Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies E-Book

Dirk Zeller

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 796

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Straight-talking advice for new and veteran agents navigating today's real estate market

Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies helps you create leads, close deals and everything in between. This updated edition covers changes to interest rates, inventory, and the impact of recent class action lawsuits on agent compensations. With tried-and-true tactics and fresh ideas from one of North America's top agents, this book contains all you need to know about the real estate business. Inside, you'll find tips and tricks on selecting a company that works best for you and your goals, marketing yourself and your listings with influence, and communicating effectively with clients. The actionable content in this Dummies guide is your ticket to thriving in a wide market.

• Gain insider advice on how to flourish as an agent in all real estate markets
• Understand how real estate is changing, and what those changes mean for you
• Find, secure, and sell more properties with optimized listings and outreach
• Get fresh ideas for improving your results in residential and commercial sales

For new licensed real estate agents, those switching careers into real estate agenting, or seasoned agents looking to refine their prospecting and selling skills, this book is a valuable source of information and techniques.

Leseprobe

Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies®

To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part 1: Showing Up for Your Own Success Story

Chapter 1: Cultivating Skills and Strategies for Success

Having Goal Objectives and Sales and Income Targets

Acting Like a Top Producer from Day One

Securing Customers and Clients

Understanding the Reasoning for Being a Strong Listing Agent

Choosing Your Avenue to Success

Chapter 2: Selecting the Right Company

Real Estate Office of the Future

Weighing All Your Options

Creating Your Agency Short List

Getting Off to a Fast Start

Considering Pros and Cons of Joining a Team

Chapter 3: Mastering Any Marketplace

A Seller’s Marketplace Seems Easy

Buyer’s Market? No Problem

Shift Happens

Chapter 4: Positioning Yourself as a Marketplace Expert

Overcoming the Bias against Rookies

Crafting a Market Trends Report

Understanding Clients’ Emotion-Based Decision Making

Expanding Your Market Knowledge with Key Sources

Part 2: Creating Leads in Our Online World

Chapter 5: Using Facebook and Instagram: Online Lead Juggernauts

Balancing Traditional and Social Media Strategies

Personal or Business? Using Social Media Accounts Effectively

Using Facebook and Instagram Marketing Strategies

Chapter 6: Uncovering Leads with Online Search

The ABCs of Online Leads

DIY Mentality and Misconceptions

No Substitute for Speed to Lead

The Psychology of an IDX Lead

Making the Most of Your IDX System

Chapter 7: Building a Larger Online Presence

Building a Quality Website for Long-Term Success

Understanding Real Estate Blogging

Integrating a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solution

Chapter 8: Creating Leads with Third-Party Websites

The Elephant in the Room: Third-Party Real Estate Sites

Zillow, the White Whale of Real Estate

Realtor.com: It’s Not Ours Anymore

The Best of the Rest: Homelight, OJO, Redfin, Veterans United

Part 3: Creating Leads through Timeless Channels

Chapter 9: Prospecting for Gold: Generating Listings and Sales

Knowing Why Prospecting Still Works

Tailoring Prospecting for the Type of Client

Understanding the Four Pillars of Prospecting

Building Momentum in Your Prospecting

Knowing the Numbers and Ratios

Staying in Touch

Chapter 10: Generating Referrals, Recommendations, and Introductions

Knowing the Referral Truths and Consequences

Building Your Referral Base

Creating a Referral Strategy

Developing and Expanding Referral Relationships

Chapter 11: Working Expired and FSBO Success in Any Marketplace

Three Reasons to Work Expired and FSBO Listings

The ABCs of Expired Listings

Opportunities in the For-Sale-by-Owner’s World

Chapter 12: Hosting Open Houses: New Agents’ Bread and Butter

Leveraging Open Houses for Leads

