What Clients Really Want

As real estate agents we are professionals at knowing where a customer plans to move, when they need to be there, and how to make that happen. However, we rarely get at the true core of the process. Basically we provide a solution for finding places for people to live. To be really effective, though, we need to learn to find out the reason for each client’s decision to buy or sell. What we should really be asking is, “Why?”

By working to discover a client’s reason for buying or selling you are establishing a real relationship with that person. This level of connection is a vital part of your sales process that ensures that these clients will move forward with you as their service provider.

The primary stage in this sales process is problem identification, or need identification. Problems/needs include birth and death, marriage and divorce, relocation and financial gain. But the real, underlying reasons a client has for buying or selling a property often run deeper.

Once you establish a timeline for your client’s need to buy or sell then you have a solid foundation to work from, so one of the best questions you can ask is, “Why now?” Why has your client decided that now is the time to buy/sell/move/relocate? Knowing their core motivation and reasons for initiating this process will help you establish that timeline, define the kind of property they are selling or seeking, and help them succeed in accomplishing what they really want to achieve. This also shapes the way you interact with each individual.

Remember, too, to update and expand your database with the information you gather on your clients, and categorize them accordingly for effective and timely future communications with them.

All of this is about getting closer to your customers through asking better questions. Think in terms of placing words like why, when, how, where and who at the beginning of sentences in order to create queries. Also ask questions beginning with, “isn’t it,” “wouldn’t it,” “couldn’t it,” “shouldn’t it,” such as, “Wouldn’t it be great to be in your property by the time we get to Easter? When would you like to be in the home?”

You really want to become more personally engaged with your customers. Once you identify the problems they are trying to resolve, then you can provide truly outstanding services for them. Be thinking of ways you can more deeply communicate and engage with your customers. This will lead to more productive conversations with them that will establish you as a trusted consultant.

I hope you have enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip.

Tactical Processes for Building Your Profile

In real estate, you need to build a great profile. To do this, you must recognize that your profile is measured by the size of your network, and your network determines your net worth as an agent. Your network is not just about numbers, though – it’s about the quality of the relationships you have built in your community.

We have discussed categories within your database, what you do with those categories, and how you measure your growth as a result. One of your best categories for conversion to actual listings is your market appraisals list. These are people you know you can work with and are active in real estate. Of course, the market appraisals that are in your database now are only a starting point. To grow your business, you need to improve your buyer work in order to continuously find new sellers and property managers.

One of the basic questions you want to ask while prospecting is whether this is the buyer’s first, second or third purchase in the area. You are, of course, looking for the client who has made multiple acquisitions and therefore owns or manages properties they may eventually want to sell. These potential sellers will ultimately convert to market appraisals. However, if you don’t keep count of how many contacts you have in these categories, then you have no benchmark to accurately measure your growth and potential. Re-evaluating and re-categorizing the contacts in your database is a necessary, ongoing process.

You want to quantify your contacts at various stages in the sales cycle so that you know how to effectively work with them to build momentum. You can calculate your momentum by knowing how many listings you need, how many market appraisals it will take to make those listings, and how many potential sellers will likely convert to market appraisals. These calculations must be done regularly because the market is always changing and your benchmarks have to change with it.

Doing the tactical work of keeping current with market trends, plus evaluating clients and making the phone calls to work with them, is vitally important to driving the momentum you need in order to build a great profile and grow your business. Remember that every sale you have made is a potential future sale. Be sure to stay in touch with those buyers so you are there for them when they are ready to become sellers.

I hope you have enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you again next week.

Expanding Your Business Processes

When you begin to understand your business processes more completely, you can realize much greater success in the way you execute them. This is what our Coaching Tips email series is all about.

You know your database is central to doing business, but you may not be as actively engaged with it as you could be in your existing real estate campaigns. For instance, when you list a property you search your database for the buyers you know will likely be interested in it. What you may not think about, though, are all the people who live around that new listing, or who own property in the area, who also might want to know about it.

