In This Issue...
Words of a Champion
Dirk Zeller
CEO
The quality of your business is contained in the quality of your prospecting. I am sorry I said the “P” word. The more I coach and train Agents, the more I realize there is one thing that separates the top profitable producers from the rest. The key word here is profitable. Anyone can bring in business through marketing; the difference is the consistency of their prospecting. These Agents make the conscious decision that they are going to get this prospecting done daily. They do not go home until they complete the most important task for the day.
With nation-wide changes in the marketplace, you cannot afford to neglect your prospecting. You will need to, at a minimum, call your past clients and sphere daily. Here is the real truth; it is not that hard. We make it more difficult mentally than it is. All it takes is a little discipline and determination to achieve success daily.
I could give you examples of many of our clients who have put this into practice. They began contacting five past clients a day and, with the right approach, have increased their income by 100K; some have even increased their income 200K or better. Why would you let 5 little contacts a day stop you from earning another $100,000 next year? In the end, that makes little sense.
We elevate the fear of rejection and decrease the feeling of success and self-worth. We make rejection too big and painful, which, in effect, makes the reward of success too small. What would you do with an extra $100,000 next year? What trip would you take? What new house would you buy? What investments would you make? For most Agents, their life would be transformed.
The only thing that is stopping you right now is you. You are stopping your success because of the fear of rejection. In the end, rejection isn’t final or fatal. Don’t treat it that way. It is merely a part of the game we play.
To Your Achievement of Greater Success in 2009,
Dirk Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com
If you’re tired of struggling to keep up with the changes in your marketplace, maybe it’s time you empower yourself with the Champion's Guide to…
Tough Market Domination™
Dear Champion Agent,
A few months ago I received a call from a close friend of mine we affectionately call “John G” here at my office. We have a long real estate history together which includes him as a client, him as one of our Master Real Estate Coaches, and as a co-author of The REALTOR®'s Ultimate Business Planning Kit™.
John and I spoke about how tough the markets are now and how bad a time Agents are having trying to not only survive, but dominate in this new marketplace.
He told me, “Dirk we’ve got to put together something for our customers & clients. Maybe we could put together a couple of CDs of everything they need to do to survive through 2008 and 2009 until things turn around. Some kind of Real Estate Survival Kit or First Aid Kit or something!”
I wholeheartedly agreed with him that something had to be done. Read More...
Learn How to Dominate
in a Tough Real Estate Market
Applying the Pareto Principle
In the late 1800s, an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto observed that, in Italy, a small group of people held nearly all the power, influence, and money, which they used to create a significant advantage over the rest of the population. He theorized that, in most countries, about 80% of the wealth and power was controlled by about 20% of the people. He called this a “predictable imbalance,” which eventually became known as the 80:20 rule.
Over the 1900s, researchers realized that the theory of a “vital few and trivial many” – 20% of the participants accounting for 80% of the results – applies across many fields of expertise. Most certainly, it is true when it comes to time investment, and here’s what that means to you:
- 80% of your results will be generated by 20% of your efforts. Conversely, 20% of your results will be generated by 80% of your efforts. In other words, one-fifth of your time-consuming activities will deliver four-fifths of your gross sales or gross commissions.
- You can increase the productivity that results from your time investment by assessing which activities achieve the highest-quality results. Too many Agents allow their time to be consumed by activities that generate a mere 20% of their revenue. The moment they shift their time investment into higher-return activities, they see dramatic income results.
The 80:20 rule holds true across a spectrum of life activities. Whether you’re investing in your career, relationships, health, wealth, or personal development, 20% of your efforts will deliver 80% of the results you seek. The secret is to learn which activities deliver the highest-quality returns and invest your time accordingly.
My son, Wesley, loves to play games, read books, and cook in the kitchen. I’ve learned that an hour spent baking cookies with him gives him real joy and contributes greatly to our relationship. It’s a minor time investment, clearly fitting into the 20% category, yet the results are significant in proportion.
Do you make time for the few activities that return the most significant results? Or are you, like most people in the world, giving your time to the time-gobbling 80% of activities that deliver a meager return?
Top performers in nearly any field quickly learn which actions account for the greatest majority of results, and they weight their time toward those activities, performing them with great regularity and intensity.
