For Real Estate Agents at every level — From those still waiting to complete their first transaction to those closing hundreds of transactions each year, success in your career is comprised of ten systems.

Overcoming every challenge and all growth in your business only occurs through your skills and application with these ten systems. 

1. Planning – You need a simple way to set goals and manage their completion.  We call our method “Goals and Measurable Results.”  Our client’s annual goals are broken into initial appointments weekly and production in three categories recorded monthly. This system makes it very simple and obvious to recognize what you need to accomplish each week and each month to reach your goals.

2. Lead Management – Successfully managing the generation, capture, conversion, and retention of your leads is an ongoing challenge.  Whether you use contact management software or three by five cards and a paper calendar, we coach a lead follow-up system and habit that relieves the pressure of all those loose leads in your life.

3. Marketing – Most agents miss the boat on Marketing, even those spending thousands of dollars on it.  What are your markets?  What message do you wish to convey to those markets?  And, what is your best method and media to convey that message to those markets?  How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing and do you get a minimum 400% return on your investment? 

4. Service – There is far more business for you in great Service than there is in great prospecting.  Our clients prove that, year after year.  What are the service systems that make you the most money?  Do you maintain consistent, scheduled communication with every listed seller and pending client?  Do you use a checklist or whiteboard for your pending actions and actively manage it daily?  Most importantly, do you keep your word? 

5. Presentations – A Real Estate career in which you have complete confidence requires mastering your, Seller Presentation, Price Reduction Presentation, Buyer Presentation, Offer Writing and Negotiating, and Property Showings.  Each of these has a structure, scripts, and a mindset for you to learn.  Learning them takes time.  The reward is confidence, skill, and results that make you a highly successful professional.

6. Quality of Life – We say that your business should serve your life not your life serve your business.  Days off occur when you schedule them.  Putting your health or your loved ones first occurs because you choose it that way.  One of our leading coaches and top Agent Rusdi Sumner says that once you are licensed everything is an appointment.  You turn your choice into your life by putting your health, happiness, and loved ones activities into your calendar, then keeping your word to yourself and others by honoring those appointments. 

7. Assistants and Teams – Between thirty and sixty transactions you reach a limit to your ability to grow your business by yourself.  To get past that point you either add assistance or your business and/or your quality of life decline.  To grow past your transaction limit you are challenged to learn and master hiring, training, delegating, and supervision.  These are the early skills of leadership.  Do you hire part or full time, for how many hours?  When do you consider a buyer specialist?  Should your assistant have client contact?  There are many decisions for high producing Agents that lead them to the next level and beyond.

8. Financial Freedom – We discovered that people in the habit of being broke stay broke regardless of increases in their income.  For those with this affliction you have to work directly to challenge and break the struggling mindset and habits so that as your production and income increase, your financial stability and freedom follow.

9. Technology – Every Agent faces technology challenges; choosing a mobile phone or new computer hardware, choosing your level of web presence and web vendors, plus a myriad of hardware and software choices.  Every one of the above systems includes and is impacted by your technology choices. 
We are constantly challenged, as you are, to seek the technology tools and services that preserve your time and increase your profitability.  We are constantly discussing these tools and services with our clients and among our coaches to keep our knowledge up to date and offer the best possible suggestions to you.

10. Self-Esteem – Success in your business and in each of the individual systems rests on the strength of your self-esteem.  We work indirectly and sometimes directly on how you think and feel about yourself personally and professionally.  We teach two basic affirmations. 

Try these in the privacy of your own mind.  “I like myself, unconditionally.”  And, “I completely trust my own judgment.”

Each time you improve a skill in one of these ten systems that comprise your business, your career improves.  As you work continuously on one skill after another you watch your results improve and your confidence reach new heights.  

For too many agents, this changed market is a first-time experience.

Remember to give yourself credit for being involved in each phase and in some capacity as a consultant, facilitator, monitor or problem solver. Odds are that you will end up in excess of 100 hours.

1) Prepare for the listing presentation
2) The listing presentation
3) Customized marketing plan
4) Implementation of the marketing plan and initial feedback
5) Buyer screening and interviews
6) Showing appointments
7) Getting and presenting offers Negotiations
9) Agreement and into formal contract
10) Satisfaction of contract contingencies
11) Appraisal, structural/engineering inspections
12) Mortgage approval process
13) Closing/settlement date established
14) Final walk-through inspection and at last
15) The closing/settlement.

Sellers, like most consumers, will pay more for something that they are convinced is of better quality and value. You deserve every cent of your preferred commission rate because you are different, you are better. It’s time for sellers to become aware of and appreciate the extent and importance of your services. It’s up to you to make sure that they do. Bring them out of their “Limited Awareness” box at your next and subsequent listing presentations.

By: Debra Asher

With everything that’s going on with the economy and real estate agents struggling, it’s time to discuss how to cut your business costs so you can keep more of the money you make.