Setting Your Prospecting Objectives

Planning for Maximum Exposure

Going Big with a Mega Open House

Being the Host with the Most: Effectively Managing the Open House

Part 4: Winning the Business and Getting Paid

Chapter 13: Making Your Listing Presentation a Masterpiece

Qualifying Your Listing Prospects

Presenting to Qualified Prospects

Dealing with Sales Objections

Asking for the Business

Bringing the Presentation to a Natural Conclusion

Chapter 14: Converting Buyers and Selling Your Value

Making a Case against DIY

Selling Your Value as a Buyer’s Agent

Selling Your Services as Exclusive

Getting a Buyer to Make a Reasonable Offer

Packaging the Buyer as the Best Buyer

Chapter 15: Getting the House Ready for Showing

Getting the Home Ready for Pictures and Virtual Tours First

Counseling Clients on Home Improvements

Passing the Curb Appeal Test

Prepping the Interior of the Home

Making a Great First Impression: Final Ways

Chapter 16: Marketing Yourself and Your Properties

Shifting from Print to Online

Choosing Internet Strategies That Work

The Art of Persuasion: Getting Prospects to Buy into You

Using Text-Back Technology for Marketing

Targeting Your Marketing Message

Creating and Placing High-Impact Ads

Enhancing Exposure via Virtual Tours

Chapter 17: Negotiating the Contract and Closing the Deal

Preparing for the Task Ahead

Advancing or Accepting an Offer

Closing the Deal

Part 5: Creating Ongoing Success in Real Estate Sales

Chapter 18: Keeping Clients for Life

Achieving Relationship Excellence

Creating After-the-Sale Service

Establishing Awesome Service

Chapter 19: Maximizing Your Time

Spending Less Time to Accomplish More

Applying Pareto’s Principle: The 80:20 Rule

Managing Your Day

Time Blocking Your Way to Success

Carpe Diem: Seizing Your Day

Chapter 20: Owning It Is Better Than Selling It

Defining Financial Independence

Appreciating the Value of Real Estate Investment

Developing Your Investment Strategy

Comparing Different Types of Investment Properties

Doing the Math

Chapter 21: Selling New Construction

Understanding the Opportunities in New Construction

Explaining New Construction Advantages to Buyers

Presenting New Construction to Buyers

Helping Buyers Understand the Importance of Representation

Protecting Your Commission in Selling a New Home

Picking Up Resales in New Neighborhoods

Part 6: The Part of Tens

Chapter 22: Ten Must-Haves for a Successful Agent

Good Contact Management System

Online Lead-Generation Software

Enhanced CMA Software

Video Production and Video Email Software

Tablet Computer

DocuSign or Dotloop Software

Facebook Business Page

Personal Website

A Good Set of Phone Ear Buds

Sales Scripts

Chapter 23: Ten Tips for Listing Presentations

Winning the Seller with Preparation

Knowing Your Competition

Sticking with Your Strategy

Forgetting about a “Be Back” Listing

Using Technology to Impress a Prospect

Conveying Your Benefits Clearly

Inserting Trial Closes Strategically

Talking about Value Rather than Price

Being Willing to Walk Away

Clarifying Service and Next Steps

Index

About the Author

Connect with Dummies

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 2

TABLE 2-1 Agent Segmentation by Income Bracket

List of Illustrations

Chapter 4

FIGURE 4-1: Example real estate market trends report.

Chapter 9

FIGURE 9-1: Pyramid of persuasion.

FIGURE 9-2: Guidelines for an elongated call.

FIGURE 9-3: Use a tracking sheet like this to monitor and evaluate your prospec...

Chapter 10

FIGURE 10-1: Typical real estate agent timeline for a referral ask.

FIGURE 10-2: Timeline showing a winning strategy for the referral ask.

FIGURE 10-3: List the names of contacts in as many of these social- and busines...

Chapter 11

FIGURE 11-1: Time on the market, FSBO and agent-assisted sellers.

Chapter 12

FIGURE 12-1: Use this worksheet to standardize your open house planning.

Chapter 13

FIGURE 13-1: Complete a qualifying questionnaire as you prepare for each listin...

Chapter 15

FIGURE 15-1: House clean-up and presentation preparation checklist.

Chapter 16

FIGURE 16-1: This conversion chart illustrates how prospects can turn into refe...

Chapter 18

FIGURE 18-1: Customize this checklist to reflect the steps you follow when acqu...

