In This Issue...
Words of a Champion
Dirk Zeller
CEO
Whether we hit our production goals, exceeded our production goals, or even fell way short, we certainly have a tremendous amount to all be thankful for. We are truly fortunate to be living in the greatest country the world has ever seen. We are also blessed to be living in a prosperous time.
Now a lot of you are going to take issue with my last statement. You are going to say the economy stinks. My response is would you rather have lived in the 1800’s or even the early 1900’s? We have such an advantage in the time we live in based on all the opportunities and modern advancements. Try being a Realtor in the early 1900’s without phones, pagers, fax machines, MLS, computers, or the Internet.
Let me tell you clearly that the economy is not the issue. Your economy is the reason for your success. Most Agents are too fixated on THE economy rather than their economy. What does it mean when I say your economy?
Your economy is what you can control to create revenue. What you repeatedly do will have more effect on your income than the National, regional, or local economic conditions. Your economy of daily prospecting, effective lead follow-up, and skillful sales presentations will provide you with the economy that you desire every time. Be thankful that is all it takes in the United States to be very successful.
How is YOUR economy doing? Has there been enough daily activities and productivity to stimulate your economy for 2009? For Realtors, 2009 really starts at the end of this week. Don’t wait; jump-start your economy right now!
On another note, I’d also like to announce that seats are now officially open for the FREE SendOutCards Webinar. This free webinar will cover exactly how you can build long-lasting relationships with your clients and cultivate solid referrals with the powerful SOC system. You’ll never forget a birthday, anniversary, or holiday again, and you’ll have the ability to follow up with your clients for 4+ years with just a few clicks! Make sure to reserve your FREE spot today by clicking here.
To Your Achievement of Greater Success in 2009,
Dirk Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com
P.S. If you want to learn ALL of the scripts, tactics, and techniques for essentially everything you'll need to know and implement to take advantage of today's changing marketplaces, please join me by clicking here.
"How to Take Advantage of Today's Changing Marketplaces and Learn the Top 5 Lead
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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 by Clicking Below...
Learn How to Dominate
Your Real Estate Market...
Seven Principles to Successful Real Estate Goal Setting
Your ability to plan, set goals, and create action plans to accomplish your goals is the mark of someone who is truly successful. This skill to set goals is a life-long endeavor. It is a habit that must be cultivated daily for a lifetime. This single activity will have the greatest impact on your life over any other achievement skill.
To be disciplined in setting goals is to sit down with paper and pen and make a list of things you want to acquire, attract, or accomplish in the next several years. Earl Nightingale said, “The problem with people is not achieving the goals we set, it is actually the process of setting them in the first place.” We are all goal-seeking organisms. Your subconscious mind will work on the goal you give it until it is accomplished. However, you must first set this vast powerful computer in motion by setting the goal.
To achieve a well-rounded, joyous life, we need to be working toward our goals. When it comes to goals, the journey is almost better than the destination. Success was defined by Nightingale as the progressive realization of a worthy goal. You become successful once you set the goal and work toward it. Success is not found only at the attainment level but also in the striving for attainment level.
You need goals in all areas of your life. It is not good enough to set your sights on your business or commission earnings or transaction sides. You need goals in family, spiritual, physical, financial, and mental areas of your life. This is the only way to achieve balance.
Organize your goals in all areas based on priority. Put the most important ones on the top.
Our overall goal for our life should be to be a continuous goal setter. We need to become so focused and clear on what we desire that every hour and every day we are doing the things that are moving us in our direction of choice and toward our goals.
Studies have shown that you will save ten minutes in execution for every minute that you invest in planning or goal setting. What an incredible return on your investment of time. How often would you invest in an opportunity that allowed you to put in a dollar and got ten dollars back?
Seven Keys of Goal Setting
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Your goals must be specific, detailed, and clear. You must invest the time to put them in written form. There is a direct link between your writing the goal, seeing it being written, and burning it into your subconscious mind. The goals you desire must be specific, not vague. To set a goal to be rich or be happy will not draw you to it. Well-written goals are like magnets - they will draw you to your desired result. Your goal must be concrete and tangible. Highly defined goals are attained - fuzzy goals are forgotten.
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The goals you set must be measurable. How can one truly measure happiness? You have to be able to analyze and evaluate your progress and your results in a tangible way. Many people have a goal of being rich. You need to know specifically how much money rich is. Your need to know the specific time period you want to achieve it by. Now that’s a goal.
