In This Issue...

• Words from the President
• Establishing an Ongoing Communication Strategy (Part 1) - To Earn Referrals
• What is Your Business Philosophy? - For Your Value
• Seven Questions to Determine the Right Team Size - Is Your Team or Future Team the Right Size?

Words from the President

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

The three areas that we'll focus our time on today are Establishing an Ongoing Communication Strategy, Business Philosophy, and the Seven Questions to Determine the Right Team Size. Any of these articles could help you change your life in 2007 if you'll read, absorb, and use the information.

Before you get started, I'd like to take a moment and highlight one small change to Coaches Corner™ that we've made. This will likely carry on through out this year. We're increasing our article content by 33% by adding another article to the newsletter.

Why the change?...you might ask.

Well, there's been a lot of buzz in the industry over the last several weeks about Real Estate Teams. One thing you may not be aware of is that we here at Real Estate Champions, Inc have been coaching clients to build Real Estate Teams since 1998.

We've coached them on how to build them (sometimes from scratch), grow them, sell them, and how to use them as a path to retirement. So, we've got more than enough experience in this area to be called an authority on real estate teams.

Also, I've recently contracted with McGraw-Hill to publish a new book, "The Champion Real Estate Team" (due out Fall 2007). I'm actually wrapping it up right now and will be submitting it to the editor shortly.

In an effort to help meet the need for information regarding building a Real Estate Team, I've instructed my team to 1) assemble a pre-release version of a chapter out of my new book as the "The Champion Real Estate Team Guide" and 2) begin releasing article excerpts from the book here in Coaches Corner™. You can get an instant download of the guide here.

I hope that you'll invest a few minutes of your life with me today and that the information you gain from Coaches Corner™ proves to be a blessing to you and your career.

To your achievement of success in life,


Dirk Zeller
CEO
Real Estate Champions, Inc

"Swanepoel Real Estate
Trends Report"

During the past year, the real estate industry has experienced unprecedented change and significant innovation. You’ve no doubt experienced it first hand.

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
• Avoiding fads that could set your business back years
• Gaining valuable insights about revealing strategies you can use right now

Learn More Here

Establishing an Ongoing Communication Strategy (Part 1) - To Earn Referrals

After your clients have completed their moves and put their real estate transactions behind them, you still need to be in touch at regular intervals if you want to remain on their radar screens.

Unless you develop a pattern of frequent communication with phone calls, e-mail, direct mailings, and other forms of contact, too many clients (even your best ones) will not remember you at the important moment when they need real estate counsel or when their friends need it. You need to constantly remind them that you are still in the business and ready to be of assistance.

I have a coaching client in New Jersey who happens to be one of the best agents in his state. During a recent conversation he shared his disappointment with the number of referrals he was receiving from past clients. He follows a good system to communicate with them frequently, but when it came to referrals, the results were not what he wanted. He capsulated his frustration by saying that he had been in the business for seven years and had not gotten a single referral from his own mother!

I followed up with an obvious question: “Have you ever asked her for a referral?” His response was similar to the one I hear from most agents: “She’s my mother. She knows I’m in real estate. I didn’t think I had to ask.”

You can replace the word mother with best friend, little brother, older sister, favorite cousin, aunt, father, wife’s boss, accountant, attorney, pastor . . . you get the idea. The lesson is exactly the same. You may think that the people you know should remember your business and assume that you welcome referrals, but they don’t. That’s why ongoing communication is essential.

Now here’s the rest of his story. He agreed to add a call his mother to his upcoming week’s action plan, during which he’d ask for a referral. The next time we talked, he seemed subdued. When I asked if something was wrong he answered sheepishly, “I called my mother. A day later, she called me with a referral. I’ve already listed and sold that home. She called me yesterday with another, and I’m going out tonight to list that home.” He’d waited seven years to get his first two listings and sales from his mother’s referrals.

If Joe’s mother can forget to recommend her own son because he lacked an ongoing communication strategy, anyone can forget you are an agent.

Using direct mail

Direct mail is still one of the best ways to generate business – but only if it gets to the right people and only if it gets opened and read.

To get your mail to the right people, create a carefully developed list that includes the addresses of past clients and people within your sphere of influence, which basically consists of people you know.

