Most people are programmed to fail, but NOT you!
This post is prompted by some statistics I just received, and it really did surprise me. Not too long ago, I released a couple of real estate training videos I recorded that teach real estate agents how to build a website for free, and get it set up to bring in 50 to 100 new buyer leads every month. Doing the math, an agent could earn $50k to $100k a year from this number of leads. If they follow everything in the videos, it costs about $10 a month. The other thing you should know is that these videos show exactly what I did to get started, and I literally sold millions of dollars of real estate a year from the exact same sites. I built my entire real estate business around that basic marketing plan, and profited greatly from it. Heres the results of my video give away:
Several hundred people signed up and downloaded the videos so far.
Based on my tracking software (it shows me how many people used my links to set up an account), 1 person followed through and set up a site.
Here is the question. Did my methods seem too good to be true because I gave them away for free, or were 99.9% of the people that downloaded it too lazy to follow through? If you downloaded the videos, don’t be offended! I’d actually like to hear your viewpoint.
Imagine you find a pile of gold. At least it looks like gold. But then you tell yourself there is no way you could have discovered real gold before someone else got it.
You feel stupid for even thinking it could have really been gold. So you leave it sitting there, in the gutter on the side of the road. The next day on the news, you see that someone found a pile of gold worth $125,000 sitting in the gutter. They couldn’t believe that nobody found it before them. It’s the exact gold you walked away from because you didn’t bother to see if it was real or not, even though it wouldn’t cost anything. Think about it. We are all guilty, but next time something comes up, you just might make a better decision.
PHOTO BY: tao_zhyn
Killing cows for success and freedom
(Photo by: skittzitilby)
Have you killed a cow lately?
I don’t care how you did it, I just want to know if you killed a cow. If you did, I salute you. I personally have had several chances to do this in recent times, and even a couple in the last 24 hours. The sense of relief you feel afterwards is truly amazing, and you are able to look at the world with a new clarity. Let me explain what I am talking about.
Yes, the cow is a metaphor, but a freakin good one!
Yesterday I took my two young boys to Barnes and Noble book store. As I usually do, I grabbed a couple of random books that looked interesting, and then took the kids over to the children’s area. One of the books was “Once Upon a Cow” by Dr. Camilo Cruz.
I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but the cow turns out to be a metaphor for things in your life that hold you back. Don’t stop reading yet, there is a little more to it than you think. Most of you will instantly realize that an excuse not to succeed would be referred to as a cow. Like saying “I’m too busy with work to properly diet and lose weight.” You get the idea. The brilliant part of this story that made it worth sharing (in my opinion) is that being comfortable can also be a cow. In the story, a very very poor family in a poor town owned a very nice cow. They focused all of their efforts on the cow, and even their neighbors and others in the town that were better off financially were quite envious of the cow. Well, one day the cow passed away (you have to read the book to get the details, but let’s just say “passed away” is a mild way to put it). As it turns out, even though the cow was they best thing they owned, once it was gone they had to spend their time and effort on something else. In a short period of time their lives became much more successful and full.
Now think about your own life. Are you in a job that is just OK? It pays the bills, and you get a couple weeks of vacation, but you are far from your dream lifestyle. You are comfortable enough not to put in the effort to change, but will never be completely happy. Maybe you have told yourself it is good enough, or just be happy with what you have. That is a cow. What would happen if that was eliminated and you had to move on???
I suggest reading this story. If you don’t want to buy it, go to the library, or just go sit at the bookstore and read it. I had many more excuses myself than I ever would have even realized, and in one day have made some major changes that will impact my life in a huge way. Stay tuned to find out.
Real Estate Lead Generation Plan
(Image by: www.lumaxart.com.)
A large portion of my business requires me to generate leads for real estate agents and real estate investors (or more precisely, set up automated systems that do this). Many of those in the real estate business don’t know where to start, or even exactly what potential prospects they are looking for. Here is a simple checklist I go through to set up a real estate lead generation plan:
Determine what your ideal client is. OR, read it this way: What type of client will earn you the most money in the least amount of time?
