Five Keys to a Super 2014

Now that we’re seeing snow on the ground regularly, it’s time to start thinking about 2014!  Of course, it’s an undeniable truth in our business that transaction activity will be slowing down over the next couple of chilly months, so how do we continue to make the most productive use of our time to make our business profitable?  Don’t forget those FIVE KEYS TO SUCCESS!  Your coach is available to help you do the business planning and preparation you need to kick off 2014 at full speed.

First, you’ll want to MASTER YOUR STATS.  You can use that information as the basis for planning your action for 2014; then hopefully you’ll find a stat that allows you to differentiate yourself in your market; and finally you may note an area you can focus on for improvement.  Once you’ve captured your stats, you can CREATE YOUR ROADMAP, a detailed business plan with an updated mission statement, target market, cash flow budget, and marketing plan.  Your coach will be there with tools to help you through this process.

Also, you can spend some of the wintertime on PROCESS MASTERY and making sure all your technology tools, your Sphere of Influence and contact lists, and your presentation and delivery approach are all in fine tuned working order and up to date.  And—most fun of all—you can PERSONALIZE YOUR TOUCHES by contacting all those friends, past clients, and potential clients to spend some of that face to face time at the top of the pyramid of the 7 Levels of Communication.  Don’t forget that wonderful “What can I do to help you and your business” conversation opener!

Finally you can begin to PRACTICE ACCOUNTABILITY by completing your business plan and implementing an action agenda to keep you on track.  Your coach will be there to help you focus on those FIVE KEYS—and action versus motion—so you can make 2014 your strongest year.

In the meantime, enjoy your holidays!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

More Paperless Magic

In a recent Playbook, we covered some of the ways agents are incorporating their iPad or other tablet into their listing presentations.  We’d heard about and tried some of the basic elements including showing your presentation to your prospective clients on your iPad and minimizing the number of trees you had to chop down before the meeting.  Also, Fusion works well on the iPad, and you can even go through and sign the listing agreement right there on your tablet as well.

But a few weeks ago, attending a webinar on becoming a paperless agent, we saw a couple more tricks that aren’t simply the duplication on screen of what we can do on paper.  The webinar showed how the adept paperless agent can use their iPad in different ways to show both their leading edge technical mastery as well as their unique approach and professionalism in the real estate business.  Who wouldn’t want to differentiate themselves from the stodgy old competition?

The first new wrinkle was simply taking some pictures of the home, using their iPad, as they toured it with the prospective seller.  But snapping a few shots wasn’t the point.  Using the app Evernote, the agent then annotated—right there with the seller—the photos showing either great features of the home or, more importantly, specific items they wanted the seller to know needed attention.  As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case, hopefully a healthy commission too! 

The second, and more fascinating, wrinkle, was when the paperless agent sat down with the seller and asked that fairly typical question of what they loved about their home and the neighborhood.  But here’s where that iPad set them apart.  The paperless agent then brought up a map of the area and took a screenshot.  Then, as the seller told them about their local coffee shop or their kids’ favorite playground or the neighborhood pool and clubhouse, they annotated the map using Evernote to create what they called a “Lifestyle Map.”  The greatest element here was that the prospective client is drawn in and participates with the paperless agent in creating something that will become a part of the marketing of their home.

Impressive!

At any rate, this paperless trend will certainly continue and grow over the next few years.  In fact, in ten years, we’ll all probably be laughing about our current tablets and smart phones, and how clunky and inept they were compared to the technology we’ll have then.  Do you even remember what cool personal technology tools most folks in business used ten years ago?  Does anyone use pagers in the normal course of business today?  And more to the point, remember how cool we were when we showed off our sparkling new…Palm Pilot!!  Yes, we no longer needed that bulky day planning folder the size of a phone book.  So cool, and yet so vanished today.

As you consider your goals for 2014, be sure to include some planning to improve your use of leading edge technology.  Your coach and our training staff will be there to help and guide you.  Oh, and leave the Palm Pilot at home!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Talk About Mastering the Stats!

We recently decided to see what correlation might exist between the coaching program and agents' business achievements, and decided to compare both Sales Volume and Gross Commission Income (GCI) for the 12 month period ending October 31, 2013, versus the 12 month period ending a year earlier on October 31, 2012.  We gathered those statistics for all agents in the Indianapolis Metro offices.

While the market has generally been considered stronger this year, we were delighted to see that the level of Sales Volume for all agents in the Metro Offices increased by 14.6% for the most recent 12 months versus the same period last year, and that GCI increased by 11.3%.  After the previous few years in our business, those are some great numbers!

But the greater news is that, for agents taking part in the coaching program in the Indy Metro offices, (about one third of the total number of agents) the increase in Sales Volume was 32.5% and the increase in GCI was 28.6% year over year.  

That means coached agents created more than DOUBLE the average increase in Sales Volume and nearly TRIPLE the increase in their GCI versus the average increases for the Metro Offices overall. 

While the correlation between taking part in the coaching program and those incredible levels of success may not be one hundred percent perfect, it certainly is a significant statistical indicator that shows the coaching program clearly assists coached agents in achieving an incredible increase in their business success!

As we head into Annual Business Planning mode to prepare for 2014, what better time to sign up for the coaching program so you can work with a personal trainer for your business to make the best use of your time and talent, and make more money per hour next year?

The stats guarantee it!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Your Mission Statement Redux

As we head into the holidays and rainy weather (I won’t mention the “S” word!) and you review your stats and progress for the year, it’s a good time to fine-tune your unique Mission Statement for your personal business. 

