Success – Real Estate Training and Coaching

05 Aug20:15pm

TAKE ACTION OR ACCEPT THE RESULTS

In all areas of life, taking action is the key to success. Most people who fail to achieve what they want, fail for lack of action. The ability to take action is the skill that ultimately separates the winners from the losers in the game of life. There are a number of truths that I have come across in my business and while coaching clients. These truths should be reviewed and lived by to produce the abundance in life that you desire.

Truth #1: It’s more essential to success to be consistent than to be precise.

The power of consistency is one of the most significant forces in the world. It far outstrips the power of exactness. If you are consistently doing enough things right, you will reap a huge reward. If you are waiting until you have it down to perfection, you are not going to take any action.

In sales, more than any other profession, consistency of your actions pays big dividends, while infrequent action, even when right, pays very little. The daily consistency of prospecting and lead follow-up is the gateway to sales success and high profitability. Again, it’s more essential to success to be consistent than to be precise.

Truth #2: A step toward your goal is a step in the right direction . . . even if it is a misstep.

Too often, we fail to act due to fear of failure. We can become paralyzed by the need to be right or correct in all our actions. My late friend, Jim Rohn, says that to achieve your goal you need “measurable progress in reasonable time.” That doesn’t mean all the progress we make will be going in the right direction every time.

Earl Nightingale said, “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” To achieve a worthy goal, we have to progress toward it through the trials. We must proceed with consistent action. It also says there are times when we will be heading in the wrong direction and have to adjust our course of action.

In the end, success is a poor teacher. The real teacher in life is adversity and short-term failure. You will always learn more from your defeats than your victories. In sales, you will learn more from the sale lost than the sale made. Most salespeople think that when they make the sale, they did everything right. What happens if that assumption is not true? What if you did just enough right to beat out the other guy, but he wasn’t any good? What will happen when the competition gets tougher or the marketplace gets tougher? Will you have the skills you need to dominate then?

Too often, we fail to face reality. This comes back to us in unfulfilled potential. Unfulfilled potential eventually manifests itself as regret. We have to be fixated on taking steps to obtain our goals daily . . . even if they are the wrong steps. It’s better to make a decision and find out it was wrong than avoiding making a decision at all. At least you know what you should not do next time.

Truth #3: Even when you choose not to decide, you have still made a choice.

Far too many of us just hope things will get better. We hope to become healthier or thinner, or we hope we will earn more. We have wishes and dreams but no commitment or definitiveness to change what we are doing to ensure the desired result. We fail to take action on what we know we need to do now.

Many of us can vacillate over a decision for days, weeks, months, or even years. We must realize that by not making a decision, we have essentially made a choice. We end up making decisions by default because we did not decide and act. The decision was made for us.

As salespeople, by not preparing for a changing marketplace or changing economy, our choice is solidified. We have chosen, by default, to not do as well or earn as much when the marketplace change occurs. Would it be reasonable to assume that our marketplace will always remain the same or improve? Would we be protecting our families and assets if we assume that we don’t need to improve our skills and abilities in sales? Our decision to not act in truth means we still have made a choice.

Take ten minutes to evaluate these truths. Are you embracing these truths in how you run your business and life? Are there changes that need to be made? When do you need to make the changes? Here’s a hint…NOW!

Don’t get paralyzed by inactivity or perfection. Turn action into your asset. That’s what true Champions do!

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09 Feb18:43pm

ACQUIRING THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL OF ALL

The single most important skill for a Real Estate Agent is sales-ability. No matter where you are in your real estate career, decide right now to master the skills of selling in order to fuel your success.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s true, that more than 95% of Agents lack top-level real estate sales skills. The reason I know this is because I coach some of the best and highest-earning Agents in the world, and even they believe their sales skills can use improvement. The difference between them and other Agents is that they realize that sales skills are vital to success and they continuously seek excellence in this area.

To follow their example, make it your priority to develop and constantly improve your sales skills, especially in these areas:

Develop sales skills to secure appointments.
Develop sales skills to persuade expired and for-sale-by-owner listings to move their properties to your business. This lucrative and largely untouched field.
Develop sales skills to make persuasive presentations that result in positive buying decisions. You can do this in every step from pre-qualifying prospects to planning your presentation, perfecting your skills, addressing and overcoming objections, and ending with a logical and successful close.