While you are doing the basic initial search for potential buyers, also use your database to list potential sellers, market appraisals, past clients, and landlords in the same area as your property listing. Contact those people, tell them the property is for sale, and ask them if they are interested in its value and final sale price. Also check on their own situation, because they just might be in need of your services, too.

When you start to think about your data this way, you are addressing three basic concepts:

How relevant are you to your customers?
It is quite relevant to contact a potential seller, a past market appraisal, a past client, or a landlord near this property to tell them about your listing in their area.

Are your customer contacts frequent enough?
Act according to the balance between frequent enough and too frequent by evaluating sales volume in a given area.

Are you building relationships through consistent communication?
By contacting all the key people in the area of each property you list and then sell, you stay relevant to all the people in your database and maintain those all-important relationships with them.

Agents have a tendency to focus on making new contacts, but it is vital that you stay in contact with the people you already know and keep those relationships active. It can mean the difference between a warm to hot campaign, or a cold campaign. As soon as you initiate the actual sale of a property, start prospecting: Make those calls to all potential sellers, all market appraisals, all past clients and all landlords in and near the area of the sale, and let them know how much the property sold for.

Staying active with current customers as well as new prospects keeps you relevant and drives the value of your business. You can also increase your open for inspections attendance by inviting all these people through during your conversations with them. This ensures that there will be other people present in the homes when an interested customer comes through, thus increasing perceived competition and sense of urgency to make a decision to buy. As a business building technique, understanding the process of geographic and relationship-based farming through expanded use of your database is clearly important.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. If we can be of assistance to you at a coaching or training level, feel free to email us. Thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Starting Strong In 2014

Gaining momentum in your business is your primary goal as you begin the new year. Already 2014 is shaping up to be a great year for market offerings and buyer interest. One of the best ways for you to start the year off right is by learning how to make the most of your open for inspections for prospecting lead sources.

The more open for inspections you can do on a Saturday, the more buyers and other prospects you will be able to work with for the rest of the week. Set a goal to get to five open for inspections each Saturday. If you have an assistant who can do them as well, try for ten. These numbers are achievable, and these open for inspections will put you solidly inside your core market meeting a lot of buyers every weekend, and will keep you working consistently within a scheduled routine.

Following a routine every day will ensure that you gain and maintain momentum. Scheduling a time to wake up, to arrive at the office, to start making calls, conduct meetings, get to the gym, etc. will ensure consistency and efficiency. Working in 45 minute sessions will also help you stay fresh and motivated. Many of the best agents start their work day by making a list of buyers, sellers and other prospects they will contact and what time to call them. The earlier you can start making those calls, the better chance you have to accomplish all of your goals for the day.

Success feels great, and the more you achieve the more you will want. Learning to measure your levels of success will show you exactly where you are and how to do better. Some ways to measure your success include logging the number of calls you make per day, the number of people you speak with, and how many appointments you make. Of course, your numbers of actual properties listed are a big measure of success.

You may not realize how important your physical fitness is to your effectiveness as a high-performance real estate agent, but it takes a lot of stamina to be highly successful in the real estate business. Being fit, healthy and energetic is vital to your success, not only toward carrying you through your busy schedule, but also in your ability to recover quickly and fully from the demands you make on yourself every day. Whether you run, do yoga, or train at a gym, fitness time needs to be part of your weekly schedule, too.

Of course, your most important step is to get started right now. The market is already active this year and it’s time for you to get active with it, doing what you love and generating business to grow on in the months to come.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. If we can be of assistance to you at a coaching or training level, feel free to email us. Thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Recognising the Four-Dimensional Client

When considering client categories inside your database, keep in mind that some individual clients actually belong in more than one category. What this implies is that your business should address them according to every area of the market where they are active, from sales to property management.

Let’s say you have a client who is a tenant in a couple of places, a landlord in a couple of other places, a buyer in one location and also a seller in that same location or elsewhere. All of your database categories relate to each other one way or another. Often that relationship comes together in a single customer. In essence this is a four-dimensional customer.