The purpose of your Mission Statement is to, first of all, reflect what you are passionate about in your business and in life, and, second, to give your clients, and especially those potential clients, a solid feel for not only the “what” you do but also a bit of the “why” and the “how.”  The textbook elements of your Mission Statement can be viewed as:

1    .     Who is your target market?

      .     What is your contribution, ie, the features of the service you provide

3    .     What are your distinctions or benefits, ie, what makes you unique or the “best,” and why        should someone consider using you?

 My own Mission Statement is:

I help people with some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives, using highly personalized services focused on making their experience a rewarding one.

The elements of the Mission Statement can be seen as:

Target Market:  people wanting to buy or sell real estate and who are looking for a highly personalized service approach.  Thus, my mission statement will probably not appeal to the REO division of a bank or a flipper looking for low priced bargains.

Contribution:  the features of helping those people with financial decisions through services provided during an “experience” or process, not just a transaction

Distinction or Benefits:  highly personalized services focused on making the experience rewarding.

There is no mention of “selling houses” but there are two echoes of money in the references to “financial decisions” and to “rewarding,” yet the emphasis is on service.  In other words, this Mission Statement not only hopes to appeal to those who look for excellent service, but it also is intentionally not all that attractive to folks whose primary goal may be to win every point of every negotiation or to bottom feed.  Yes, you can and should be selective in whom you want to serve, and recognize your own strengths as well as those areas where you might not thrive.

So, what’s your own passion in our business—and what kind of clients do you want to serve?  Be sure to take some review time to refine that passion and tap into it for your own unique Mission Statement—and a shorter “tagline”—as part of your Annual Business Planning for a strong 2014 and beyond!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Could Less Be More?

A recent post on the 1000WATT blog--thanks to Greg Cooper for pointing me to that one--got me to thinking about marketing for our real estate businesses.  The blog noted that, while email "open rates" are at all time highs, we need to remember one of Peter Drucker's wise statements:

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."

By that, Drucker--and the blogger--mean that the better we taylor our marketing message to reflect exactly what the prospective customer wants, the higher the probability we'll connect and develop a client relationship.  That makes sense.

But the blogger points out that with so many emails filling inboxes these days, the effectiveness of drip campaigns like our monthly newsletter, Market Watch, or ecards, may not be as effective as they used to be.  Hmmmm.  He then takes it a step further and recommends "turning off" our drip campaigns--doing less--for our real estate business and only touching our sphere of influence a couple times a year with a much more focused phone call or face to face meeting.  Then, he goes so far as to "guarantee" more success in our business!  

Really?

Recalling Michael Maher's Communication Hierarchy pyramid with shotgun style broad advertising at the bottom, or least effective, level and one on one meetings at the top, or most effective, we all know we get a better return from the investment of our time and money in such face to face chats.  But does it follow that it means that's the ONLY thing we need to do?  How about, instead of making it the ONLY thing, let's just consider it the MOST IMPORTANT thing we can do, and plan and use our time accordingly?

I'd suggest that, especially given the heavy email traffic our sphere of influence may receive, it's even more important to make sure we have an integrated approach--a true marketing plan--that combines email drip campaigns with "Just Sold" postcards, hand written notes, phone calls, and those crucial face to face meetings.   And Drucker is correct, so it will pay off if we taylor our messages to best strike the right chord with our potential clients, and that chord is of course based on our own personalized mission statement focused on our own target market. 

So, now is that time of year when we can take a break and work on our 2014 annual business planning, starting with fine tuning our mission statement and target market so we can create the most effective marketing plan to help our business grow next year.  

I guarantee it!

David M. Hassler
Director of Coaching

Knowledge Trumps Information

Recently, I skimmed an interview in Fortune where Warren Buffett talked about the best advice he’d ever been given, along with his secrets to success.  The thing that struck me most was Uncle Warren’s comment that his “big secret” was that he was good at “lifelong learning.”  Wow, what a simple idea, and one we so often forget as we get caught up in our day-to-day spin!

So, taking a page from Warren’s book, I decided to do some reading and turned to the Inman News website and was of course delighted to see that a new Facebook app “let’s homeowners tweak valuations” so they can “adjust their published online home value….”  As Charlie Brown likes to say, “Good grief!”

But then I found another article that lowered my blood pressure a bit.  The writer’s lead line had to do with “knowledge-driven services,” and since I love knowledge and I love services, I dove right in.  The article pointed out the widespread public availability of a vast amount of real estate information that has become staggering compared to what was out there even ten years ago.  The consumer can be overwhelmed by not only the amount of information, but the wide variety of sources. 

Unfortunately, having access to information can be confusing and misleading, and is no substitute for knowledge! 

And that’s where we real estate professionals come in.  Our expertise and experience allow us to analyze the information and recognize subtle patterns and quirks that make one element of that information more important, for example, than others.  Our understanding gets us to the “how” and the “why” of the information that are crucial in making decisions.  Voila, value added!

The article goes on to remind us that not only is knowledge power, but that given the near instantaneous generation of information, such knowledge had better be delivered quickly.  Enter technology!  The writer urges us professionals to make sure we’re fully integrating the latest tech tools—tablets, digital contracts and signature, etc—and that we’re comfortable and professional in their use when we’re with a client. 

So, where are you with the integration of contemporary technology so you can leverage those tools and showcase your high level of knowledge to win and impress your clients every day?  Your coach is there to help you assess your integration of the various tools, and the snow will be coming soon, so you can spend some time on the practice field honing those docusign skills if you need to.  Get ready to showcase your knowledge to its best advantage!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching