1. Make a decision.
The power to decide and understand that you will have to do something
is one of the most powerful decisions in the universe. The process of
deciding that you will be a success, have a great marriage, strong relationship
with your children, or certain type of business or wealth will cause
you to move forward towards your goal. Most people never decide what
they truly want in life therefore they get nothing. Your conscious decision
will cause your mind to diligently search and create the reality that
you have chosen. For example over six years ago, I decided to work a
Monday through Thursday workweek. That was the most powerful decision
of my life at that time. I made the decision and created the specific
plan for me to achieve the goal of a four-day workweek. By making the
decision, I was able to block out things that were taking me farther
away from my goal. This allowed me to successfully achieve my goal with
lasting results for my life.
2. Creating a schedule.
Your schedule should encompass your whole life. Your business
and personal life need to be factored in to create balance.
I have seen far too many Agents sacrifice their family to achieve
a production or commission goal. When they finally reach their
goal, they have no one to share it with or they realize what
little importance that goal had 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 time for each daily activity in real estate.
Schedule time to prospect, qualify buyers and sellers, negotiate
contracts, return phone calls, listing presentations, and show
property. The better you “time block” the more effective you
will be. The more that 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 time for relaxing will enable you to stay
focused and sharp during the “up time.” Give yourself 15 minute “flex
time” every two to three hours. This should be sufficient to
break the tension or catch up so that you are able to stay
focused and “time blocked.”
3. Value of Time.
To decrease your time worked and increase your production,
you must know and understand the value of your time. Anyone
can make more money if he trades more time for it. Even the
ditch digger can do that. He merely needs to work overtime.
The secret is to trade less time for more income.
People who understand
the value of time trade less and less time for more and more
income. You must first know the value of your time today. What
are you worth per hour? Do you know? If you do not, it is a
simple equation. Determine your gross commission for last year
and divide it by the total hours you worked. The total would
be your hourly rate or what you are worth per hour.
Now if you want a
more accurate figure of what you are worth per hour, subtract
your business expenses for last year from your gross commission
for last year. Divide that figure by the total hours you worked.
Now, look at you value per hour. Most people don’t have the
courage to really look at this number. For one of my clients,
before we began to coach him he was grossing $300,000.00 per
year; it showed him he was making around $80.00 an hour. With
his high level of skill in the real estate business his hourly
rate was about a third of what he should have been making.
People who know the
value of time in their life create masterful lives. People
who do not know have a miserable existence, because they do
not understand the importance of time. Let me give you an example.
If you had a bank
that credited your account each morning with $86,000—that carried
over no balance from day to day—that allowed you to keep no
cash in your account…and every evening cancelled whatever part
of the amount you had failed to use during the day—what would
you do? Draw out every cent, of course! Well, you do have such
a bank—its name is ‘time.’ Every morning it credits you with
86,000 seconds…every night it rules off as lost whatever of
this you have failed to invest to good purposes. It carries
no balance…It allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new
account for you. If you fail to use the day’s deposit, the
loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing
against tomorrow. You must live in the present on today’s deposit.
If you and I make
the most of our time, it will be because we understand the
value of each and every second. We will learn how to spend
our time wisely.
4. Invest your time
in high payoff activities. You must invest your time and define
what the high payoff activities are for you. Once you have
defined the activities, you need the discipline to do them
daily. These are the only activities you can do to pay yourself
well. You need to also understand that these activities will
change as your hourly value increases. For a new Agent, there
are a lot of high payoff activities compared to a top Agent
in the office. For a top Agent, who makes $300.00 plus per
hour, there are very few high payoff activities. You must invest
the time to define what the high payoff activities are for
you. The following were my high payoff activities when I was
a real estate Agent.
1. Prospecting.
2. Lead follow-up.
3. Going on listing appointments.
4. Negotiating contracts.
5. Coaching staff.
6. Planning my business.
These were the only
activities I could do and effectively bill the amount per hour
I was worth. You must focus, like an attorney does, in billing
out hours daily. The more hours you bill, the more income you
make. The greater percentage of the day I did these six activities
the more income I earned.
5. 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, i.e. personality types,
price range, and the type of clients to look for. You may not
be able to work in a certain price range or with certain types
of people. When a buyer does not provide you the answers you
need, you can refer him to another Agent or drop him because
he does not meet your philosophy. You need to understand you
were not put on this earth to help everyone. There are people
you cannot help. This fact does not make them or us bad people
or you a bad person. It just makes you a business person who
expects a reasonable profit for the amount of time invested.
