In This Issue...
Words of a Champion
Dirk Zeller
CEO
If you had the chance to ask ONE really important question to ONE really important person about your real estate business, what would it be?
With last week's tumultuous news...
*Congress failed to pass the 1st 'bail-out' bill
*DOW plunging 777 points, the largest drop in history
*Nearly a trillion dollars in wealth disappeared
...you probably had your fair share of questions, but had very few answers!
So this Thursday live at 8pm EST past NAR Chief Economist John Tuccillo steps in, spells out, and answers your questions in PLAIN ENGLISH on:
"How the Bail-Out Boosts Your Bottom Line" ... Click Here.
This news is breaking *exclusively* via a free teleconference call by Justin Zimmerman, host of GoodMorningRealEstate's upcoming webinar series.
:::Current Questions on the block:::
-How did we get here?
-When are we getting out?
-Where will the $700B go?
-How will this impact foreclosures?
-Is the bailout good for REALTORS?
-How does the credit ecosystem work?
-Are all banks bad? Who’s our Allies/Enemies?
-How are foreign buyers affected by oil/US dollar?
-Is there a way I can 'recession-proof' my business?
:::Add your questions now:::
To help mold the call, John and Justin have agreed to accept questions beforehand and invite you to submit them on the registration page. Click here to submit a question.
Justin recommends you dial in Thursday a couple of minutes early, since there are only 243 lines, and it's on a first come first serve basis.
I recommend not missing this limited chance to learn the truth behind this market and gain the ability to lead your clients to closing with this rare knowledge.
To Your Achievement of Greater Success in 2009,
Dirk Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com
P.S. Justin knows it's a Jewish holiday Thursday and he plans to email you the recording, if you've registered for the call.
P.P.S. If you haven't already signed up, make sure you reserve your spot today for my new webinar, "How to Become a Champion by Thriving, and Not Just Surviving in Today's Tough Marketplaces". I'll be giving you some of the most important tools, strategies, and tactics that you need to be implementing in today's tougher marketplaces so you can effectively thrive and increase your income while other Agents are struggling. We only have 500 spots available, so make sure to reserve your spot today!
If you’re tired of struggling to keep up with the changes in your marketplace, it’s time that you find out…
Over the past year, I've made it my main goal and have been working extremely hard to give all my faithful Coaches Corner™ subscribers and customers the exact tools they need to thrive in today's down marketplaces, rather than just survive in them.
It's very important to have a clear focus and to implement strategies that have been proven to work in times like these. You don't want to be like the majority of Agents who are simply doing the same things over and over again and expecting better results. When the markets change, you have to change with them!
So today, I'd like to add another important piece to the puzzle with an exciting new Webinar that gives you some of the most critical tools, strategies, and tactics you need to be able to:
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Develop the key mindsets necessary to successfully navigate and thrive in a slow marketplace |
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Identify the Buying and Selling trends in a tough market |
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Acquire and use the tools necessary to attain and sell listing inventory in a slowing marketplace |
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Learn new effective lead generation strategies that you can begin to tap into right away |
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Realize and utilize the many opportunities that you can take advantage of (and that your competition doesn't know about) in a tough marketplace |
Date and Time:
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Wednesday - October 29th , 2008
1:30pm - 3:00pm Eastern
12:30pm - 2:00pm Central
11:30am - 1:00pm Mountain
10:30am - 12:00pm Pacific |
Click Here to Find Out How You Can
Thrive in Your Market Today
The Pre-listing Package
You just set a good appointment to list a home with a motivated seller. You are excited and pumped up because you have an opportunity to meet face-to-face with a prospect. To give an edge, Agents need to develop effective pre-listing packages. Some people call these pre-sale packages. They are both the same items. The pre-listing package gives you an opportunity to sell the prospect before you ever walk in the door. It shows the prospect you are organized and professional.
The pre-sale package is similar to your stockbroker sending you a prospectus on a stock in which you are considering investing. The prospectus tells you about the track record for the stock, the trends, overall market information, and the proposed future return.
My team either hand-delivered our pre-listing package, or we mailed it out if we had enough lead-time before the appointment. Here are some ideas of what you might enclose in your pre-listing package.
- Testimonials from four to five clients. If you have enough, try to customize for the specific seller. If you have an appointment with an expired, having letters from other expired clients will show you as being a successful problem solver.
- Charts and graphs about the importance of pricing and the correlation to selling and market time. This has to be a strong straightforward section, easy for the seller to understand and effective.
- Series of questions to ask other Agents. I always sent this to knock out at least half of the other interviewees. I obviously knew the answers, but most of my competition had no idea.
- Your resume of sales or a list of all properties you have sold. You want to include training in the field and formal education. You should also include awards you have earned. Limit this to one page. Any longer and it will be overdone.
- Include a copy of your marketing plan. This copy will enable you to avoid the subject during the listing presentation. Most Agents spend too much time discussing marketing and not enough time discussing price. Price is King and the main issue to be discussed on a listing presentation. 80% of the marketing happens when you set the price. As Agents, if we don’t get the home priced right, we are wasting our time.
- You might include a section on staging your home and the preparation a seller must do to help you get the home sold.
- Many Agents use pre-sale videos also. There are some that have been created that are effective. You can also develop one of your own. I used one we created for five years in my career. It was very effective in focusing the clients on price and what my team was going to do to sell their home. It enabled me to reduce the discussions on marketing and get back to price.
