Five Tightening Market Mistakes As our market “normalizes” and competition gets tough, it is much too easy to fall into age-old traps that lead to lower commissions, customer frustration and agent burnout. Avoid these pitfalls by staying current in your knowledge base, putting systems in place and committing to continuous follow up. 1. Failing to Begin with the End in Mind: Prospecting without a plan historically finds agents either spinning their wheels working low priority activities or worse, heading into hibernation. Treat your business as a business. Sit down with your manager and create a success plan that works for you. Determine what your goals are based on your financial needs and budget first. How many listings will you need to take to reach your goals? How many prospects will you have to reach to earn those listings? Now, where do you find those prospects? No longer able to wait for the phone to ring; you have to implement a solid system for developing and maintaining your book of business. Download a free version of our BusinessBASE™ system today. This simple contact manager allows you to identify 150 people who should be in your sphere of influence and gives you a step-by-step process for how, when and why to continually contact them. This one tool, if used faithfully, will allow you to build your business to the point where you can sell it when you are ready. How many REALTORS® do you know who can say that? 2. Poor Prospecting: A lot of agents had a false sense of confidence in recent years as market conditions in some areas gave the ability to be more “order taker” than REALTOR®. With the recent shift comes the realization that true, consistent, repetitive prospecting needs to take center stage in an agent’s business plan. How many different ways do you have to prospect? Do you have a way to stay in touch with your sphere-of-influence base, geographic farm area as well as develop new business by choosing specific target markets? Specializing in one or two additional areas such as first-time homeowners, investors or jumping into the corporate marketing arena will allow you to broaden your base of business just enough to create a steady and vital stream of prospects. ProspectsPLUS! offers a free 24 month wall calendar, the Master Marketing Schedule which spotlights over eight categories per month to choose from with at least two campaigns per week to keep their client’s bank of available prospecting ideas full for the next two years! Visit us online at www.prospectsplus.com to request yours today! With helpful dialogue and strategies and ideas you’ll have a results-getting track to follow regardless of market conditions. 3. Taking an Overpriced Listing: As the market changes, agents sometimes find themselves in desperation mode. With the fear that the competition will snap the listing out from under them, they are anxious to take a listing under any terms. Truth be told, a listing that won’t sell is worse than no listing at all. Don’t be afraid to educate your sellers regarding the importance of pricing their home right from the beginning. Try the Floyd Wickman dialogue, “Mr. and Mrs. Seller, do you want me to lie or level with you?” Explain that timing is everything in the real estate industry then use the Price pyramid to illustrate the need for price to be both comparable with other listings in the area as well as flexible according to the amount of time the seller has to keep the home on the market. Quicker sales will require better than competitive pricing. 4. Wearing the Wrong Hat: The Do Not Call Registry, increased competition and the all too common fear of prospecting keeps many agents wearing their administrative hat instead of donning the daily role of professional sales associate. You’ll find them first up to make coffee, rearranging the office, surfing the internet to look busy or trying their hand at being their own graphic designer, editor, and advertising executive. As a REALTOR® you get paid to do three things: Prospect, Present and Close. That’s it. Those are your highest priorities and the work that will keep you closest to your revenue line and on track to meet your goals. You do not get paid to create, cut, paste and stamp envelopes. For these tasks take advantage of the incredible programs, tools and technology available that puts all the marketing materials at your fingertips! No need to cut and paste, just concentrate on what? Prospecting, Presenting and Closing! 5. Not Fueling the Right Mindset: Do you know anyone trapped in old patterns, unproductive routines or negative mindsets? Make your mind your greatest asset, not a liability. Supercharge your success by continually fueling your mind with positive affirmations. Capture your goals and dreams into visual image and focus on that visualization each day and your mind will consistently help you work towards their realization. Where do you want to be? What would you like to have? Be specific, put a time frame to it, and then see yourself achieving that dream. Power your mind each morning as you set upon your tasks for the day. Smart, savvy agents know that today’s best modern skill is to rapidly learn utilizing the Internet. On any given day or night you can tap into the best resources in our industry to inspire, motivate, train and ignite the spirit that will propel your career. You can download information from directly from the websites of experts like Floyd Wickman, Bill Barrett, Dave Beson, Tom Hopkins, Anthony Robbins and more 24 hours a day if you like. Constantly feed your mind with the tools, dialogues, strategies, tips and techniques that are readily accessible to you and simple to find. Being the best begins with believing that you can be. Remove the negative obstacles in your path and set a course for greatness. Julia Escobar, Director of Corporate and Convention Marketing for ProspectsPLUS! has over 20 years experience in real estate sales and marketing. To register for a monthly newsletter filled with prospecting strategies, schedule a Master Marketing Meeting to help your associates play at the next level, download your free copy of our BusinessBASE™ or get your free copy of our Master Marketing Schedule, call 1.800.287.5710 today or visit us online at: www.prospectsplus.com. Open a PDF version of this article: Five Tightening Market Mistakes You will need to Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these files, which can be downloaded free here. Click Here. |
