Fine Tuning Your Stats

As autumn turns the corner and the already dwindling number of new listing opportunities declines further, how can we make sure we get our fair share—or better yet, more than our fair share—of those opportunities and decorate more yards with our new BHHS Indiana Realty signs? (Well, after October 7, anyway!)

Of course, the most obvious leverage we all have is the magic of the new brand and the mystique those words Berkshire Hathaway carry in terms of professionalism and reputation as the most respected corporate name in the world—yes, not Indiana, not the USA, but most respected in the WORLD. More respected than Disney, Apple, IBM, Starbucks, name your favorite brand, and WE are more respected around the world! No other real estate company is even on the list of the top fifty. And, more recently, just this past March, the Harris Poll EquiTrend survey named Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices the Real Estate Agency Brand of the Year for 2014. Given that the first BHHS office opened just six months before that survey, that award—voted on by 55,000 folks around the country—shows again how powerful that corporate name can be when we take advantage of it.

Yet, we also know that, while our company name, our leadership, our training and coaching, and our systems and tools, provide each agent with a solid, professional platform on which we can stand, it’s that personal/professional connection we make with each potential client that finally wins us the business. Our individual personality and style are of course highly important in making that connection, but we can also raise our own platform by making sure we leverage not only our brand and personality but our own individual statistics where we can.

Some obvious stats might include our years in the business and our career sales volume, but we can focus on more specifics and gain even more power from our numbers. Consider these numbers:

DOM: most sellers want to move on with their plans and an agent with an average DOM that is below the market average—in total or for a zip code or even a neighborhood, depending on our volume—should be highly attractive!

SP/LP Ratio: again, most sellers would be fools to NOT engage the agent who has a track record of getting more for listings than the competition, so how do your stats rank in total, in a zip code, or a neighborhood?

Pending to Closing rate: we all know that not all pendings make it to the closing table but often sellers don’t. Take a look and rate your own percentage of contracts that close versus other agents and let that prospective client know they can count on you to get it done.

Average Sale Price: this one probably has more relevance in comparing to the average market sale price and for a smaller area rather than in general, but this one could be another strong factor in winning the client.

So, hop up on our new Berkshire Hathaway HS Indiana Realty platform and dig into your stats so you can win more than your share of those new listing through the cooler—and colder—weather to come!

Good to know!

David M. Hassler

Director of Business Development

Leading with Questions

After the small talk to open your listing appointment, what’s the best way to make your presentation the most effective?  Whether you use paper, laptop, iPad or any other presentation form, your first few minutes are key to gaining your potential clients’ attention.  So, do you dive right in with your script?  Years ago, an IBM marketing exec made a presentation to a group of top producing brokers, and he opened by asking questions of his audience.  First, he asked one of the simplest questions, and one we rarely remember to ask:  How much time do we have?  Have you ever gotten half way through your presentation only to have the sellers look at their watch and tell you they have five minutes left and you need to wrap it up! Awkward! 

Next, the IBM guru asked what the group’s goal was for the meeting, in other words, what did they want to accomplish.  When you sit down with the seller, it can change your approach if you can learn through good questioning that they are just hoping to get an idea of their home’s value and considering maybe listing sometime in the next year or so, since if you try to close them in that situation it will likely have the opposite result.   On the other hand, if they’ve just been transferred to Topeka and have to move in sixty days, your approach can be more oriented to securing the listing then and there.

Finally, the IBM exec asked the group for specific questions they wanted to make sure he answered and he noted them on a white board.  So find out the details the seller wants to learn, and as you go through your presentation, if you refer to those questions frequently, you'll give the seller a feeling you're responding precisely to them.  Thus, if the seller is more interested in your commission rate than your qualifications or marketing plan or net proceeds or comparable sales, you know you’ll need to focus on differentiating yourself and the benefits you bring to the table to secure your goal rate and win the listing.

Of course, before the listing appointment, it’s great to ask the seller if they’re interviewing other agents—we’ve all been caught unwittingly in that situation!  And if that’s the case, since the last presenter typically has the advantage, be sure to always ask for that spot in the lineup.

Bottom line, by asking questions first, you’ll be better able to tailor your presentation to the sellers’ goals, interests, and timing, and you’ll enhance your success rate in winning those listings.

David M. Hassler

Director of Business Development

Static Information Versus Living Knowledge

We’ve chatted before about the way knowledge usually trumps information—thanks in part to Warren Buffet’s comment that his “big secret” was that he was good at “lifelong learning”—and how 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!

Along those lines we noticed a recent article in the Inman News that addressed all those “Zillions-for-us-timates,” “Truli-wrong-imates,” and other machine-generated (computers are still machines, aren’t they?) prices for homes that drive us all crazy whether working with a seller or a buyer. Well, guess what, Standard & Poor’s did a study and found that many of these “automated value models,” or AVM’s, can be wrong by up to 20%! Wow, that’s a huge difference—try explaining that margin of error to someone with a $500,000 house that’s really only worth $400,000, or vice versa—and of course we professionals are the ones who end up having to clarify the realities of the market to our clients who have been misled by these flashy snake-oil prices.

