In This Issue...
Words of a Champion
Dirk Zeller
CEO
Total clarity before a listing appointment is essential for success. One of the key struggles for most Agents is clarity on the price. Sometimes we are not sure about the price or what the seller is willing to price it at. The most effective way to protect yourself from taking your listing at too high of a price is what I call the 3-step pricing policy. In the 3-step pricing policy you determine three different numbers before you meet with the seller to interview them. These three numbers are:
- The price the house will sell for.
- The price you want to list the home for.
- The price you will not exceed to list the home for.
You must have these three numbers already identified so you don’t end up in the price stratosphere. When we don’t have clear objectives the seller will often bid you up to a higher starting price.
For some of you what the home will sell for and what you want to list it for may be the same number…that is fine. Then you only need to know two numbers.
Be sure to know these numbers before you sit down at the table with the seller. It will dramatically shorten your listing presentation. You will get the home priced right today instead of six weeks from now. You will decrease marketing time and increase the true sales price. Don’t leave the price to chance.
To Your Achievement of GREATER success,
Dirk Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com
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Diligent Salespeople
Many people in real estate sales think being called a salesperson is like being called an axe murderer. Being a salesperson is an honorable profession. It is a highly skilled and professional vocation. A professional salesperson is a critical cog in any company’s success. Just ask IBM a few years ago, when they were heavy on engineers and light on sales professionals. Because of the lack of sales, IBM stock went on a free fall until their sales increased.
Many REALTORS® misinterpret what a salesperson’s function is for the client. My first thought is to remember that selling or being a salesperson is legal. As REALTORS®, we are not selling crack on the street corner. We are helping to provide one of man’s basic needs and desires…home ownership. Selling is also the highest paid profession in the world. There are more millionaires in sales than in any other profession. We should be excited that we have selected a profession that provides an unlimited income while still providing a valuable service.
The art of being highly successful in sales can be summed up in five words: Believing something and convincing others. That’s it! That’s what makes a salesperson successful. You must have unshakeable belief in what you are selling.
- Unshakeable belief in homeownership for your clients.
- Unshakeable belief in your strategic partners: your mortgage originator, attorney, title or escrow company.
- Unshakeable belief in the company you work for and your broker.
If any of these begins to waiver, or if you are lacking in any of these areas, you will find resistance from your clients and prospects. The ultimate edge over your competition is the firm belief that you are the best Agent they can hire to get the job done. When you possess that belief down to your soul…you will be unstoppable.
The first step to being a Champion Agent is self-mastery. You have to master yourself before you can lead others. People will be hesitant to follow you if you are not in control. The largest part of self-mastery is time mastery – being able to get paid well for the time you invest in others and yourself. Time mastery is learning to increase your hourly wage by narrowing your focus to only the activities that pay extremely well. There are only about half a dozen activities that will pay you extremely well in real estate. They are prospecting, lead follow-up, listing appointments, showing property, and writing and negotiating contracts. These are what we call high payoff activities.
How much time is spent daily on the above high payoff activities? After coaching hundreds of successful Agents, we have discovered that they generally spent less than 2 hours a day on these activities. These are the activities that can pay you $200, $300, $400 or more per hour. Why not master yourself and your time, so you can do more high pay off activities during the day. Without time mastery, you will never earn the income you desire.
The second step is that you study and know human nature. You have to genuinely like people and have the desire to serve. Understanding and studying people is a lost art in sales. By studying their motivation and behavioral styles, you will be able to give them the guidance they need to move forward to make the correct decision. The Agent who doesn’t encourage the client to move forward when the right house comes up does his/her client a disservice. In most cases, the client doesn’t get the house, and then compares every house to the phantom house they didn’t get because they moved too slowly. This situation is magnified when we are in a competitive selling market, where we are seeing multiple offers on properties. In these types of markets, Agents often have to earn their commission over and over again. You won’t be able to help your clients move forward to the right decisions if you don’t have sales skills. Professional sales people handle the objections that their clients raise efficiently and effectively. After the objections are settled, ask for the opportunity to serve the clients.
The third step is to have the mental strength to persevere. Professional sales people need to be able to take the punch and keep coming. Too often, we look for the easy road. The truth is the easy road never leads to success. If that were the case, the road to success would be well traveled and well worn, but the road to success is hardly traveled. The true road to success is a toll road. The toll is persistence and patience. Most are not willing to pay the toll. They would rather buy the ‘rejection-free’, ‘prospect-free’ system from some guy who has never been in the trenches but claims to have it all figured out. Success is never easy, but it is worth the price.
