Be proactive. The most serious owners will re-list their home within a couple of days of listing expiration. To land the listing, you can’t be low-key with your dialogue and delivery. These owners are ready-for-action. You must convey power, conviction, and belief in your ability to achieve success.

· Leave yourself wiggle room. There are a few factors you don’t know at this stage. You don’t know the condition of the home, the neighborhood layout, the level of access the owners are granting to buyers, what exactly they are trying to achieve in terms of price and time frame, the probability that their expectations can be met, or what the previous agent really did over the course of the listing term.

· Turn the most frequently asked questions to your advantage. Be ready to answer the questions, “What will you do differently?” and “Why did my home not sell?”, by saying that you don’t have enough information to give an accurate answer. You can say something like: “Are you asking me to guess, or do you really want to know for sure?” When they say, “I want to know for sure,” you book an appointment to see the house and have a friendly discussion. With that helpful move, you’re through the door.

· Gain information. The owners need to understand clearly that, without firsthand knowledge of their situation, it is impossible for you to determine specific approaches that you would employ to achieve their desired outcome. You need to see their home in order to review the features and benefits of the property, the home’s condition, and its curb appeal. You also need to review the previous agent’s marketing strategy. Plus, you need to gain an understanding of the owners’ expectations regarding time frame, listing price, sales price, and access for showings, as well as their interest in your evaluation of the competition they face in the current marketplace.

· Differentiate yourself. Use your track record (or your firm’s track record if you are new in the business) to gain credibility with the owners. As you present your success story, do so with the caveat that your success is based on your outcome with clients who sought your counsel, accepted your recommendations, and implemented your advice to achieve successful conclusions. Tell them you would like to contribute to a similarly successful outcome on their behalf.

· Provide the option of an easy exit. The seller with an expired listing usually wanted to fire the agent long before the listing term was up but, in most cases, was bound by the contract terms to wait the agreement out. Acknowledge that you know the owners are apt to feel cautious about “tying their home up” for another long period of time. For that reason, offer them an easy-exit listing agreement or include a 100% satisfaction-guaranteed clause. Either approach allows the owner to sever the agreement before it expires, greatly reducing the perception of risk they may feel about committing to another agent.

Winning expired listings is the result of superb sales skills, including:

· Daily prospecting
· Focused dialogue
· Strong delivery
· Solid ability to handle objections
· Compelling description of the unique benefits you offer
· Ability to win appointments that end in listing agreements

As you initiate contact after the owners’ previous listing has expired, your first objective is not to convince the owners to re-list with you. Your initial aim is to pique their interest and to make a compelling argument regarding why they should invest their time to see your presentation.

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Seven Principles to Successful Real Estate Goal Setting

Your ability to plan, set goals, and create action plans to accomplish your goals is the mark of someone who is truly successful. This skill to set goals is a life-long endeavor. It is a habit that must be cultivated daily for a lifetime. This single activity will have the greatest impact on your life over any other achievement skill.

To be disciplined in setting goals is to sit down with paper and pen and make a list of things you want to acquire, attract, or accomplish in the next several years. Earl Nightingale said, “The problem with people is not achieving the goals we set, it is actually the process of setting them in the first place.” We are all goal-seeking organisms. Your subconscious mind will work on the goal you give it until it is accomplished. However, you must first set this vast powerful computer in motion by setting the goal.

To achieve a well-rounded, joyous life, we need to be working toward our goals. When it comes to goals, the journey is almost better than the destination. Success was defined by Nightingale as the progressive realization of a worthy goal. You become successful once you set the goal and work toward it. Success is not found only at the attainment level but also in the striving for attainment level.

You need goals in all areas of your life. It is not good enough to set your sights on your business or commission earnings or transaction sides. You need goals in family, spiritual, physical, financial, and mental areas of your life. This is the only way to achieve balance.

Organize your goals in all areas based on priority. Put the most important ones on the top.

Our overall goal for our life should be to be a continuous goal setter. We need to become so focused and clear on what we desire that every hour and every day we are doing the things that are moving us in our direction of choice and toward our goals.

Studies have shown that you will save ten minutes in execution for every minute that you invest in planning or goal setting. What an incredible return on your investment of time. How often would you invest in an opportunity that allowed you to put in a dollar and get ten back?

Seven Keys of Goal Setting

1. Your goals must be specific, detailed, and clear. You must invest the time to put them in written form. There is a direct link between your writing the goal, seeing it being written, and burning it into your subconscious mind. The goals you desire must be specific, not vague. To set a goal to be rich or be happy will not draw you to it. Well-written goals are like magnets - they will draw you to your desired result. Your goal must be concrete and tangible. Highly defined goals are attained - fuzzy goals are forgotten.
   


2. The goals you set must be measurable. How can one truly measure happiness? You have to be able to analyze and evaluate your progress and your results in a tangible way. Many people have a goal of being rich. You need to know specifically how much money rich is. Your need to know the specific time period you want to achieve it by. Now that’s a goal.



3. The best goals have deadlines. They have a time by which you need to accomplish them. They also have interim steps along the way that can be monitored. These sub-deadlines or schedules are critical to success. There are no unrealistic goals; there are merely unrealistic timeframes.


4. Goals need to challenge you to capacity or beyond. They will stretch you and mold you into a new person. Jim Rohn wisely said, “It’s not the money that makes the millionaire successful; it’s what he had to become (as a person) to earn a million dollars.” If you took the money away from that millionaire, he would make it back twice as fast as before, because he learned the skill to make it in the first place.



5. Your goals need to possess congruency with your values and beliefs. Your goals also have to be harmonious with each other. Let me give you an example: I want to lose 40 pounds, but I also want to eat Dreyer’s Rocky Road ice cream every night before I go to bed. One of these goals will need to give way to the other. They are not congruent with each other. There is no way I can achieve both at the same time. You cannot achieve goals that are actually contradictory.



6. Your goals must have balance between your personal life, family, financial, spiritual, physical, mental, and business goals. Just as a wheel needs balance to rotate properly, we need balance to get anywhere in life.



7. The largest most difficult goal in life is to define your purpose goal. We all have one goal that is at the core of our being. Our life moves to greatness when we decide upon a definite purpose or focus for our life.

I can speak from personal experience. When I determined my “core purpose” was to make meaningful impact in the lives of all the people I come in contact with, my perspective changed dramatically. My enjoyment of my day to day “work life” increased. Fortunately for me, I get to live my “core purpose” daily by helping people such as you reach their fullest potential and joy in life.


For related articles, go to:
http://www.realestatechampions.com/realestatetraining_articles/

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