NOTEvember!

We’ve talked about Michael Maher’s wonderful book The Seven Levels of Communication, Go from Relationships to Referrals, and its transformational guidance in understanding and using communications at all levels to achieve not only success but significance.  And of course making more money per hour!

Remember, his hierarchy of communications tells us that we can't rely on advertising or websites alone.  As a reminder, here is his list of communication levels from least effective to most effective:

7.  Advertising:  broadest form, expensive, shotgun approach

6. Direct mail:  more targeted but still scattered

5. Email: aha, a person's name at last!

4. Handwritten notes: truly personal, finally

3. Phone:  and now we hear a voice!

2. Events/groups: and finally see the person and shake a hand, but we have share them with others

1. 1 on 1: best of all, we look them in the eye and have their full attention

Recently, Greg Cooper shared with me one of Maher’s newsletters, where he suggested a great use of some of our “extra” time in November as the weather gets nasty (cue those snow flurries!) and the transaction pace starts to relax a bit.  He reminds us that, with Thanksgiving around the corner, we should remember to express our appreciation and give thanks to our clients and friends by sending out thirty handwritten notes.  That’s only one a day, so maybe we can even do more!

Maher goes on to suggest some guidelines for the best notes—he calls them POWER notes.

1.     Use unbranded, personal notecards—no logos, no business cards, just a simple “thank you” card/note.

2.     Use BLUE ink!  Not red or violet on tanzanite or even black.  Blue, he says, is real, original, and most folks’ favorite color.

3.     Use the word YOU as much as possible—and avoid me/my/I—it’s about them and how much they are appreciated.

4.     Be specific with your praise—and makes sure it’s heartfelt.

5.     It’s okay if your writing slants across the note, but make sure it slants upward to the right so it resembles a positive growth chart instead of the stock market in 1929!

6.     If appropriate, include a call to action in a PS, almost as if it were an afterthought.  For example:  PS, Have you been to the new cigar bar yet?

So get out your fountain pen, a bottle of blue ink, practice up on your handwriting, and get to work/joy thanking your friends—and don’t forget to remember Michael Maher for his great idea on NOTEvember! 

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

The Paperless Listing Presentation

Recently, a few agents have decided to save more trees (a good thing!) and head toward a paperless listing presentation using an iPad or other tablet, and they’ve asked what we’re hearing about this approach and what elements to include.

Most folks feel the best use of the iPad for a listing presentation is to fill out our Prudential presentation (with the Toolkit CMA version or whatever presentation you've developed yourself, of course!)   You can save that presentation as a pdf and then walk through the key points displaying them on your iPad.  We've done this and it really draws folks in since you’re holding something in your hand, while at the same time being large enough that it's not awkward.  At the conclusion of the presentation, you can email the full pdf to the client so they have it and can dig into more detail as and when they wish since the full presentation can be quite long and lends itself more to being read than being presented.  Of course, as usual, you'll want to make sure you understand exactly what's important to each particular client by leading with questions and focusing on those elements!  By the way, we’d love to hear if anyone has used a Prezi format for some aspect of their listing presentation as that format has an extra element of motion and of the leading edge technology to it.

Another key element folks include is having the CMA opened in Fusion on the iPad so you can quickly switch to the full listing sheets for the analyzed homes and dig into the details and see the photos if appropriate.  Again, if the client wants those details you can easily then email them the full listing sheets to review at their convenience.  It can be even better to save those listing sheets in one of the annotatable apps like Upad where you can make notes right on the pdf with your really cool Prudential stylus.  You or the client can make notes and then you could email the pdf's to the client with all their notes right there for easy reference!

Another use we've heard folks employing on the iPad is preparing a flyer of the prospective listing using photos from google maps and information from the tax records or previous listing sheets if available.  Showing folks how their house would look on your flyer—and many of the great things you might tout about the house—can be powerful.

Of course, you'll probably want to make sure to show the client your own personal flyer/resume/cv sharing your experience, stats, and mission statement that sets you apart in whatever way reflects your personal approach and strengths in the business.