So, how do we make sure our clients—especially those sellers who are trying to keep up with a yoyo of a market like we’ve seen this year—best understand how and where to price their house to maximize the probability of an optimal sale price and a successful closing?

The Inman article had some great ideas!

First, we can remind our clients—and in general everyone we chat with on the golf course or over a cigar—how misleading and just plain wrong all these AVM’s really are. That 20% figure is gigantic and no professional worth their salt would ever make such a pricing error (we would hope!) So use that stat and remember that friends don’t let friends surf and price.

Second, while this is probably obvious to we professionals, it’s worth making sure our clients know it as well, and that’s all the non-mathematical and even human elements that go into the price at which a home sells. We all know this from our years of practice in the market. Bottom line, the price to be paid for any individual house is based, yes, on some review of comparable sale prices, but is mostly impacted by the individual circumstances of the buyer and seller as well as the hyper-specific (sorry for lapsing into the latest jargon!) aspects of the house, ie, the condition, décor, lot, and location. Even Einstein couldn’t develop an algorithm that would consider ALL of these elements!

Finally, and this is where we come in, only a human, and frankly only a dedicated professional who has the resources and the time commitment to dig into all those non-mathematical aspects of the value of a particular home, can provide as accurate as possible an estimate of a home’s value. As we often say, each property is unique, so pricing a home is as much an art as it is a science. That's where our knowledge and professionalism make the difference!

David M. Hassler

Director of Business Development

Reporting to Whom?

As we get ready for football season—even though temperatures have only now hit the 90’s—most of us remember our high school and college days with some fondness and nostalgia.  Of course, in our nostalgia, we often forget the main reason for attending those beloved institutions:  to learn and grow.  On campus, the focal point for most of us, at least some of the time, was all those classes we took and hopefully enjoyed, even when we had tons of homework.  And yet, somehow we managed to do it and it paid off.  Now we’re striving to maintain and increase our success in our own real estate businesses in a competitive market.  Of course, one of our benefits, as independent agents, is that we report to no one but ourselves, so we enjoy great freedom and flexibility.  But that coin has another side—a potential lack of accountability. 

And now back to the campus.  Can you imagine how much we would have learned if the profs had assigned all that homework but said that turning it in was optional?  Would we have made all the prospecting calls we needed?  Would we have updated our Exact Target list regularly?  Would we have sent out all those closing anniversary cards and added new entries on our blogs?  Maybe.  However, studies show that we are generally more successful in completing tasks when we have to report the results, but as independent agents we have no such requirement, other than to ourselves.  So how do we report to ourselves? 

Do you have a solid system in place for holding yourself accountable, not only for meeting an annual volume goal, but for handling all those monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly tasks needed, step by step, to meet that volume goal in your annual business plan?  If not, chances are you have the potential to improve your business results considerably--and probably to also reduce your stress level.  Your management team and your coach can help you develop your own unique ways to make sure you’re doing all the little things you want and need to do to meet your goals and insure that ongoing success.  Now back to the game!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Catapult!

No, not the kind where they hurl rocks against castle walls in Game of Thrones, but the catapult on an aircraft carrier that propels a jet plane from zero to a few hundred miles an hour in a second or two! Now that’s a catapult!

And from what we’ve seen in the last two weeks as the Leadership Team has toured our offices around the state, the energy and enthusiasm for our October 7 transition to BHHS Indiana Realty looks to be building for an exciting launch that can catapult our agents to greater success.

In September, Craig West and I will be visiting each office and sharing an overview of the new BHHS systems and our own new BHHS Indiana Realty website. Then, during launch week, trainers from the BHHS HQ will be in town for detailed, hands on systems training. For now, though, we’ll give you a few glimpses of what’s coming:

The national BHHS consumer facing website is fabulous and if you haven’t yet checked it out, you can find it at:

www.BerkshireHathawayHS.com

That website will provide your clients and prospects with some leading edge features they won’t find other places! First, consumers can search nationwide, so when your local client decides to buy a condo in Bonita Springs or a cabin in the Rockies, they don’t have to leave our company’s website and potentially forget about us!

Also, the national website will have a feature called “Inside Access,” where the consumer can register and view new information including “Off Market” data! Yes, they’ll be able to view Pending and Sold homes (provided the local Board allows it) so they no longer will need to rely on some other site’s guestimidiocy!

Also, the Inside Access participant will be able to search and view homes’ INRIX Drive Times and even Walk Scores, two of the latest, high tech sophisticated tools our clients will find extremely helpful in seeking that perfect home. And think about how these elements can improve our effectiveness in working with buyers by helping them eliminate areas that are too far from work or other desired commuting destinations, as well as helping them focus on areas with high Walk Scores showing proximity to parks and coffee shops and other desired community features, if that’s an important consideration! Using these two features, we should be able to reduce the number of homes we’ll need to actually show most buyers—while providing them better service by being more focused on their desires! Sounds like a win/win to me.

Next time, we’ll share some previews of the new BHHS Resource Center that replaces and enhances the tools of the PREA Center.

So, strap in and get ready for an exciting and profitable ride!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching