Category: Attitude

Focus

There is an old Cajun saying that I dearly love:  ‘Be what you is; even if you’s old and ugly then be old and ugly, but be what you is.’  The bad grammar is intentional – that’s the way I heard it.

There are many messages in this little line, but this morning what I’m getting is:  know your strengths and structure your environment so that you can bring them into play as frequently as possible.

Traditional real estate has generally made a mess out of the salesperson’s job description.  Agents are expected to do it all — which means prospect, list, sell, process, coordinate, followup and on and on and on.  Truth is:  it’s a very rare individual who can do all of that well and all at once.  The sharpest quickly zero in on the jobs that result in more listings and more sales and build a team to take on the other functions.

Maybe you’re a great people person.  You’re personable, sharp and you know your business.  People like to be around you and it seems the more time you spend reaching out to people the more business you do.  Maybe technology baffles you.  You couldn’t put together a flyer if your life depended on it and you still haven’t learned how to get your email on your Blackberry.  Instead of looking over at the Wunderkinds of our industry with all of their devices and technical know-h0w and feeling like you just don’t measure up, find a way to focus on your strength.  In this very two dimensional example, the way is clearly to hire somebody to do the largely clerical job of managing your technology (and maybe more).  Really:  if you are the kind of people magnet I just described, it’s probably a waste of your time and a squandering your biggest asset to futz around trying to keep up with technology when you could pay somebody else to do it for you at $12 an hour.

I got a real lesson in this last week when John Powell and I dropped in on one of our top producing brokers, Patrick Wood, in Chino Hills, CA.  Pat’s been in the top five consistently and has closed 44 sides in the last 3 months.  He has among the largest market shares in his area and personally outperforms entire offices of traditional agents.  Getting a moment with Pat is not easy because his typical day is non-stop meetings, back-to-back , all day long.  He’s doing what he’s good at:  Pat is definitely a people person.  Sitting just outside his office door is his assistant, Valerie.  You know the instant you meet her that this person is supremely well organized.  Her work-space is neat and everything seems to have its place.  The morning we dropped by I commented on the stack of offers she had open before her.  ‘That’s 18 offers that came in on one of our REO listings, ‘ she said.  I bet she could easily tell you the essential details of the best 5 at the drop of a hat.

John and I had been with Pat for about 30 minutes when Valerie came to the door.  ‘Your 10:30 is here and don’t forget, you’ve got an 11 O’clock, too,’ she said.  The message was clear:  You need to wrap this up or you’re going to be running late all day . . . and frankly, nice as James and John are, neither of them is going to buy or sell real estate through you, so get a move on!

This kind of functional partnership is the stuff of greatness.  With the right help a good REALTOR can be huge.   On the other hand, it’s very hard to find a great REALTOR who has no help.

In the early 90s, I spent a couple of days with Ron Prechtl, one of the top agents to ever work in Granada Hills.  He was a people meeting machine and that’s mostly what he did:  meet people, let them know he was in the business and collect their contact information.  Every time he came into the office, he’d drop a handful of business cards and scraps of paper on which he’d recorded information on the people he’d met on his assistant’s desk.  ‘These go on the regular mailing list,’ he’d say and then, pulling a few out, ‘And these go on the hot list.’  His assistant had a pre arranged schedule of mailings for all of Ron’s various prospect lists and one of her most important tasks was to keep it going and keep it growing.

Ron was a pretty sharp guy; but I’ll bet if he had to organize and maintain a mailing list, produce, print and mail letters on a consistent basis and track the results . . . he’d have done less than half his normal production.

I’ll bet he never spent an hour and a half making a flyer . . . someone else did that while he was out meeting five more people.

In today’s real estate world, finding the time to do what you do best can be daunting.  If you’re in the business, you’re probably doing Short Sales.  The time and detail requirements for this type of business are so demanding that few are really good at it.  You could spend hours of your day cranking through this — again largely clerical — job or find someone to do it for you.  It doesn’t even have to be an individual on staff.  We recently heard a good presentation from the Loss Mitigation Network who will take on that job for you . . . for free.

Is our business changing?  Absolutely.  Are there more and more new tools, new technologies, new strategies flooding into the industry?  Without a doubt.  But people still deal with people and that’s where they usually make the decision to buy or sell:  with people.  Don’t let your learning curve keep you from doing the thing that has always made you successful:  meeting the people.  Even if you is old an ugly . . .

