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Words of a Champion

Have you ever noticed that achieving the goals we have set can often take longer than we want?  We often set out on a certain objective or goal but, along the way, we encounter difficulty or challenges that were unforeseen.  We often under-estimate the time needed to accomplish certain activities or even under-estimate the time needed to acquire the skill needed to excel.

When the progress is not swift or easy, we often give up.  We spend our time looking for a short cut to success, when none exists.  We get impatient for the result to happen now.  This ongoing challenge with success reminds me about a story.  Several centuries ago, the Emperor of Japan commissioned a Japanese artist to paint a particular species of bird for him.  Months passed and then years.  The Emperor was finally fed up with the delay and went to the artist’s studio to demand an explanation of the delay.

When the Emperor arrived he found the artist staring at a blank canvas on his easel.  The Emperor demanded the artist to begin his painting at once.  The artist began to paint the bird, and within 15 minutes the painting was complete.  The painting was an absolute masterpiece!  The Emperor was extremely pleased with the work but had to ask why such a long delay.

The artist walked over to his cabinets in his studio.  He proceeded to pull out stacks of drawings of feathers, tendons, wings, feet, claws, eyes, and beaks.  He pulled out drawings of every part of the bird from every angle.  He stacked them in a large pile before the Emperor.  The Emperor knew why it had taken so long to complete the project.  He picked up his painting and left.

The truth is there are a lot of small, little, detailed steps to create a masterpiece.  You must be a master of the small details before you can create a masterpiece.  This artist spent a few years perfecting his skill of drawing this bird for 15 minutes of excellence.  The greatness in life is in the consistency and the details.

To achieve excellence in life, we must strive and focus on creating an excellent year.  Within that year, we must strive for an excellent month.  Within that month, we must strive for an excellent day.  To achieve an excellent day, we must focus on creating an excellent hour.  The accomplishment of an excellent life is created moment by moment.  What is the sum of your excellent moments so far?

 

To Your Achievement of GREATER success,

Dirk Zeller, CEO
RealEstateChampions.com

 

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Buyer Leads

Many Agents have more Buyer leads than they are able to convert effectively.  They generate them in large volume from the Internet, ad calls, sign calls, and floor time.  Currently, the Internet is the largest producer of leads.  The problem with Internet leads is the conversion rate on them is less than 1%.  Agents invest a tremendous volume of time working to convert Buyer leads with a very limited return.

The reason the conversion ratios are so low on Buyer leads is our approach.  The strategy of most Agents is to send information to a prospect.  Their hope is their information is better than the twenty other Agents who also currently possess the same leads.

Champion’s Principle in Lead Follow-Up:  Don’t assume for one second you are the only person who has identified this prospect as a lead.

It amazes me how often Agents believe we are the only person who knows about this prospect’s desire to move, even if we secured the lead from a less than exclusive source.  Every time we acquire a lead from the Internet, we must assume that person has been to ten other Agents’ websites, as well.  It is not reasonable to believe that we are the only Agent who has the information from a Buyer whose e-mail we just received or we met at our open house. It is also unreasonable to assume that an open Homebuyer will attend our open house exclusively.  We must assume they are gathering information from many sources.

As a typical Agent capturing or following-up on leads, we try to talk with them and attempt to build rapport.  We capture these leads in person at our open houses; via e-mail when it’s a web lead; over the phone for ad calls, sign calls, and floor time calls.  We tenaciously respond to our web leads through e-mail.  We offer to send them information.  For lack of a better strategy, we send them “stuff”!  We are holding out hope that our “stuff” is better than the “stuff” that ten other Agents are sending them.

Finally, we pray that someday all the stuff we sent them will help us gain an appointment with this lead.  For most of us, we are relying on the volume and frequency of the information we send them to raise their desire to work with us.  My friends, the truth is that the objective of an inbound ad call, sign call, floor call, lead follow-up call, or face-to-face encounter at our open house is the same.  Plain and simple, the objective is to get an appointment. That appointment objective is not to show them homes but to conduct a Buyer interview.   Because we are so single-mindedly focused on building rapport and sending them “stuff”, we often lose sight of the real objective . . . to get an appointment.

When we analyze the true differences between Champion Agents and other Agents in the business, the number of appointments makes the biggest difference.  Champion Agents have more appointments than other Agents.

