I just did a series of complimentary coaching calls for those people in the Up and Running in 30 Days coaching program. First, let me congratulate one of the agents in the program, Carlena, for attaining 108 lead generating contacts in a week! I wanted to have a little fun and competition in the call, so I set up a friendly contest: Which caller on the line made the most lead generating contacts in a week? Callers could pick any week of their Up and Running program. 

Note: Look on this blog for interviews with Carlena and Emily, both doing a great job in generating many, many leads with the start-up plan as their guide. 

You Need Confidence to Succeed in Sales

To help the agents on the call get much more confidence, I did an exercise with them I call Bringing your Skills and Talents to Real Estate Clients. Why is this important? When we’re new agents, we think we know nothing. We’re constantly humiliated with our lack of knowledge, and inability to handle objections. We get so tired of ‘nos’ that sometimes we forget that we are capable, honest, caring, responsible humans. We actually come into real estate with a whole adult experience of widely developed skills, qualities, and natural talents. These are much more useful to us than we give ourselves credit for.

 How is Music Helpful to Real Estate? 

Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I was (and am) a musician since age four. But, when I went into real estate, I felt like I knew nothing! And, it is true I didn’t know anything about selling real estate. But, I carried with me many great skills into the business that in turn carried me to success fast. Can you guess what some of those skills were—and are? 

Had to practice piano 2-4 hours                  Tenacity

Put off mastery for years                              Persistence

Followed direction of a coach                     Coach ability

 Application

How could I show one of these, tenacity? I actually presented an offer and got 10 counteroffers! I just never gave up, because I felt it was in the best interest of both parties to buy and sell from each other. I could show that marked-up purchase and sale agreement. Where could I share that quality? I could show testimonials from my clients in social medial, and in my Professional Portfolio.   

The Exercise 

Draw three columns. Name the first ‘skills and talents’. Name the second ‘benefits to clients’. Name the third ‘how/where to show clients’. 

Now, list at least three skills and talents from your former business life. What about these skills/talents are benefits to clients? How would you show this? Where would you show this? 

Enlist a Partner

If you’re having some ‘mind blocks’ on how and where to show these benefits to clients, enlist a partner to brain storm the possibilities with you. Once you start crafting these, you’ll get much more excited about your ability to help people—along with that confidence to expand your leads and help more people.

What skills and qualities did you ‘attach’ as benefits to clients? How did that raise your confidence?

I know. You were interviewed and sold on the company’s training program. You thought that was the main criteria for your success. But, if it were true that the training program guaranteed success, all those agents who went through it would be selling up a storm. They’re not. So, here are facts and fallacies about what a company training program can do for you.

Because my start-up business plan, Up and Running in 30 Days, has been a best-seller, the editors there asked me to update it again with a fourth edition Since real estate is changing so dramatically, I wanted to update the potential or newer agent (or even you experienced agents), with the major trends agents need to recognize. This excerpt explores the important trend of company training.

Three Major Concerns with Most Company Training Programs

As a National Association of Realtors Educator of the Year, I certainly support training. However, my observation is that few company training programs today fill the bill of what I judge to be valuable training. There are three problems with company training programs:

1. They aren’t taught as ‘training’. They are taught as ‘education’ (someone tells you all he/she knows, so you know what the teacher knows).

How you’ll know: If the instructor spent almost all the time talking, and you spent little or no time in role playing or in action plans, it really wasn’t training to prepare you to sell real estate. You know a lot, but, what can you DO?

2. They aren’t centered on sales. They’re centered on the technical aspects of our business (new agents conclude that memorizing laws and filling in blanks in forms are most important to their success)

How you’ll know: Look at your training manual. Which is the largest part?

3. They aren’t driven by a business-producing start-up plan (and new agents need order and priorities to decide how to put that training to work every day)

How you’ll know: Were you given a prioritized lead generating, business-developing plan to put to work in your office every day? Did you have to make a daily and weekly schedule and analyze and evaluate it?

Bottom line: What were you taught, what experiences did you have, and what models were you given that prepared you for the day-to-day job of managing your real estate career?

Question: What did you wish would have happened during that training that would have helped you succeed much faster? Let me know. I’m right in the middle of doing my fourth edition of Up and Running in 30 Days!

 How Long Does your Tenacity Have to Last?