Following is the list of the half-dozen important activities that I share with all of my real estate coaching clients:
- Prospecting
- Lead follow-up
- Listing presentations
- Buyer interview presentations
- Showing property to qualified buyers
- Writing and negotiating contracts
If you dedicate yourself to the above six activities, you’ll see high returns on your time investment. I’ve studied the time allocation of Agents for more than 15 years. I know for certain that, on average, real estate Agents spend fewer than two hours a day engaged in the activities on the above list. Instead, they work long hours, often putting in more than ten hours a day, spending 80% or more of their time on activities that generate less than 20% of their revenue. Flip the principle to your advantage. Begin spending more and more of your time on the activities that are proven to deliver results and refuse to be crushed by the weight and waste of those that don’t.
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Prospecting Expireds - What To Say And How To Say It
When you place a call to the owner of a home with an expired listing, you have one objective: To secure an appointment for a face-to-face meeting. Remember, the owners will likely be contacted by dozens (if not hundreds) of other agents, so you need to move quickly and skillfully, following this advice:
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Address their situation. Quickly convince them that, if they choose to work with you, the outcome will be different than the last time. Explain why working with you provides them a higher probability of sales success than they would receive with any other agent.
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Be proactive. The most serious owners will re-list their home within a couple of days of listing expiration. To land the listing, you can’t be low-key with your dialogue and delivery. These owners are ready-for-action. You must convey power, conviction, and belief in your ability to achieve success.
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Leave yourself wiggle room. There are a few factors you don’t know at this stage. You don’t know the condition of the home, the neighborhood layout, the level of access the owners are granting to buyers, what exactly they are trying to achieve in terms of price and time frame, the probability that their expectations can be met, or what the previous agent really did over the course of the listing term.
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Turn the most frequently asked questions to your advantage. Be ready to answer the questions, “What will you do differently?” and “Why did my home not sell?”, by saying that you don’t have enough information to give an accurate answer. You can say something like: “Are you asking me to guess, or do you really want to know for sure?” When they say, “I want to know for sure,” you book an appointment to see the house and have a friendly discussion. With that helpful move, you’re through the door.
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Gain information. The owners need to understand clearly that, without firsthand knowledge of their situation, it is impossible for you to determine specific approaches that you would employ to achieve their desired outcome. You need to see their home in order to review the features and benefits of the property, the home’s condition, and its curb appeal. You also need to review the previous agent’s marketing strategy. Plus, you need to gain an understanding of the owners’ expectations regarding time frame, listing price, sales price, and access for showings, as well as their interest in your evaluation of the competition they face in the current marketplace.
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Differentiate yourself. Use your track record (or your firm’s track record if you are new in the business) to gain credibility with the owners. As you present your success story, do so with the caveat that your success is based on your outcome with clients who sought your counsel, accepted your recommendations, and implemented your advice to achieve successful conclusions. Tell them you would like to contribute to a similarly successful outcome on their behalf.
Provide the option of an easy exit. The seller with an expired listing usually wanted to fire the agent long before the listing term was up but, in most cases, was bound by the contract terms to wait the agreement out. Acknowledge that you know the owners are apt to feel cautious about “tying their home up” for another long period of time. For that reason, offer them an easy-exit listing agreement or include a 100% satisfaction-guaranteed clause. Either approach allows the owner to sever the agreement before it expires, greatly reducing the perception of risk they may feel about committing to another agent.
Winning expired listings is the result of superb sales skills, including:
- Daily prospecting
- Focused dialogue
- Strong delivery
- Solid ability to handle objections
- Compelling description of the unique benefits you offer
- Ability to win appointments that end in listing agreements
As you initiate contact after the owners’ previous listing has expired, your first objective is not to convince the owners to re-list with you. Your initial aim is to pique their interest and to make a compelling argument regarding why they should invest their time to see your presentation.
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What To Do When the Storm Hits - By John Gualtieri
When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.
~ (Hamlet, Act IV, Sc.5)
As I was “coming up” in the real estate business, I made an effort to attend every seminar, listen to every speaker, read every book, and listen to every audio program I could (literally) “get my hands on.” As time went on in my career, two things began to occur to me:
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Much of the time, the person who was presenting the material had either never sold Real Estate in his or her life, or hadn’t been in the game for many, many years.
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Whenever I listened to someone who was actively involved in our business (i.e. a “top producer”), it was usually an exercise in inflating an already inflated ego. These folks gave the impression that their lives and their businesses were all in perfect order—that they had it all figured out and all “dialed-in.”