If you have been in the business for awhile, you should be able to look back and see what deals were the easiest, and what took the longest. Is their a pattern? If you are new to the business, do your research. Ask others that are more experienced. My advice for real estate agents is to get listings. Target neighborhoods in the mid price range to upper price range. I try to stay away from the lowest price range neighborhoods when working with a commission based on a percentage. If your business model is flat fee, the price range of the neighborhood won’t matter as much.
The reason I say target listings first is that listing bring buyers. They call on your signs. They call on your ads. And now you have something to advertise. If you have 20 listings, and properly advertise them with just yard signs and free on the Internet (try craigslist.com) you can bring in hundreds of buyer leads.
Determine your marketing strategy based on your budget.
I am a fan of maximizing your marketing budget, and for a long time had a $0 marketing budget but still brought in a very substantial number of leads. If you have the money, hire a reputable company or person to set up an online marketing campaign for you. Just remember this, if they are trying to sell you on new technology and all the latest and greatest flashy website designs, they are probably going to charge you way too much. The best sites for finding new clients are simple and straight forward. They provide a specific solution for a specific need. For example: You are looking for first time buyers. All 1st time buyer advertising you put out directs buyers to a page on your site titled: Important information for first time buyers. With the correct call to action, a high percentage of viewers will contact you.
If you are starting with a small budget or zero budget, there are ways to get going. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, craigslist, and many other ad sites are completely free. Even if you don’t have any properties of your own yet, ask around in your office and see if anyone will let you post their properties to bring in some leads for yourself. I recorded a video on how to use craigslist and Blogger to set up a free marketing campaign that works really well. You can get it free here.
Conclusion
Always work backwards when creating a marketing campaign. Decide who you want to work with. Then determine exactly what they are looking for. Next, find the best way to get that in front them. And finally, have a good lead follow up system in place to maximize your conversion rate.
Can one little movement change everything?
The way you view life, business, or just about any other situation depends completely upon your perspective. One day, you may be completely certain that you are right, and someone else is wrong. The next day that may be completely turned upside down. Take a look at this video for an example of how something can seem one way, but with a small change in perspective you realize it is not at all what it seemed.
Of course, everything is not an illusion. I simply bring this up because there are certainly many times in life where things seem one way, but even the smallest adjustment in your perception could make the entire situation look completely different. This is important in problem solving. Whether in business or in your personal life, taking a few “steps” in either direction may give you a much better understanding of the situation. And chances are at that point you will look at the whole thing differently. Sometimes the hardest part is to let go of what you thought was right, and now base your future actions around this new found reality. Did you make mistakes that now need repaired? Did you give up on a dream or major business goal, but with this new perspective realize you should have gone through with it?
Play around with this idea on many different aspects of your life. Try to look at things through the eyes of your friends, your family, your coworkers. View everything from a different angle. You will be surprised to see that almost everything is different than it first appears. Sometimes better, sometimes not.
What is your priority?
photo by: Lazurite.
Sometimes life, business, work, and everything in between can become a big jumbled mess of over-activity. It is during these times that your productivity drops, and the overall quality of your life can start slipping. When you just simply have too many things trying to take up your time, it is extremely critical to begin prioritizing and putting things in their proper place.
I always suggest writing things down. It is easier to gain clarity this way. So take a few minutes and write down every activity in the last week that took up your time. After you have a through list, read through it, and find the 5 most important activities. A few I personally would put at the top are: Spending quality time with friends and family, generating income, and exercise. Add these to a new list under “top priority”.
Next, look back at the first list again. Find five items that are not important, or that you could live without doing. Be honest with yourself. If you are unsure of something, put it to the test. Ask these questions: If I stop doing this, will something bad happen that I can’t fix another easier way? How much value is this adding to my life? Is it taking away time from my top 5 priorities? As you find the bottom 5, just go ahead and cross them out. They are out of your life. Feel the relief?
The rest of the items from the first list are the low priority items, but you have determined they are activities that need to be done. Ideally, see if any of these can be combined, or even outsourced. Also, think about batching activities together. For example, only get groceries once every two weeks. On the same trip, drop off or pick up dry cleaning (choose a dry cleaners that is on your way to the grocery store). A simple example, but you get the idea. Planning and scheduling things together this way will save you a lot of time that can be used on higher priority items.