 Staying motivated means staying tenacious—holding onto the goal. On this call, we discussed the quality of ‘tenacity’. In interviewing hundreds (at least) of would-be agents, I never once heard one of them say they weren’t tenacious. In fact, most of them tried to convince me of their abnormal strength of tenacity! However, once they got into the business of selling real estate, that tenacity vanished like smoke into the atmosphere. Why? Because everyone thinks they are tenacious and determined when there are no challenges. Yet, when challenges appear (like handling objections, making sales calls, getting repeated ‘nos’), that tenacity disappears. 

How’s your ‘compass’ set for attaining a sale? In my survey of hundreds of agents under three months in the business, I asked when they expected a sale. The majority said in the first month! But, we know that the majority of new agents don’t get a sale  in month one. Most don’t even get a sale by month three (and Up and Running tells you why someone is successful fast, and why someone isn’t successful, so there is no mystery).

 So, how long do you think it is until the agent is de-motivated? You’re right:  About 32 days.

 The Secret to Staying Motivated

 Who is in charge of motivating you? Many agents will say ‘my manager.’ It is true that managers and coaches can encourage. They can be positive. They can pick out areas to celebrate. But, the real person in charge of your motivation is YOU. Why? Because you are in charge of your own attitude. No one is inside your head and heart except you. If you don’t feel you’re going at managing your attitude, you have a task: Create that skill. In fact, there are many chapters on attitude and motivation and how to do it in Up and Running, because it is truly a skill that can be developed.

 Big idea: Instead of looking to a sale as the only ‘win’, choose small ‘wins’ all along the way. Up and Running has the numbers in black and white. You know what you need to do to keep on that sales path and ultimately sell a home. So, figure out how to reward yourself in small increments. That keeps your motivation high and protects that tenacity you need to ultimately succeed.

Develop the skill of self-motivation and you will ultimately be successful. Remember, you are on no one’s timeline except yours. If you’re doing the Up and Running activities, you will be successful. Believe it. Act like it. Get help. Get coaching. Be honest with yourself about your skills and needs. Then, you will succeed.

Questions: What do you do to stay motivated through all those challenges? Why do you think agents become de-motivated? Share your insights and advice to help other agents succeed. 

About those bonus tele-conferences: As my ‘thank you’ for purchasing Up and Running in 30 Days, and the coaches’ companion resource, I’m providing coaching tele-conferences in October, both for agents and their managers. I will be offering them three times, also, in 2012. So, if you’re thinking about purchasing Up and Running yourself or as a manager for your agents, you’ll be able to take part in these bonus coaching calls, where I personally coach you in using the program most successfully.

I just did my first tele-conference (of 2) for purchasers of Up and Running in 30 Days (past 2 months). On this tele-conference, I helped them bash the barriers they were getting in their way to a sale in 30 days. Here were the top three:

Keeping focus

Time management

Staying motivated

Interesting, yes? So, in the blogs this week, I’m going to share some of the tips I gave the attendees for ‘moving the mountain’—bashing the barriers to getting that sale.

Keeping Focus

It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Just do the activities in Up and Running weekly and you’ll get a sale in 30 days. But, then life gets in the way. One of the most common ways people get bogged down is that they slow down their lead generation to ‘learn stuff’. What category is ‘learn stuff’ in?

Business supporting.

You know, from doing Up and Running, that the more business supporting work you do, the less business producing work you tend to do. That principle is so important, I’m going to put it in quotes:

The more business supporting work you do, the  less business producing work you tend to do.

Tip: Do your weekly schedule from Up and Running each week, and analyze your balance of business-supporting vs. business-producing work.

Coach’s note: I teach agents how to analyze their daily schedules–a very important time management tool that each agent should grab in their own ‘personal management’ game bag.

Engaging your Coach

Get together with your coach, and go over your analysis. What’s getting in your way of doing lead generation? What do you feel you need to know before you get started? Why are you putting off getting started? What’s scaring you? What can your coach do for and with you to help you get past those barriers and start lead generating ‘with a vengeance’?

Big idea: The business starts when you start lead generating. Why not start now and guarantee a great career in our business?

About those bonus tele-conferences: As my ‘thank you’ for purchasing Up and Running in 30 Days, and the coaches’ resource, I’m providing coaching tele-conferences in October. I will be offering them three times, also, in 2012. So, if you’re thinking about purchasing Up and Running for your agents, you’ll be able to take part in these bonus coaching calls, where I personally coach you in using the program most successfully.

If It’s Not Knowing Lots of Stuff, What Is It?

Practice and performance. So, what in the world can a pianist teach you about getting higher performance? A lot, I think.  Why? Because pianists play better by learning new skills–not learning about how the piano is tuned…….

