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?

When I phone an agent today, I have no idea where that agent will answer his or her phone—or from what phone the call is being answered. And, I don’t really care. Technology allows the phone to follow the agent. That’s great. Here’s what’s not so great. Many times the agent’s message is so dull, powerless, or mumbled that it doesn’t sound as though the agent wants to talk to me. Or, the agent’s message is so long, that I’m impatient by the time I get to leave the message.

What Impact Do You Want to Make?

Surveys show that consumers want their agent to be enthusiastic. So why do many of the agents’ phone messages sound as though they are terribly tired or uninterested in the caller? Here’s the principle.

We use our senses to make snap judgments about people.

The less senses involved, the more important it is that we communicate properly. On the phone, there is only once sense involved—that of hearing. You have no ability to communicate your warmth, your interest, etc. visually on the phone. You have only your voice.

Decide What You Want to Communicate

What conclusions do you want your caller to have about you? Write down the five most important judgments you want your caller to make about you and your business approach. Now, listen to your own voice message. Do you believe you are communicating your ‘best self’? Ask five other people to listen, too. Decide what you like and what you want to change.

Research your Competition

Don’t listen only for your own communications. For three days, listen carefully to the tone, intent, and messages you hear on answering machines or voice messages of other agents and brokers. Listen carefully to how agents answer the phone at their offices. What do you think those agents are communicating? Do you believe they are communicating the kind of qualities they want to communicate—and think they are communicating?

Four important tips to remember when recording your own message:

1. Stand up—you’ll sound as though you have much more energy.
2. Write out your script first—and be sure it’s not too long. I don’t really care where you’re going to be all day!
3. Modulate your voice pleasantly. Try to get some resonance.
4. Sound as though you’re looking forward to hearing from me!

These simple tips will increase your trust rate and your business. Get to ‘hearing’ today! Best news for budgeting agents: This tips cost you nothing, but reap you great benefits. First impressions: Create your best phone voice.

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!

Is your listing process focused on the best interests of your client? The five questions below will help you evaluate your process, and update it for today’s client.

The “Client-Centered” Approach

If what the client wants from us is a “sold” sign on the property, and that’s the only way they rate us highly, then, we must change our methods of listing and marketing properties to create higher levels of customer satisfaction. By the “client-centered” approach, I mean to keep the client’s best interest first at heart—not the agent’s!

Here are five questions to ask yourself, to see which kind of process you use—and tips to change your process to true ‘client-centered’.

1. Do you have an ‘information-loaded’, prioritized listing system? If you don’t have a complete process, you aren’t instilling trust and confidence in the seller.

2. Do you educate from the beginning, or do you just sell, sell, sell (tell) ? A pre-first visit package educates seller and shows your professionalism.

3. Are you a ‘property information gatherer’ or a ‘people consultant’? An in-depth questionnaire focusing on their needs proves you care more about them than getting a sign on the property.

4. What’s your objective? The statistics prove that most agents’ objective is to list the property. That is not in the client’s best interests. To change to client-centered marketing, you must focus on listing only saleable properties.

5. Do you provide the seller a written marketing plan? A professional marketing company always provides the plan in writing. Shouldn’t you?

Catch Up with the Business Principles and Trends

The principles I’ve outlined above are reflected in the bigger, and more real, world of international business. They’re how you and I like to be treated as real people. Step your business up to the next level now by catching the trends, not by trying to copy what worked in yesteryear.

For a method to polish your presentations for today’s challenging clients, 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!

• has been in the business three to five years and seems real committed and enthusiastic,
• has completed higher level training (Graduate REALTORS® Institute and Certified Residential Salesperson—both REALTOR®-sponsored educational series for real estate agents, which include sales and technical skills),
• has completed an average of 10 to 20 sales per year or more (working with buyers),
• has letters of recommendation and a list of people I could contact,
• has a portfolio or brochure, with stated mission and values,
• specializes in areas where I want to look,
• has time to put me first, within reason,
• doesn’t delegate me totally to an assistant,
• seems strong enough to tell me the truth, even if I don’t like it
• explanations about agency relationships and how they work are clear and concise,
• has high standards for choosing buyers,
• demonstrates strong communication skills, and
• seems to match my business values.

