This was my “call to action” for my agents for 2011. Read it if you want to. Read it if you are thinking about a career in real estate. Read it if you want to know what makes EXIT agents different than others.
Wow! I am tired, but excited about 2011. Over the past 5 weeks, I have set down with close to 40 of you to discuss your business plan for 2011. Each of you have a plan of action to take you to your lifestyle goals for 2011, and there is nothing standing in your way to reach the opportunities available to each of you in the new year….except for yourself. No one, nor anything, whether the economy, unemployment, Congress, The President, rising interest rates, competition, friends, or family can keep you from having a very successful 2011. For everyone of you when I asked what was standing in your way, do you need more training, more resources, more mentoring???…..the only answer I received was ‘MYSELF’. It happens to all of us. WE get in our own way. WE don’t do what we are trained to do. WE don’t prospect on a daily basis. WE don’t develop a plan and stick to it. WE make excuses. WE allow distractions. WE get tired. WE get depressed. WE become a secret agent. WE focus on the negative. WE don’t hold ourselves accountable. WE don’t manage our time. WE question authority.
Stop focusing on the limitations and reach for the opportunities!
Did you know that 2010 was the worst real estate year since 1997?! What does that mean? Those of you still standing….MADE IT! It will only get better and easier from here. The transactions are out there, people will still be buying and selling. There will always be job transfers, babies being born, family members passing, marriages, divorces, and graduating kids. There will definitely be short sales and foreclosures, and first time homebuyers (did you realize that 50% of the transactions across country, this year, were first time home buyers?). Just like in 2010, those who make the effort to find these people will make the transactions. If each of us reached our annual goals, EXIT Realty Deaton Group would be in the elite group of top producing firms in Arkansas! We are capable!
Now that interest rates have risen, buyers should realize, and you should tell them, they missed the bottom. It happened sometime in October 2010, and rates will continue to increase but they will stay at rates that are historically extremely low. Inventory is high so buyers have choices, prices are stable but increasing slightly, deals are available, and interest rates are low. Investors should invest and renters should buy. Reports still show that the number one reason to buy a house is for the simple desire to own a home. Go help our community fulfill their dreams.
I have confidence in each of you that you possess the skills and the resources to provide the professionalism our market needs. There are no better agents than you! Guaranteed! You have the tools, the training, the plan, and the resources to help our market “invest in real estate”. But they aren’t going to come looking for you. “Go Play in Someone Else’s Sandbox!” Go to where the clients are.
Communicate to your center of influence are a consistent basis. They are your personal sales team. Educate them about your services. Show them your value. Ask them for referrals. If you are not using EXIT’s Promo Shop, then you are LOSING money every month! You must use this tool! If you have not created an official database of everyone you could possibly know, then do it now. These are your sales people. Use them.
Identify a specific farming area. Just like a farmer, you need to work a specific piece of land, nurture it, plant the seed, fertilize it, and sometime in the near future, YOU WILL HAVE A HARVEST! Provide your farm area an updated market report monthly. They want to know what their home is worth. Show them. Show them you are the neighborhood expert.
Contact FSBO’s weekly. These sellers are your future clients, not your competition. They will list with a REALTOR within the next 3 months. When they do….it should be you they list with. Why? Because they have seen that you are willing to provide a service to them throughout the process. They will see that you are different! Do you have a 12 week communication plan? Check out our dropbox account…now you do. Work the plan.
Call Expireds daily. They need your help! They have a real estate need and it was not met by the previous agent. Contact them and show them what you can do to satisfy their needs. You have the tools and the knowledge to sell their home and help them move on to the next chapter in their life.
Call all the Just Listed and Just Sold your fingers can handle. This is a gold mine. Don’t miss this opportunity to have more for sale signs in that neighborhood than anyone else. Regardless of who listed, or sold, the home…you have the right to inform the neighbors about the new listing or the recent sold. They want to know. Neighbors do think about selling their home when someone else in the neighborhood sells. Make the contacts and you will take the listings.
Hold an Open House every other week. Not for the satisfaction of the seller, but for the opportunity of finding serious buyers…many who also have a home to sell before they can buy their next home. Stand out from the crowd and actually tell the surrounding neighbors and the closest feeder market about your open house. The Saturday before your open house, pass out 25 flyers about the open house to each group. You will be amazed at the results. Don’t have your own listing? Find an EXIT Realty Deaton Group listing and ask the listing agent for permission. They would be glad for you do it. Sometimes the house actually does sell from an open house. Right, Ginger! If our agents held an open house every other week, think about the exposure EXIT Realty would receive with the amount of signs and flyers being distributed throughout the neighborhoods. Think that exposure would help you, individually, get that next listing? They won’t have to ask, “Who is EXIT.”
Two forms you MUST use this year: Weekly schedule and weekly activity sheet. Both of these are available for download on our Dropbox site. Sit down each Sunday afternoon and plan the upcoming week. Put everything you must do in your schedule and stick to it. Put your lunch breaks, your church time, little johnny’s baseball game, dinner and most important….your prospecting time. You do the activity on a consistent basis and there is nothing to hold you back!
As always, I am here to help you grow your individual business. If you have any questions about any of these techniques, or tools, or strategies, please let me know. Ignorance is very expensive!
Remember the Prayer of Jabez:
And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, "Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain." So God granted him what he requested.
I Chronicles 4:10 NKJV
The prayer is composed of four parts. First, Jabez asks God to bless him. Second, he asks God to enlarge his territory or increase his responsibility. Third, he prays that God will be with him and stay close. Lastly, Jabez asks that God keep him from harm so that he will be free from pain.
2011 is going to be awesome! Come take an exciting ride with me and lets have some fun!
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