To get your mail opened, make it look personal. People sort their mail with the garbage can close by. They rifle through the pile and, within seconds, put pieces into an A pile that will definitely get attention, a B pile that has a 50/50 chance of getting opened, or the trash. Your objective is to get into the A pile.

To get your mail into the A pile, try putting these tips to work:

• Send your correspondence on note card sized pieces

• Handwrite the address on the envelope. Avoid computer labels or, if you must use labels because your writing resembles hieroglyphics, use clear labels that are almost invisible and, at a glance, allow your address to appear typed onto the envelope.

• Send special occasion cards. Use the clients’ anniversary, the anniversary of the day they moved into their home, Mother’s day, Father’s day, and birthdays to reinforce your connection with the clients and to remind them that you care. Also send thank you or “just thinking about you” cards. 

• Send mail to their children. Separate yourself from nearly all your clients’ other business contacts by taking an interest in their children. I didn’t understand the value of this connection until I had children. Now I know firsthand that someone who transfers value, service, and kindness to my kids is someone who will get my business forever. Send your clients’ children birthday cards. Include a certificate for a treat at the local ice cream parlor and you’ll really get your mailer noticed, both by the kids and their parents.

Don’t expect your direct mail program to just happen spontaneously. Plan it out a year in advance. Select about half a dozen times over the course of the year to send handwritten cards to past clients or people in your sphere. Program the dates and nature of the mailers into your database to remind you when to do it. And then do it.

Staying in touch via e-mail

E-mail provides an easy and cost-effective way to deliver your correspondence to your prospects and clients – as long as you create a good list full of addresses of recipients who want and have given you permission to send them your mailings.

I suggest that you establish at least two databases of e-mail addresses:

• One database should include the names and addresses of all prospects who have given you permission to send them email messages.  When mailing to these people, you are trying to generate interest and confidence and to coax them into a relationship with you. The text in their messages is sales oriented and articulates reasons why they should take action in the real estate market now. Mailers might focus on appreciation rates, inventory levels, interest rates, and projections of future rate increases. Additionally, each mailer should include a concise statement about the value of doing business with you, why they should hire you, and the benefits they will receive from working with you over the competition.

• A second database should include the names and addresses of past clients and those in your sphere of influence, which includes friends, family members, and professional associates.  When mailing to this group, tone down your sales message. You still want to provide an update on current and emerging market conditions, and most certainly, you still want to convey the value you deliver; you just want to do it all with a softer, more personal approach. Your purpose when mailing to this group is to generate referrals. By sharing marketplace facts, you provide them with information they can use in their conversations with their friends. 

When compiling your databases, make sure that you obtain and include e-mail addresses for each person you want to reach in a home or business. For instance, my wife, Joan, and I each have our own e-mail addresses. If you only send to my e-mail address, she would never see your mailer. I wouldn’t take the time to forward it on to her. I guarantee that we are not an unusual couple in this respect.

When mailing to your databases, put the following advice to work:

• Send a monthly newsletter. Choose a template from your word processing program or one of countless third party resources. Then all you have to do is fill in the text area with a customized message.

• Develop content that is solid, helpful, positive, and valuable. It doesn’t have to be earthshaking in terms of news value. And it doesn’t have to be written in award-winning prose. It just needs to be current, customized to your local market conditions, and capable of making a good impression over the few minutes between when it’s opened and when it’s deleted.

• Avoid e-mail blasts that send the identical message to a long list of addresses. The exception is when you’re sending a newsletter or news flash to your full list, but in all other cases, work to personalize the notes you send. Your clients are well versed in e-mail and know exactly how much (or little) time and effort goes into a communication that involves absolutely no personalization. Subconsciously, they’ll translate the mass mailing as a definition of the quality of your relationship with them. For that reason alone, use mass e-mailings sparingly.

When e-mailing market updates, don’t get lazy when relaying market facts. When the MLS shares that the average home price went from $205,458 to $221,497 over the last year, the numbers really don’t mean much to clients or prospects. But if you take the time to do some math, you can tip your e-mail recipients off to the fact that home prices in the local market area increased by 7% in the past 12 months. That kind of figure is memorable and gets passed along, with your name as the source.

If you'd like more help with after-the-sale strategies see my new book "The Champion Real Estate Agent™"... check it out here.

