Sobering thought: If they don’t expect anything from you, how much effort will they put out to see you are successful?

The Ten Commandments

From working as an agent for 8 years, and managing agents for almost two decades, I’ve drawn some conclusions about the ‘turnabout’s fair play’ that I believe agents owe managers. I’ve also listed these in Up and Running in 30 Days, to give agents a ‘heads up’. I believe if managers are willing to give 100% support through training and coaching each agent to success, agents need to give it their best, too. Here are agents’ ten commandments:

1. Do the work. You know what it is!
2. Don’t argue.
3. Don’t make excuses for not doing your start-up plan.
4. Don’t tell the manager you’ve been in the business two weeks and you have a better way.
5. Do thank your manager frequently.
6. Do tell other agents that you appreciate your manager’s efforts.
7. Do tell other new agents you meet in other companies that you have a great manager.
8. Don’t bug other people in the office to find another answer because you didn’t like your manager’s answer.
9. Don’t change the Up and Running plan because you “don’t like it”. (You just don’t like lead generating, do you?)

10. Don’t miss a coaching appointment!

I’d love to hear what you think of my ‘ten commandments.’ Are there others you think are important? Before you hire on, get in writing exactly what your manager is going to do to assure your success, so you won’t have disappointments later. Getting agreement on what we both expect before deciding to work together is key to a happy partnership. The only surprises I want you to have after you start are good ones!

In his book on motivation, Daniel Pink says that we are motivated by either autonomy, mastery, or purpose. Here are questions to uncover what motivates you.

About Your Autonomy

Are you in charge of your own business, or are you waiting for someone else to tell you what to do?

Do you expect your manager to make you go to work, or are you self-directed and self-starting?

Are you disciplined in your business, so you can enjoy that autonomy?

Seth Godin, author of Tribes, says about autonomy: The art of the art {of autonomy} is picking your limits. That’s the autonomy I must cherish. The freedom to pick my boundaries.

Are you just playing at being your own boss? Do you expect someone else to hand you success? How much ownership have you really taken about that autonomy?

About your Mastery

Are you working just to get by, or are you consistently working to get better? What do you want to excel at? How does that translate into your business?

Have you ever done something to mastery? How did it feel? Is it important to you to do some things well? What things?

Have you considered mastering selling real estate?

About your Purpose

What excites you so much you can’t sleep at night?

Is there a way to translate that to your real estate business?

The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business. Teresa Amabile, Professor, Harvard University

As you can see, today, people are motivated by inner drives. How strong are these inner drives in you?

Question: What insights about your behavior did you get from this post? What do you want your manager to do to help you ‘drive’ your motivation to succeed? Is your manager helping you do that?

Ask your Interviewer: Five Critical Points

If you’re looking for effective training to get your career started fast, you need to choose a training program that has these features. So, in your interview ask the manager if the training program has these attributes:

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?

It is amazing to me that agents wait so long to get organized! I remember, though, how confused I was as a new agent. I just didn’t know what to do first. Luckily, though, I quickly found buyers and started selling homes. I’m going to tell you the bare truth: I was not organized, packaged, or, certainly—systematized!

You Can’t Go Very Fast Unless You Have Packages and Systems

What I found, very quickly, was that I had to have ready-to-use systems to serve buyers and sellers as fast as I wanted to move (I sold 40 houses my first year in real estate!). After years of working on them, I created packages for both buyers and sellers that work.

Here are the Packages you Need for Buyers

Your buyers’ system should include

• A Pre-First Appointment Information Package—to set you apart from the ‘pack’
• A Consultation Package (I’ve created one I call Your Guide to Purchasing a Home, available in my resource The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit)
• The Buyers’ System—a resource you provide only to those who sign a Buyer’s Agency Agreement with you, that takes the buyer much deeper into the process

Capture Buyers’ Loyalty and Respect

Creating your Buyer System not only raises your value dramatically to buyers, it creates a track for you and your team to run on. When you treat buyers with the care and systematization you show sellers, your buyer close ratios go way up, and your time management challenges diminish. Why not start competing with very seasoned agents with your own packages? You will greatly increase your confidence, and find the buyer trust you much more quickly.