We must to be able to convince the prospect on the initial call or initial e-mail that an appointment with us raises the possibility of them:

• Understanding the marketplace better.
• Receiving a high level of valuable service.
• Securing an advantage when negotiating for a home.
• Securing a better Lender for a smoother transaction.
• Saving money in initial down payment
• Increasing their equity position initially
• Increasing their long-term appreciation because they selected a better property.
• Receiving the representation they deserve.

Any of these are valid reasons to do business with us and to do it now.

The definition of a Champion Salesperson is someone who can convince a prospect to do something that is beneficial to them and do so more quickly than their competition.  People perceive a true professional to be someone they meet with by appointment only.  Their Doctor, Dentist, Attorney, and Accountant meet exclusively by appointment.  We must reposition ourselves as appointment only Agents.

Many Agents have bought into the concept of “by referral” only.  The strongest position for an Agent isn’t by referral only; it’s by appointment only.  Driving a prospect to a face-to-face Buyer interview allows us to serve them most effectively.  It also allows us to better ensure our ability to be compensated for our time, energy, and expertise.

The truth is there are an unlimited number of prospects we can work with if we are willing to work for free.  We must increase our value and show that value to the prospect, so they have a desire to meet with us.

Here are some scripts that are effective at directing and getting an appointment:

1. In order for me to provide you with the highest level of service and representation, we simply need to meet.  Would __________ or __________ be better for you?

2. Having helped _____ families during my career and over _____ just in the last year, my clients have found that, by meeting with me, they have a greater knowledge of the current and emerging marketplace trends.  They also have a dramatically higher probability of living in the best property for them and their family.  Would __________ or __________ be a better time to meet?

These are examples of how we can compel prospects to meet with us face to face to conduct a Buyer interview.

For any salesperson, the largest cost we incur is the opportunity cost we lose by working with the wrong prospect.  We spend vast amounts of time and energy sending stuff to these “wrong prospects” that we cannot get in to the office.  Most of us have huge opportunity costs that center around two core areas:

1. Wasted time with low probability prospects.  The way to quickly separate out the best from the worst prospects is to ask for an appointment.  The last place a low-level prospect wants to be is in front of a salesperson.

2. Managing all of our created but not converted leads.  I read a marketing piece from another trainer the other day that I will use to illustrate my point.  He was featuring a protégé who was closing about sixty units a year.  His protégé was being marketed by this trainer as someone who has it together in lead generation, because he generates 1200 leads a month.  Most Agents would be attracted to this training, so they can learn to generate 1200 leads a month, as well.  The truth is this trainer and Agent are living in a land of delusion. 

   Follow my thinking here: 1200 leads a month X 12 months = 14,400 leads a year.  That 14,400 leads a year yields 60 transactions.  UGH!!  Who in their right mind would want to manage 14,400 leads to generate 60 deals?  The guy must spend morning, noon, and night following-up on leads!  Yet, the rate of conversion for this guy is .004%.  That means his conversion ratio is less than ½ of 1%.  This trainer is promoting his system as the way all Agents should operate.  Give me a break!!

   There are only two options we have to conclude:

   1. There are a lot of leads, and the leads are junk.  It’s easy to create a lot of junk leads.  If you have to invest your time to follow-up on junk leads, you’ll never be a Champion Performer.  In the early days of computers, the techies had a term they use.  The term was GIGO.  It stood for Garbage In . . . Garbage Out.  That’s exactly what’s happening to this guy.  Garbage Leads In . . . Garbage Commission Out.

   2. This Agent doesn’t know how to manage, categorize, follow-up, and sell the lead on an appointment with him.  He is unable to drive that prospect to a face-to-face meeting where he can make a service presentation.

For Agents to improve income and performance, we must solve these two issues.  The first is to separate the junk leads from the high probability leads. The second is to sell the high probability leads on the value of an appointment with us.  We might not have as many leads as this person does, but that is really not the real issue.  The real issue is what we are doing with them once we have identified them as leads?

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Establishing Awesome Service

A service encounter happens any time that a consumer interacts with a servicing organization. Every Website hit or incoming ad or sign call is a service encounter. When a prospect talks to you, your staff, your company Receptionist, your Closing Coordinator, or your Broker, Owner, Lender, Escrow or Title Attorney, or anyone on your service team, that person is having a service encounter. 

If one person in the long chain of people who help you get your job done says or does anything negative, it affects the impression of the nature of the service you provide. There’s no way to separate yourself from your colleagues if they mess up. It’s even possible for your service to be tainted by those outside your service team. For example, say that a Buyer uses a Lender other than the one you recommend. If the transaction closes late and with a higher interest rate than originally quoted, that client will leave with a bad impression about the whole transaction and everyone involved in it. Your future business and referral opportunities will be affected by the actions of someone entirely outside your influence.

