In This Issue...

• Mega Mastermind Teleseminar - Invitation
• Defining Your Service Standards - And Grow Your Business
• How to Add Over Six Figures to Your Income Prospecting FSBO - The Right Way

Mega Mastermind Teleseminar - Invitation

Thanks for joining me today on your journey toward success as a Real Estate Agent.

The two areas that we'll focus our time on today are Defining Your Service Standards & How to Add Over Six Figures to Your Income Prospecting FSBO. Either of these could help you change your life in 2007 if you'll read, absorb, and use the information.

I hope that you'll invest 9 minutes of your precious life with me today and that the information proves to be a blessing to you and your career.

Before you head off to your training for the week I'd like to give you a personal invitation to, what I believe to be, a rather noteworthy event.

“Discover the answers to the top 10 most burning questions
from over 250,000 Agents in 159 countries!”

To my knowledge this has never been done before to the degree of which we're doing it. We're calling it the Mega Mastermind Teleseminar. Mega sounds rather hyped up, but if you think about surveying over 250,000 Real Estate Agents in 159 countries, I think that's a big enough deal to call it Mega. It's a Mastermind because I'm opening it up to you and all of my faithful Coaches Corner™ Newsletter Subscribers for your input and participation.

We are implementing a new technology that will allow us to collect all of your questions and sort them to determine the top 10 most important questions. We'll be collecting your questions for the next few weeks, and on March 22^nd I'll deliver the answers, complete with solutions, during a 90 minute free teleseminar.

By design, this will not be at all like the other free teleseminars you're used to getting. If you've been a Coaches Corner™ subscriber for awhile then you'll know for a fact that I don't normally conduct free teleseminars, and normally charge at least $167 for a 90 minute teleseminar like this.

Why am I doing this? Well, by conducting this Mastermind group we all learn and benefit from each other. I'll learn the most important questions facing Agents today (which is invaluable information if you're a Real Estate Coach & Trainer), and you'll learn the answers to the questions and some tips to solving them.

So, here's the deal. Assuming you had me on the phone and could ask me any question whatsoever regarding Real Estate, what would you ask me? Type your most important, burning question below:

"If could ask me any question whatsoever
regarding Real Estate, what would you ask me?"

Over the next few weeks my team will tally the results and hand me the top 10 most asked questions. I'll put together the answers; and any appropriate tips, tricks, scripts, tactics, etc that are required to equip you to not only answer the question, but to solve the underlying problem related to the question.

Then I'll deliver all 10 of them LIVE on March 22^nd at 9:00am. You'll be sent an email invitation to participate in the call, and we'll make room for as many callers as our techie guys can handle.

If you know that you won't be available for the call, that's OK too. We'll make an online recording available for you to listen to afterwards.

To your achievement of success in life,


Dirk Zeller
CEO
Real Estate Champions, Inc

"Swanepoel Real Estate
Trends Report"

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The key to being successful in real estate, or any other career for that matter, is staying apprised of the trends in your industry. If you can see where things are heading, you can utilize new opportunities before your competition.

• Beating your competition to the next wave of opportunities
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Defining Your Service Standards - And Grow Your Business

By delivering excellent service on a consistent and ongoing basis, your current client relationships will spawn repeat business and referrals that draw new clients into your business. As a result, your success will reap yet more success, your business will grow bigger, and you’ll need to provide superb service to an ever-growing group of people. At some point you’ll face the important but difficult task of transitioning from an individual service provider to a service provider who works with a team to communicate with and serve clients.

Making the shift from do-it-yourself service delivery to delivery that’s leveraged through an agent team is an essential turning point in a successful agent’s business. It’s also a dangerous point for these reasons:

• Even though you know it’s necessary to leverage your service ability by assigning tasks to others on your team, you may find it difficult to release ownership. This inability to let go can result in service lapses and frustration among both staff members and clients.