Keep the list you created, and be sure to reevaluate it monthly. As your life changes, so will your priorities.
The first (and most important) steps to becoming a Realtor
(Photo by: Christmas w/a K)
Since I have been consulting with so many Realtors lately, I have noticed a very defined pattern. Most Realtors started out not really knowing how they want to set things up. Many of those that have done well in the industry are still using the haphazard business structure they started out with when they had no clients. By helping them update their business systems, many of these agents are able to double or triple their sales without adding any additional staff members. What???!!! Yes, it really is true. It is too easy to let a business continue to run inefficiently. If it’s not broke (and making money) don’t fix it, right? I don’t agree with that at all. What if you could take one single day of changing a few systems, and increase yearly profits by 10%? It’s a no brainer.
New agents read this: You are at the beginning. You have a chance to do it all the right way from the start. And if you do, you will make it to the top a whole lot faster. The first thing I want you to do is read the article about the top mistakes new agents make, then come back and finish this article.
Now that you know what not to do, it is time to build a solid foundation. I don’t want you to take forever to try to set up things perfect, but having some sort of structure in place is extremely important for you to get on the right path. And it is important to have the at least some of these systems in place before you put too much effort in to getting new clients. Let’s start with the basics so you can get on your way. I am going to assume your budget for anything is pretty close to zero at this point, so let’s focus on things that are free, or close to it.
Getting Started
Dedicated Business Line. I think it is stupid to use your cell phone number as your business line, yet most agents do it. I don’t want you to put it on your signs, or your business cards. This is a huge bottleneck holding you back from huge success. Why is that? Because all of the calls come to you! When you become extremely successful, will you have time to answer 150 phone calls a day? NO WAY! I’ll assume for now you don’t want to pay the phone company for a separate line, so here is my suggestion:
Use a phone service that will forward your calls to whatever number you choose. Google Voice (Is currently in beta right now), is a free service that will do that for you. It will also transcribe your voice mails and email or text them to you. That is a huge time saver. There are also other slightly more advanced virtual phone systems you can use for a pretty small monthly fee. Many of them have the option of adding extensions that callers can dial, music on hold, forwarding to multiple land lines and cell phones, etc… FreedomVoice is one of these services, and if you search on Google, there are a ton more.
This gives you a couple advantages. Even if it is just you working alone, people get the impression of a larger business. Advantage number two is that you can answer less calls. Advantage number three is that you can forward the calls wherever you I want. FOr instance, you could forward it to a professional 24 hour call center that will answer all your calls for you. Or you could forward it to your assistant. The point being, when the time comes, it is easy to take yourself out of the phone answering position, which is a HUGE waste of time. If 20% of your phone call leads end up being qualified to buy a house from you, the other 80% of those calls you are answering are wasting your time, and you are too important for that.
Lead Follow Up. I would be willing to bet 90% of real estate agents WASTE UP TO 80% OF THE LEADS THEY GET. Of course not all of them would have converted to sales, but a portion would have. What do I mean by wasting leads? I am talking about all the sticky notes stuck on your keyboard and computer monitor. The buyer that couldn’t get a loan for another couple months. The seller that was going on vacation, but was going to sell after they get back. Oops, you forgot to call them back? Even buyers that are a year away from buying should be important to you. With the proper system in place, YOU will be the one that sells them a house when they are ready. And it really doesn’t take any extra work to track these leads if you have a system in place.
There are tons of contact management programs you can buy, or pay a monthly fee to use online. I won’t go in to details here, but take a look if that interests you, they really can be a great time saver. If you want a free quick solution right now, read on:
Create a spreadsheet. Name each column with information you need to fill in about your leads. Col 1: First Name, Col 2: Last Name, Col 3: Phone, Col 4: Email, etc… You also need columns for date of original contact, and dates calls were made to them. Make sure you have space for notes on the person. If this is someone that won’t be ready to buy for a year, you will need details to remember who they are (be sure to keep in touch with them, don’t wait a full year!) As each lead comes in, put it in to the spreadsheet. As soon as that is done, pull up your outlook calendar. If the person will not be ready to buy a house for a month, schedule a call in 2 weeks to follow up. It will pop up on your calendar, so you won’t forget. Refer back to the spreadsheet to look up the details on the person. This is a really simple and basic way to make sure you follow up on leads. It will need upgraded later, but is actually amazingly efficient. It is really important to have this system in place before you get a lot of leads, otherwise you will end up wasting a lot of them.