A resource to cut your ‘learning time’ down dramatically:  Take a look at The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit. You can see a sneak preview of the complete toolkit there, too. Make a goal for yourself to get your buyers’ process systematized now, and enjoy the benefits.

The Ten Tips

1. Learn non-verbal skills and apply them in writing, on the phone, and in person to establish rapport in an increasingly ‘cold inquiry’ world.

2. We believe what others say about a salesperson, not what the salesperson says about themselves. Use testimonials; check evaluation websites to see what consumers are saying about you.

Check out www.realestateratingz.com and www.incredibleagents.com.

3. Create an after-the-sale survey and use it consistently. If there’s something wrong, fix it fast.

4. We believe what we see, not what we hear. Show, don’t tell. Use visual presentations consistently.

5. Flip your sales presentations. Ask questions—lots of questions—first. Educate. Finally, sell (well, you won’t have to sell).

6. Tell the truth attractively. Show evidence, don’t try to scare the client into action by predicting  the future.

7. Evaluate the client for long-term relationships. Is the client someone you want to add to your ‘tribe’?

8. Use ‘tough love’ with a client to tell the truth, turn down a client—to stay true to your values. Do what’s best for the client.

9. Re-cap. Regularly, stop and re-cap with the client. Do this, too, when you can’t meet client expectations.

10. Book of Greatness: Don’t brag about yourself in the middle of apresentation. Create a ‘Book of Greatness’ to use in your pre-first visit so your clients get to know you and your approach to sales.

Skill enhancers, time savers, and presentation builders:

See Your Professional Portfolio to assemble an effective ‘book of greatness.

See The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit* to assemble and present your presentations to buyers.

See Your Client-Based Marketed System* to create presentations and systems to work effectively with sellers.

See Objection-Busters for buyers and sellers to handle barriers to a sale.

*tested and recommended by CRS (Council of Residential Specialists)

If you’re a newer agent, I understand how difficult it is to organize that blizzard of information. And, admittedly, you’ll have to keep changing your organization as you progress. Yet, until you meet the organizational challenge, you can’t really move forward.

There are two reasons to organize.  The first is that it provides much better customer service. If I’m the consumer today, I want to know that you are trustworthy—that you’re good for your word. If I can see that you have systems, I know that you will have a much better chance of keeping your word to me. I’m using the word “see”, because we believe what we see, not what we hear.

The second reason is that it provides you much better time management. The agent’s biggest challenge is to find a way to make the same amount of money and quit working 24/7. Creating systems will take a long way toward that goal.

Take system inventory now.

Here are the minimum systems you need:

For sellers:

• Lead generating system (should be run with contact management software)
• Automated process for following the lead from first contact through listing
• Visual marketing presentation and a system for having them pre-done and always ready to go
• Pre-first visit presentation and a system to have them packaged, ready to use
• System for following the listing from first listed to after closing (can be automated with use of a contact management program)
• After close/client retention system (can be automated)
• Your personal marketing system—a marketing plan that can be automated and delegated to someone

For buyers:

• Lead generating system—driven by contact management
• System to follow the buyer from first contact to sale (can be automated)
• Visual buyer presentation—packaged and ready to use
• Pre-first visit presentation—packaged and ready to use
• Checklists: process during buying/before closing/after closing—client retention
• Your personal marketing system

How to begin. Real estate professionals are doers. We talk our way through processes.  We dread organizing things, and frankly, we’re not good at it. So, how do we begin?

Start with one system or process at a time. Make a list and prioritize it for the systems you need first. Put a date to start, and a date for completion (I know, there’s that organization again!). You’ll find that the first is the hardest, and then, it starts to actually get easy! It’s a skill like anything else. Bottom line: Systematization allows you to actually run a business, not just run after buyers and sellers.