Once I was clear on my philosophy of what a client was and
my expectations for a client, I was able to work with people
who conformed to my philosophy. You must define clearly your
world of business. This definition will enable you to better
select the people to work with. We have all selected the wrong
people. We have spent large amounts of time and money working
with people we should not have and felt awful afterwards. In
some instances, we were never 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. By understanding
your “core” philosophy, you will be able to seek out the clients
who meet your criteria rather than finding those that do not.
By having this philosophy, you will generally find the clients
you are looking for. You will also be able to quickly dispense
with those clients who do not meet your standard operating
procedures.
6. Understand your
business. Know what generates your business. What are the top
three income producing activities that you do? Where do you
spend your time daily? Compare those two answers and look at
what you are worth per hour. Do only those activities that
earn you the highest return the bulk of your day. I will give
you a hint; high payoff activities are not putting up signs
and lock boxes. These are only high payoff activities if you
want to make less than $10.00 per hour. You are a business
owner of a company that sells millions of dollars in product
per year. You need to know and understand your business. You
must know where your sales come from to enable you to sell
at higher volume. Most Agents earn success by the sweat of
their brow. They outwork the competition. Your job is to outthink
your competition. Then outwork them, if you desire.
7. Prospecting. There
are as many ways of prospecting, as there are people. The key
is you must prospect daily to bring in the business. You can
prospect via the phone or in person. You can prospect expired,
FSBO, cold call, appointments for buyers, investment properties,
your sphere, and out of area owners. The list is endless. If
you are not spending a minimum of one hour everyday prospecting
for new business, you will have difficulty during stretches
of your career. Even calling your past clients and asking for
referrals is an excellent way to prospect.
When you begin to
get busy, do not fall into the common trap of letting prospecting
slide. Just because you are busy, do not think you do not need
to prospect anymore. This is the time to focus on prospecting
and bringing in more clients. You have momentum, so keep going.
The analogy I like to use is that 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.
8. Qualifying the
potential client. This step 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.
Do not be like these foolish Agents. The whole goal in qualifying
is the exclusion of the unmotivated. If you do not become skilled
at excluding out 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
are 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 because of 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 are most of them). Leads have little value
warehoused in your computer. If you do not follow-up on your
leads, throw them away. You can always create more leads. You
can get more leads than you can handle. Why not pick only the
best ones?
9. Create Strong Systems.
Systems enable Agents to leverage themselves while still servicing
their clients and prospects. You need to develop systems that
create the desired result without your involvement. The reason
why McDonalds is so popular is not the good food. It is because
of the consistency. Whether you go into a McDonalds in Dallas,
Texas or Tokyo, Japan the fries will be the same. They have
developed their systems and procedures that allow them to sell
billions of fries with the same effort and outcome every time.
As REALTORS® you
do not have to be mechanical like McDonalds, but you do need
systems. You need to have systems for listings, escrows, buyers,
sellers, leads, other Agents, presenting offers, negotiating,
follow-up with lead and clients, and the list goes on. You
need a step-by-step process for each of these so you can delegate
the tasks to other staff members.
10. Delegation. You
need to delegate the low payoff tasks that need to be completed
to other staff members. You need to teach and train your staff
to replace you in certain functions. You need to monitor their
progress with praise. And finally, you need to get out of the
way and let them do it.
The last step is the
most difficult step for most Agents. They hire assistants then
never turn over ownership of the tasks to the assistant. You
need to be able to relinquish control. They are going to fall
down and bump their knee. They will ruin some deals and make
some clients angry. But you have made mistakes, why wouldn’t
they make similar mistakes?
Let me give you an
example. Your child is learning to walk. How many times do
you let him fall down before you say that is enough? You are
done trying to walk. If you say enough, he will have to crawl
the rest of his life since he will never learn to walk. But
you would not do that; you would help him until he is able
to walk all over the room. You need to let your staff fall
down and get banged up. Don’t shelter them from the storm,
but do not create a hurricane in your office either.
It took me years to
learn these ten steps. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
in time, energy, and money to work through the learning process
of these disciplines. If I had the opportunity you have right
now, I would have taken advantage of it. You have a rare opportunity
to develop and learn and to apply these steps in months instead
of years. Instead of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars,
you can invest less than one commission check to be coached
to earn a larger income and create balance in your life. What
are you waiting for? Do not delay; call right now,
1-877-732-4676
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