In real estate there tends to be a rivalry between sales teams and property management departments. These units could provide useful leads and resources for each other, but instead they fail to communicate or share information. Consider for a moment that a large client may have thousands of properties under management of which 8-9% will probably sell each year. Sales of those properties represent sales leads to the sales team, but the sales team rarely reciprocates with property management leads, even though they regularly receive that kind of information from owners and investors they meet at open for inspections. Your challenge is to bring your sales and property management teams together.

You can begin by establishing an in-and-out style leader board for numbers of referrals per month from each team to the other. Establish a measurement for referrals coming in from the sales team to the property management department, as well as referrals going out from property management to sales. In reality, you want more referrals coming in from sales than going out from property management. Remember, sales leads from property management to sales represent managed properties your business is losing, while sales of other properties represent income from those sales as well as new properties your business can now manage.

This is just one of many new ways to view the way the real estate industry works. Think how efficient it would be if a significant number of your sales leads came directly from property management. The only follow-up necessary would be to verify that the sellers are already owners in your market. Once you do that, you can contact those people and ask them if this is their first, second or third purchase. If it’s their second or third then you know they are potential sellers or landlords.

By establishing regular communications between teams, such as weekly emails to each other with greetings and a friendly reminder to share any leads they may run across, you set an expectation for referrals to be collected and shared. By breaking down the barriers between the sales team and property management department and getting them to work together, your business will become a truly full-service real estate business. In this way you will provide full customer service whether your customer is a buyer or seller, tenant or landlord, or all of the above.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Dealing Naturally with Objections

You know that objections are simply part of the sales negotiation process. But do you know how to handle them? It helps to realize that objections are natural whether you are working with buyers, tenants, landlords or sellers. They occur because the client has questions and concerns about the sales process and the outcomes that follow. Your job is to make them feel comfortable, confident and informed, and that they will get a better deal with you than they would elsewhere.

There is an effective conversational technique we use called the Why/If I/Will You/Why technique. Objections usually arise over your fees versus another agent’s fees – or selling fees, marketing fees, etc. The technique works by first asking the client why they think the other agent’s fees are lower. Then you ask, “If I could meet the other agent’s fee, would you use me as your agent? If so, why would you choose me over the other agent?” What this discussion does is identify the client’s real concerns. Usually you will discover that they have misconceptions about pricing or the sales process that you can address and then move forward. Of course, you can use another approach which is to simply disregard their objection and drive forward. This can actually create confidence for them by displaying confidence in yourself and your process. But you have to have real self-confidence to pull this off, otherwise you will come off as arrogant and insensitive.

Occasionally clients raise objections at the point of closure. Suddenly they want to wait, or they want to see another agent, or they want to take another day and get back to you. At this point the best you can hope to do is restore confidence with your client by using a technique called reappointing, which creates a sense of urgency and immediacy for the client. Tell them one of your other agents has an interested party who wants to see their home, and ask if they would be willing to stay with the process so that buyer can have a look.

Fundamentally, handling objections follows a natural progression. First, identify your clients’ needs. Next, present the features and benefits that relate to them individually. Then proceed into trial closing. This is where most objections appear, so you can handle them before continuing into final close. If you have been attentive with your soft closing from the start, you should have no problems by final closing.

You can also address any probable objections you know your clients may have by bringing them up yourself and addressing them before your clients raise them. For example, initiating a discussion around fee approximation will demonstrate how your fees are competitive within your marketplace, which puts any questions about fees on the table and resolves any qualms your clients may have about the value they are receiving by using your services.

Basically you must understand and work with what is happening with your client. Know where you are at each point. Experience will show you new ways to work with specific types of clients. Really think about what each customer is asking you when they present an objection. Remember that most objections will have to do with fees and costs, so you will want to demonstrate value and relevance within your marketplace. Remember that objection is natural, and address it in a natural way.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Optimizing Personal Productivity

This time of year more than any other, your ability to sustain a high level of personal productivity is vitally important. As year-end arrives, there are more demands on your time, longer hours and late night appointments. You want to start preparing for it now.