Un-Dumbing the Industry

I am very encouraged today.  A little elated, actually.  Yesterday, John Powell and I met with seven members of the Help-U-Sell family in San Diego and Riverside Counties.  Our conversation was free-wheeling but seemed to focus mostly on marketing and deal-doing strategies.  As we got into the realm of Short Sales I had to sit back, and I started to smile to myself.  These guys, the survivors, know their stuff!

Short Sales are complicated things.  There are dozens of lenders, each with their own requirements, varying industry and government regulations to consider as well as the vagaries of investors on the secondary market.  To work them and work them in a way that makes them worthwhile, there is a huge volume of information a real estate professional must know and manage.  The level of detail, understanding and street-wise know how I heard when these folks talked about what they’re doing was astounding.

It took me WAY BACK (I mean, way WAY BACK) to 1982, when interest rates edged close to 17% and the only way you survived was by knowing financing, contracts, and sales strategies inside and out.  We called it ‘creative financing,’ but it was really just knowing your business so well you could make things happen even under impossible circumstances.  It was a great time to be a REALTOR, a time of pride, because you knew if the person sitting across the table from you had a REALTOR pin on their lapel and an HP 12-C calculator cranked up, he or she was probably just as smart as you and the two of you were going to put that deal together.

The boom years were a fun ride, like the latest offering at Six Flags.  But, like that Six Flags ride, the pace was fast and the lines of people pressing to get in on the good thing were long.  Few practitioners took the time to learn their business. Most just gripped the safety bar and screamed.   We (as an industry) got dumber and dumber.  It was almost cartoon comical . . .

Picture the agent and buyer standing outside the house that’s just been toured.  The buyer says, ‘So, if I put 20% down, what would my payment be on a 30 year fixed?’  The agent hems and haws, scratches his head and finally answers, ‘I don’t know . . . let me call my lender.’ That was 2005.

In the churning and collapse of our markets, the weaker ones, the ones who didn’t learn how to put a and b together to make c, fell by the wayside.  They didn’t have the depth of knowledge they needed to make it through this mess.  That’s why the ranks of REALTORS across the country are way down.  The survivors are a wonderful bunch of very sharp people.  Many are hanging on by their wits and their toenails waiting for the wheel to turn but from what I see, their grip is tenacious and they will make it around that bend.

Suddenly, the REALTOR is a hero again.

More on Value

I am really old.  I am so old, people in their 40s routinely call me ‘Sir.’  I’m so old, when I do crunches at the gym, I literally hear crunching.  I’m so old, my dog, Homer, thinks he’s an assistance animal.  I’m so old, young mothers burdened with babies and bags of groceries routinely hold the door open for me.  I’m so old a punk on the sidewalk called me ‘Grandpa’ the other day.

Having now publicly wallowed in all that wrinkly tommy-rot, I must admit there are some benefits from being older than dirt. One such benefit is the fact that I actually know a couple of things.

We’ve been talking about the Buyer Inquiry and Buyer Data Sheet and, today,  about Buyer Objections  (which I prefer to call Buyer Questions and Concerns . . . it’s less adversarial).  Often our conversation has gotten back to demonstrating your value to the consumer when he or she makes contact.  That seems essential.

Here is a Great Truth:   Nobody ever does anything they don’t want to do.

Let me repeat that:  NOBODY EVER DOES ANYTHING THEY DON”T WANT TO DO.  Even if they’re choosing the lesser of evils, they are making a choice.

So your task, when that potential Buyer makes contact, is to make them want to meet you.

As you probably already know, nobody who ever calls you for the first time wants to meet you.  Meeting you is the last thing they want.  They want to get the information you have as quickly as possible with a minimum of entanglement and to get off the phone.  They will pause and absorb only when something extraordinary happens:

  • Either the house they are calling about is absolutely perfect for them in every way OR
  • You demonstrate the ability to bring so much value to the home search and purchase process that the caller can’t wait to get together.

There’s a word for getting people to want what you have.  It’s called ‘Salesmanship.’  And when used properly, it is not dishonest, manipulative, opportunistic, harmful or fattening.  Great salesmanship is knowing your business so well that you shine like a polished gem.  Great salesmanship is being willing to educate the other person about a process in which you are expert.  Great salesmanship is knowing, right down to your marrow, that nobody can do a better job for this caller than YOU.  Believing so strongly in what you know and what you do, you reach out to consumers with near missionary zeal.  Really, gaining the right to help people make good decisions becomes your mission.  (In fact, I don’t think it would be a bad idea to slip that phrase into your cadre of dialogs:  ‘My personal mission is to help people make good real estate decisions.’ )*