Note: If you want to make it easy on yourself, get The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit and Your Client-Based Marketing System, the complete buyer and seller systems, with dozens of checklists, processes, and presentations already created for you.

Webinar on Motivating Yourself/Others

Motivational and inspirational webinar coming up for you: On March 17, at 2 P. M. EST, I’ll be doing a webinar for the NAR Learning Library, titled Light ‘Em on Fire: Newest Truths about Motivation. Click here for more information. Join me!

We’re Not Motivated by What We Think We Were…..

In his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink lays out a persuasive case, backed by extensive scientific studies, about why the traditional ‘carrot and stick’ motivational methods just don’t work for us today. It’s especially true with real estate professionals. Why? Because we in effect work for ourselves. We have to be self-starters, initiators, and tenacious in our pursuit of our goals. That means we have to be motivated by things other than promises of material things.

Why Money Doesn’t Work as a Motivator

First, as Pink points out, money and/or material things are good short-term motivators. (Read MacGregor’s and Herzberg’s studies on short and long-term motivation). In fact, just take a look at the number of real estate agents who are motivated to visit an open house when there’s food! But, as Herzberg and others have pointed out, money is a lousy long-term motivator. You know that if you’ve tried motivating your kids with money—or threats (the carrot and stick).

I know. You’re thinking, “If I just had more money, I would be fine.” So, let me ask you, what are you willing to do to get that money? Lead generate more regularly? Make more sales calls? We all know that lead generating is the answer to that money problem. Yet, the vast majority of agents avoid lead generating as if it gave us some chronic disease! So, money is just not an effective long-term motivator.

The Best, Deepest, Strongest Motivators We Can Use to Motivate Ourselves

Pink shows, via extensive studies, that there are three driving motivators which we should put to work today to fire ourselves up, keep those fires lit, and achieve what we want to achieve. They are:

1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose

Questions to Ask Yourself to Fire Yourself Up

About Your Autonomy

Are you in charge of your own business, or are you waiting for someone else to tell you what to do?

Do you expect your manager to make you go to work, or are you self-directed and self-starting?

Are you disciplined in your business, so you can enjoy that autonomy?

Seth Godin, author of Tribes,  says about autonomy: The art of the art {of autonomy} is picking your limits. That’s the autonomy I must cherish. The freedom to pick my boundaries.

About your Mastery

Are you working just to get by, or are you consistently working to get better? What do you want to excel at? How does that translate into your business?

About your Purpose

What excites you so much you can’t sleep at night? Is there a way to translate that to your real estate business?

The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business. Teresa Amabile, Professor, Harvard University

Webinar on Motivating Yourself/Others

More about effective motivation today: I’m doing a webinar on motivation for the National Association of Realtors on motivation–March 17, at 2 PM EST. Click here for more information.

Want expert, professional support and motivation? Check out our unique coaching programs. Click here for a complimentary consultation.

Are you using the old term, “listing presentation” to describe the presentation you give to the seller to list the home? It’s over. The days of describing what you’ll do for a seller as a “listing presentation” just don’t cut it in this marketing world.

Today, savvy agents are presenting “marketing plans”, not giving listing presentations. Why? Because you want to describe what you’re going to do for the seller in action terms. That’s your special marketing plan. To get the commissions you expect, you must compete on “added value” issues. That added value is all about you, not just about your company. These added values are best stated in your individual marketing plan. Here are 5 points to remember as you create your plan:

1. It’s an action plan—what you will do for the seller

2. It’s specific—it has dates for what will be done and who does it

3. It’s not about what the company will do—it’s about what you will do

4. It is stated either as a checklist, as a calendar of events, and demonstrated in your visuals.

5. It has a section on pricing, but the pricing, or market analysis, is only one part of the plan

Show Them or Tell Them the Plan?