Without new skills, we just keeping working harder, not smarter. The really bad thing about continuing to beat your head against that ceiling, is that it hurts more and more. You spend more energy just trying to accomplish the same thing.

 Too Much Energy, Too Little Results

 Worse yet, we bounce off that ceiling and hit a new low every thing we get up the energy to try to break through it. Not only that, the last few years have been discouraging for many in real estate. Don’t give up on yourself! You do have the talent, the skill, and the determination to succeed at a much higher level again.

 All Performers Hit ‘Ceilings of Achievement’

 As a long-time performing pianist and flutist (I spent the first thirty years of my life playing and teaching music), I had to learn how to constantly change up my playing for the better. In these next few blogs, I’m going to share what I learned as a musician that will change your  performance dramatically—for the better.

 You Aren’t as Good as You Can Be—I Promise

 I just did a talk for our area’s Women’s Council, on how to have a much better ‘next year’—how to smash through that ceiling of achievement. (Title: Everything I learned about Achievement I learned from Tickling’ the Ivories—also the title of my latest keynote).

 As a four-year old, I climbed up on the piano bench and figured out, by ear, how to play “Sue City Sue”—with bass notes, chords, rhythm, melody—the whole shebang. I was acclaimed as a little kid. However, as I got a little older, I found that playing by ear just wasn’t getting me to be a better player. Here’s what I did to get to concert artistry level, and earn a bachelor’s in piano performance—and how you can translate these performance principles to your real estate business.

 Get from ‘By Ear’ via your Talent to Conscious Systemization

 As a musician, I know that no one can play very well when they try learning only by hearing (playing ‘by ear’). To progress past a ‘whiz-bang, aren’t you wonderful’ amateur level, musicians must learn to read music, get a great teacher, and learn to practice perfectly. Generally, their teacher/coach will teach them how to practice, and provide the best editions of music. They will teach them a specific system. The better the system, the coach, the music, and the practice, the higher the performance—the sky is the limit.

 The First Time You Do Something Isn’t As Good as it Gets!

 What does that mean to a real estate professional? Most of us started selling or managing ‘by ear’. Some of us were talented, and that carried us pretty well for quite a while. But, then, we hit our ‘ceiling of achievement’, and found we were working 24/7 and expending way too much energy—and money. The way out:

1.  Grasp systems (the best systems you can find)
2. Follow processes and checklists
3. Get a great coach
4. Practice as perfectly as you can

 Practitioners—Watch Those Actions, Not Just the Words

 Unfortunately, we real estate professionals don’t realize that we are judged on our performance, not our knowledge. So, when you get all antsy because you think you need more classes, stop and think about your performance level, not your knowledge level. Spend more time evaluating your performance, and pay someone to coach to you get better (all performers, whether musicians or golfers, do this, by the way). Critique your systems, and keep refining them because they will subconsciously affect your performance levels.

 If I had a piano, I’d demonstrate these points (I do use the piano in the keynote!).

 What Do You Want to Work on This Year—from ‘By Ear’ to Systematic?

 Do you have some business plan goals for yourself this year to raise your ceiling of achievement? What do you believe is most valuable for you to work on?

Remember, if you’re a newer agent, you’ll be tempted to hang back, keep your fingers off the keys, and wait for something different–or better–to happen to you. Don’t get tempted! Put to work these performance principles and see yourresults improve dramatically.

Question: What do you wish you’d had as training to help you ‘see’ success early in your career? What would you change about your training if you were creating it?

 What should you expect from a training program?

What to Look For: Five Critical Points

If you’re looking for effective training to get your career started fast, or re-started, you need to choose a training program that has these features:

            1. The objective is fast productivity, not just knowledge. When you interview, ask what the objectives of training are with that company. If it’s just knowledge, run the other way! You will know a lot, but you won’t be in business very long!

            2. The training program has business-producing expectations and goals.  For example, if you expect to make money fast, your training program needs to help you learn to set prospecting goals and attain them. That doesn’t mean lecturing in class. That means you have an activity plan and are working in the field during the class duration. That also means that you aren’t in class all day.

            3. The training program is built around a business start-up plan. Ask to see the company’s business start-up plan for you. If it isn’t sales-producing, it isn’t a real start-up plan.     

4. Sales skills are practiced by the students in class. How can you expect to be competent with clients if you haven’t gained competency and confidence in the classroom? Clients are very discriminating these days. They expect agents to know what they’re doing! During the interview, ask for a description of how the students spend class time. If the manager says the students listen all the time, pick up your materials and go to the next interview. You need skills training; you don’t need to know everything the instructor knows.

