In This Issue...

• Words from the President
• Setting and Achieving Prospecting Goals
• Sailing Toward Objectives

Words from the President

It’s time to take a look at your report card for 2006.  We are a few days past the midway point.  How are you doing?  Have you taken the number of listings you needed to take?  Do you have enough in escrow?  Are you doing the daily disciplines that lead to success?  This is the perfect time to stop and analyze how you are doing. 

Take a half-day in the next week to invest in replaying the tape of the first half of the year.  Come up with your year-to-date number in the following categories:

• Listing appointments
• Listings taken
• Buyer appointments
• Buyer commitments
• Closed listings
• Closed buyers
• Under contract listings
• Under contract buyers

For some, you are right on track.  This exercise will encourage you that you are doing the right things.  For the people who are behind, you will now see reality.  You need to create a Plan B to either catch up or adjust your finish line.  Sometimes in life, it’s how we work Plan A.  Sometimes, it’s how we implement and focus on Plan B that makes the real difference. 

Make sure to invest the time . . . know where you are and how you got there.  The more I coach, the more I realize that knowing your business and how it functions is a critical step to mastering your business.

To your Success,

Dirk Zeller
CEO
Real Estate Champions

Setting and Achieving Prospecting Goals

In setting prospecting goals, focus on three core areas: the number of contacts you should make each day and week, the number of leads you should develop, and the number of personal appointments you should set.

Start with easily attainable numbers, so you can build up your energy, intensity, focus, and discipline slowly and steadily. You wouldn’t decide to run a marathon without working your daily and weekly mileage up over time, and the same premise applies when establishing and meeting your prospecting goals.

A contact is a personal conversation with a decision maker who can make a purchase or sale or who might refer you to someone who could. A contact is not a conversation with the babysitter, a 10-year old neighbor, a friendly teenager, or an answering machine.

When I take on a new coaching client, I almost always start them with a goal of five contacts a day, and I would suggest the same for you.  Make a goal of five contacts a day without fail, resulting in the completion of 25 contacts a week.  It will take three to four weeks for contact with five prospects a day to become a habit. Once you achieve the goal for three weeks straight without missing a single workday, you can raise your goal to seven or ten.

Leads are contacts that have demonstrated through their dialogues that they possess the basic motivation and desire to make a change in their living arrangements. In prospecting, we assume until we either pre-qualify them ourselves or they secure an appointment with a lender that determines they have the financial capacity to make a purchase.

To advance your business, you should aim to develop at least one lead per day and five leads per week.

An appointment is a face-to-face meeting with prospects, during which you discuss their needs and wants, share how you work, and aim to gain their commitment to work with you in an exclusive relationship to sell their home or find them a home to purchase. An appointment is the launch of the agent-client relationship. It is not a meeting during which you show a property!

Like your lead-generation goal, your appointment goal should be set at a reasonable level: A goal of one appointment a week is a solid start. If you acquire two appointments, terrific, but make sure that you are able to secure at least one.
If about now you are wondering, hmm, five leads and only one appointment a week from all those calls, realize that these are starting goals. It is far better to begin with aims that you can actually achieve rather than ones that overwhelm you from the onset. As you gain consistency and skill in prospecting, both your numbers and your ratios will improve.

Even if you maintained the goals we set and sales ratios of leads and appointments, you would have a good year as a newer or inexperienced Agent.  At the end of the year, you would have made 1,250 contacts.  You would have created 250 leads.  You also would have set and conducted 50 appointments and gotten two weeks off with your family to boot.

Even if only half of the appointments turned into listings or sales, you would have 25 deals in your first year.  In most companies, that would make you rookie of the year.  You would also earn in excess of $125,000 in gross commission income.  I do not know too many people in real estate or in any other profession that make that type of money in their first year.

Need more help with listings? Click Here or See Below

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"Getting the Listing on
the First Appointment"

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“We are already putting into action a number of the ideas we learned from the seminar. In my three years in the upper-end real estate industry, my sales have doubled each year.

Last year, my transactions totaled $13 mil. Utilizing Dirk's system, we anticipate (and are counting on!) an increase of at least 50% this year over last year.

Thank you in advance for your part in our success!”

– Elaine Bierstock, Lyon Real Estate, Sacramento, CA


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Sailing Toward Objectives

I recently read a statement from Oliver Wendell Holmes.  He said, “To reach the port of success, we must sail; sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, not drift or lay anchor.” 

This quotation and thought led me to break down the approach for sailing toward a successful life.  The first step for a successful sailor is to have a specific port he is trying to reach.  We who seek a successful life must also have an objective.  The objective must be clear and concise, crystallized and definite.  Too often, we are very fuzzy as to our main objective in life.  Our main objective is beyond what we do.  It’s beyond the income, sales, and money we earn.  It’s beyond our business and all the challenges that surround it.  Too often, the objective is monetarily based.  To earn X amount of dollars or sell so many homes, in my perspective, is not the main objective in life.  It, at best, is a goal to be obtained along the way.  The desired end is not the money itself.  It could be what the money can do for us or the lifestyle it allows us to have in the future. 

One of my favorite speakers is Jim Rohn.  Jim talks about it not being the money that makes the millionaire.  It is what that person became in order to attract the million dollars.  It’s the skill, mindset, discipline, and character that person developed that are truly valuable.  The money can be fleeting, but the other skills of character, mindset, and discipline last forever.  
           
One of the hardest tasks in life is to set that clear objective.  If it were easy, everyone would do it.  Everyone would achieve success.  We are often stopped by the difficulty of the task.  The difficulty should be viewed as an advantage.  Now that’s a novel mindset, isn’t it?  The more difficult the task, the fewer people who will master it.  The fewer people who have mastery, the lower the level of competition will be.  Few people have mastered success.  That’s why there is so much opportunity.  Studies have shown that the peak earning years for people are in their 50’s and early 60’s.  For many, it takes that long to master success.  It takes years of trial and error to get it right.  Most people never hit the mark or get it right.  If we are progressing, learning, and moving forward, we are successful…provided we have a definite aim or objective.

The second key point in the Oliver Wendell Holmes quotation is the section that refers to ‘against the wind or with the wind.’  There will be days when things go smoothly, and we are with the wind; when we are hot, and everything we touch turns to gold.  We gain appointments easily.  We create trust effectively with our prospects and clients.  A skilled sailor will sail long and hard on those days.  He will ensure that he makes the most miles he can by sailing longer, harder, and with more focus and intensity.  How often do we let up when we have things rolling, and the momentum is with us?  When we have favorable wind, do we take a mental break?  Do we let up?  That’s the time to pour it on.

It seems human nature to let up or to ease back on the throttle of success.  People often neglect what they did to create the momentum in the first place, but you must not.  Carpe Diem…Seize the day!  Seize the opportunity when the conditions are favorable.  There will also be days, weeks, and maybe longer when the wind is against you; when you feel like you are right in the middle of a squall.  A highly skilled sailor just realizes that this is a passing storm.  He may not know the length and breadth of the storm, but it will pass in time.  When the storm hits, you need to understand that it will pass on.  You can weather the challenge.  A sailor will also go back to basics in a storm.  He will take down the spinnaker.  He may remove the jib.  He might even lower the mainsail slightly.  He focuses all his attention on the most important thing to get him out of the storm.  He focuses on the mainsail. 

What’s your mainsail in life?  What’s the mainsail in your business?  Do you focus intently on the mainsail in times of trial, or are you concerned about the spinnaker?  There will always be peripheral stuff in your life and business, but don’t take down the mainsail. Keep working the wind. Use your mainsail…weather the storm. 

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

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