We agent types like to talk. In fact, many of us became agents because people told us that, since we’re good talkers, we’d make great salespeople! That’s an old idea today. Why? Because consumers are over-whelmed with sales talk. The client today just doesn’t trust salespeople because they have a good ‘sales spiel’.

If you’re finding it increasingly difficult to list properties at the right price, it may be because you’re working too hard trying to talk the seller into it, and are not working hard enough to show a seller into it. Sellers, like all of us, believe what they see, not what they hear.

Go visual. Instead of trying to tell a seller what you know to be true, back up your statements with statistics, graphs, facts, etc. You do this already in your market analysis. But, most agents don’t do this with the rest of their marketing plans. Start now gathering information to back up your chosen marketing strategies. For example, if you’ve found, through your experience, that open houses do not sell that particular home, start keeping statistics of your open house visitors, their needs, and what happened to them during their buying cycle. You want to provide sellers the information they need to make good decisions, and to support your marketing plan.

Tell them What You’re Going to Do—Show them Why, and Show them What Worked

In a recent study of buyers visiting open houses, only seventeen percent accepted the claims of the agent holding the home open. The other eight-three percent sought a second opinion! So, back up your claims with testimonials, statistics, pictures, graphs, and history. You’ll see a dramatic rise in your marketable listings. You’ll have enthusiastic clients forever. You will have told the truth attractively!

For a complete sellers’ process, including marketing plans, see Your Client-Based Marketing System.

I’ve done surveys to managers and to newer agents about the value of their new agent training. I found a great disparity between what the managers thought, and what the new agents thought—six months after the training. So, I’m gathering information from the source—you newer agents—to find out what you found valuable, and what you wish you had experienced in training. I will also do the same from the management perspective.

Here are some things to think about:

How well did your training prepare you to give effective listing and buyer presentations?

How could it have prepared you better?

How well did your training prepare you to answer buyer and seller objections?

How well did your training prepare you with visual buyer and seller systems so you appeared to be a ‘seasoned agent’ to compete with the best?

How well did your training prepare you with the self-confidence to work with difficult buyers and sellers?

What did you want your training to do for you—before you entered that training?

After having been in the business awhile, what do you wish you had experienced during the training?

Did your training lay out a business start-up plan, and did it train and hold you accountable to that plan until you got results?

Did your training require you to demonstrate enough competency that you could effectively work with buyers and sellers?

How well did your training prepare you to write and negotiate purchase and sale agreements?

How well did your training prepare you to gain loyalty and buyer agency agreements?

What Else?

Please comment on the positives and negatives of your training, so I can better help managers and trainers prepare newer agents for the ever challenging markets and sophisticated buyers and sellers. Thank you!

                                        within your first month in the business. 

Are You Going to Hit the Ground Running?

 My assumption: You want a fast start! If you already have my business start-up plan, Up and Running in 30 Days, you know I start you right into the business so you can realize that sale within your first month. This is, unfortunately, very unlike the start most agents get (they get a very slow start—keep reading!).

 Your Manager’s Expectations May Surprise You

 Your expectations may vary from your manager’s expectations of you. If the new agent expects high earnings fast, what did his manager expect from him?  Most of the respondents from the survey didn’t know what their manager’s expectations were.  71% of the respondents didn’t know even the minimum expectations of their managers–the minimum production standards they would have to meet to have their contracts renewed the second year.

 Be Sure Your Manager’s Expectations Match Your Goals

 To assure that the new agent and manager see ‘eye to eye’, you need mutual expectations in writing prior to hiring on. You need to see the exact business activity plan you will be coached to. You also need proof that the plan works! What if your manager doesn’t care how fast you make a sale—or even that you make a sale? You need much more support than that.

Be sure your manager has expectations of you that you can fulfill, and that your manager will actively coach and support you to realize.  (Psst: Go ask NOW!) Now, get up and running to that first sale! (or more)