In This Issue...
Words of a Champion
Dirk Zeller
CEO
There is an ancient saying, “Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.” My mother would use that old axiom quite a bit when I was growing up. She would also say to me, “You must keep your options open.” Today I realize that these sayings are dated and inappropriate to one who seeks success. You must put your focus and effort into the “one basket.” To zero in on the one task, or most important task, that must be done right now.
To single-mindedly do what will have the biggest impact and take it to completion is essential to success. What is the one basket that you need to work on right now? What is the one thing you do every day that will create the biggest impact on your business? Only then, when it is done, can you look for another “basket” to work on.
Too often we have ten to fifteen baskets open with our hands, efforts, and focus going into all of them at once. We can often move them along but never get them done and completed and moved off our agenda. The skill to select the most important task right now and take it to completion is the difference between massive success and failure.
So, I ask again, what is your one basket right now? What is the one task or activity that you need laser-minded focus on to complete? What must be done and completed today? What can’t wait and will bring you the biggest return? Set some time aside to do it now.
Then, before you leave today, select the one thing to focus on for tomorrow. Prepare your day for tomorrow before you leave today. Create the order of how tomorrow will unfold in the calmness of today. Select the one thing you will focus on right now. Then, resolve to not quit until it’s done!
This one skill will enable you to craft the life that you desire. Don’t wait to start learning the skill, start today!
To Your Achievement of Success in Any Marketplace,
Dirk
Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com
P.S. Are you in a changing or down market? Do you want to learn the same tactics that 84% of my clients used to have their best year ever last year, despite the poor market conditions? If you'd like to join them in controlling today's changing marketplaces, feel free to check out my brand new program below...
If you’re frustrated & tired of letting changing and down markets control your real estate future, it’s time that you finally take back control and find out…
Dear Champion Agent,
In the past few months, I've been getting absolutely bombarded with emails from both my clients and regular Coaches CornerTM subscribers essentially asking me, "Dirk, my market is the worst it has been in years. What exactly can I do to get out of this slump and drastically raise my income?".
The truth is, whether you're in a market that is moderately down or one that has totally bombed, there is actually a huge opportunity for you to take market share and greatly increase your income. With the proper tactics, you can essentially take advantage of the fact that most Agents simply don't know what to do! Find out how by clicking here...
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How to play the odds in your favor like a casino - you too can become the house and come out on top in any market |
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The Top 3 Reasons why prospects
select an Agent, and how to use them to instantly create loyalty with new clients over your competition |
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How to use the 4 Pillars of Prospecting to avoid the plague of yo-yo production numbers and achieve long-term consistency in your income |
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Dirk Zeller's personal high-converting and proven scripts that will allow you to easily convert buyers and sellers into clients |
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How to answer the #1 crucial question that could mean the difference between a prospect selecting you or your competition - Most Agents forget it completely |
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How to use Champion Sales Techniques to convince unwilling customers in a down market to price their homes competitively so you can get the listings sold |
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How to easily convert prospects to appointments every time using time-tested and proven scripts (provided to you in full) |
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...and much more! |
Find out how you can thrive in your market by clicking the link below...
Behind the Scenes of Success
Most Agents hold top-producing Agents in the highest regard. A top-producing Agent is given a status that is almost God-like. Since I was put on a pedestal for many years during my sales career, let me give you an undeniable truth. Each and every one of us has a top-producing Agent inside of us trying to get out. Each person has the God-given ability to produce at a stratospheric level. Top-producers are ordinary people who happen to be doing extraordinary things. There are three components that enable top-producing Agents to excel in their business.
They are highly organized in certain facets of their business. Organization is derived from solid systems and procedures. McDonalds’ success is not built by having the best food in town. It is built on two fundamental principles: consistency and systems. You can get a Big Mac in Los Angeles, California; Portland, Oregon; or Paris, France, and they will all be the same. The cost will be different, but the taste and quality will be the same. Why? Because the systems and procedures they use in preparation and cooking are consistent. They do the same thing over and over to prepare a Big Mac.
What if your business were able to run like that? What if, when a lead came in, the steps to process and follow-up were exactly the same each time? Could you eventually develop a business that repeated itself with the same results each time? I know you could.
In order to create a solid, repeatable business, organization is a must. Organization is derived from creating systems for every aspect of one’s business. Creating systems for leads, past clients, offers, listings, listing presentations, prospecting, escrows, and anything else that you do regularly in your business will provide true organization.