FIGURE 18-2: Customize this checklist to reflect the steps you follow from cont...

Chapter 19

FIGURE 19-1: Productivity form for recording time spent.

FIGURE 19-2: Use a schedule grid such as this one to block your tim...

Chapter 20

FIGURE 20-1: Comparing pros and cons of property types.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Begin Reading

Index

About the Author

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Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies®, 4th Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com.

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2024939946

ISBN 978-1-394-25824-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-394-25826-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-394-25825-3 (ebk)

Introduction

Welcome to the fourth edition of Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies! You’re about to move into the big leagues, populated by the most successful real estate agents.

Real estate sales is the greatest business in the world. In my more than 35 years as a business owner and entrepreneur, I’ve yet to find a business equal to real estate sales when it comes to income potential versus capital investment. In any marketplace, a real estate agent has the opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. (I coach many agents and teams who earn more than $3 million per year.) An agent’s income is especially significant when viewed against the capital investment required by the business. Most agents need as little as $2,500 to start up their practices. Compare that to any other business, and you’ll find that most involve sizeable investments and burdensome loans to buy equipment, lease space, create marketing pieces, develop business strategies, and hire employees — all to achieve what is usually a smaller net profit than what a real estate agent can achieve in the first few years. It’s almost too good to be true!

Because of technological advances, including the internet and social media, a new agent can create the appearance of success, marketplace stature, and marketing experience far beyond the early stages of a real estate career. This gives new agents better odds at carving out a career for themselves. Furthermore, the timing of your decision to enter the field of real estate or advance your career could not be better because the industry has seen an exciting improvement in sales post pandemic.

New agents are entering real estate sales in very high numbers. Real estate will likely enter a new growth phase as interest rates go down. We will see a surge in demand and an increase in sales prices. The market is still somewhere between 4.5 million to 7 million housing units short in the United States, and the Gen Z generation is starting to enter home ownership in larger numbers. All these factors will contribute to an active housing market.

Real estate sales paved the way for me to become a millionaire at a very young age. It has provided a solid income, many investment opportunities, an exciting lifestyle, and a platform from which I’ve been able to help many others achieve their own goals and dreams in life. You’ll find these opportunities are still available to you in today’s real estate market. The strategies to make them happen are contained in the pages of this book.

About This Book

This book is about becoming a successful real estate agent. It’s also about acquiring sales skills, marketing skills, time-management skills, people skills, technology skills, and business skills. It’s about gaining more respect, achieving more recognition, making more money, and closing more sales. It’s a guide that helps you achieve the goals and dreams you have for yourself and your family.

I’m delighted to share with you the keys I’ve found for real estate success and to help you avoid the mistakes I’ve made along the way. I’m a firm believer in the idea that you often benefit more from failures than from successes — but with this book, you can benefit from my experience so that you don’t have to repeat my failures.

The techniques, skills, and strategies I present throughout this book are the same ones I’ve used and tested to perfection personally and with thousands of coaching clients and hundreds of thousands of training program participants. Although technology has had an expanding influence on the real estate market in the past decade, the foundational skills of sales, time management, marketing, and people skills have not changed as much. This is not a book of theory but of “real stuff” that works and is laid out in a hands-on, step-by-step format. You’ll also find time-tested scripts in most sales-oriented chapters. These scripts are designed to move prospects and clients to do more business with you.

If you apply the information contained in this book with the right attitude, and if you’re consistent in your practices and your success expectations, your success in real estate sales is guaranteed.

Throughout this book I incorporate a number of style conventions, most aimed at keeping the book easy to read, with a few aimed at keeping it legally accurate:

Throughout this book, I use the term

real estate agent

rather than

Realtor

unless I’m talking specifically about members of the

National Association of Realtors

(NAR).

Realtor

is a registered trademark owned by the NAR, which requires that the term appear either in all capital letters or with an initial capital R. For your information, all Realtors are real estate agents, but only those real estate agents who are members of and subscribe to the association’s strict code of ethics are Realtors.

