Five Keys to Your Strongest Year Yet: 2017!

Four years ago, we launched the Coach’s Playbook and our updated training programs under our new LEAP Training Systems banner, including the Peak Producers training and our Wednesday Wake Up and Tech Savvy Thursday training sessions live and via Go to Meeting to offer everyone the opportunity for that “kaizen” or continuous improvement in your business that Gino Blefari, CEO of our parent organization, HSF, speaks and blogs about regularly. 

So, now that football season and the World Series have started in earnest, it’s time to start thinking about 2017! Of course, it’s an undeniable truth in our business that transaction activity will typically 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? That means it’s time to again remember those FIVE KEYS TO SUCCESS! Your management and coaching teams are available to help you do the planning and preparation you need to kick off 2017 at full speed and make it your best year yet.

First, you’ll want to MASTER YOUR STATS. You can use that information as the basis for planning your action for 2017; 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. We recommend looking not just at your sales volume or gross commissions, but digging into your average side price, your average days-on-market, and your average commission percentage rate, with a goal to average at least 3.0%!

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. The ideal plan will break things down to show you THE ACTIVITIES YOU NEED TO DO EACH WEEK to build your business for the long term based on repeat and referral business. Remember, people with written plans—and who track their progress regularly—in any endeavor, are many times more successful than those who have no plan or tap their head and say “It’s all up here!” Your management and coaching teams will be there to help you through this process between now and the end of the year.

Also, you can spend some of the cool season MASTERING YOUR PROCESS and making sure all your technology tools, your CRM lists, and your presentations, service delivery, and negotiation approach are all in fine tuned working order and up to date. Our regular training on systems and business skills are a great opportunity for you to add more arrows to your quiver!

And—most fun of all—you can PERSONALIZE YOUR TOUCHES by contacting all those friends, clients (remember, there’s no such thing as a “past” client, they’re either active or inactive!) and potential clients to spend some of that face to face time at the top of the pyramid of the 7 Levels of Communication to build your referral based business. Don’t forget that wonderful “What can I do to help you and your business” conversation opener!

Finally you can make the habit to PRACTICE ACCOUNTABILITY by completing your business plan and implementing an agenda to keep you on track DAILY so you can make 2017 your strongest year ever!

David M. Hassler

VP, Professional Development

4 Steps to Excellent Customer Service

Excellent Customer Service is the heart of our real estate business and the key to long term success based on referrals and repeat business. Everybody knows that! The question often comes down to the specific how’s of serving those sometimes difficult clients. A recent article from Inman News gives us “4 Steps to Customer Service that Never Let’s Clients Down” and it’s worth a read!

Let’s face it. Dealing with clients is challenging.

Homebuyers are emotional. They see a bedroom painted red and can’t move past the color of an otherwise perfect home. Homesellers are too rational. They need you to elaborate every bit of minutiae in your marketing plans to justify a price decrease.

So how do you provide these two very different groups of people with high-class customer service? It starts with what’s in your heart and what’s in your soul. Here are four ways real estate agents provide better customer Service to both homebuyers and sellers — 100 percent of the time.

It starts with you

To provide great customer service, you first have to want to provide great customer service. Everyone can spot a phony. Clients know when you’re just babbling a bunch of bull.

If you aren’t dedicated to delivering exceptional customer service all of the time in everything you do to everyone you encounter in your real estate career, you won’t have it in your heart and soul to give great customer service. You need to eat, breathe and sleep customer service around the clock.

Exceed, don’t just meet, expectations

Customer service isn’t something you do to meet your client’s expectations. Any average Joe can meet the needs of a client. People who want to give great customer service strive every single time to exceed their client’s expectations. Going above and beyond is the only way to remain relevant to your clients.

If you are working with homebuyers who like craft beer, don’t just show them on a map how close the nearest brewery is to the house. Drive them past the brewery on the way to the showing, then provide them with a growler of the spot’s signature brew when you arrive.

Be mindful — it always wins

Customer service is intentional. You have to be mindful because everything you say has an impact on the people you interact with. When a potential client asks you to do something for him or her, don’t say things like “no problem” or “don’t worry about it.” Elevate your customer service game by saying things like “my pleasure” and “I would be happy to take care of that for you.”

Do it all the time

Great customer service isn’t something you can do just some of the time, most of the time or nearly all of the time. You have to give great customer service all of the time. Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, brings up this point about customer service: It is easier to do things 100 percent of the time than it is to do things 99 percent of the time.

What he meant by this expression is that not giving your best every time is an easy trap to fall into. And if you don’t deliver your best just once, it’s easier to let quality slip again and again.

Thanks, Inman News, for some great tips to keep in mind to make sure we’re delivering our promise of excellent customer service.

David M. Hassler

VP, Professional Development

Take it to the Next Level

As we head into 2017 Business Planning season, we’ve all often heard—and likely even used—the phrase “take it to the next level.” Generally, we assume that phrase means some form of increase in effort/energy/commitment to yield an expected improvement of impact or result. So far so good, but usually we toss out that phrase as more of a marketing ploy than a genuine plan of action! Indeed, what are we actually planning to do to “take it to the next level?”

And even more basic, exactly what is that next level we’re so committed to achieving?

Well, we’re on our own for most things, but Tom Ferry, the well known Real Estate Coach and Educator, actually takes it to the next level (sorry!) and provides us a roadmap for The 8 Levels of the Real Estate Business—and how to avoid the dreaded plateau.

Here are Tom’s 8 Levels—and these parallel those taught by Brian Buffini in the Peak Producers System:

            Stage One: Stability is the goal

Level 1 - No Business Plan & No Proactively Generated Leads = No Income! There is an 87% failure rate in the business!

