In This Issue...
Words of a Champion
Dirk Zeller
CEO
We just passed the first half of the year. It seems like only yesterday we were looking to the unfolding of the year 2009.
Now is the time to review how you have done so far. Block out some time in the next week to check your numbers.
How many listings did you need to take in 2009? Are you halfway to your goal?
How many Buyers do you need to put into pending in 2009? Are you halfway to your goal?
What do you need to do in the next 90 days to catch up if you are behind on your production goals?
For most of us, we want more consistency in our income that we earn. The question is what consistent actions are you willing to commit to in order to insure your consistency of income? Check your progress for 2009. If you are on track, plan a quick mini-celebration. If you are off track, create the plan to get back on course.
To Your Achievement of GREATER success,
Dirk Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com
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Five Disciplines to Guaranteed Annual Increase
Real Estate sales are changing and growing at an alarming rate but there is always one constant. The Agents who learn to be better business and sales people will be more successful in this industry. Agents who learn the five disciplines of increasing production will have a thriving business.
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Creating a schedule. This schedule should encompass your whole life. Your personal life must be factored in to create balance. I have seen far too many Agents sacrifice their family to achieve a production goal or certain amount of commission earned. When they finally reach their goal, they have no one to share it with, or they realize what little importance that goal has compared to their family. I have a friend who tragically lost a child and now is reflecting on the years of decisions made for the sake of a few plaques and personal production goals. Those plaques, or even the money earned, are little comfort to her at a time of great sorrow. What a hollow feeling for that highly successful Agent!
The schedule should encompass the “time block” system. By time blocking, I mean to schedule specific times for each daily activity in real estate. Schedule time to prospect, qualify Buyers and Sellers, negotiate contracts, return phone calls, conduct listing presentations, and show property. The better you “time block”, the more effective you will be. The more you adhere to the schedule, the more success you will have in sales. Remember to allow for a little “play time” or “flex time”. You will need some time to relax and decompress. This relaxation will enable you to stay focused and sharp during the “up time”. Giving yourself 15-minutes of “flex time” every two to three hours should be sufficient to break the tension or catch up, so you stay “time blocked”.
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Prospecting daily. There are as many ways of prospecting as there are people. The key is you must do something daily to bring in the business. You can prospect via the phone or in person. You can prospect expireds, FSBOs, cold calls, appointments for Buyers, investment properties, your sphere, and out of area owners. The list is truly endless. The truth is if we are not spending a minimum of one hour everyday prospecting for new business, we will have difficulty during stretches of our career. Even calling your past clients and asking for referrals is an excellent way to prospect.
Often, when Agents get busy, prospecting is the first discipline to be shelved. Their theory is, “I am busy; I do not need to prospect anymore.” This is the time to pour it on. You have momentum, so keep going. The analogy I like to use is: If a plane is on the runway, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to climb to 20,000 feet. Once the plane is at 20,000 feet, it can throttle back a little and easily maintain its cruising altitude. If the plane throttles back completely, it will soon be back down on the runway. Do not throttle back in your prospecting or you will find yourself on the runway quickly. By continuing to prospect, you can then climb higher or do the same production in less time. Consistency in your prospecting leads to consistency in your paydays.
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Qualifying the potential client. This one is crucial to success. I see more Agents make mistakes in this area than in any other. They are afraid to qualify people to the point of excluding them out. The whole goal in qualifying is exclusion of the unmotivated. If you do not become skilled at excluding the unmotivated Buyer or Seller, they will waste your time. They will eventually drive you out of the business . . . both emotionally and financially.
The most valuable commodity you have in life is your time. We all have a finite amount of time here on earth. We do not even know the amount of time we have left. If we choose to work with unqualified, unmotivated, unloanable, unable-to-sell people too often, we will be out of business. By properly qualifying all leads, you are saving yourself from putting them in your car or going to their house to find out they are not a lead at all. Spending five hours showing property, only to find out that they are working with another Agent, unable to buy due to bad credit, have no money, or are unrealistic of the value of homes today, is a painful experience. Any one of these people causes us frustration and macaroni and cheese for dinner. Do not allow these people to control your business. The majority of the Agents in our industry really need to strengthen this discipline dramatically. They allow their clients to be the CEO of their real estate sales company.