1.  Bring your lunch and coffee to work -  This is right out of David Bach’s Automatic Millionaire series, and it’s such common sense.  These days, with tax and tip, ordering lunch is about $10 a day.  Add to that you’re morning large double half-caff, light, skim mocha choca loca boca with whipped cream at $3-$4 a day (and I’m not even including the bagel you bought for breakfast) and that’s $250-$300 bucks a month you’re spending in a 5-day work week.  For some, that’s a car payment.  Whatever it is to you, it’s unnecessary spending.

Buying a pound of turkey and loaf of bread is infinitely less.  You’ll spend about $10-15 a week, instead of in a day.

It’s the same thing with coffee.  Even if you have to initially buy a coffee maker, that expense will get amortized over the course of your career, and be much less expensive in the long run.  Get a gallon of high-test from the grocery store at around $10-15 and it’ll last you the month.  Splurge for a travel mug at $2.99 and you’ll have that for years.

2. Quit smoking – I don’t want to be judgmental, but the package of cigarette’s practically says “Smoke these and you WILL die early.”  Folks, let’s face it, smoking is out, like the mullet haircut and the leisure suit.  Smoking does things to your system that will take you off your “A” game.  And when you gotta get that last puff in before you walk into a potential seller’s house…they can smell it.  We all can.  Besides, at more than $5.00 a pack, that’s just a ridiculous expenditure, and it adds up horribly fast.  I’m not on high here, I used to smoke.  I know the addiction, I know the relaxation with a cup of coffee.  I know the socialization out at a bar with some drinks.  I’ve been there and done that.  But with everything they now know about smoking, why would you spend money to basically ensure a slow, painful death?

3. Don’t pay for advertising – First of all, you should never advertise yourself.  If you do advertise, only advertise your listings.  Advertising yourself is completely egotistical, and it takes so much time and money before anyone will call you based on just seeing your smiling mug with that stupid phone on your ear, it’s a complete waste and will eat your profits like nothing else.  Buyers only call on houses they are interested in, they don’t call for you.

Now, even though the industry standard percentage of buyer sign and ad call-in’s/internet leads to appointments set is extremely low (considerably less than 10%), I understand the need and want to advertise your listings.  In that case, instead of haranguing your title and mortgage people to foot the bill for those useless broker-open houses, have them subsidize your advertising (pages in magazines, just listed/just sold post cards, etc.).  And think outside the box; perhaps a home inspector or warranty company would be interested.  Do what you can to NOT pay a dime for your advertising.

4. Manage your time to the utmost - This is the biggest downfall, and by far the most expensive issue for real estate agents.  Most agents do not follow a schedule.  They do things in order of importance in the moment.  They answer any phone call at any time, no matter what else they’re doing at that time.  They are task oriented instead of time oriented.  They’re on the schedule of anyone who wants their time.

This is hugely inefficient.  It drains your energy.  It causes you to work harder and more stressed out.  And, business constantly slips through your cracks…costing you money!  Ever know of an agent who got so busy with other things they forgot to follow up on a lead and found out they listed with someone else?  The more you manage your time, the less money you’ll lose (or the more money you’ll make).

5.  Only deal with totally qualified buyers and sellers -  In case you haven’t noticed, gas is starting to creep up again.  Driving 45 minutes one way to a listing appointment to find out they can’t sell is a ridiculous waste of your time, money and energy.  You need to pre-qualify every listing appointment you set.  You have to find out why the want to sell and if they even can sell, at the very least.  Then you can make a business decision as to whether you want to go on that appointment.  Owning a house and wanting to talk to you does NOT equal a qualified, motivated seller.

For buyers, as a rule, you should first meet them in your office.  Spending an hour with a buyer at your office, gaining rapport, finding motivation, connecting and finding out how you can best serve them will save you hours and hours of driving them around, meeting them at the property they call in on, and all sorts of other hoops many agents jump through, only to find the buyer didn’t buy with them.

6.  Practice - Practice scripts, presentations, objection handlers…everything you say to a potential buyer or seller should be practiced and polished.  The better you are, the easier it will be to get them to sign the contract.  The more contracts signed, the more money you’ll make.

7.  Gold Standard Listings only - Especially in this market, you absolutely CANNOT afford to take listings that are overpriced or for cut commissions.

An overpriced listing will cost you more than you’ll ever know in time, energy and money because it WON’T sell. The same goes for a cut commission listing, but there are exceptions to the rules.

So, let’s say it does sell.  You’ve just done all the same work you would do for a full commission listing, yet you get paid less money.  If you had practiced (see?  I told you it would help), then you would have been able to successfully take the listing at a full commission, and therefore got the property sold faster and made more money quicker…for the same amount of work.

As you see, cutting costs isn’t just about spending less money, it’s about the best utilization of your time, energy and focus.  It’s about efficiency.  Work smart.  Make more money.  It’s that simple.

By: Scott Friedman