Now I’m sure that many of you have had the same experience, and I’m also sure that we have all witnessed some speakers and material that were outstanding, but sadly, these are the exceptions, and not the rule. At any rate, I resolved a long time ago that if I were ever given the opportunity to write or speak on the subject of our business, that I was “going to be real,” because telling the truth and sharing challenges is one of the most helpful and instructional things that we can do for each other.
To that end (i.e. “being real”), let me share with you when I had one of the most difficult times (in recent memory) in my life and my business. The details aren’t that important, we’ve all experienced what I did (in some version or other), and it goes something like this:
Deals start falling out of escrow like rain from the sky. The new listings that you were counting on for the month also start to fall away, one after the other. Cash flow is kind of tight (it’s the winter season), and the bills are piling up. One of your dogs is sick, and you haven’t been getting much sleep because you’ve had to let her out twice (during the middle of the night) for the past three nights. Two of your clients are particularly difficult people to deal with, and they are “sucking you dry” emotionally. Your spouse isn’t happy because you’re tired, and afraid, and anxious, so you start to withdraw into silence. As the storm rages, things go from bad to worse because etc., etc., etc.
If this scenario doesn’t sound familiar to you, you’re either not setting your goals high enough, or you’re not in touch with reality! The great author and speaker Brian Tracy talks about “the dark night of the soul” in his book “Create Your Own Future.” Here is what he says about it:
As soon as you set a big goal for yourself, your life will often hit a storm. You will be tossed and turned by a whole series of unexpected reverses and difficulties.
I hope by now that we’ve established that these storms are inevitable, and that no one is spared! But the question remains, “What do we do when they hit?”
Under the banner entitled, “I want to be real with you,” please allow me to set the record straight. The “bottom line” is that a lot of what I’m about to share with you are things that I struggle with continually in my life. However, I have weathered enough of these storms to know what to do when they hit, and here are ten “do’s” and “don’ts:”
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Don’t make matters worse by “generalizing” temporary circumstances into permanent states of being. One of my big defects of character (yes, my wife and my Coach will tell you that I have more than one defect!) is that I often allow my inner dialog to deteriorate when the storm hits. I say things to myself like, “my business stinks,” “what am I going to do if it stays this way,” “there must be something wrong with me,” etc.,
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Don’t allow difficult clients to “suck the life from you.” Don’t intentionally offend these people, or “dump” on them. Just disengage. You can’t afford to be close to someone who is trying to push your head under water, when you’re barely keeping it above water in the first place!
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Don’t isolate from you family, especially your spouse. Share with him or her how you’re feeling. My wife is a source of hope and inspiration for me when I’m felling hopeless and uninspired, as long as I don’t shut her out!
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Don’t share your personal storm with people in your office. Most of them don’t care, and they’re happy to see you suffer—sorry, but it’s true in most Real Estate Companies.
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Don’t try to “force” solutions. Most of the time when I try to “force” solutions without the appropriate thought, deliberation, and council, I cause things to go from “bad to worse.”
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Do acknowledge (notice that I didn’t saw “wallow”) that you’re feeling badly, and that things aren’t going well. I’m a huge advocate of positive thinking, but unless we acknowledge how we’re really feeling, we can’t move onto clarity of thought.
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Do share your meltdown with someone you know and trust. I believe that “us guys” have a lot more difficulty with this than the women. When I finally told my Coach at Real Estate Champions just how much I had struggled (spiritually, mentally, financially, and emotionally), his comment was, “Why didn’t you call me while all this was happening?” The reason that I didn’t call him was that on some level I thought that he would think that I was wimp; he shared with me that that was the very last thing that he would ever think about me, and that next time “I had better pick up the phone!”
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Do remember “who you are.” You are a child of The Creator, made in His image and likeness, and you have been engineered to meet any challenge. It is especially important during the storm to spend time in prayer and meditation. (P.S. It’s also important to spend time there when things are going well!).
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Do keep up with your commitments to exercise and eat right (you have made those commitments, haven’t you?). You’ll feel better after a good workout and a healthy meal, and things won’t seem so bleak.
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Most importantly, Do remember that “this too shall pass.” No storm lasts forever, and before long the skies will clear, and the light of dawn will appear to illuminate your path.
No one is immune from the storms that come our way in life. However, built into the very essence of “who we are,” is everything that we need to overcome them, conquer them, and prosper by the lessons that they teach us.
Dirk Zeller
CEO |
Dear Champion Real Estate Broker,
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