To direct your service toward superb outcomes, follow these steps:

1. Control service encounters by using your own people to conduct transactions. Direct and drive as much business as possible to the best providers. Work hard to convince the client to use people on your team when securing a mortgage or closing the deal. Some might call this “steering”, but I view it as taking care of your clients.

2. Make sure that your client works with Lenders who know their stuff and are responsive. Be aware that the Lender triggers the chokepoint in most transactions. Take time to counsel your client toward a resource you know will perform.

3. Have a plan for recovering from service disasters if necessary. If your client is reasonable, no situation is too far-gone to salvage. In fact, handle the problem well and you’re apt to turn a disgruntled client into one of your most vocal supporters. Take these steps:

   • Do what is necessary to right the wrong.

   • Find out from the client what it would take to turn the unsatisfactory situation into a satisfactory outcome. Ask what would it take for them to be delighted. Be cautious here. I don’t really believe that forgoing a fee or a reducing a cost ever creates a more satisfied client. The service and the cost are not linked at this stage of customer satisfaction.

   • Avoid the blame game. If you point out that it was the client’s decision to use the service provider who caused the problem, you only make the situation worse. Conveying that “I told you so” is never a way to soothe feelings.

   • Follow up. Eventually sore feelings will wane, but the only way to replace the negative impression is to make a better one through continuous and professional contact.  In the early stages after the sale mishap you may not see many referrals, but when they start to come through you’ll know that your service recovery plan was a success.

   • If you can’t turn the situation around, don’t concede your profit. Some clients will only feel placated if they get into your pocketbook and win cash compensation. If you did something that caused them to be hurt financially, you might have to buck up.  Most of the time, though, that won’t be the case. I caution you, before you ever give up your hard-earned money ask yourself three questions.

   1. Will doing offering cash really turn this client into a raving fan?
   2. Is there another way to turn this client into a raving fan?
   3. Is there a reasonable chance that I will win future business and referrals from this person?

    

   If your answers don’t cause you to feel confident that giving up money will net a future return at a low risk, keep the cash in your pocket.

I am an ardent supporter of Hyatt Hotels and a good part of the reason is because years ago they took a bad situation and turned it around. I’d flown to Tampa, Florida from Bend, Oregon, which entailed leaving at six in the morning and arriving in Tampa sometime after 7:00 at night. I was tired, hungry, and faced a full schedule the next day. From the airport, I called for the shuttle van three times before it showed 45 minutes later. My last call had gotten through to the manager on duty. She was sympathetic to my weary travel story, but I expected only an ear.

When I arrived at the hotel, which was less than ten minutes from the airport, the manager greeted me as I stepped off the bus. She told me she had already personally checked me in. She walked me to a wonderful room where wine, cheese, and fruit were waiting. While walking to the room, she took a genuine interest in my day and travel trials.  She later sent up a tray of desserts.  She knew how to create a raving fan out of what could have been a lost situation.  She had a great plan for service recovery. 

Create your own service recovery plan today so you will be well prepared!  Not many Agents are – you will be well ahead of the game in client retention.

 

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Handling the Landmines of Wasted Time

There are numerous challenges and landmines to the time management equation.  Entrepreneurial small businesses face a large number of these challenges.  As Real Estate Agents, we are owners of entrepreneurial small businesses.  This business type tends to put us in the front lines, with multiple job descriptions at once, trying to drive strategic objectives in sales, marketing, management, leadership, customer service, accounting, administration, and research and development all at the same time.  The probability for landmines that can blow up and wreck your day, hour, or even half hour of production is lurking around every phone call e-mail, fax, cell phone call, and meeting.  My goal is to give you tools, strategies, and implementation techniques to help you achieve the highest return on investment for your time.

1. Handling the constant stream of interruptions

   We are in a profession that we delight in the inbound sales inquiry calls.  We all live for the potential Seller or Buyer who calls us to ask about a property or, better yet, about our services.  The problem for most Agents is there are never enough of those and a lot more problem calls.  We can compound those interruptions through the use of cell phones, pagers, and access to our home phone as well.