Achieving success is not a 100-yard dash. It’s a marathon race. To win the race, you need legs, but the most important thing to winning the marathon race is not legs or lung capacity – it’s heart. You have to have heart to be a success.
Successful people know the importance of perseverance and salesmanship. Thomas Buxton said, “With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.” Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Edison was asked what the secret of success was, and he replied, “Don’t look at your watch.” What he was saying was to keep going. Don’t quit and become impatient and stop moving forward…keep going. Edison would often get so absorbed into his experiments that he would forget to eat or sleep. How could he not succeed with that level of commitment? The key to greatness is believing something and convincing others. I watched how successful these five words were first hand. My father was a great salesperson in what many people believe is a non-sales profession. He was a dentist for over 30 years. He applied the rules I shared with you extremely well. He believed in doing the job right the first time with excellence. This belief often caused him to ‘sell’ people on putting in gold crowns instead of just putting in an amalgam filling in the heavily decayed tooth. There was a substantial cost difference, but he believed the job should be done right, and he was the man for the job. A gold crown was eight to ten times the cost of a filling. This difference raised his hourly rate and provided the highest level of long-term quality care for his patient. He believed in something and convinced others…being a salesperson is honorable, whether you are in real estate, life insurance, or even dentistry. Earl Nightingale said, “We are all successful in life based on our ability to sell.” I believe and am convinced that is true.
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Killing the Time Killer Called Procrastination
The number one obstacle between real estate agents and higher production is interruptions. A close second is procrastination.
Procrastination is the direct result of a lack of urgency to do what needs to be done and to do it now. Urgency is directly linked to success. You can increase your output by 30% if you work with urgency in mind.
My friend, Brian Tracy, shared with me years ago the law of forced efficiency. It is based on the premise that you will never have enough time to do everything you want or need to do, but in every day, there will always be enough time to accomplish the most important tasks. Obviously, you won’t get to the most important things if you are bogged down with tasks of low importance that could easily wait until later. Nor will you get to the most important tasks if you procrastinate.
Once you set your priorities of what are the most important tasks, take action without procrastination by following these two pieces of advice:
- Limit the time in which you can get the job done. Too much time to work can lower urgency and lead to procrastination. By identifying days off and time off, you raise the efficiency and effectiveness of your production on the days you are working.
- Give yourself deadlines. Have you ever noticed how much gets done when you are leaving on a vacation in a day or so. I’ve seen people double or triple their work output in the days leading up to a vacation. What if you operated everyday at that pace and urgency all the time? Your income and quality of life would explode to heights you never imagined.
Moving forward with a clear vision
A good deal of procrastination results directly from the lack of a clear vision or clarity about what to do. If you don’t know what you want, you can’t possibly achieve it. You can hardly hit a target you can’t see.
Clarity of purpose kills procrastination, yet fewer than 3% of all people define and write down their goals.
Answer these questions:
- What do you want to be?
- What do you want to do with your life?
- What do you want to have?
- Where do you want to go?
I know you want to be financially independent. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in real estate sales. But what does financial independence mean to you? How much money do you need to live the lifestyle you dream about? The famous success motivator, Napoleon Hill, explains the importance of identifying your goal when he says: “There is one quality that one must posses to win, and that is definiteness of purpose . . . the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it.”
Clarify your desires in life. Once you are certain about what you want to achieve, you’ll find it far easier set and follow an action plan that isn’t hindered by the problem of procrastination.
Knowing your objectives
You’ll set annual goals, of course, but also remember each day that you work or play in terms of daily objectives. What do you want to accomplish today? What result do you want to achieve by day’s end?
I coached a young real estate Agent, Greg Ferrera, in Portland, Oregon. Greg had a high sense of urgency to succeed but struggled when it came to establishing plans and objectives necessary to achieve his goals. In 1998 he wanted to make $250,000 in income. He was less than a third of the way to his goal when we began working together in July of that year. Then, over the next five months, he closed deals for another $175,000! The key was setting a daily objective. Each morning he asked and answered the question: Who has the highest probability of buying or selling today? Then he focused single-mindedly on those prospects.
What big picture results do you want to achieve today?
Setting your priorities
Your priorities are the most important actions or steps you must take in order to achieve your objectives for the day. Objectives and priorities aren’t one and the same. Objectives are results you intend to achieve. Priorities are steps you must take to achieve success.
By prioritizing the importance or value of the tasks on your to-do list, you greatly increase the probability that you will be motivated to overcome procrastination and get the job done.
Most people go about creating task lists in the wrong way. They write down all of the things that they must do each day and then go to work – proudly ticking off items as they are completed and equating their level of success with the number of items they check off the list. Success, though, doesn’t result from how many things you get done. It results from getting the right things done. In other words, you need to know your priorities.