5. Expectations for achievement in sales developing and packaging are clear. Is this a college-level training? In college, students are expected to perform during the course. If you’re not expected to practice outside class, and get your sales packages together (like listing and buyer presentations), then this isn’t a real training. It’s just a time-eating event. Wouldn’t your consumer expect you to have a high level of competence? Then, your training program must deliver.

Armed with these 5 critical expectations, you can choose a training program that is dedicated to assuring you quick results, high sales skill, and confidence with consumers. Why settle for less? 

Question: What went wrong with your traiming? What do you think should have been in your training program?

Want to see that kind of program–and a sample of what it looks like? Check out Advantage 2.0. Click here to see more.

High Failure Rate Tells the Story

It’s estimated about 50% of agents fail their first year in the business, and another 25% fail in year two. That’s terrible–for all the parties involved–clients, agents, and the office. So, one of the methods to reduce that failure is to assure agents are going into the business with a clear idea of what constitutes success. What do you do every day to assure you’re successful?

Here’s my prioritized job description for you. 

How to Create your Own Job Description

It’s easy. Just go to your planner and analyze the amount of time you spend in the various business producing or business supporting activities. Prioritize them according to your actual activities. That’s your job description. Now, you can see why you’re making the amount of money you’re making.

A Model: Successful Agents

What do successful agents do more of? Business Producing Activities. Low-producing agents to more business-supporting activities. It’s as simple as that. So, just switch your priorities and time management, and you’re on your way to making lots more money!

Want more information on prioritizing your job? Take a look at Up and Running in 30 Days. I’ve made a start-up (or re-generating) business plan based on a successful agent’s priorites. It works every time.

Don’t forget to get your job description here, too. Provide it to your manager to use in the hiring process to get the right recruits for success.

Here’s the rest of the list of 10:

1. Starting the business part-time, with no ‘drop dead’ exit plan from your other work. I know. I started part-time, but, within three months, I realized that I could not serve my consumer honestly when I had to run to another job. The truth is that you just don’t care much about the consumer if you’re not committed and working a real estate at least 50 hours a week. If you have to start part-time, give yourself a deadline to become full-time. Managers, don’t hire without that dead-line in writing. You’ll be wasting your time training and coaching.
2.  Not getting a commitment from your manager that he/she will consistently and frequently coach you to a game plan. If your manager can’t rise to that level of commitment, how successful to you think your manager intends you to be? (Side note to managers: I believe you need to be 100% committed to your agents, or else the likelihood they will fail is 100%. Use a precise, consistent, proven game plan like the 3^rd edition of Up and Running in 30 Days to put your agent to work, and coach your agent with Managers: Putting Up and Running to Work, now in its 3^rd edition to match the new, expanded agent’s start-up plan.)
3. Thinking that the best commission plan is the best place to work. As the old song says, “Nothin’ from nothin’ is nothin’.” You need to sell lots of real estate—lots and lots of real estate. Choose the place where you think that will happen. New agents who figure out they only have to sell three homes a year to pay those fees are thinking like losers.
4. Not investing in the business until they ‘get successful’. When would that be? Why do you get to be successful without an investment? With that attitude, how are you going to compete with those great agents—and how are you going to meet those amazingly high consumer expectations?
5.  Going into the business to see if they like it. I’ll bet 50% of new agents don’t really go into the business to make it a career. They go into the business to ‘try it out’. If that’s your attitude, how do you expect your manager and your company to be 100% committed to you, when you’re 25% committed?

A Great Manager Plus a Great Plan Plus Accountability = Success

Harsh words above, but true.  If you want to succeed, find a great manager who will coach you and hold you to a start-up plan. Find a manager who will tell you the truth—even when you don’t want to hear it! Find a manager who is 100% committed to you, and you will be one of those 50% who survive their first years, and go on to great careers.

The Frank Sinatra Syndrome: Doing it ‘My Way’

We all want success easily. We all want to ‘do it our way’. And, if we’re honest, in our quest for easy success, we’ll all done dumb things. That is, we realized they were dumb—after the fact. So, just because I’m picking on new agents here doesn’t mean I haven’t done many more than just ten dumb things! I’m listing these here, though, to help you avoid the mistakes I made as a new agent, and the mistakes I’ve observed thousands of new agents make over the years I’ve managed, trained and coached.