Three things you can do to fortify yourself for the drive ahead of you are to get enough sleep, eat consistently, and exercise regularly. As simple as this sounds, these are generally the first things you drop off your schedule as it fills up with business demands. The key to keeping up with these revitalizing acts is to make them routine. Make them part of the system your business functions around. They really are that important.

To maintain a high level of personal productivity, learn to focus only on work that actually gets results. Know what must get done each day and schedule for those things at the times you can best address them. Even the time you get to bed is vital for your system to work optimally. You know the time between 8am and 5pm is your window for working directly with clients, so schedule exercise and other work before and/or after that window. And schedule client time as well – for example, prospect in the morning and meet appointments in the afternoon.

You measure the success of your day by what you get done. It all comes down to listings, sales and income. Make a daily task list – it is much easier than making up your schedule as you go along, and it will keep you focused on doing what is truly important and not getting distracted. Measuring and managing those tasks is helpful when you are just starting out, but once you know what you need to get done in a day through experience there’s no reason to focus on numbers anymore when it’s results you ultimately need to see.

The one number you do need to be concerned with is the one that grows your business: Open for inspections. How many can you do on a Saturday? How many more can you do with assistants? Open for inspections per week determine your number of sales per month, so the more you can do, the more your business will grow. But your ability to do more open for inspections rests on how good your systems are. And those systems are built on established routines.

Make a task list every morning. Meet with your agents and establish goals and objectives for the day. Then get on the phone, get in front of clients – get right down to the important work. And at the core, make sure you are taking care of yourself so that you feel up to doing the work you must do. Which means, sleep enough, eat enough, and exercise. High energy is vital to personal productivity and, thus, to success. Work hard so you can afford to take time off to revitalize, and come back ready to work hard again. That cycle will insure your business will grow year after year.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Planning For Growth In Your Business

Every business needs a business plan, and your real estate business is no exception. Your business plan is a clear and detailed picture of your business. This is where you plan your strategy for success and plot the numbers that will show you how you are doing. This means knowing the numbers of houses and units that sell in your marketplace every year over a ten-year period, and deciding how many transactions you must complete in order to achieve the market share you want. You need to know the average sale prices and stock turnover in your marketplaces so you can focus your efforts on those that average both the highest numbers of sales and the highest prices.

The best times to review your business plan are at the end of the calendar year and the end of the financial year. You do this twice a year to make sure you are always in a pattern of growth and not sliding backward during any quarter. Reviewing this often also gives you a clear idea of what is working for you so that you can keep doing those things, or can change your strategies if they stop working. Your basic tools for growth include increasing your fees, selling more properties, or increasing your average sale price.

When you review your business plan, start by reviewing your current numbers over the past year – listings, sales and income generated. Review each month in detail and look for patterns of activity. Which months were slower, which were more successful, and what elements contributed to those levels of activity? You want to really understand what is working for you – or against you – and why.

In order to help you review your financials more effectively click here for our 2014Financials tool where you can enter your own numbers for current fees and income you want to generate, and get an estimate for the numbers of listings and sales you need to produce over ten months in order to reach your goals. We use a ten month calendar because you need two months worth of vacation, holidays and other time off. This time off is vital for you to rest, regroup, and stay healthy and motivated for the hard work you do the rest of the year. Set dates for your proposed days off a full 12 months ahead so that you can plan your working schedule to make sure you get that time off you need and deserve. Knowing you have a little time off every 8 to 10 weeks is motivational as well as rejuvenating, and also helps you to appreciate the quality of life your hard work is allowing you to enjoy.