The Following is an outline for the prioritization system I’ve used with success for years:
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Create your daily task list as you normally would. Don’t think at all about what is most important. Just think about what needs to get done over the course of the day. Put yourself in brainstorming mode and get your thoughts down on paper.
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Once you have your list, create task categories. You’re not prioritizing during this step. This isn’t about what to do first, second, or third. All you’re doing is sorting tasks into these categories:
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You’ll suffer a significant consequence if you don’t complete these tasks today. If it means you have to work all day and all night, these items must get done.
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These tasks trigger a mild consequence if they aren’t completed today. You probably wouldn’t stay late in order to finish them.
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These tasks have no penalty at all if they aren’t done today.
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These tasks can be delegated. They involve low-value activities that should be performed by someone who has a lower hourly dollar value than you.
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These tasks can and should be eliminated. They probably made their way onto your list out of tradition or habit. They aren’t necessary, so you need to figure out a way to get them off the list. I call it pruning.
My friend, Zig Ziglar, tells a story of a little boy who asks his mother as they are preparing a holiday meal why she cuts the ends of the ham. She says, “I don’t know. My mother always did it this way.” Now this four-year-old boy (the reason I know he was four is that my son, Wesley, is four and would say the exact same thing) said, “Let’s call Grandma right now and find out.” So they call Grandma and ask why she always cut the ends off the ham. Her reply: Her roaster was too small!
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Once your list is categorized, prioritize the tasks. Begin with your A category and determine which item deserves A-1 status. Follow by designating A-2, A-3, A-4, A-5, and so on. Then repeat the process for the B, C, and D categories. Go to work in the order of these priorities, and you’ll be amazed at how you can accomplish more in less time without falling into the procrastination trap.
As you master the art of prioritizing, expect to see fewer cross-offs or checkmarks on your task list. By undertaking your most important tasks first, you’ll complete fewer but more important activities.
Consider every day that you achieve closure on all your A category items a terrific success. If you complete your A items every single day you work this year, I guarantee that you’ll see your production and income explode.
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Persistence with Buyers
The key to securing the face-to-face appointment with the Buyer is persistence. A Champion Agent knows that persistence will create the payoff.
As a child and throughout my high school years, I personally witnessed one of the greatest stories of a salesperson’s persistence. Many salespeople know the story of Bill Porter because he is a legend of sales. His story has been profiled in newspapers, books, magazines, and even an Emmy award-winning movie about his life titled “Door to Door”.
Few people can say that they experienced it first hand, though. You would have been blessed, like I was, to see it first-hand by growing up in an upper-middle class neighborhood on the Westside of Portland, Oregon. For more than fifteen years I watched Bill Porter come to our door to sell household products in the rain, snow, and summer heat. He always had a smile on his face, shoes neatly shined, suit and raincoat on, and a glove on one hand to carry his large briefcase up and down the hills of his territory.
Bill Porter’s remarkable journey in life started with a tragic accident at birth that caused cerebral palsy. His condition affected his speech and his motor skills of walking and using his hands. He can’t even tie his own shoes or button his shirt, yet there he was everyday, walking several miles each day going door to door to sell his household products for about $1200 a month in income. His steel will and persistence won over his inability to verbally communicate clearly. He had his clients write out the orders since he struggled to write legibly. He would type out the orders one finger at a time on his manual typewriter to ensure his clients received the correct products on time. Bill Porter is truly a Champion in sales and a Champion of persistence.
There are two areas of persistence. The first is the willingness to continue to call for days, weeks, and even months until a prospect is ready to move forward in a purchase. Most Agents quit long before they call a few times. Be persistent with prospects during your lead follow-up process. The second and most important area of persistence that only Champion Agents possess is continuing to ask for the appointment on the initial call even in the face of a no from the prospect. Only a Champion Agent would ask for an appointment multiple times on the same call.
Champion’s Rule: Ask for the appointment more than once.
Most salespeople quit long before the sale is made or even the appointment is booked. Salespeople quit when they receive the first “no” or first rejection.
When Salespeople Quit
44% 1st time the prospect says “No”
22% 2nd time the prospect says “No”
14% 3rd time the prospect says “No”
12% 4th time the prospect says “No”
92% of salespeople quit before they acquire the appointment or the order from the customer. Only 8% of salespeople will ask more than four times. 60% of all sales made or appointments set occur after the prospect has said “no” four times. The net result is that 8% of Salespeople control 60% of the business . . . just for asking. Persistence will create the payoff.
We need to ask for the appointment more frequently on each call that we make. My philosophy is: get beyond the “four” threshold right on the first call!
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