 How many of these qualifications do you meet? If you don’t meet them, how can you ‘equal’ them with your other great qualities and skills?

Agents Sure Responded to Me

I was really shocked when I started getting phone calls and emails from agents, protesting that I was too stringent in my qualifications. The key here, though, is not to feel you can’t do a great job for a consumer without some of these qualifications, but to figure out what you DO bring to the table.

Expected, or Exceptional?

Unfortunately, too many of us in services businesses think that we are providing exceptional service–while the consumer rates those services as ‘expected’.

So, my question to you is: What’s your list of qualifications, and how can you get to the ‘exceptional’ level?

For more information on personal promotion, see Your Professional Portfolio. There’s also information on personal promotion in Up and Running in 30 Days.

Webinar note: Want help in business planning? I’ll be doing a webinar for the National Association of Realtors’ Learning Library Oct. 29 at 1 p. m. EDT (10 a. m. PDT). Click here for more information.

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?

 I’ve compiled 10 questions you should ask yourself. In the last post, I gave you the first five.  In this post , I’ll give you the rest of the questions.

Ask yourself:

1. Do I know how long it will take to get a sale? To get a listing? To get a listing sold? (so you can project your income) (New agents tend to wait, and wait, and wait, to get into the business ‘stream’, thinking that there is no time frame to buyers’ decisions—wrong!)

Key point: Use the time lines in Up and Running to project your income. You don’t want to run out of money before you run out of time!

2. Do I have a method of setting goals and tracking accomplishments in the areas above—so I can analyze my specific strengths and challenges in this business? (Most agents never track what they do, so they don’t know what worked—or why what they’re doing isn’t working).

Key point: If you know how many listing appointments it takes, for example, for you to list one marketable property, you can project with confidence your income. You have truly become independent.

3. Do I have a budget so I know how much money I should be spending in marketing myself/marketing my listings?

Key point: Creating a marketing budget from day one assures you get paid for all that work you’re doing in lead generation (Up and Running has a prototype marketing plan for you, too).

4. Do I have someone to talk to regularly, to coach me, to keep me on track, and to help me if I fall off my start-up plan (to keep me from failing)?

Key point: Most new agents drastically over-estimate their mental toughness in the face of adversity. Studies show that having a mentor, a coach, someone on your side, greatly increases the chances of your success.

5. Do I have a method to keep myself motivated and inspired to keep on keeping on (like a coach or your manager)?

Key point: All the successful people I’ve ever met have a method to ‘keep themselves up’—diaries, logs, inspirational notebooks, readings, CDs, etc. That’s why I put so much inspiration and motivation in Up and Running—we all need it!

Give yourself every chance to succeed to answering ‘yes’ to all of these ten questions. You deserve success! Quit stumbling and get Up and Running!

 I’ve compiled 10 questions you should ask yourself. In this post , I’ll give you the first five questions.

Ask yourself:

 1. Do I have a ‘start-up’ plan—a plan that tells me what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why to do it? (Or, do I just come to the office and ‘go with the flow’)

Key point: This isn’t an ‘on accident business’ anymore!

2. Am I waiting for someone to tell me what to do each day, or do I have focus and purpose with my plan? (it doesn’t work to ask your manager what to do each day, and, as a newer agent just told me, your manager answers, “Mail some postcards.” You wouldn’t expect a Starbucks franchise to ‘guide’ the new franchisee that way, and you’re not going to get a business start with that kind of piecemeal ‘advice’!)

3. Do I have a daily schedule that is prioritized with the business actions most important to me to assure I make money? (If you’re just relying on your office for its floor time and meeting schedule, or, worse yet, those awesome (ha!) Internet leads, you aren’t in the business!)