We are now no longer in the robust market conditions we had experienced in the 90s and early 2000s, where leads were abundant and relatively easy to attract, especially Buyer leads. So when the market slowed, as it inevitably would, real estate success becomes less automatic. Only great sales skills guarantee that you – instead of some other Agent – will win clients no matter the market conditions. The best Agents make more money in a challenging market than in a robust market.

Regardless of economics, every market contains real estate buyers and sellers. No matter how slow the economy, people need or want to change homes. Babies are born. Managers get transferred. Couples get married. People divorce. And real estate opportunities arise for those with the best sales skills.

The way to build immunity to shifting market conditions is to arm yourself with skills in prospecting, lead follow-up, presentations, objection handling, and closing.

If you have a strong desire to improve your income & quality of life, I urge you to check out the video by Dirk and take the first step here: www.RealEstateChampions.com/coaching

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29 Jan15:22pm

BUILDING A CHAMPION BUSINESS BY PAUSING

Being able to build a Champion’s Business takes focus, skill, and determination. It takes the desire to move, change, test, adjust, and then change again. One of the ingredients that most Agents fail to execute is the ability to regularly pause. The ability to pause, evaluate, ponder, meditate, and clarify at regular intervals will move you from a good business to a Champion Business. The pause helps you learn and invest what you have learned into your future success account.

Pause at the end of each day to reflect on what went right. If you had to rate the day one to ten, how would it rate? Why did you rate it there? What could have been improved on? What are you most proud of for the day? What are the priorities for tomorrow? I typically spend thirty minutes at the end of the day reviewing the day and learning from the day. Too often, we continue on daily without pausing, pondering, and evaluating, so we make the same or similar mistakes repeatedly over time . . . warning!!

At the end of the week, take an hour to pause. A week is a pretty good chronicle of time that has gone by. Evaluate the prospecting numbers, leads generated, and appointments booked. What did you learn this week? What would you change? How should next week be approached? What priorities didn’t get accomplished that need to be moved to next week? How’s your energy level and reserve? How’s your attitude at the end of the week? If you have staff, evaluate their performance as well.

Pause at the end of the month for two hours. Invest those two hours in your future wealth, growth, and happiness. Besides the previous questions for the day and the week evaluation, review your leads in your database. Did you miss calling anyone? Is there someone you should call earlier than scheduled? Too often, Agents call someone they have as a lead just after they have made a decision to commit to someone else, or they have bought and sold using someone else. By taking a few minutes to review the leads monthly, you will catch oversight that will cost you thousands. Even today, I review leads in our database quarterly and always catch opportunities about to be lost. My sales manager at Real Estate Champions is required to review calls and leads weekly and monthly.

At the end of the month review your prospecting leads, appointments, and overall numbers for your business. You also want to review the numbers on your market trends report. We must already know where the marketplace is heading in real time, rather than reaction time.

The break at the end of the quarter should be a half day to give you the opportunity to repeat all the steps I have given you thus far on a large, deeper, more focused time frame. When you get to the quarter evaluation, I really believe that it needs to be conducted off site. This time is of paramount importance and needs your full attention without the distractions of being in your office. If you feel you need to be in the office because of the availability of your data to analyze, then come in 4 hours before your normal day would begin, or stay in the evening and evaluate. Again, evaluating the marketplace for the quarter is an integral part of the quarter pause.

The pause at six months should be around a full day. Six months is a significant amount of time. I know Agents who have been way behind initially, but caught up to their goal in the last six months through making the right adjustments. I know others who were way ahead of their goal, but they didn’t take the time to review and weren’t paying attention. They missed the mark on their one-year objectives.

The pause at the end of the year should be from three days to a week. I personally prefer a week. The final week of the year has developed into my favorite week of the year. It is the time I hit the rewind button for the whole year and replay the tape. I immerse myself in questions and evaluation to guarantee the mistakes remain in the past and the victories flow into the future. I check my business plan, business vision, and values, systems, lead generation source, and conversion. I check my mental state and commitment level to my goals for the next year. This week isn’t to build a business plan for the next year. In fact, if you are doing that in this week, you are too late. Your business plan for the new year needs to be constructed no later than the end of October of the preceding year. To decide a week before the new year to build your business plan is too late.