A Word of Caution: Many Agents create novels when developing a pre-listing package. I don’t believe our prospects want to read a novel. They want information that will prepare them for your presentation. They want to learn more about what Agents do and your strategy specifically. They are not trying to be the expert - that is why you are there.
My goal was to give myself an advantage over my competition going in and to convey information to my prospects to reduce the time I personally had to invest on the appointment. To begin to prepare them for the price discussion that would take place at the appointment.
Creating a compact hard-hitting pre-list package will help increase your batting average on listing appointments. It will also decrease the length of time on the appointment. Your clients will see your commitment to them and your business. Start putting together the components that will begin to sell you and your service before you even walk in the door.
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Open Houses - What's In It For The Sellers
If you’re one of the many Real Estate Agents who think of open houses as a primary means to sell the home being shown – or if you judge success by the number of sales you generate as a result of your open houses – expect this article to redirect your thinking.
Well-documented research shows that fewer than 5% of all buyers purchase a home they visited during an open house, a finding that proves the open house to be, at best, a pretty ineffective sales approach.
Yet open houses remain an important tool in an Agent’s business arsenal for a very good reason. Open houses provide a terrific opportunity to generate prospects, and prospects are the lifeblood of real estate business success.
So, what’s in it for the sellers?
You’re probably asking yourself, but what’s in this open house thing for the seller? Why would homeowners agree to be booted out of their houses for the afternoon just so their Agent can throw open the doors in an effort to attract prospective new clients? And why would sellers care if their Agent generated new leads, anyway?
While you may have these questions, sellers rarely, if ever, ask them.
That’s because most sellers have no idea of the limited results that are likely to result from an Agent holding an open house in their home. In fact, if you survey most sellers you’ll learn that they desperately want their Agent to hold an open house. They hold fast to the belief that an open house might sell their home. And the odds are that one out of every 20 times, it will. And it seems that every seller knows someone whose home was one of those few open house sales success stories. They apply that one owner’s experience as the rule rather than the exception. As a result, they want an open house, ASAP.
To sellers, an open house is a tangible way to see Agents doing something to earn their fees. The selling of real property is a mystery to most people. They can easily understand an open house. It is not part of the behind-the-scenes magic that an Agent performs to get the home sold.
Plus, to sellers there are some real advantages that come out of the open house experience:
While open houses rarely result in the sale of the specific home being featured, they do sell homes -- just not the featured home and not usually to who attended the open house. For example:
- An open house attendee may share her home-buying interests with the hosting Agent, who proceeds to sell her a home featured at an open house a week ago.
- A couple attending an open house may find that the featured home isn’t right for them but that it matches the wish list of some good friends, who end up making a purchase offer.
What’s more, an open house prompts the owners to get their home ready for prime-time showing, and that alone makes it worthwhile for all involved parties. Whether the home sells as a result of the open house (as only few do) or afterwards, the effort provides a worthwhile dry run for all the showings that will follow.
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Compensation Comparison - Listing Verses Buyers Agents
I seem to be one of the few who believes the compensation split arrangement with a Listing Agent must be different that that of a Buyer’s Agent. The truth is it has to be different because of two clear business differences.
The position – you become involved in the life of the transaction
The cost – you incur expenses to bring it to close
On a buyer’s transaction, your team incurs the largest cost in closing the transaction. Your team and you really enter the picture to service the client once there is an accepted agreement between the buyer and seller.
With a listing, to get to that same point, you have to advertise the property to other Agents and consumers, communicate with the seller, and assume some risk that you won’t get the property sold, and all your time and expenses will be uncompensated. When the Buyer’s Agent brings in a transaction to the team, everyone is usually thirty to sixty days away from a pay check. With a new listing, the time to everyone’s pay check is further away. The pay check also may never come with that new listing. If the Listing Agent didn’t acquire the listing with a motivated seller for the right terms and conditions, you might not get paid. Your risk is clearly greater as the Lead Agent.
In addition to your risk being higher, your costs are higher as well. With more work in manpower needed to keep the seller happy at this stage, and with all the same work needed for the seller as with the buyer being down the road after an accepted contract is reached, the cost of marketing, advertising, communication, open houses, Internet costs, virtual tours, pictures, signs, flyers, and home magazine ads all will come out of your part of the commission. You can’t apply the standard 50% split like many Lead Agents use to compensate Buyer’s Agents and still be profitable.
For example, if only 50% of the listings your Listing Agent takes sell, I guarantee instantly (without looking at your P&L or any of your costs of business) you are losing money on every listing they take. I had a client in Florida that I worked with in calculating her costs per transaction, time invested into every transaction, and the number of homes her Listing Assistant took that failed to sell. We added those costs into the ones that did sell and factored the commission split to the Buyer’s Agent. She lost $750 for every listing that the Listing Agent took for the team. She was convinced that her Listing Assistant was a big asset to her and her team before we looked at reality. The truth was the Listing Agent was a big asset to herself!
You must create a compensation plan by using your core numbers of average commission check, cost per transaction, time invested per transaction to arrive at a split arrangement that enables you to earn a profit. That’s certainly easier to do when your average commission check is higher. This process will help you arrive at a fair split that works for everyone. The amount will generally fall in the range of 15% to 35% of the gross commission earned, depending on your costs and gross revenue.
Another option is for them to pay a fixed cost per transaction to cover your cost per transaction or costs associated with doing a transaction. If they are wiling to share in the risk and lower it for you, they should receive a greater reward.
Dirk Zeller
CEO |
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