• Unless you clearly establish and communicate your service philosophy and program to those on your team, you’ll risk delivering an inconsistent or lower level of service to your clients.

The remedy to both these pitfalls is to define and communicate the kind of service you stand for before you share responsibility for service delivery. To define the level of service you want your clients to receive, answer the following questions:

• How frequently do you communicate with sellers?

The number one complaint consumers have about real estate agents isn’t that they charge or make too much money. The number one complaint is that they are bad or infrequent communicators. Especially if you are representing the seller, understand that your client wants consistent communication. If you are not making a weekly call to provide an update on the process of the sale, you risk a poor customer relationship.

• How frequently do you make calls, send e-mail, or mail written reports?

• What is your process for sending sellers copies of your ads for their property?

• Do you provide sellers with links to virtual tours or to Web sites promoting their property?

• How often do you meet face-to-face, and do the meetings take place in the sellers’ home or in your office?

• How do you receive and share showing feedback?

• Do you call the showing agent once, twice, or three times in hopes of a response, or do you keep calling until you reach the agent and receive feedback?

• Do you relay showing feedback to the seller right away, or do you collect feedback to share in a once-a-week meeting?

• What marketing strategy do you employ for each property you list?

• What steps do you take to expose the home to cooperating agents?

• What tools or systems do you employ to raise awareness of your listed property within the real estate community?

• How do you generate awareness and interest within the public pool of real estate buyers?

• What marketing techniques and systems do you employ to attract qualified buyers to your seller’s property?

• In what order do you execute your marketing plan?Create checklists that everyone on your team can use and follow. Once you are clear about what you stand for and how you deliver service to clients, you’re in a position to train those on your team to deliver on your behalf and to your standards. At that point, your transition from a one-person service provider to professional service team is complete.

If you'd like step-by-step training, including the scripts & tools you need for better customer service & sales methods...check out my program "Survivor Sales Skills™" here.

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How to Add Over Six Figures to Your Income Prospecting FSBOs - The Right Way

For Sale by Owner’s can be uncomfortable for real estate Agents to work with.  They can often be extremely rude and inconsiderate.  They also can be a great source of income if handled in the appropriate manner.  The reality is you do not have to look for them; they are out there.  They are advertising in the newspaper saying, “Come list me.”

The first task we have is to understand the FSBO.  They have a specific reason for trying to sell on their own.  We, as Agents, need to find out what that is.  Certainly, the most common reason is to save on the commission.  For close to nine out of ten FSBOs, that is their motivation.  Other reasons people try FSBO are low motivation, the belief that REALTORS® as a group are incompetent, or their ego (because their neighbor or friend got lucky, so it must be easy).  Some of these reasons are hard to get around.  In many cases, low motivation and ego are cause enough to move on to another potential client. 

In working FSBOs, I subscribe to the three P’s theory: Picky, Patience, and Persistence.  You must work these three P’s in some combination to be successful in FSBOs.  The first, and I believe the most important, P is being picky.  You must be highly selective when working FSBOs.  One of the first mistakes I made early in my career was trying to work too many FSBOs at a time.  FSBOs must be screened very carefully and completely.

FSBOs need to be screened for motivation.  You are looking for the ones who have to sell, not those who just want to sell.  They have to be moving for a very valid reason, not just because they feel like it.  The feeling may not be strong enough for them to lose 6% to 7% of their equity, and this is clearly their mindset.  This mindset is false, but often, they feel that it is very valid.  They feel that they are losing money.  The truth is they were never going to get the money in the first place.  They need to be motivated to sell because they are transferring, having a new child, divorcing, needing a one level house due to health, or some other clearly defined reason.  They have no option but to sell and sell today.