Prospecting is Still the Best Answer

May 31^st, 2007

A proven prospecting strategies for peak sales performance!

Prospecting is one of the easiest but most misunderstood concepts in the field of sales.

Every day, sales trainers try to sell their "prospecting-free systems" on worldwide speaking circuits saying, basically, "You will never have to prospect again if you use my system." And because salespeople secretly don't like prospecting, they readily buy into the too-good-to-be-true no-prospecting philosophy.

Join me for an easy-to-integrate-into-anyone's-schedule 60 minute Teleseminar where we'll dispell the myths about Prospecting for Real Estate Sales.

Don't end up chasing false promises and endangering your livelihood like the Agents who are buying into the prospecting-free sales systems.

Date and Time:
	• Thursday - May 31st, 2007 • 10:00am - 11:30am Pacific • 11:00am - 12:30am Mountain • 12:00am - 1:30am Central • 1:00pm - 2:30pm Eastern

How You'll Learn :
	• Dial-in Tele-seminar • Accompanied by a PowerPoint Presentation via Internet • Prospecting is Still the Best Answer Workbook (tools & tactics) • Professionally-recorded audio CD sent ~30 days after seminar

 

I want to learn more about how I can join Dirk to learn his prospecting techniques

What is Your Business Philosophy? - For Your Value

What is your business philosophy?  Do you know the answer?  You should be able to write it out and articulate it clearly.  Whether you know it or not, you do have an answer.  Your standard business practices and procedures for what you do make up your business philosophy.  It is the guidelines you follow for daily business.

One part of your business philosophy should encompass your value per hour, which is the amount of money you are worth per hour.  What are you willing to do to earn the money you make per hour?  It could also encompass your average commission check.  If you understand your value per hour and your average commission check, you can determine the type of people you are willing to serve.  Some Agents may not be able to help people in a certain price range because of their hourly wage or average commission check amount.

If you have developed and understand your business philosophy, you are better equipped to qualify potential clients.  When the buyer does not give you the exact answer you need, you can refer him to another Agent in the office or drop him because he does not meet your philosophy.

You were not put on this earth to help everyone buy or sell a home.  There are people you cannot help.  There are people who, as much as you try, really do not want your help.  Although most Agents will continue to work with them, hoping to win them over, my philosophy was wishing these types of clients the best of luck and sending them on their way.  You should consider doing the same thing.  Often, these people actually believe they know more about selling and buying than Agents do.  Now why would you want to spend your time trying to prove to them that their reality is false?  You are going to lose either way in that discussion.  Wouldn’t you be better off to throw them back like an undersized fish?  Let someone else catch them and waste their time.  The truth is that fish is not going to grow much more once you put it in your bucket, or do I mean car!  This strict philosophy does not make the people who don’t fit your business philosophy bad people.  It does not make you a bad person, either.  It just makes you a businessperson who expects a reasonable profit for the time you are investing.

Once you are clear on your philosophy of what a client is and what you expect from them, you do not have to deal with people who do not conform to your philosophy.  You need to concisely define your world of business.  This definition will enable you to better select the people to serve.  We have all selected the wrong people, 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. 

Knowing the client you are looking for before going out to search for clients will enable you to find them.  There is a law of life called the law of attraction.  That law clearly states that you will have a tendency to attract what you are thinking about and looking for.  For example, if you were thinking about buying a black Jeep Grand Cherokee, and you went out driving, it is amazing how many your mind will find on the road.  You may never have noticed them before, but because you are contemplating a purchase, you see them everywhere.

If you'd like more help with defining your business philosophy and would like to learn the business philosophy os a Champion Real Estate Agent see my new book "The Champion Real Estate Agent™"... check it out here.

Seven Questions to Determine the Right Team Size - Is Your Team or Future Team the Right Size?

You must be willing to get out of the answers and into the questions.  You have to really know the size and scope of the team you need before you hire the first member.  That doesn’t mean you won’t make some changes or adjustments along the way.  It really means you must be proactive in your planning and strategy, not reactive.

1. How much do you want to sell in units and sales volume as a team and individually?

   The key is really transaction units.  To me, what makes a Champion Team’s business is unit volume increase annually.  Did you grow the units sold by 20%, 30%, or 40% in a year?  You can increase sales volume by raising your average sales price as a singular agent more easily than you can by building a team from the ground up.