If you don’t have spreadsheet software, or a calendar, there are tons of free options. Go to download.com to search for some. If you prefer to work online, try Google Docs. This also makes it easy to share specific files and schedules with other people, even if they are not in the same physical location as you.
Company Policies.
This is so important, you CAN NOT SKIP THIS SECTION. Too many agents act like this: “Hello, I’m just some random person that sells real estate. What do you want me to do for you? When do you want me to call you with updates? Oh, you want me to cut my commission in half? Let me think about it, I’m not sure… Hmmm, I guess that’s OK.” Anyway, you get the picture. DON’T TREAT THIS AS ANYTHING OTHER THAN A BUSINESS. YOU ARE RUNNING A REAL ESTATE SALES BUSINESS, EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY EMPLOYEES.
You need to WRITE DOWN your company policies, and stick to them. Let me give you a few suggestions.
- Have set hours. For instance, you don’t work Sundays, and you only have 2 days during the week that you can do appointments after 6pm. Set your schedule, and give the clients an option of which works best, but don’t give in and set appointments on your scheduled time off. You should also have at least one day a week that you schedule an office day, and don’t allow any appointments. Hold yourself to this. 99% of the time, the client will be able to make something work to fit in to your schedule.
- Require Buyers to get Pre-Qualified. Do you have any idea how many times I dropped everything I was doing, drove across town to show a buyer a house, only to find out their credit was trash and the mortgage broker ran the other way? I used to do that all the time. Any time someone wanted to see a property, I showed it to them. Here is how this should work:
You run through a simple call script with everyone that wants to see a property. Here are a couple critical questions that should be on the script:
Do you plan to purchase with cash, or will you be getting financing? (If financing, go to next question)
Are you currently pre-approved for a loan with a bank or mortgage broker? (If yes, they are good to go! If no, next question.)
I work with a mortgage broker that is extremely good at what he does, and he’d be the best guy around to answer all of your financing questions. With your permission, I’ll have him give you a call right away. (Notice I don’t give his number to them. I only work with reliable mortgage brokers that will call the client the same day, or the very next at latest. I would guess they are 90% more likely to talk to your mortgage broker if the broker is calling them.)
So now you have them pre-qualified (or you don’t, but now you aren’t showing them a house they can’t buy), and you can proceed to show them a house.
Have a written script for everything. Literally type out your scripts word for word, and refine them until they are near perfect. You need scripts for calling seller leads back. One for if they answer, and one for if you leave a voice mail. Have a separate script for buyers. Don’t leave this to chance. If you find out certain woring works better, update the script. This way you can pass on these tasks to an assistant later on.
Get Contracts Signed. I won’t get to upset if you show a pre-qualified buyer a house, maybe even two before you get a buyer agency contract signed, but that is the limit, and the less the better. Don’t risk showing them 30 houses and then have them sign a contract with a listing agent at an open house. This happens all the time. You don’t want to work for free do you? All you need to do is memorize a script that explains why you need them to commit to working with you, and ask them to sign. If they refuse, chances are you were going to have a problem anyway. Move on.
Create a policy for everything, and write it down. Some policies will be easy to come up with, and you’ll be able to get it written down before it ever even comes up. Others will have to be carefully thought out in response to certain situations. For example, what do you do if you listed a property, have an accepted offer, then an unexpected lien the seller has to pay shows up on the title work. In this scenario let’s say the seller was barely able to break even after paying off the mortgage, and has no money to bring to close. What do you do? Do you lower your commission to cover the unexpected fee? Do you try to get the buyer to up his offer a bit, or try to get the other agent to lower his commission a bit? Whatever you decide, write it down. And here’s a tip for that situation: If you don’t offer to cover the expense, 9 time out of 10 the seller will figure it out on their own.
That should be enough information to get you started. Be sure to sign up for my blog updates, they will get sent right to your email address.