Once you have a motivated seller, you need to determine their maintenance level.  By maintenance level, I mean you must decide if the seller is high maintenance or low maintenance.  Do you remember the movie, “When Harry Met Sally”, when Billy Crystal told Meg Ryan she was the worst kind of woman: the type who is high maintenance who thinks she is low maintenance.  The FSBO is the same way. Most FSBOs who are high maintenance think they are low maintenance.  They will really cause frustration for you and your staff. High maintenance ones will cause you to lose money.  You need to be able to spot them and exclude them from being your clients.  They will call you at all hours of the day and night.  They will bother you incessantly.  They often will try to tell you how to do your job.  This pestering can be an on-going drain of time and energy for both you and your staff.  The truth is it is only one deal.  What are you willing to do for one deal?  FSBOs often know just enough to be dangerous to themselves and others.  They, however, do not realize this fact until it is too late.  You must evaluate the owner before you take the listing.  Do you want to be associated with this person for at least 60 days (and more likely 120-180 days) until the deal is closed and you are paid?

The next evaluation I make is based on their integrity.  Do they have the integrity to tell the truth regarding the condition of their home?  Are they going to fight about the commission at the end?  Are they going to be honest with you, or are you the enemy just looking for a commission?  You do not need to do business with people who have this attitude.  Rarely will you create a win/win situation with people who have this philosophy of life.

The more you exclude the difficult or unreasonable FSBOs, the more time you will have to devote to the enjoyable people you can work with.  You are not going to list them all.  Focus on the really motivated and good people who you will enjoy working with.  This will allow you to do more business with less effort.  Life is too short to work with people whose expectations you will rarely be able to meet.

Another key to success in working with FSBOs is patience.  You need to patiently wait them out.  They will all run their course.  They all have a length of time they will endure the process of selling on their own.  The key is to find out the length of time if you can and be there at the appointed hour.

Most FSBOs will not think about listing until they have tried selling it themselves for three to six weeks.  They want to give it a good try before giving up.  The higher the motivation, the shorter the time they will try FSBO, the more aggressive the follow-up will need to be with them.

Your patience factor needs to be great because you know you can help them.  You have to let them fall and get back up.  It is almost like watching your children go through the process of their first steps or riding a bike for the first time.  Early on I wanted to teach FSBOs and help them before they were ready.  It was painful to watch them create all these problems for themselves.  The problem was they did not want my insight or help at that time.  If you move in too early and too hard, you are out the door.  You need to patiently wait until they go through the whole cycle.  When they finally realize they cannot do it themselves, then you can step in and help.  At that moment, you must step in aggressively and decisively.  You cannot hesitate once they get to this point.

The last key is persistence.  You must be persistent in calls, letters, updates, and on all communications.  The focus of persistence is to be one of the three or four Agents that they interview for the job.  Your goal is not to convince them to list with you but to interview you.  Just like expireds, they get fewer calls from Agents as the weeks go by.  If you maintain a steady professional level of contact for three or four weeks, you will usually get an interview.  Continue to contact them and continue to follow-up on their progress.  Let them know you are there to provide a quality service if they have the need for it.

If you have been picky and qualified them well, you will have to be less patient and less persistent.  Meaning, if they are more motivated, you will spend less time in follow-up and money on mail pieces to them.  Their window of marketing the home as a FSBO is small.  They will try for a few weeks and turn it over to you.  I cannot impress upon you enough how critical qualifying can be.  The biggest loss is the client you list who turns out to be a nightmare client.  They can disrupt or ruin your or your staff’s whole day.  You also lose all the time and money you have invested when they do not sell or when you release them because they are not worth it.  Make that selection very wisely.  You are going to spend time, effort, and energy on every listing you take.  Make sure you get compensation for your efforts.

For more information on ways to prospect & convert FSBOs & Expireds to leads & listings... see chapters 6, 7, 8 in my New Book.

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I Want to Learn More

Teleseminars
• Mega Mastermind
March, 22nd

Champion Performer Series
• Champion Agent's Buyer Interview

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by Dirk Zeller

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Here First!

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Your 1st Year in Real Estate: Making the Transition from Total Novice to Successful Professional

by Dirk Zeller

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