To all of us, leads are like security. If we have them, we feel secure, and we do not have to find new ones. The truth is a lead by itself has no value. What is the true value of your leads? What would someone pay you for all your leads? Why not make them worth something to you and your family by qualifying them well and then setting an appointment or throwing them out if they are of no value (which most of them are). Leads have little value warehoused in your computer. If you are not following-up on them, chuck them. You can always create more leads. You can get more than you can handle. Why not pick only the best ones?
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Understanding your business. By understanding, I mean know where it comes from. What are the top three income producing activities that you do? Where do you spend your time daily? Compare those two answers. What are you worth per hour? Take your gross commission and divide by the number of hours worked. Take that per hour dollar value and determine the activities you can do to earn that amount per hour. Then do those activities the bulk of your day. I will give you a hint…it is not putting up signs and lock boxes, unless you want to make less than $10.00 per hour. You are a business owner of a company that sells millions of dollars a year in product. You need to know about your business.
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Developing a philosophy. By philosophy, I mean guidelines for doing business both personally and professionally. If you understand your value per hour and your average commission check, you can determine the type of people you are willing to work with. You may not be able to work in a certain price range or with certain types of people. When a Buyer does not give you the exact answers you need, you can refer him to another Agent or drop him, because he does not meet your philosophy. We were not put on this earth to help everyone. There are people we cannot help. This does not make them bad people. That also does not make you a bad person. It just makes you a businessperson who expects a reasonable profit for the time invested.
Once I was clear on my philosophy of what a client was and what I expected of a client, I did not have to deal with people who did not conform to my philosophy. You need to concisely define your world of business. This definition will enable you to better select the people you work with. We have all selected the wrong people. Bent on our beliefs, we spent large amounts of time and money working with people we should not have and felt awful afterwards. Then we never were paid or appreciated for our efforts. You will feel much better turning them down before you invest your time, energy, and money in a losing cause. This understanding of your “core” philosophy will enable you to seek out the people who meet it rather than finding those who do not. You will generally find what you are looking for. You will also be able to quickly dispense with those that do not meet your standard operating procedures.
By learning the value of control in your life, you will be able to create a growing, thriving business. You will also be creating a thriving life.
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Four Rules of Real Estate
Upon reflecting on what it took to be successful in real estate and life, my mind recalled a movie from the early 1980’s called Buckaroo Bonzai. One of the characters in the movie had a saying that caught on in my circle of friends at the time. The saying was “wherever you go…there you are”. It was a cute little saying at the time, but the truth is most of us have to struggle to live it.
How many times have we gone to show a property, list a home, go to work, spend time with our family, and we weren’t really there? “Wherever you go…there you are.” But are we really there? We are certainly there in physical body, but are we mentally there?
Let me share with you the four rules of real estate.
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Be there: This rule means to show up on time. Being on time to a listing appointment can often mean the difference between getting the listing and not getting the listing. It means preparing before you go on an appointment, so you are ready. Being there also means treating your real estate career like a real job. Show up at work everyday at the same time. My day started at 7 a.m. during my sales career. It was very rare for me not to be in the office at that time.
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Focus mentally: Focus mentally means to be in the moment with intense concentration. The better you focus mentally, the more results you will get for your time invested. If you need to listen to the client…focus on what the client is saying. If you are formulating your answer or response, you are not listening to the client. Learning to focus is one of the most valuable skills you can acquire. Focus always comes before success. Focus means paying attention to what is happening around you; paying attention to the details of success. It is usually a small thing that separates success from failure. Just ask the United States women’s soccer team or better yet, ask China. One penalty kick made the difference between first and second place. The difference between the number one PGA tour player and number 150 is about one stroke per 18 holes and over four million dollars in earnings. Focus mentally in the moment you are in.
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Tell the truth: In every situation tell the truth. Agents are often given the opportunity to tell people something they don’t want to hear. For example, their home is worth $150,000, but the seller wants $165,000. What do you do? Many Agents will take the listing at $165,000 and deal with the $15,000 price reduction later. My belief is to tell the truth. You may not get the listing, but at least you will know you were honest. Too many of us hedge or shade the truth. Understand, there will be a time of reckoning. It may not be now, but it will come. It may be when the market slows, and you have a bunch of listings that will not sell. Remember the truth will set you free.