Some Mistakes Cost us All Lots of $$$$

Some dumb actions don’t cost us much, but, when an agent fails, it costs money to everyone—agents, offices, and consumers. It’s estimated that it costs a manager $15,000-30,000 for every agent hired who fails! So, that agent isn’t a profit-center, she’s a cost center! In addition, an agent who fails spends at least $5000-15,000 just in ‘subsidized living’ and real estate expenses the first three months in the business. Finally, the consumer loses, because the agent is out of the business before serving the consumer.  

Heads Up

New agents don’t come into the business to fail. But, they don’t realize the effort and skill it takes to succeed. In addition, there are increasingly difficult challenges for new agents:

1. The gap between consumer expectations and agent performance is widening quickly and dramatically. New agents must have better training, coaching, and commitment from their brokers.
2. The market in most areas has become more challenging, so new agents can’t get those ‘easy sales’.
3. The committed, career-oriented agent is taking much more of the market share.

It’s estimated that 50% of new agents fail and get out of the business in their first year, and 75% are out in two years. That seems to me a huge waste of resources—and a huge contributor to that expectations gap I listed above. We need to stop that attrition now. So, new agents, I’ve created a list of the ten dumbest things I’ve seen thousands do to fail themselves right out of the business. In this blog, we’ll investigate the first five:

1. Thinking that there are lots of ways to start the business. There aren’t. Real estate sales is sales, and sales is a numbers game. (Up and Running shows you exactly how to work those numbers to your benefit).
2. Thinking they don’t have to lead generate, because they’ll “do it differently.” Don’t talk to people consistently and in great numbers and you’ll be flipping burgers before you know it! (Not that there is anything wrong in flipping burgers, but you won’t be “selling real estate”.
3. Thinking that their manager or office or the Internet will supply them leads. If that were the case, your commissions would be much smaller.
4. Thinking that this business is about tasks and technology. It’s not. It’s about people relationships.
5. Treating the business like a ‘next’ business. It’s not about finding and selling a customer. It’s about finding and keeping the customer for long-term referral business.

How many of these dumb things have you done? In truth, we learn from our mistakes. It’s not what we do wrong. It’s what we continue doing wrong. I wrote Up and Running to cut your ‘mistake time’!

In my next blog, we’ll investigate the remaining mistakes. What did I miss?

So, do we need to get a move on and stop nurturing those sacred cows?

We real estate professionals are creatures of habit. One of our favorite sayings is “we’ve always done it that way”. Or, “it won’t work in my area.” However, in this time of great change, we must take a hard, honest look at how we do business—and ask ourselves if it’s really in our best interests to continue that business practice. This is an especially important thing to do right now, as we head into winter, and start to think about business plans.

What’s a ‘Sacred Cow’ Anyway?

So, let’s get right to the looking. To do this, let’s use the ‘sacred cow’ approach. What is a ‘sacred cow’? In animal life, is a “plodding, bovine mammal of numerous stomachs and dubious intelligence regarded in some climes as holy in origin and therefore immune from ordinary treatment.” In business, it’s “an outmoded belief, assumption, policy, system, or strategy, generally invisible, that inhibits change and prevents responsiveness to new opportunities.”

Some Sacred Cows That Need to be Put to Pasture

If you’re newer to real estate, you may not realize that our industry even has   ‘sacred cows’. That’s when you should be extra cautious. So, heads up.

Here are four sacred cows that real estate professionals need to examine for their viability (and perfect for reviewing your business plan):

            1. ‘If you don’t list, you don’t last’. How much money did you spend on listings last year? How fast did they sell? Change that sacred cow to “if your listings don’t sell, you don’t last!

            2. ‘The best way to establish trust is to have all the answers’, Are you talking too much and finding out later that you’re missing a critical piece of information about your buyer or seller? Quit talking and start asking great questions. Take the ‘consultative’ approach.

            3. ‘Any client/customer is better than none’. Really? How much time are you wasting with buyers who can’t or won’t buy—and sellers who won’t list at the right price? Change your paradigm to ‘I work with people who value my time.’

            4. ‘An experienced agent doesn’t need a visual presentation’. Sure. They’ll believe what I say if I just talk a lot. Not anymore. Substantiate your claims of excellence with sophisticated visuals such as testimonials and statistics. That’s professional sales. We believe what we see, not what we hear, should be your new presentation mantra.

Taking the ‘sacred cow’ approach at least yearly is the way you can assure your business strategies are up to date. You can’t afford to put your head in the sand as changes are occurring with warp speed around you! Are you ready to kill your sacred cows—or, at least, put them out to pasture?

Hey–what are some of the sacred cows I didn’t mention?