101 things to turbocharge your real estate business

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2 101 things to turbocharge your real estate business How to make more money in less time and enjoy your life more Set new SMART (Specific-Measurable- Attainable-Relevant-Timed) daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Goals give you focus, direction and motivation. Raise your level of self-expectation. If you want to grow your business and life to the next level you have to set a new standard and not accept less from yourself than you are capable of. Raise your level of self-esteem. You are where you are right now because this is where you feel you deserve to be, you have to see yourself somewhere else to get somewhere else. Create a business plan and follow it. A business plan is your roadmap to take you from where you are now to where you want to go. Fail to plan Plan to fail! Don't hang out with an easy crowd. We are all influenced by our associations and some are more positive than others. Choose to associate with people who are turbocharging their life. Feel the fear but do it anyway. Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to feel the fear and still do what needs to be done to reach your goals and objectives. Make enthusiasm your daily habit. You cannot control what happens to you but you can control how you respond to what happens to you so always respond positively. Practice self-discipline. This is the most important habit for success. You must direct yourself to complete specified tasks to achieve goals and objectives and not be distracted. Stop making and accepting excuses. Reasons are just excuses spelled differently. Make the commitment to follow a plan of action and not accept any excuse for not staying on track. Repeat this affirmation every morning: If it s to be It s going to be up to me! Take responsibility to make things happen and accept responsibility when they don't.

3 Implement a system of time allocation and spend 1/3 of your day on servicing activities, 1/3 of your day on selling activities and 1/3 of your day on business building activities. Prioritize your day using a simple ABC system: A are action now items. B are before the day is over action items. C are can wait action items and D is delegate action items to others. Get your office, home and car organized like a professional real estate sales person. It s impossible to perform at an optimal level without the proper systems. Get a BIG jump on your competition by starting your day one hour earlier each day. Most real estate agents waste the most productive part of their day. Eliminate wasted and unproductive time. The average real estate agent puts in 6 hours per day but actually only works 3 because of wasted and unproductive time. Don't spend major time on minor things. Time is your most valuable resource you must spend it wisely. Ask yourself, Am I doing the most productive thing I could be doing at this moment? Use a database management system to automate your entire business. Lead generation and client follow up are time intensive activities made easier by automating the process. Stop procrastinating and suffering from perfection paralysis. Most real estate agents are too busy getting ready to get ready to actually get anything done. Just get busy on one task now. Have great vendor support. You can t run a high performance real estate business if you are doing all of the work. You must have excellent support vendors who pick up the slack. Don't be too busy with the urgent to take care of what's important. You don t need to choose between urgent and important, instead you need to focus on how to accomplish both.

4 Understand what business you are in. You are in the people finding business. Your job every day is to spend time searching for the people who have a NEED to buy or sell real estate. Focus on finding sellers. If you build an inventory of good salable listings and keep replenishing it the buyers will always find you. Build your own brand. Consumers of today are very brand conscious and building a brand will help you position yourself in the minds of your target customers. Work your best source of business regularly and with a plan. You must make lots of contacts if you want to write lots of contracts. 17% of the real estate agents control 83% of the business. Make sure you are doing what the 17% are doing and NOT what the 83% are doing. (Look around your office/market) Stay in touch with your sphere of influence every 30 days by snail/ and make a personal contact a minimum of twice yearly. Don't be a secret agent. Tell everybody you meet who you are, what company you work with and what you do for a living. Work with prospects NOT suspects. The number one time waster in real estate is spending time with unmotivated, unqualified suspects with no need to act. Always focus on need. Utilize better lead tracking and follow-up systems. It s impossible to turbocharge your business without an automated program for staying in touch with customers and prospects. Expand your demographic and geographic reach. The demographics of our customer base is changing quickly and providing new opportunities for agents willing to expand their base. Know how to say the right thing, in the right way, at the right time. Rather you like it or not you are a sales person and to be a good one you need to master the tools of our trade, words! Invest a minimum of 10% of each commission check back into your business in the form of personal promotion and marketing. It s a better return on investment than the bank. Schedule time quarterly to review the results of your business plan and make necessary adjustments and changes to keep you on track to reach your SMART goals and objectives.