   A Champion Team has the goals and objectives to raise units sold as well as sales price.  As a singular agent, you might be at capacity for units sold or at least at the point of diminishing return.  The focus of increased units yields more stability of income and greater referral value in the future.

2. What does your business look like in five years?

   Being able to vision cast the production, sales volume, percentage of revenue from buyers and or sellers, transaction units, sources of leads, conversion rate of leads, and net profit goal will help you achieve a clearer picture of the size of team you need.  It will allow you to build a team to a fixed point of reference in the future.  Then you can create a plan of action points and strategic steps to arrive at your desired result.

3. How long do you plan on being a real estate agent?

   If your answer is a few years (fewer than five), you might not want to waste a lot of energy and mistakes building a large team.  You would be better served being lean and mean in your size and approach.  Having a team of one to two administrative people with a buyer’s agent or two would take you a few years to put in place well.  The extra effort and risk might align with a large enough return.  Your time would be better invested in deepening your relationships with your past clients and sphere and working to generate more referrals and higher quality referrals out of your database.  Investing your time readying your business for sale would be the highest and best use of your time.

4. Do you have other business interests now or in the future?

   I fell squarely into this category.  I am often asked, “Why did you stop growing your business at 150 units per year?”  It was because I had other business interests.  For me to go beyond 150 units, I was faced with adding additional staff, refining systems, marketing further, and either training and educating or hiring someone who could manage the whole sales operation at it’s increased size.  There were really a number of evaluations, challenges, and problems that would need to be addressed with the growth.  I wasn’t willing to take on new risk, reduced net profit in the short run, and more investment of my time.

   For me, it was really a business and life decision of how I wanted to spend some discretionary time I had acquired through the proper care and execution of my business plan.  I chose to select two areas that I was interested in, and I felt were far more lucrative in the long run for myself and my family, than adding another fifty or 100 units in production.  I invested more of my time in land development, home building (Joan had a construction company), and building investment property for our personal portfolio.  I am not saying it’s the right decision for you to not grow beyond a certain point.  It was the right one for my family and me.

5. Where do you see your income coming from in ten years?

   Is it from you and your team through sales commissions?  Is it from you owning a brokerage business where you are the broker/owner with twenty agents, 200 agents, 2000 agents working for you.  Is it from investment properties?  If it’s a combination, what percentage comes from each source?

   We possess a limited amount of energy that we can invest daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.  For you, what creates the greatest return in personal satisfaction and income based on your goals, desires, and how you are wired?

6. What’s the size of your marketplace?

   If your marketplace is on the smaller side, you will have a more challenging time building a larger team.  You will have to acquire a large segment of the marketplace.  In a small town of say 75,000 people, unless it’s a resort area, building a large team would require you owning 30% of the sales that happen annually in that small marketplace.  For an individual team to own 30% of the marketplace is a rare occurrence.  I have a few clients who have achieved this in small markets, but it has been a challenge with each step.  They could have achieved the same number of units far more easily in a larger marketplace.

   The advantage when they get there is knowing that no one will ever be able to take it away from them.  No one will be willing to work as hard as they did to get there.  It also makes their practice more valuable at the time of sale.

7. Are you a good teacher, manager, and coach?

   Being a great leader and coach is more important than being a good manager.  Competent managers are really a dime a dozen.  A good leader is truly priceless.

   • Do people work with passion for your vision of success?
   • Are you able to hold people accountable to standards and set actions?
   • Do you have the ability to stay calm when the entire world is falling apart?
   • Are you willing to correct wrong thinking, behaviors, and actions?
   • Are you able to encourage others to raise their performance?

   These are all marks of a great leader and coach.  If you don’t have these traits, how hard are you willing to work to acquire them?

   Let me give you two bonus questions, as well.  How much time off do you want?  This question applies to your weekly schedule and specific vacations you want to take based on frequency throughout the year and the duration of those vacations in terms of length of time off when you do go. 

If you'd like more information on how you can build your own real estate team, get your free copy of "The Champion Real Estate Team Guide"... here.

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Teleseminars
• Prospecting is Still the Best Answer

Champion Performer Series
• Determining a Home's Ideal List Price

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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

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