Managing your staff. Top-producers create solid teams. They create a team of specialists at every position. The world has gone the way of specialization. Successful teams have specialists for specific functions. Look at the NFL. Forty years ago players played both offense and defense. Today we have nickel backs, designated pass rushing linemen, run stopping linemen, third down running backs, etc. Most successful teams have specialized players. Creating and managing this menagerie is the key.
The most important key to management is to hire the right people. Make sure your staff has the characteristics and qualities you desire before hiring them. If you expect a strong work ethic from your staff, then you’d better hire someone who has one. You can’t teach, train, or coach your staff into having a strong work ethic.
Strong prioritizing skills. Most of us don’t get everything accomplished we want to everyday. We only make a dent in our task lists. Prioritizing is critical for us to move forward daily towards success. Prioritize and organize tomorrow before leaving the office today. Make sure you work to complete the high pay-off activities daily. Don’t neglect to do the things that drive your business. Skip making the flyer, and make sure you work to generate new business daily. My highest priority was generating new business daily. If I accomplished nothing else, but I did the daily requirements of generating new business, it was a great day.
To get the priorities of your staff in line with yours, have them make a task list before they leave for the day. Have them put it on your desk, so that you can reprioritize the activities. Often staff members will do priorities five, ten, and eleven before they do one, two, and three. Ensure their production by helping them prioritize. Reduce your frustration of thinking they are not getting anything accomplished by helping them do the high priorities daily.
There is no magic answer to success. There is no magic pill or marketing plan to becoming a top-producer. I realize that there will always be someone trying to sell you the magic answer. It lies in the daily disciplines of a Champion. Success lies in your organization, management, and priorities. That may not be as exciting as looking for the magic answer, but it happens to be the truth. Remember the truth will always set you free.
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What Stuff to Keep and What to Remove
The décor of many homes can be described as too much of a good thing, with too many pictures, too many pieces of furniture, and too many small rugs, lamps, figurines, toys, and electronic equipment. Every one of those visual distractions is a potential roadblock to the sale.
The point in showing a home is to allow prospective buyers to mentally move in and assess how well the home fits with their lives and possessions. Realtors know to listen and watch for buying signals, and one of the clearest and best signs is when buyers discuss where their own belongings might fit in various rooms.
However, buyers can hardly think about where their piano or china cabinet or most-treasured family heirlooms will go when they can’t get their eyes past the visual onslaught of furnishings, accessories and clutter of the current owners. Use the following information to guide your recommendations regarding what sellers should leave in place and what they should move out prior to home presentation.
Pictures: Suggest that the owners pack up all but a few of the personal photos in the home. Especially if they have a wall covered with pictures; advise them to pare out all but a few.
Appliances: Store all small kitchen appliances except the ones that get used daily. Leave the coffee maker on the counter, but lose the blender and even the toaster.
Vanity Items: Remove most of what is on the bathroom vanity. A collection of items draws attention to a small vanity size.
Closets: Thin clothes out of closets to create the illusion of greater space. Even a good-sized closet that is crammed with clothes looks undersized and inadequate.
The Garage: Too often, what gets removed from the home goes into the garage. Don’t let your sellers make this mistake. Ask them to move household items into a rented storage unit instead. While they’re at it, they can move garage items – from extra sets of tires to out-of-season recreation equipment – to the storage space. Then advise them to organize what’s left. Suggest that they hang bicycles from the ceiling and install a few inexpensive pre-made cabinets to hold paint cans, tape, shop rags, toolboxes, and the rest of the amazing collection of stuff that ends up in most garages. The objective is to end up with a clean, spacious garage that adds openness and perceived square footage to the home – and dollars to the seller’s final sales price.
If you encounter seller resistance, remind your clients that they’re going to have to pack their stuff up anyway; by preparing their home for presentation they eliminate visual clutter and get a leap on the packing process at the same time.
Establishing Measurable Benchmarks for Your Team
It is essential that you create meaningful targets or benchmarks that are tangible and traceable for each staff member. These benchmarks are much different for the sales-oriented team members like Buyer’s Agents and Listing Agents. The benchmarks for these production-oriented staff need to be aligned with the standard an Agent should aspire to.