5 Focus on conversion ratios. A little change in one of your ratios can make a huge difference in your performance. What is your listing taken vs. sold ration? Contacts vs. appointments? Work HARD to convert or kill every lead-don't let them die a slow death. Leads are like money in the bank if you know what to do with them and you do it. (Don t ignore this one!) It s not what you know It s what you do that makes a difference in your business.

6 Focus your attention on appointments. Stop worrying about the number of listings and sales and instead focus on appointments with people who you can help. Change your thinking. Stop worrying about finding people to like you and instead focus your attention on finding people with a need to buy or sell. There is no rejection in real estate. You must fish where the fish are! Determine the greatest opportunities for new listings in your market area and measure how your listing inventory compares. Always keep your hook in the water. Don t get so busy servicing that you stop doing the activities that generated the business in the first place. Always be prospecting for new business. Learn to use the concept of give to get to help you attain appointments with the homeowners who have a need to sell. What can you give them to get the appointment to meet them? Automate a daily for sale by owner campaign. 80% of the homeowners who try to sell their property themselves end up using the services of an agent. Will it be you? Automate a daily expired campaign. One of the greatest rewards in real estate is helping people who other agents could not help. A great opportunity with a built in reward. Become a short sale specialist. The economy is going to continue to provide challenges for many homeowners and an increasing number will be looking for short sale assistance. Create a networking group or join one. Start a networking group with other likeminded professionals with the purpose of providing referrals for each other. Develop a demographic or geographic farm where you establish yourself as the real estate expert for that group of people. Work them effectively every month or don t bother. Don t just hope for referrals. Use a three-step referral generating system. Explain your business is built on referrals and get commitment to provide a referral. Earn the referral. Ask for referral. Stake your claim to a future hot niche market. Where will your market opportunities be in 3 years from now? Develop a plan of action now to allow you to position yourself there.

7 Send 100 just listed AND just sold notices with EVERY listing and each new sale. This is a great source of lead generation and positioning. (Don t forget to include your S.O.I.) Have client appreciation of events to demonstrate your appreciation to all of your current and past clients and customers. Take video and lots of photos. (Should be a love-fest for you!) Focus all of your on promotional material and marketing on the results you have been able to achieve for your clients and customers. Results NOT excuses gets people s attention.

8 Use every listing to generate a minimum of one lead from each: Ad/internet inquiry. Sign call. Open house. Just listed notice. Just sold notice. Referral from seller. Seller becomes buyer. Have the best listing presentation in your market area. There is no point generating more seller appointments if you can t beat the competition on the appointment. Know how to sell the value benefit of you and your company. You must be able to demonstrate 15 reasons to choose you and 50 reasons to choose your company. Master good closing techniques. Closing is the ability to help people make a decision that benefits them but they might not make without your help. Price your listings right or don't take them. One of the biggest mistakes in the real estate business is taking overpriced listings. They require a lot of time, money and energy to service. Reduce listings every 30 days until they sell. If you have inventory that is not moving in today s market you need to institute an automatic price adjustment methodology. Use weekly seller report focused on seller s market segment not your marketing. This keeps the seller happy with regular communication and keeps their attention on pricing strategy. Under-promise and over deliver. Don t set the sellers up only to let them down by not meeting an expectation that was falsely established. Have a plan to sell every listing you take. Determine who the most likely buyer for this property is and what your specific plan for exposing this property to them is going to be? FOCUS!

9 Use technology to improve your productivity. Don t waste time trying to learn programs that can t help you get where you want to go. Learn what you need to learn to do the job. Use your website to capture leads not provide free information. A million hits are good but 10 captured leads are even better. Your address can be one of the most effective free forms of advertising you have. Make sure yours is easy for people to remember. (Mine is bill@billfields.com) Develop a series of free e-books to capture leads. You need to offer free content to your buyers and sellers so they will visit your site and register for your free materials. Focus on search engine optimization. It s no longer enough just to have a website, now you must have a website that people find easily and quickly. Create a local blog and make it relevant. One of the best ways to build a potential pipeline and improve your search engine optimization is through publishing your own blog. You on YouTube and other good Internet ideas. Differentiate yourself from your competitors and establish a more personal bonding with potential prospects through the use of video. Become an Internet social networker Use video response to all buyer inquiries on-line. Stop answering internet inquires with a boring, old that rarely results in success. Send a personal video message to buyers instead. Voice recognition software. Turn your computer into a personal assistant that responds by voice command and save yourself hours and hours of time creating documents, etc.

