Dave Robison
By Dave Robison
All the top producers have something in common. Yes, they all have something other agents want, such as higher sales, more disposable income, and more free time. But how do they achieve this? It’s not by buying an iPad or iPhone. Can you guess what it is they have in common?
Assistants.
NAR reports 87 percent of agents don’t have assistants.
An agent recently asked how I came to the decision to hired an assistant. This agent is excited to grow their business and take the next step into creating a sales team. After thinking about it, I realized how my business expanded due to having assistants, and how my lifestyle is more enjoyable. Here is my advice for agents who are considering hiring an assistant:
When do you hire an assistant? There are two main, simple steps. Whenever I hire a new assistant, I do it after analyzing what I’m doing with my time. My first step is figuring out how much time I’m spending in each area of my business. My second step is deciding if there is a certain area I could focus more time, and whether that time would produce a large enough return for my bottom line while paying a new assistant.
For example, recently I realized I’m spending a ton of time on e-mails, answering simple questions from my clients and other agents. I have a transaction coordinator who I keep busy with 20 to 30 deals under contract at one time. She is already very busy, so I couldn’t add more to her plate. I figured if I can have a licensed assistant take care of all the routine e-mail and simple calls all day for me, then I could spend more time getting more listings. Now it’s time to do it. I hired my second assistant so I could focus on increasing sales.
How do you hire your assistant? Continue reading »
Jared James
By Jared James
I am a firm believer that you can only do so many things great. I guess you could say that I fall in line with the phrase, “jack of all trades, master of none.” Now, I do believe that some people can excel at more things than other people, but as a general rule you can only be great at so many things.
I bring this up because I fear that we are becoming a people who are being told we have to be good at everything.
A day doesn’t go by where I don’t get questions from people on Facebook, Twitter, and in e-mails asking me about how to use Pinterest, what are the best database, how they should use social media for business, what’s the best online lead generator, what apps I recommend, what’s the best way to work in the “cloud,” and on and on…
At some point I have to just say, ENOUGH ALREADY!!
Please do not get me wrong, every question I listed above is a good one, and they are questions that we, as professionals, should know the answer to. But I worry that we are becoming a people who are so obsessed with mastering everything that in the end we will end up mastering nothing. You see, I would rather be great at working my database or leveraging Facebook page than be good at everything there is to know about creating or managing a business. Being good doesn’t separate you, and separation is what it takes to stand out and actually see a real return on investment (ROI).
I can’t tell you how often I hear about people who are using social media and get no return on it. At the same time, I know of many people making a living off of it. So which opinion is right? The one that thinks social media is a waste of time? Or the one that thinks it is amazing?
One thing that I have learned as a speaker/trainer is that most of the time it is not the tool or strategy that is the problem in people’s lives — the problem is the implementation of the tool. And when you are a master of none, it is difficult to get the results that you see someone else getting without giving their same level of dedication. Continue reading »
Anand Patel
By Anand Patel
Now that I have your attention, let me explain!
Last month my wife and I took our three-year-old daughter to the Disney On-Ice show that came to our town (Tampa, Fla.). It wasn’t until the day of the event that my wife decided to tell me this show, which was called Disney on Ice: “Dare to Dream,” was going to feature various Disney princesses and their stories. I wasn’t too excited, but anything for your little pipsqueak, right?
As we were walking up to the arena entrance I saw a swarm of little girls seemingly attack a Disney vendor hawking all sorts of princess paraphernalia. I thought to myself – ok, this is strange. Once inside the arena as we were escorted to our seats, I again was confused and shocked as to why all these girls were dressed up from head to toe in princess clothing. Halloween wasn’t for another five months! Throughout the show, as the arena filled with screams of little kids cheering for their favorite princess, I sat there looking around in awe at the powerful business machine that is simply Disney. They had come up with a way to create a very profitable revenue stream from their old characters!
An Idea is Born
Being the business nerd that I am, when I got home I googled the Disney Princess franchise and discovered that the idea of the Disney Princess line came from a man named Andy Mooney. Disney hired Mooney in 1999 to help their consumer products division improve their dropping sales. At that time, while attending his first Disney on Ice show, he found himself surrounded by young girls dressed as princesses in generic, non-Disney costumes. That’s when the idea of capitalizing on Disney’s existing cast of princess characters hit him. The Disney Princess franchise was born. In my opinion, this was genius!
What’s the point?
What does any of this have to do with real estate? As I thought about it some more, I realized how many times I find myself (and many others fall into this trap as well) looking for an outside “shiny object” to help with our business. Continue reading »
Chris Nichols
By Chris Nichols
I just got back from some meetings in Orlando, Florida. There are many beautiful golf courses in the area, and I had the opportunity to drive by Disney’s Lake Buena Vista Golf Course and see this phenomenal golf hole.
Surrounded by water and sandwiched between two sand traps, this hole could easily be summed up as “challenging”! But is it really? Interestingly enough, the green is no different in size than a standard hole without the water and the the sand traps. In other words, it’s not any more difficult to get the ball on this green than on any other green at your local golf course.