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Accept the results and move on: Too often, Agents let the highs get too high and the lows get too low. We need to accept the results we get. Work to understand them and the reasons why, and then move on to any necessary changes.
Mark McGuire realized that striking out is all part of playing baseball. He knew he would have other opportunities. He would have other times at bat – some today and some tomorrow. If a pitch fools him, he learns from it, so he won’t be fooled again. We are all going to strike out. We are going to strike out with buyers and sellers, other Agents, and our broker. It is just part of life. We must learn from our mistakes and move on.
If you are worried about the lost deal, you won’t be able to focus on the one that is currently in front of you. The process of your daily disciplines and improvement of your skills are what you can control.
Lawrence Taylor had a great thought that he shared at his induction into the National Football League Hall of Fame. He said, “A Hall of Famer is not someone who never falls down. A Hall of Famer is someone who continues to pick himself up and gets back into the game after they have fallen down.”
I urge you to be there everyday at every moment. Focus mentally on the one thing you are working on in that moment. Tell the truth in all situations. If you have done the first three, then accept the results, and move on. Massive success will be right around the corner.
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It's All About Priorities
To be successful in life we have to have a standard or system for decisions. Most of us are faced with more decisions in a day than we care to make. We often are hurried in making decisions because we feel pressure to make them. We also have a ‘get it done and move on’ mentality.
- How do you make daily decisions?
- Is there a process or system that you follow?
- Do you have a system to determine your focus point based on what really matters to you?
Let me share with you a series of questions that will help you make decisions more effectively and efficiently.
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Is this consistent with my priorities?
It is amazing how easily we can be moved off our priorities. Something comes along that looks enticing and we jump on it. Many of us will change course at the drop of a hat. Like a game of chess, each move we make must be evaluated against our priorities and our key objectives. In chess it’s clear, our objective is to capture the king. Many people think the objective in chess is to win. That is the result or outcome, but capturing the king is how you do it, which is the priority.
- What are my priorities for this year?
- What are the priorities for this quarter that aligns with my yearly priorities?
- What must I do this month, or this week, to be able to fulfill my annual priorities?
- Is this within my area of skill?
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Am I attempting something I already possess a skill for or am I going to have to perfect a new skill?
Our highest return, with the lowest risk, is staying within an area that we are already competent. Too many of us venture out into uncharted territory because it’s new, exciting, and fun. Our objective is to align our priorities with what we already possess in skill and expand the return on investment we can receive. As we achieve higher levels of skill in our core area, we will be able to devote increased discretionary time to new ventures.
Most of us are still stuck on the steep side of the efficiency curve where we are investing large amounts of time to acquire the skill necessary to increase the leverage and reduce the time we invest.
A fatal error we see in people is they have multiples of these efficiency curves in new ventures at once. They are working to climb up too many of these curves with limited results. Too many new ventures all at once destroy one’s effectiveness.
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Is someone else more capable than I?
The successful leader is the person that evaluates their skill for each activity and delegates accordingly. Too many of us fear releasing control of things that others are more skillful in completing. We worry about not being in control. We worry about it being done perfectly. Our standard of expectation might be too high.
If perfection or perfect execution is your standard, you will be disappointed with yourself and anyone who works with you. The value of work produced will be significantly diminished. The most grueling, time consuming segment in anything in life is the last 10%. If you will accept a 90% standard of excellence, the volume of work will increase significantly. We can use up more time in that last 10% than we invested in the initial 90%. If you are holding out for perfection or that last 10%, you are severely stunting the volume of work completed.
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Do I really have the time?
In our overworked, overextended lives, we have to evaluate – do we have the time for something else? The key word is really. We need to get real in evaluating our schedule and current commitments. Most of us don’t really have the time without changes to our schedule, outsourcing current responsibilities, or changing the priorities and objectives in our plan. The old saying “something’s gotta give” is really true in decision making toward our objectives.
If we follow the checklists we will find greater success in our decisions. We will increase the results we achieve without increasing our time invested. Take the time to figure out your focus and objectives. Your results will surprise you.
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