Key point: You should be scheduling at least 75% of your time. (the other 25% may be scheduled by your office—meetings, etc.)

4. Do I know the best methods of lead generation—and how to implement them? (You can’t wait for ‘training’ that starts in 3 months to start your business!)

5. Do I know the numbers? (how many contacts does it take to get a lead, how many leads to get an appointment, how many appointments to get a listing, showing, how many showings to get a sale, how many marketable listings will sell) (If you don’t, you are destined to be an ‘on accident’ agent—only selling someone something when the stars are aligned).

Key point: Knowing your conversion numbers puts you in the driver’s seat and allows you to really be independent—your own manager.

 If you can’t answer the questions above with authority and confidence, you need much more business direction than you’re getting now. It’s time for you to get serious about real estate as a business, and grasp a start-up plan and the support you need to assure your success. Quit stumbling and get ‘up and running’!

How a Homeless Girl Got to Harvard

Khadijah Williams’s mother was last spotted living in a storage unit in Los Angeles. But, Khadijah isn’t living there. She’s on her way to Harvard. What an improbable—yet inspiring—story. For as long as she can remember, she and her family, consisting of her mother, and her sister, have drifted from one homeless shelter to another. Yet, she’s still not drifting. And, she’s not just graduating from high school, or getting an entry-level job, or going to a community college, she’s actually enrolled in Harvard. (Don’t get me wrong. It’s a terrific feat to go from homeless to a job, or to graduate from anything. But, Harvard?…..)

Where did Khadijah Get Her Tenacity? 

What aspects of Khadijah Williams’s life caused her to veer off the homeless, dependent path and toward higher education? Who inspired and motivated her?

 Five exceptional points stand out from her story:

 1. Hear the positive about yourself 

Someone told Khadijah she was smart. In the third grade, she scored in the 99^th percentile on a state exam. Her teachers told her she was gifted, and put her in special programs—even though her schooling was intermittent—and she moved schools constantly.

 Question: Are you able to block out the negative and focus on the ‘positive you’?

 2. Believe in your unique talents and skills 

Khadijah believed in herself because she believed what her teachers told her about herself—the positive.

 Question: Do you have the tenacity to turn the positive comments into unshakable belief?

 3. Seek out encouragement/inspiration from mentors  

Khadijah realized she couldn’t do it herself, and sought out organizations and mentors.

 Question: Do you seek out mentors who encourage and inspire you?

 4. Never give up    

Fueled by her belief in herself and the faith others had in her, Khadijah developed unbelievable tenacity to put herself into programs, stay in school, and ignored the taunts of the other students (you’re homeless, you can’t do this, etc., etc., etc.)

Question: How long are you willing to fail to succeed?

 5. Create your own environment  

Even though her mother and sister continue to live the homeless lifestyle, Khadijah has never blamed her relatives or her environment.

 Question: How good are you at putting yourself around winners/

 Yes. It’s a challenging market. But, if this homeless girl with absolutely none of the advantages almost all of us have can put these five attributes to work and step so very far out of her comfort zone, our challenges don’t look so huge, do they?

 Who/what inspires you? Let me know who and what inspires you and why by putting a comment on either of my blogs on this subject (1-2 paragraphs, please).   

And, the winner is……I’ll pick three inspiring comments, and send each of you a complimentary copy of Your Professional Portfolio, which helps you choose your best skills and talents and shows you how to share them with your clients to create loyalty.

 Deadline: Sept. 10. I’ll let everyone know who wins, and I’ll publish the inspirations for everyone in a later newsletter (and probably a blog).    

 Managers’ tip: Why not do this as an exercise with your agents? You’ll inspire them and re-light the fires of desire so they’ll be eager and enthusiastic to do what needs to be done to get back into the action.

 Read Khadijah’s entire article here.

Who’s inspiring you?