Finally, we’ll want to be prepared and have that listing contract all filled out and ready to go on zipforms so we can simply insert the dates and price and have our new client sign using docusign or digital ink.

So, make sure you’re looking ahead and take some of your business planning time this fall and winter to thoroughly integrate your iPad into your business so you can make more money per hour.  Plus, think of all those lovely trees!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Creating Your Roadmap!

Some years ago when my daughters were both in school down in Bloomington, our extended family decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in Detroit instead of the usual family homestead in Columbus, Ohio.  The girls decided to drive separately from my wife and me so they could bring their boyfriends.  Since they’d never driven to Detroit, but they knew the family branch in Detroit often drove down to Columbus for gatherings, they figured the best way to Detroit was…yep, through Columbus!  Unfortunately, none of the eager collegians thought to bring a roadmap—and this was in the dark ages before they had cell phones—so their trip took nearly twice as long as it should have, and it produced a ton of anxiety for them and for my wife and me, waiting for them in Detroit on a cold, rainy, windy night, hours after they were expected!  So, while they did finally make it to their goal, the journey was unnecessarily stressful and tiring. 

Maybe they should have done a little advance planning and used a good roadmap instead of just setting the final destination!

Yet, since we’re all in business for ourselves in real estate, you may be used to simply setting a final destination of improving sales volume by, say ten percent over the prior year.  But how will you get there with the least stress and anxiety if you don’t know the best route to follow?  Just like getting to Detroit, you can make your journey a lot easier—and probably more profitable—with a good roadmap in the form of a solid annual business plan.

So what do we need in our business plans?  Once you’ve “Mastered your Stats” for 2013 and earlier, you should review your Target Market and see if any adjustments are warranted.  From there, you can begin to develop your goals, working backward from that ten percent volume increase through the number of sides that will take based on your own average transaction value; through the number of listings taken and presentations needed; and on down to the details of each day and each hour of the time you want to commit to your business to achieve your goals.  You can then wrap all this planning into a detailed business plan covering everything from your market budget to managing your time.  By keeping your detailed goals in mind weekly, daily, and hourly, and how they lead to achieving your larger goals, you’ll be able to manage your time more efficiently and thus be more effective each and every day!

Bottom line, if you put in the time and focus this fall to develop your plans and put them into a clear roadmap, your 2014 should be more enjoyable and profitable.  Your coach, of course, will be there to help and encourage you through this process. And remember, it’s like a free personal trainer for your business, and part of your pathway to success!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

So What is it You Do for a Living?

As we head toward the holidays and look forward to all the gatherings and parties, seeing old friends and making some new acquaintances, invariably that age old question will come up: “So, what do you do for a living?”  If your answer is a simple “I’m in real estate” or “I sell houses,” you may have just closed the door on your best opportunity to develop a genuine relationship and include that new acquaintance in your sphere of influence.   While you may have been dressed to the nines and your personality may be sparkling, most folks have a preconceived notion of what a real estate agent does—and what kind of person they are.  Unfortunately, based on some surveys, that perception may not be as beneficial as we’d like.  And even if that’s not the case, your “I’m in this slot” answer has done nothing to differentiate you from the thousands of others in that same pigeonhole, and you’ll have to dig yourself out of it if you want to create a genuine relationship with that new acquaintance.

Michael Port, in his excellent work, Book Yourself Solid, talks about creating an informal dialogue for this situation, one that gets to the heart of what you really do, why you do it, and how it’s important to your clients.  He lists several elements in this process, but the most crucial one is for each of us, in our own unique way, to determine the most significant results you help your clients achieve, and especially the benefits and the deeper value they create.

Those results can be best be found, of course, as we dig into our statistics for the prior year by Mastering Our Stats, one of those Five Keys to a Strong Real Estate Career.  Recently, we worked with one of our agents digging into their stats and found the average Days On the Market for their nineteen sold listings last year was an incredibly brisk 38 days.  Now there’s a solid result—with clear benefits—that creates excellent value for the agent’s clients.  That agent now has the key to a new or updated informal dialogue and/or tag line that takes them out of that pigeonhole and opens the door to a genuine relationship.

So, tell me now, what do you do for a living?