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Thursday, September 28, 2017
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Here's something most real estate gurus refuse to talk about
| Hey all, Take a minute out of your day to think about a topic that doesn't get enough attention in real estate. Quality of life. At the end of the day, that is what we all want. Today the average agent is in his or her 50s so that means that most of us have had a chance to look death in the face. Maybe it was a major health issue of our own, or maybe the loss of someone close to us. One thing is for sure, when we confront mortality, our priorities change. My mother passed away a few years ago after suffering from Alzheimer's for the last part of her life. She outlived her prognosis by several years, which gave us a lot of extra time with her, and now she is finally set free from her disease. But it is still a good reminder that life isn't guaranteed forever and gives me occasion to revisit the topic of how to achieve the quality of life you want from your career in real estate. So let's think for a minute about what constitutes quality of life. It is subjective, of course, and each of us are different, but most of us have a mix of several common elements including financial security, job satisfaction, loving relationships, health, and inner or spiritual peace. Unfortunately, many of us Realtors find ourselves moving in the wrong direction in pursuit of that ever-elusive quality of life. We find our jobs not particularly satisfying due to increasing stress and decreasing incomes. That leads to less time pursuing and nurturing our relationships and often even adversely affects our health. It's a downward spiral. But what if you could work a very specific and yet doable plan that would allow you to work hard for a year or two, and that work would position you to get off the treadmill, and begin to reap the benefits of a carefully constructed money machine that could carry you through the rest of your life with minimal new effort? Can it actually be done? Absolutely. But it won't happen by accident. It will take a very focused, specific plan of attack. It will take your commitment to that vision, and it will take a lot of very hard work. It will come in three parts or phases. I call them Learn, Earn, and Return. I'll show you what I mean, but I need you to pay close attention for the next few paragraphs. Learn (approximately 3 months). Most agents are more emotional than logical. That's not bad -- in fact, it helps them relate to clients better. We tend to go by feelings and intuition and not by analysis and numbers. But I need your undivided attention for a few minutes because I need you to think about this concept 100% rationally. Intellectually. And when your mind gets it, I promise you your heart will follow. If we ever want to earn a windfall, we must go where the money is. Who has the money? The customers. If we really want to kill it -- not just make it, but kill it -- we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of coasting along picking up the occasional transaction, like the blind hog that finds an acorn every now and then. In other words, we need to find out where the customers are and then we must go to where they are in order to get their business. Seems simple enough, but most of us refuse to do it. Instead, we follow the crowd, which is usually wrong, and our results are safely the same as every other struggling agent. The good news is that we don't have to wonder where the customers are. The National Association of Realtors surveys our customers for us each and every year. And year after year the numbers are very clear. This past year 94% of all our customers began searching online and yet ironically most agents generated not a single transaction from their websites. Why? Because they won't take the time to learn what they need to do. Most won't even learn how to generate sales leads from their websites, and then the few who begin to generate leads fail to take the time to learn how to effectively turn those sales leads into closings and commission checks. Agents willing to apply themselves to learning the skills of attracting and keeping this new online customer can absolutely transform their practices in about three months. I've seen it happen again and again. I've also seen agents invest in the tools and then fail to apply themselves to learning this new skillset and give up on their dreams in about the same amount of time. What a shame. Earn (approximately 2 years). After learning how to attract and keep internet business you need a season of growth. First you'll have to reach your own maximum capacity, and then you will have to begin to refine things. You'll focus on both quantity and quality. Most agents never have the luxury of shifting to this phase because they never leave the scarcity of traditional real estate. Once you finally understand how to generate a steady, predictable, scalable, flow of high-quality, inbound customers, and then learn how to build and manage those relationships through the home-buying and home-selling process, through escrow, closing and depositing your commission checks, you realize that you have a money machine. Like a big V8 engine, all you have to do is put in more input (fuel and air) and the result will be more output (speed and power). Only in your real estate money machine you will simply put in more internet traffic and the result will be more leads, resulting in more closed transactions. But until you have your machine in place, adding more traffic is like pouring gas on the ground. It won't produce anything. You will systematically scale up your traffic while maximizing your efficiency until you eventually reach your own personal maximum capacity. At that point you will need to make a decision. Do you want to begin to add cylinders or do you want to be a very fast one cylinder engine. For me, I wanted to add cylinders so I began to bring on other agents. It's what Gary Keller calls the principle of leverage. For me, recruiting agents was really quite simple. They needed business. I needed additional hours in the day. I gave them the business and they added the hours. We split the commissions. I continued to focus on getting listings and handed the buyer clients off to my team members. Return (onward and forever). Eventually, I reached capacity and handed off the listing business as well and I spent my time managing agents. Sure, I could cherry pick the occasional transaction, or I could list the occasional home for a friend or relative, but I was free. Quality of life was great. My life was my own again because I was no longer on the treadmill. From that point on I began focusing on how I could give back. In my case, I began to share my technology tools with other agents. I began writing books and articles and teaching the lessons I'd picked up during the Learn and Earn phases. To this day, I answer my own phone and I love spending time talking to fellow agents about their practices and I try to return what's been given to me. I believe there is a law of reciprocity. Whatever you sow, you will reap. If I want to reap corn, I need to plant corn. If I plant beans, I'll harvest beans. So what if I want to reap success? I need to sow success. And the best way I can think of sowing success is by helping other agents become successful. That's what the Return phase is all about. So allow me to ask you a few pointed questions and take a moment to be brutally honest with yourself. Has your quality of life been improving over the last few years? If not, why not? Are you doing as much business as you would like to be doing? Are you currently effective in gathering business from the largest customer pool in real estate today -- the internet? Is your website earning its keep? Be honest: Has it produced you a single closing in the past year? If not, why not? Tough questions. Finally, I have one last question: Would you be willing to invest a couple of years building a real estate money machine so that you could then spend the remainder of your days with a fantastic quality of life, returning, mentoring and training -- investing in those not as far down the path of success? If your answer is yes, I sincerely believe I can help you accomplish that goal. First you'll need to assemble the tools to attract and capture customers. My Ultimate Website can do that in spades. Here's the thing, I limit how many agents I allow to use the technology to maximize your competitive advantage. But I've made it easy to find out if it's available in your area. It only takes a few seconds, just click the link below. Find out if it's available in your market » Next you'll need to learn how to use the technology. After you master the technology, you'll need to learn the art of working with online customers. Don't worry, it won't take long because my coaching staff and I are there to help you every step of the way. The only part of the equation we can't supply is your desire and your willingness to work hard. We are more than happy to work with you until it clicks and then through the refinement period as you begin to grow and grow and grow. There's no extra cost and we've got a lot of experience when it comes to doing online business. But if you want to capture leads like I describe above ^ then check out my Ultimate Website system. The typical agent captures their first customer within 24 hours of signing up! Get My Ultimate Website System (Wait. Did you check to see if it's available in your area?) All the best, -Matt Jones P.S. - Have you joined my private Facebook group yet? It's free, and I'll sharing secret tactics I don't feel comfortable sharing on the blog. Join and meet and new like-minded agents. Guerilla Realty |
Sunday, September 24, 2017
The real math on cold calling
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