Level 2 - Diversify Lead Generation & Create a Plan versus the bumblebee or the shotgun approach; leverage your database to proactively generate referrals!

Level 3 - Consistency and Conversion = momentum at last = Stability

            Stage Two: Success is the goal

Level 4 - Hire an Assistant: the huge differentiating step! Are you ready? Hire the RIGHT assistant to handle day-to-day tasks to allow you to leverage your time and energy

Level 5 - Grow Your Team & Operationalize (Install Systems): you now have a business and your role changes to leadership not just sales

Level 6 – The Team Out Produces You: you now have a machine and you’re only as successful as your team!

            Stage Three: Significance is the goal

Level 7 - Extend the Cash Cow: you take your business to a level of significance and you make more money than you can plow back in

Level 8 - Exit & Succession Plan: your business has a life of its own and the value is in your database. Sell to the next generation.

So, where are you in your journey in the Real Estate Business? Tom Ferry recommends we take the following steps if we want to “take it to the next level:”

1.    Get honest about where you really are! Have you been in the business for years yet still have no Business Plan and No Proactively Generated Leads? Are you giving new ideas a try but bouncing from one shiny object to the next? Or are you now solidly Consistent and feeling some Momentum but have no idea what to do grow further—you’ve plateaued! Be honest with yourself.

2.   Write a detailed business plan and set deadlines! Remember, a goal without a deadline is merely a dream. And folks who have a detailed written plan—in any endeavor—are far more successful than those who wing it.

3.   Implement Accountability and Alignment: Your commitment and your behavior must align!

4.   Be sure to Track and Measure: If you want it to count, you have to count it! Tracking and accountability foster that alignment of commitment and behavior.

So, at which level are you in your Real Estate career? Have you plateaued? As you meet with your manager or your coach and begin to focus on the detailed planning for your business for 2017, take some time to put together your own roadmap to “take it to the next level!”

David M. Hassler

VP, Professional Development

How to Deal with Clients Who Make Lowball Offers: Part 2

Last week we shared the first 5 ways to deal with clients making lowball offers from an Inman News article by Ted Wiggin. Here are the rest of the 10 ways to deal with this issue we all face from time to time:

6. Discuss the offer with listing agent

If a buyer’s agent can figure out whether a seller has already rejected an offer that’s higher than the price his buyer is after, the agent may be able to use that information to persuade a buyer to strengthen an offer, according to Steve Weiss, a San Luis Obispo, California-based broker-owner. “Most of the [listing] agents will be forthcoming with that information, especially if they know me,” Weiss said in the Facebook group Inman Coast to Coast.

“I just used this practice this past weekend and we’re still verbally negotiating today and currently $25,000 apart,” he added. “We were $75,000.” But Weiss cautioned this tactic isn’t a “one-size-fits-all.”

Phil Faranda, a Briarcliff Manor, New York broker-owner, says a buyer’s agent who decides to discuss an offer verbally tosses away the ability to provide documentation that shows that “while price may not be their strong point, terms could be.” “The biggest mistake I see with buyer’s agents making a lowball offer is they do not treat them with the same care and discretion as strong offers, making the offers all the more weak,” Faranda said.

7. Let the buyer lose

Some buyers need to lose out on a home to understand that they will have to pony up more to win one, some agents say. Los Angeles-based Realtor Andi Grant tells buyers early on that she’s willing to let them “get one lowball offer out of their system.” As suggested above, Brandon Doyle, a Minnesota-based Realtor, shows the local average list-to-sales price ratio if a buyer’s proposed offer seems to ignore market conditions. “If they still want to come in low, we let them lose one,” he said. And if that experience doesn’t teach a buyer to be more realistic, then “we have a serious conversation about their motivation and determine if it’s worth continuing the relationship.”

8. Probe a buyer’s commitment

Indeed, if buyers persistently brush aside evidence that suggests their offers are non-starters, that might indicate that they aren’t serious about securing a property anytime soon.

Probing this possibility can help agents decide whether they should consider moving on. But it may also impart enough of a sense of urgency to finally spark an attitude shift in a buyer.

“I feel like you are more interested in home shopping than homebuying…am I wrong?” Daniel McCoy, a Parker, Colorado-based agent may ask some buyers. He is only interested in helping buyers purchase a home, he will add. Andy Brown, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Realtor, frames the home search for a buyer as either “shopping for bargains” or “looking for a move-in ready home that matches all your wants and needs.” “If you are bargain-hunting, I can help you find a project that you can get at that price,” he said, implying that otherwise the buyer will have to offer more.

9. Fire them? 

If all else fails, agents may need to cut a client loose.

“I am only interested in helping you actually close on a home, so if you do not want my experienced advice, I am afraid I cannot be of service to you,” McCoy has told a buyer.

Seattle, Washington-based Realtor Kim Mulligan said she recently told a buyer, “If you don’t trust me or my advice, this isn’t going to work and you should find someone you do trust.”

The buyer took offense and the two parted ways, but Mulligan said she felt a great sense of relief. “The best way to succeed in this business is to cut your losses and to know when to cut them,” said South Hadley, Massachusetts, Realtor Stacy Ashton.

10. Send the buyer to a colleague for a referral fee 

Rather than merely dropping stubborn buyers, agents may be able to ultimately get some money for their time by directing them to another agent in exchange for a potential referral fee. Newer agents who are trying to build a critical mass of clients or those who have time on their hands are good candidates for these referrals, agents say.

Mt. Juliet, Tennessee-based Realtor Juanita Anderton advises gauging upfront whether buyers are willing to make reasonable offers. “If not, refer them to another less-busy agent and hope they eventually close so that you make some $$,” she said.

So there you have it! Five more great approaches to try when you have one of those lowball clients.

David M. Hassler

VP, Professional Development