   I believe that we are the most interrupted profession on the face of the planet.  We have the highest probability of distraction, as well, especially when we add e-mail to the distraction list.  We must be able to limit the access we provide people by restricting inbound calls significantly.  We want those calls, and we need to be able to respond to them quickly.  One tactic is to use your cell phone for the lead generation calls or what I call “money” calls.  We might have to re-educate our clients whom we have listed, sold, or are securing a home for to call the office line.  It would help you reduce the number of cell phone calls.  The more we can direct only “money” calls to the cell phone, the more we are able to secure the other calls out for later.  Certainly, another technique is to simply turn off your cell phone and only operate through the voice mail for much of the day.

   Create a short list.  That’s a list of people your Assistant or Receptionist knows to put through to you right away when they call.  You want about half a dozen people on your short list.  For me, it’s my wife, my attorney, and my father.  All other people must leave a message or book an appointment for as soon as I am free.  There is rarely anything in real estate sales that can’t wait an hour.

2. Procrastination – the silent killer

   Procrastination is caused by thinking that we have more time to complete a task than we really do.  It is also a lack of urgency on our part.  There is a difference between procrastination and prioritization.  Prioritization is the skill of a Champion.  A Champion puts off the things that don’t matter as much and uses their time to do high-value activities.  Procrastination is putting off everything that is challenging and difficult.  The challenging and difficult items are usually the most important and valuable items.  Procrastination is caused by lack of clarity in goals and lack of connecting the goals to important activities that link with the goals.  The key question:  Is what I am doing right now bringing me closer to or further away from the goals I have set?

   Procrastination can be caused by having too many workdays available.  In your mind, you can think, “I can always do that later”.  It allows you to do the activities a few days later, even though today would be best.  We can really fake ourselves out by not having set workdays.  The old adage that work expands into the time allotted is true.

3. Unclear vision, objectives, and priorities

   Procrastination can happen because of a lack of clarity in your vision and what you do.  Why are you in real estate sales?  What are your objectives for the year in gross commission income?  What is the mix of your business in listing side versus Buyer controlled side?  How many listings do you need to take yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly to reach your goals?  How many Buyer sales do you need to make in the same time frame?  What’s your conversion ratio of leads?  How many leads do you need to generate and appointments do you need to make to earn your income goal?  Every Agent who wants to achieve the Champion level must have clear objectives and a clear vision of what needs to happen next to accomplish their objectives.

   The skill of prioritization is missing for most Agents.  How you execute your priorities has a dramatic effect on your income and results.  When we evaluate what our objectives and priorities are, too many Agents view them synonymously.  Objectives are really the results you are aiming for in your business.  Priorities are the individual steps in the right order to accomplish the objective.

Champion Rule:  We have too much to do and not enough time.

Most people who are Champion Performers are running at 100% or more all the time, and there is more stuff added to their plate daily.  As we get better and more successful, our opportunities and responsibilities increase.

I am blessed with more opportunities and responsibilities today than when I sold real estate.  I have more now than when I founded Real Estate Champions almost ten years ago, and ten years from now, there will be even more.  With greater success comes greater responsibility and greater opportunities.  You will also experience greater problems.  As you expand your business, the problems and challenges will increase in number and difficulty.  The good news is with larger problems comes larger money.  We are problem solvers in the real estate business.  When markets shift, problems increase, and your value as an Agent increases too.  The increased responsibilities and opportunities are the circle of life from the time we were born.  Wesley, my son, has more responsibilities and opportunities than his younger sister, Annabelle.

Time management myth:  More successful people have fewer distractions.  Because of their production and the opportunities they are constantly creating, they experience more interruptions, distractions, and challenges on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  They are, however, better at handling these demands than others.  They have the ability to solve the challenges much faster.  They let the negative things that happen to all of us affect them mentally for shorter periods of time.  If you are a Champion Agent, like many of my clients who earn $500 an hour or more (that means each fifteen minute block of time is worth $125), you can’t let too many of those fifteen-minute blocks slip away during the day.  The control of those blocks of fifteen minutes and the attitude control is one of the main reasons they are worth $500 an hour.

Champion Rule:  We will never get caught up.

For Champion Agents, there is no hope of ever getting caught up.  Why would you want to?  It means you are not getting new opportunities, challenges, clients, prospects to sell to, etc.  It means your business has stagnated or receded.  A Champion Performer will go home each day of their work life with something un-done or not completed.  We could stay in the office past midnight each day, and we still would not have everything completed.  We must get over the “clean up and get everything done” syndrome.  The question isn’t, did we get everything done; it’s did we get the most important things done.  The ability to have a system to select and execute the high-value tasks enables us to align our priorities with our objectives.

    

 

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