For a Buyer’s Agent, there should be a set standard or benchmark for number of units sold. The minimum standard should not be below two transactions a month or twenty-four units in a year. I personally feel that is the absolute basic minimum standard for even a brand new Agent to the business. If a Buyer’s Agent can’t do two deals a month, they shouldn’t be on your team. With the leads that a Champion Lead Agent creates (the ad calls, sign calls, open house opportunities), twenty-four units a year should be easy to obtain if the Buyer’s Agent has determination, desire, and a little discipline.
The twenty-four transaction minimum benchmark can easily be achieved through forty-eight buyer consultations or buyer interviews. Buyer consultations or buyer interviews need to be conducted in your office. The Buyer’s Agent needs to be adept at explaining their role and services and the benefits of doing business with you and your team. They need to be able to convey the truth about the conditions and opportunities in the marketplace. The Buyer’s Agent must be able to explore the client’s wants, needs, desires, and expectations of their next home and of the Agent they are selecting to represent their interests. They must then be able to ask for an exchange of commitment of loyalty on the buyer’s part for their service guarantee. Many Buyer’s Agents offer a poor version of this important meeting with a prospect.
There are two main reasons for poor buyer consultations or buyer interviews. The first is, most never get a prospect to such a meeting. They run out and show property and attempt to build rapport with the prospect using the same tired process that most other Agents attempt to use. They don’t push the prospect enough, or show the prospect that an appointment with them for a consultation carries significant value to the buyer. They don’t raise the value of the appointment to a high enough degree to gain the prospect’s desire to meet with them. In essence, they won’t be very effective because they don’t conduct them frequently enough to achieve a reasonable level of competency. No one is naturally outstanding at anything without applying a reasonable level of practice, time, repetition, and discipline. People can be naturally gifted at something. They can have previous experience that is transferable, but they don’t become Champions or world-class through osmosis.
The second reason the buyer consultation yields less than desirable results is the presentation isn’t planned. Even when most Buyer’s Agents manage to get a face-to-face meeting with a prospect for a buyer interview, the structure (agenda, scripts, dialogues, trial closes, value building segments, questioning, and qualifying) is so undefined and unorganized in it’s delivery that the odds of their success in securing an exclusive right to represent contract are diminished.
Designing a set agenda for your meeting with a prospect and knowing what to say and how to anticipate each agenda item will enable you to stay on track; this provides a better, more complete articulation of services, benefits, and values that the prospect will understand more easily. Knowing what to say and the order in which to say it will raise the conversion ratios of prospects to committed clients. At the low end, a Buyer’s Agent with a reasonable understanding of the structure and delivery of a Champion Buyer Interview will close more than 50% of the prospects they meet with face-to-face to an exclusive right to represent contract. I have seen highly skilled Buyer’s Agents who have practiced, rehearsed, role played, and debriefed their presentations regularly close in excess of 80% of the buyer consultations they book.
Establishing measurable benchmarks in units sold and appointments booked will ensure that your minimum standards are correct. You could also include standards for leads, contacts, open houses, returned calls, conversion rates, and return call or e-mail promptness. There are a number of key benchmarks to establish for sales-oriented staff.
It is more challenging to establish benchmarks with administrative staff. Areas that need benchmarks for them will be communication with your clients and prospects (quantifiable by survey scores), productivity, and reduction in your involvement of production supporting activities. The most valuable benchmark relates to productivity and getting priorities accomplished. Are these important administrative people establishing the correct priorities based on your view and your business? Do they understand what your priorities are for the business, and are they working accordingly? Do they know what your priorities are for the day, and do they complete them always before going home? Always is a very limiting and exclusive word to define this. Always will give you a clear picture because you are comparing it against 100% adherence.
You might want to establish a benchmark for frequency of communication with a client. The Assistant should be handling the majority of the communication with the client. They should be sending out the written reports, advertisements, showing feedback, and making weekly or bi-weekly courtesy calls to the client. I would suggest that you, as the Champion Lead Agent, make a call to your clients a minimum of once a month, however, twice would be even better. Is there enough communication between your team and the client who is listed, pending, or searching for their new home?
Another benchmark could be survey scores. Use a survey to determine how you are viewed by the clients you just completed a transaction with. Even though there are a number of people involved in each transaction that influence customer service, most surveys can be connected to the lender, title company or attorney, marketplace changes, Buyer’s Agents, you, or other Agents in the transaction. Your administrative team has one of the greatest influences on customer satisfaction and referrals of anyone involved in the transaction – other than you. Using a scoring benchmark in this customer service area will help you improve service and drive up referrals.
Dirk Zeller
CEO |
Dear Champion Real Estate Broker,
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