Take the above steps to execute pausing at regular intervals into your business. You will see how this exercise helps you move your business from a good business to a Champion’s Business.

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25 Jan21:25pm

BUSINESS VISION . . . IS WHERE IT ALL STARTS

Being able to establish a business vision for your company separates you from the other agents who are in real estate. When building a team, you must pause and work to define your business vision. Enduring, successful people and successful companies establish their core values and core purpose. They then remain fixed on those core values and purpose throughout their business life. The changing elements are their business strategy and tactics due to the marketplace changes and competition influences.

Successful people and companies know that it is critically important to know who you are and what you stand for. In many cases, knowing who you are, as a team, will be more important than where you are going. We all will change and adapt as our world changes and adapts. This change is inevitable. The only part about change that is in question is whether it will be evolution or revolution.

Evolution is defined by Webster as: A process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage). We want to engage in the small, gradual movement or change over a period of time. This type of change only comes from clarity of values and purpose. More effort, energy, and resources can be used to increase success, sales, and production in an evolutionary mode, rather than a revolutionary mode.

Revolution is defined by Webster as: A drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving. The change in revolution is more violent, sudden, and potentially damaging. The vast majority of resources will be used to keep up with the revolution at hand or trying to get out of the revolutionary process. The stress level is significantly higher, and the probability of success is much lower in revolution. By having well-defined core values and core purpose, you can avoid the forces of revolution more effectively.

There has been a prevailing thought for sometime on the value of mission statements. The thought is that you have to build a mission statement for your team. When I ask many experts why they have that view, their answers are less than stellar: “Because good companies have them”; “You just do”; “Your people need something to guide them.” There are a host of others that I have heard regularly.

I have personally coached hundreds of the most successful agents in the last fifteen years. I always ask if they have a mission statement. When they say “oh yes”, I ask them what it is. The phone always goes dead silent. Then you have this rustling of papers as they try to find the document that has their mission statement on it. Once they can’t find it, they try to recite from memory some garbled version of it.

I personally feel that mission statements have little value, and we should abolish their use. Most small business owners’ (like real estate agents) mission statements are treated as something you have to have or do, but you don’t know why you have to have it or do it. The most common practice of building a mission statement for small business owners is to scalp what they like from a large company, like Nordstrom if you have a service mentality or Nike if you like competition or Wal-Mart if you want to serve the ordinary or disadvantaged consumer.

We aren’t building it from within our own views, tenets, and principles of excellence in life and business. For most, we are building the mission statement based on what sounds good, looks good on a brochure or marketing piece, or is made up of the components that another successful company articulates in their mission statement. My best advice is to scrap the whole exercise and start focusing on what you stand for.

What do you stand for?

We can’t look for what we stand for in others. We have to discover it in ourselves. It is not outside in the world around you; it is in your inner world, in your mind and heart. In order for what you stand for to be authentic, you have to search for it. You aren’t asking yourself what you should stand for; you are asking yourself what you passionately stand for.

Let me share with you an example of what I mean. At Real Estate Champions, we stand for hard work and continuous self-improvement. We believe passionately that the quest of self-improvement, both personally and professionally, is one of the noblest callings in life. I personally toil long hours weekly in the quest of self-improvement and building tools, training systems, scripts, materials, strategies, tactics, theories, coaching – the list is endless. I spend additional hours reading, writing, praying, and listening to podcasts to keep my personal development in high gear. I have other people on my team, as well, who contribute to this effort.

There is no one in the real estate field who has produced more quality systems, tools, strategies, skill improvement, and business master systems in the last fifteen years than we have at Real Estate Champions. You can pick any name, speaker, trainer, or coach, and most are still selling the same material they were ten years ago! We have 15 distinctly different coaching programs, over fifty different training programs and audio CDs, DVD training, internet subscription-based training, and ten books written on sales success. We don’t do it because it’s good business; we create new intellectual property and deliver it in many different ways because it’s what we stand for. It is born out of my personal core values and beliefs.

We passionately believe that we need to engage in our own journey of personal self-improvement to impact the world. Once we take on that challenge, we will be able to impact the world around us.

What do you stand for?

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