Other factors you can control that directly affect your business growth include adjusting your days on market, hiring more and/or better support people, implementing and maintaining reliable and scalable systems, and staying on top of your personal fitness. Growing your business does not happen by luck. It happens because you plan for it, adjust the plan when necessary, and consistently follow through on your business plan.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Target Your Best Prospects With Lead Sourcing

You already know how important your database is as a resource for expanding your business. Inside your database you have lists of buyers, potential sellers, market appraisals, existing clients, past clients, key referrers, landlords and tenants. All of those lists would be far more useful if you learn to use lead scoring to target certain clients within those groups and create primary “hit lists” for working them – specifically, active buyers and potential sellers.

Most agents have a “fat database” that contains hundreds or even thousands of buyers, but most of those buyers are not active in the marketplace. With lead scoring, which is a method of evaluating and categorizing clients, you can identify which of those buyers are most likely to be buying property in the near future and place them on your buyer hit list to contact. These will be high-quality prospects who have registered to bid at a recent auction, placed a bid, have come back for a second appointment or attended open-for-inspections for several weekends in a row, and may even have requested legal documentation on a property and sent it in to a conveyancer for review – these are all indicators that they are currently active in the marketplace. The more of these indicators a prospect fulfills, the higher on your buyer hit list they should be placed.

You can also divide those prospects further into price ranges and time to buy ranges. By reviewing individual property files you can identify potential buyers who are requesting contracts, returning for second appointments, etc. and put them in your buyer hit list for concentrated phone and email contact. With lead scoring you can put your valuable time and effort into your most likely prospects instead of contacting everybody in the database.

Lead scoring also works for evaluating and quantifying potential sellers, and creating a seller hit list. Using the same relative criteria, you can focus your attention on contacting and meeting with the prospects most likely to be signing agency agreements for upcoming sales and auctions.

The point is to refine your entire database into smaller target segments of potential buyers and sellers who are most likely to complete transactions. You want to build and maintain momentum by consistently working ahead of the market by six to twelve weeks, and you also want your efforts to be targeted for your best results.

I hope you enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

The Importance Of The Qualifying Process

One of the most important skills in real estate is the ability to qualify clients. You need to know each client’s experience in real estate, their level of involvement, and their reasons for buying or selling right now. A lot of agents fail to ask the proper questions to get them the vital information they need, but there are really only three basic bits of information you need to know to qualify your client: Why, How, and When.

Most agents ask a lot of “When” questions such as, “When do you want to go to market?” or “When do you need to be moved into your new place?” or “When would you like for me to come by?” Then at the listing presentation level agents switch to “How” questions: “How do you want to see your property marketed?” or “How do you want to proceed with me as your agent?” The most important questions, however, are the “Why” questions.

“Why” questions tell you what your client’s motivation is to do a deal, whether buying or selling. Why are they buying/selling their property? Why did they choose to live where they are moving? “Why” questions are about death, marriage, divorce, relocation, financial gain, financial loss, or the client’s chosen lifestyle. Once you know “Why” then you know exactly which other questions you need to ask and what information you need to know in order to qualify your client. For example, you can easily ask your client, “Do you need to sell in order to be able to buy?” They will tell you yes or no, but you still need to know what their actual reasoning is and whether they might potentially be a seller or even a landlord.

Here is an example line of questioning you can use, beginning with “Why”;

Why are you moving? This tells you the client’s motivation.
When do you need to be moved into your new place? This gives you their timeline.
Where are you looking to live? This tells you about your client’s target marketplace.
Have you inquired about any properties, or been to any other opens? This tells you how involved they have been thus far in their process.
Have you bid on anything, or made any offers? This tells you how far they are in the sales process.

And possibly the most important question you have been working toward is,

Is this your first, second or third purchase in the area? If this is their second or third deal, then you know you are working with a higher-level client, possibly at property management level, and you definitely want to meet with them personally to view their property.

Whether you are writing fees of $50,000 a year or $2.13 million, you must understand the best ways to execute the qualification process. It’s all about establishing relationships with your clients that will build your business over time and make you the best real estate agent you can be.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.