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The best goals have deadlines. They have a time by which you need to accomplish them. They also have interim steps along the way that can be monitored. These sub-deadlines or schedules are critical to success. There are no unrealistic goals; there are merely unrealistic timeframes.
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Goals need to challenge you to capacity or beyond. They will stretch you and mold you into a new person. Jim Rohn wisely said, “It’s not the money that makes the millionaire successful; it’s what he had to become (as a person) to earn a million dollars.” If you took the money away from that millionaire, he would make it back twice as fast as before, because he learned the skill to make it in the first place.
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Your goals need to possess congruency with your values and beliefs. Your goals also have to be harmonious with each other. Let me give you an example: I want to lose 40 pounds, but I also want to eat Dreyer’s Rocky Road ice cream every night before I go to bed. One of these goals will need to give way to the other. They are not congruent with each other. There is no way I can achieve both at the same time. You cannot achieve goals that are actually contradictory.
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Your goals must have balance between your personal life, family, financial, spiritual, physical, mental, and business goals. Just as a wheel needs balance to rotate properly, we need balance to get anywhere in life.
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The largest most difficult goal in life is to define your purpose goal. We all have one goal that is at the core of our being. Our life moves to greatness when we decide upon a definite purpose or focus for our life.
I can speak from personal experience. When I determined my “core purpose” was to make meaningful impact in the lives of all the people I come in contact with, my perspective changed dramatically. My enjoyment of my day to day “work life” increased. Fortunately for me, I get to live my “core purpose” daily by helping people such as you reach their fullest potential and joy in life.
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Shattering the Myths about Prospecting
You’ve heard at least some of the reasons agents use in order to avoid adopting sound prospecting techniques. “My market is different” or “You don’t understand how we do things here in Mayberry” are among the many. Truth is there are techniques that work in every market area, everywhere in the world, at any point in time. So, bury the myths, starting with the ones that follow.
There is a “Magic Pill”…
Real estate success is built on a series of fundamentals. One of those fundamentals is prospecting.
There are plenty of people working to sell agents on some “magic pill” they can take to avoid the fundamental need to prospect. They are greeted by a willing market, since many agents secretly want and hope for a prospecting-free existence. We secretly hope those guys on the late night infomercials are right that we can buy a home for no money down at below market prices, or we can eat whatever we want and not have to work out and still lose weight and have a sculpted body.
Dream on. There is no magic mailing program, calendar, magnet, marketing piece, or website that will make up for the fundamental need to pick up the phone and start prospecting for new clients.
An Approach Too Good to be True…
Agents are quick to share with you how they got where they are today – passionately describing their techniques, people who helped them, or products that made the difference.
While a few of these agents can tell you the cause and effect link between their actions or techniques and their sales and revenue, better than 95% truly have no idea or can’t quantify their success for you.
Your job is to pull the curtain back. In the movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, the tin man, the scarecrow, and the lion were all mesmerized and scared of the great and powerful Oz. It took a dog, Toto, to reveal that Oz was a little man pulling levers and using a sound system to produce the semblance of greatness and power.
In the future, when someone approaches you with great and powerful business-generating techniques, pull back the curtain with these questions.
- How many transactions does this technique generate for you annually?
- How much time do you need to invest personally to set this up and maintain it?
- What does it cost you to use this marketing service to generate leads?
- What is the conversion ratio on this technique?
- What percentage of your business comes from this activity?
- How many buyers did you get from this approach?
- How many sellers did you get?
- What is your net profit from this activity after all your costs are subtracted?
- Have you included the value of your time in that equation?
Most people (whether they are other agents, your broker, other trainers, or sales gurus) couldn’t answer most of these questions. However, they are all positive that what they are advocating is the “cat’s meow” for you and your business.
I recently received a marketing piece from an agent touting his approaches to business. He had sold 60 homes in his third year in the business – a very respectable number. Based on his personal success, he was promoting his lead-generation model as better than prospecting because he did 60 deals and generated over 1,200 leads a month. The average agent would be frothing at the mouth to achieve those numbers.
I immediately grabbed my calculator and did the math. He generates over 14,400 leads a year, which means his 60 transactions represent a lead-conversion rate of .004167 – less than ½ of 1%. Put differently, he has converted only one person out of 240 leads that were generated through his so-called “prospecting technique”.