For years, when I worked for Brand X, I devoted lots of time to meeting with and interviewing our top producing salespeople.  Because I was designing training, it was important that I knew what the top people were doing.  These great salespeople had a few things in common:  they all had a strong sense of mission about what they were doing.  They knew their business so well that they were supremely confident they were the best person to help the consumer.   And helping as many people as possible to make good decisions was the only goal that seemed to matter.  Honestly, I rarely met a great salesperson who could tell you how many deals they’d done this year or what their gross commission total was.  That wasn’t important to them.  What was important was the customer whose transaction had snarled and whose living room furniture was now being stored in their garage.  What was important was getting that family comfortably relocated before the start of school so the kids could go into the new situation on day one.  What was important was finding that perfect house in that perfect neighborhood with the mother-in-law suite downstairs so the family could be together.

When you have the accent on that syllable and can back it up with solid knowledge of inventory, finance and the real estate process your value just oozes out.   The potential Buyer recognizes it quickly and is anxious to meet you.  Suddenly he or she wants what you have.  I don’t guess I’ve ever heard anyone demonstrate the value he brings to a Buyer transaction any better than Jack Bailey.  He did it again today in our National Sales Meeting when he volunteered to role play a Buyer Inquiry call.  Luckily, we have tons of video of Jack doing this in the Download Library and you really ought to be taking a regular look at that wonderful material.

*For a real example of that sense of mission, I have a short video clip of a great salesperson. Cindy Coplin Mitchell works in Athens, Georgia and lives her business with passion every day. Here, she’s talking about working with FSBOs, but I think you’ll see what I’m talking about. I am sad to say, she does not work for us . . . but who knows? Enjoy!

Pugnacious Practice

Yesterday evening, I took Homer out for a long walk to Balboa Park.  We made our way to one of his favorite spots, the Redwood Circle.  He loves this little open lawn surrounded by big trees because it is home to dozens of grey squirrels:  his favorite stalking target.  He’d just spotted a plump adult and the two of them were in a frozen stare-down when I saw a couple of guys coming down the hill carrying a gym bag.  They made their way to the center of the Circle and set about wrapping their hands in Ace bandages and then strapping on boxing gloves.  I could tell from the conversation they were speaking Italian.

Next thing you know, they are squaring off, putting the dukes up and flailing away at one another.  I knew this was practice because I’d observed their friendly conversation prior to the fight, but they were really pounding away at one another.  It was as intense and focused as anything I’ve ever seen in the ring.  This heavy sparring went on for about forty minutes with just a couple of breaks:  the first when one fighter split his upper lip and needed a moment to get the bleeding under control;  the second when the other fighter developed a bloody nose.  Each time, when the fists came down, the friendly Italian banter returned.  And each time, after a few minutes to regroup, they returned to more serious fighting.

When they finally finished, I walked over with Homer and learned that they are indeed from Italy, Livorno to be exact, and that they belong to a gym and boxing club there.  They are in America for an extended trip this summer and wanted to keep their boxing skills sharp.  They’d left their hotel a few blocks away and came to what seemed to be the best place to practice:  the park.

I walked home thinking about what I’d seen.  These guys were very serious about their boxing.  I can’t imagine hitting anyone like that unless I was insane with anger; but they weren’t.  They were good friends practicing a violent sport intensely.

Yesterday we were supposed to have a national training session on the Help-U-Sell Buyer Data Sheet and using it to secure working relationships with potential buyers who call the office.  The session was designed to include several role plays and attendees were supposed to leave with the instruction to pick a partner and role play on their own.  I say ‘supposed to’ because about five minutes prior to the start of the session, GoToMeeting crashed;  not just our session, the whole system.  It was thirty minutes before it came back online and by then we’d already put the training off for a week.

Here’s the point:  the way those boxers were going after each other — seriously, intently, nothing held back — that’s the way our guys need to be practicing their phone skills.  Really:  if I could only tell a real estate broker one single thing that would absolutely increase production and improve the bottom line, it would be to work on the Buyer Inquiry and how that call is handled in the office.  Period.  It’s a skill that has to be practiced constantly:  role play after role play after role play.  The best offices I’ve ever seen were ones that orchestrated this kind of practice every week.  It takes constant practice to get over the natural discomfort that comes with exposing your sill level before your peers, but once that hurdle is overcome, the real value of practice comes out.  Practice is serious business with a serious payoff.  You owe it to yourself and your career to commit to it on a weekly if not daily basis.

For a little inspiration, here is a video I shot of these two friends duking it out in the park:

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