Why then, when we look at this hole, do we automatically add the words challenging or difficult to its description? It lies with where our focus is centered. If we are focused on the goal or objective (aka the pin and hole), and not on the visual distractions (aka the sand traps and water waiting to gobble up your golf ball), it’s much easier to get the ball on this green. Golf course designers like to add these obstacles because they understand that the principle of target fixation will distract the golfer and increase the difficulty of the hole.
How often do we allow external challenges, Continue reading »
Dave Robison
By Dave Robison
The problem client:
That’s what an agent said to me over a year ago. “Dave, this client calls me a lot and is really high maintenance. Her listing price is unrealistic, we should just drop her listing.” This agent was selling 40 listings a year. He should know exactly what he is talking about right? Many sellers have pie-in-the-sky pricing on their listings and they may blame you that its not sold! Phone rings… “Mr Agent, why haven’t you sold my unrealistic high priced listing? I mean you haven’t even brought one buyer over to see it!” (Ummmm…probably because no one wants to see an overpriced listing, duh.)
Well, this seller had a hard time reaching their listing agent mainly because the agent felt like she was high maintenance and his time was better spent elsewhere. As a result, when her mother asked if she liked her agent, her response was, “Not really.”
There went $20,000 in referral commissions down the drain. The mom went and used another agent.
I took over:
Right about this time I heard through the grapevine that she wasn’t happy. The agent wasn’t happy either. So I took over. I sold her home and helped her buy another one. That client was worth $20,000 in commissions on those transactions. If she had been happy there would have been another $20k in commissions for a total of $40,000 in commissions made.
Where success comes from: Continue reading »
Toby Boyce
By Toby Boyce
We’ve all seen the advertisements on television. The more Axe bodywash you use, the more female attention you are going to get.
Well, I recently conducted a not-at-all scientific experiment and wore Axe body wash to the library. A couple of girls and guys smiled at me, but I was really disappointed as I expected there to be a line out the door complete with cat fights. I mean, that’s what the advertisement leads us to believe will happen, right?
Ahh, yes. But we know better. We know that isn’t true. We know that there are a lot more things that go into whether you’ll have a female talk to you than what body wash you used this morning.
So how is it that so many of these “real estate gurus” continue to travel the country selling the exact same thing? The magic bullet that will save your real estate career and desperate agents buy into it.
“Those that came here today hoping to just pick up one piece of usable information are just prolonging their failure.” It was the line that got me in 2006. I was struggling and forked over $600 that we really didn’t have for a system that I never really ended up using. Why? Because I needed a magic pill and they offered one.
When teaching technology classes in my office and others, I see too many agents looking for the same result from social media. The most common question is, “How much will blogging make me?” Well that’s hard to answer because it depends on what you do with it and where you take it. But you can do it. Sadly, I can count on one hand the number of blogs I’ve set-up over the years that are still functional and being maintained.
Yet every single agent has access to the “magic pill” for their real estate career — a business plan. Continue reading »
Toby Boyce
By Toby Boyce
Football season is on us and in Ohio that means a lot of cheering on Friday and Saturday and praying for our NFL teams on Sunday. Football is a passion and as I’ve matured and grown older and – hopefully – wiser, I see the wisdom in those screams and rants from my childhood coaches.
“Football is the game of life,” I remember Mike Billow screaming as we worked over-and-over to perfect a task. And the older I get, the more I realize that his statement was right on the mark – and it can even double when taken into application with a real estate career.
I thought I’d share a few of Coach Billow’s favorite “sayings.” I know many of them weren’t original to him, however, on those hot-August days in Danville, Ohio, he made them his.
- Look Down, You Go Down. How often do we see it in this market? The “naysayers” start talking about how the sky is falling and it isn’t going to last. Well, they are exactly right. For as soon as they put their head down to avoid the falling sky, their business fell. Doesn’t matter how beaten, weathered, or challenged you feel – keep those eyes up and looking at the prize.
- Did you get better today? You never stay the same. We practice our craft, hopefully every single day, to improve those listing presentations, get more buyers, convert more short sales, etc. The reason is simple. If you don’t practice it and make a conscience effort to get better, you will by default be getting worse – because you never will stay the same. Life – and real estate – is about eternalizing responses (i.e. scripts) so that they become a spontaneous response. If you aren’t role playing and practicing, is that possible? Continue reading »
Dave Robison
By Dave Robison
When the Focus is On Getting More Money:
Recently, I talked to an agent who, unfortunately, didn’t quite know where their focus should be. It can be really tough to know. If more agents did, they would be selling a lot more homes.
If you can learn these secrets, though, you could be consistently successful. As John Wooden would say it, “Skill may take you to the top, but it takes character to stay there.”
The agent who didn’t quite know their focus had many outside influences affecting them: They were doing a loan modification; their time was limited due to a new baby; and they stacked up a lot monthly bills creating a “higher lifestyle” for themselves in previous years. All of these things added stress, taking time and focus away from work, on top of less pay than previous years and too many bills.
But this particular agent figured the split with their broker was the cause of stress. They thought that if they got more money for what they were already doing, it would help.
So this agent went to the other agents in their office to see how they felt about getting a higher split. “A higher split?” some of the other agents asked. “Of course. But is that possible?” The agent wanting more money said, “Of course its possible. I mean, look at the broker and all the vacations they are going on. We are the ones struggling with a loan mod and the broker is in Cancun, we deserve more money and the broker can afford it.” Continue reading »
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