There are only two logical conclusions that one can come to: The leads he is generating are marginal at best, or he is really poor at securing face-to-face meetings and subsequent deals. I will leave you to draw your own conclusion.
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.
Top Producers Don’t Prospect…
This myth is based on some truth. Many top-performing agents don’t prospect once they have “made it” as agents. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find top producers who got where they are without prospecting at earlier stages in their careers. And you’ll be even harder-pressed to find top producers who can weather the swings and changes of the marketplace without going back into prospecting mode at least on an occasional basis.
To become a top producer, you must prospect. And to remain at the top of your game, you must continue to prospect. Don’t quit prospecting . . . ever!
As you become more and more successful at real estate sales, you may even do more prospecting – in part because prospecting becomes more natural and easier than ever. As you acquire name recognition and market presence, the people you contact are increasingly honored and pleasantly surprised to receive your calls. They know that you are busy and successful, and they respond not only with their own business but with many referrals, as well.
My Clients and Friends don’t want to be Bothered…
Agents who use this excuse are focusing almost exclusively on the canvassing or referral portion of the call, rather than on the connection the call allows with a long-established associate.
Wouldn’t you be delighted to get a call from your accountant, doctor, dentist, or insurance agent asking how you and your family are, thanking your for your business, and seeing if there is anything they could do for you?
I bet you can count on one hand the amount of times in the last 20 years you have received a call like that. If you did, you would probably be stunned and appreciative. Your sphere, past clients, and other associates would feel the exact same way.
Every time I work with a new client, I hear the same excuse: They don’t want to bother anyone. Then they make calls for a week, and when I talk with them again, they always say the same thing: “I was amazed how easy it was. My clients were really happy to talk with me. I couldn’t get them off the phone. It was great to catch up.”
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Respecting the Agent and their Time
One of the most frustrating things for you, as an Agent, is to deal with a client who does not respect your time - one who is late for appointments or cancels at the last minute. Here are a few steps to insure you minimize these people in your life.
The best way to handle these people is to avoid them in the first place. You cannot help everyone with his real estate needs, nor should you try. Where most REALTORS® struggle is when they compromise their values and time because there are not enough leads. They try to take bad leads and try to convince them to be “good leads”. When someone is a bad lead, dump him and move on. There is a famous four-letter word in sales. Do you know what it is? NEXT!
One of the keys to successful sales is getting enough opportunities with motivated buyers and sellers. If you were a baseball player and you were ninth in the batting order; what are the odds that you would get more hits than the first player would in the batting order? The odds are about zero. Here’s the truth…the guy batting first will have 100 more times at bat in a 164 game year than you. Your batting average would have to be extremely high to get more hits than someone who gets at the bat 100 more times than you.
As a REALTOR® if you have more leads and opportunities, you will produce more. You will be able to be more selective in the clients you work with because you know more leads are coming. Work to create more opportunities. That is the first rule.
Confirm all appointments the day of the appointment is the second rule. Make sure to get enough contact information about the client, so you can reach him easily. Get his home, work, and cellular numbers. If you are working with someone who struggles with being punctual, call him before you leave the office to make sure he is going to be on time. The script could be, “I know you are very busy. I was just confirming that you are going to meet me at ______.” He will usually indicate that he is just heading out the door or he is going to be 15 minutes late.
Rule three is to lay your cards on the table. I encourage our clients to do this up front at the beginning of their relationship with their prospect. If you are working with someone who is non-respectful of your time, tell him so. The script could be, “______________, I am here to help you achieve your dreams of a home. I am committed to providing you the level of service you deserve. Understand that you are hiring me for my knowledge of real estate and I am providing that and my time. All I ask in return is your loyalty to me as your Agent and respect for my time and our appointments. Can you do that?”
If the prospect says, “yes”, then you have a client that will be enjoyable to work with. If he says, “no”, then you have saved yourself a lot of wasted time and frustration. You shouldn’t grovel for your commission just because you get paid after the closing and do a lot of work before payment comes.
The real key is the first rule. The more leads and clients you have, the less you are willing to compromise your values and beliefs. Work every day to generate new leads and clients so that you can remove the poor ones out of your life.
Dirk Zeller
CEO |
Dear Champion Real Estate Broker,
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