10 Create a VIP Buyer Guarantee Program that offers specific benefits to a buyer including VIP vendor list, white glove move in service, VIP buyer hotline, etc. Develop and post This week's top 10 hottest buys list to capture the newest buyers looking for the best opportunities in your market area. Build a database from these inquires. Have more open house events but do them right. Open houses are to capture leads not to sell the property. Create an event and drive traffic. (40% will actually be potential sellers!) All buyer appointments MUST start in the office with a new buyer complimentary consultation to determine how you can help them and to agree on a plan to accomplish that objective. Focus as much energy on counseling a buyer as you do on qualifying the buyer. Your job is to determine the needs and then satisfy the needs. ALWAYS review with the buyer any paperwork that would be necessary to purchase their new home BEFORE you begin to preview property with them. Get a Buyer Broker Agreement completed with all buyers. You would not go to work for the seller without a written agreement; don t the buyers deserve the same discipline? Be a good detective. You ll make more sales if you talk less and listen more. You should listen at least twice as much as you talk. Learn to listen with your eyes and your ears. Learn how to effectively handle objections. Objections are not bad, objections are good. Objections give you the direction you need to help your buyers move forward. Develop a first-time homebuyer and investor buyer campaign to capitalize on the large percentage of buyers in these market segments.

11 Work on building a book of business. Your business could have huge residual value if you build a book of business you could sell one day if you decided to retire. Master the fundamentals. You can t build a turbocharged business on a weak foundation. Spend the time, money and energy necessary to master the fundamental skill set of a professional. Be honest about your strengths and weaknesses. Applaud your personal successes but spend more time working to reduce your weaknesses. Every day focus on making progress in the right direction not trying to be perfect. A journey of a thousand miles really does begin with making simple steps in the right direction. Make good business decisions. You can t run a turbocharged business if you make decisions like a real estate agent. Number 1 bad business decision? Taking a listing you can t sell. Strive to create win-win negotiations with all buyers and sellers. Don t invite an us versus them mentality to invade your negotiations. Instead focus on achieving success for both sides. Be a better problem solver. The best problem solvers are those that solve the problems before they even come up. When problems occur fix the problem do not fix the blame. Demonstrate its good business to do business with you. There s only one way to accomplish this task. Always do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it! Stay in touch to stay on top. Your objective should be to establish yourself as people s real estate professional for life! To do that you must stay in touch and stay in touch more often. Ask for testimonials from every customer you have the opportunity to work with. A testimonial from a satisfied customer is the best marketing tool you have to attract new clients. Search for what you're not doing-be innovative and creative. Just because things have always been done a certain way does not mean that is the only way, or the best way. Garbage in = garbage out. Work to improve the information you allow into your brain to get better performance out of it. Watch more webinars and training videos and less television.

12 Read one book (or listen to books on tape) each month. Everything you could possibly need to know to change your life and turbocharge your business has already been written in a book. Read industry publications. These are the tricks of the trade that are developed and provided for real estate professionals only. Why not take advantage of them? Look for just one good idea. BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE! Enroll in All Star Coaching or mentoring program. Every superstar who is working to turbocharge their profession has a coach they count on to help them achieve new heights of performance. Invest in your own success. You must see yourself as someone running a real estate business and like all businesses that wish to grow yours requires investments of time and money. Be a little tougher. You can t be a wimp and get your feelings hurt whenever a potential client does business with someone else or something else happens that upsets you. BE TOUGH! Have a sense of humor. Stop seeing failures and setbacks as final. Failures are merely an opportunity for you to develop your sense of humor. Learn to laugh at life, you ll live longer. Establish a personal reward system. Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated, so if you want to establish the right behaviors develop personal rewards for yourself and your family. Get exercise. Eat right and get plenty of rest. If you had a million dollar race horse you wouldn t keep it up all night feeding it booze and donuts. To do good you must feel good. Don't be a quitter. Winners never quit and quitters never win. If a task is important enough to start it should be important enough to finish. If not, don t start it.