The word

agency

describes the relationship that a real estate agent has with members of the public, or as they’re sometimes called,

clients.

When clients list a home for sale, they enter a contractual relationship with the agent who will represent their interests. That agreement is called an

agency relationship.

Every state and province has a unique set of laws stipulating how consumers and real estate agents work in an agency relationship. These agency laws have been reworked and clarified over decades. Throughout this book, when I refer to agency agreements, I’m describing the real estate agent’s relationship with buyers or sellers, depending upon whether the agent is the listing agent or the selling agent.

Foolish Assumptions

As I compressed a career’s worth of real estate experience and coaching advice into these pages, I had to make the following assumptions about you, the reader:

You’re already a licensed real estate agent.

If you haven’t yet taken the real estate license exam, consider the book

Real Estate License Exams For Dummies

, 5th Edition, by John A. Yoegel (Wiley, 2023).

You’re looking to rev up your real estate business, whether you’re just starting out or have been in the business for a while.

You may be deciding which real estate company to join. Or you’ve already launched your career with a good company and are now looking for advice on how to climb the success curve faster and higher. Or maybe you’re interested in refining specific skills, such as prospecting, selling, running your business more efficiently, or building customer loyalty.

Icons Used in This Book

This wouldn’t be a For Dummies book without the handy symbols that sit in the outer margin to alert you to valuable information and advice. Watch for these icons:

When you see this icon, highlight the accompanying information in your brain. Jot it down, etch it in your memory, and consider it essential to your success.

The light bulb marks on-target advice and tried-and-true approaches that save time, money, and trouble as you achieve real estate success.

When there’s a danger to avoid or just a bad idea to steer clear of, this icon sits in the margin issuing a warning sign.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product also comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the web. Go to www.dummies.com and search for “success as a real estate agent” to find these goodies. To view this book’s Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

The beauty of this book is that you can start wherever makes the most sense for you.

If you’re a newcomer to the field of real estate sales, I suggest that you start with Part 1, in which I consolidate all the start-up information that you’re likely to be looking for.

If you’ve been in the trenches for a while and simply aren’t having as much success as you’d like, start with Chapter 3 or 4 and go from there.

If you’re pressed for time, facing a crucial issue, or grappling with a particular problem or question, turn to the table of contents or index to look up exactly the advice you’re seeking.

Wherever you start, get out a pad of yellow sticky notes, a highlighter pen, or your note-taking app and get ready to make this book — and all the information it contains — your own key to success. I send you off with my very best wishes!

Part 1

Showing Up for Your Own Success Story

IN THIS PART …

Get an overview of the skills you need to swing the odds for success your way by grasping the fundamentals that place agents on the right path to reach their target.

Navigate the process of evaluating, choosing, and joining a real estate company.

Research and understand the marketplace in which you’re working.

Discover how to act and work like an expert, top-producing agent to make your goals a reality.

Chapter 1

Cultivating Skills and Strategies for Success

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining financial success

Understanding the role and importance of a professional real estate agent

Knowing the importance of lead-generation and sales skills

Building your success as a listing agent

Choosing the right path to real estate success

Each agent defines success slightly differently. Some agents set their goals in dollars, some are attracted to the opportunity to be their own bosses and build their own businesses, and some want the personal control and freedom that a real estate career allows. Achieving success, however, requires the same fundamentals regardless of what motivates your move into real estate. Agents who build successful businesses share four common attributes:

They’re consistent.

They perform success-producing activities day in and day out. Instead of working in spurts — making 50 prospecting calls in two days and then walking away from the phone for two weeks — they proceed methodically and steadily, day after day, to achieve their goals. And, instead of slamming their Facebook friends or Instagram feed with a barrage of posts, reels, and long videos over a two-week span, they consistently post, engage, respond, and add value multiple times a week. (See

Chapter 5

for more on marketing with social media.)

They believe in the law of accumulation.

The law of accumulation is the principle that says with constant effort everything in life, whether positive or negative, compounds itself over time. No agent becomes an overnight success, but with consistency, success-oriented activities accumulate momentum and power and lead to success every time.

They’re lifelong learners.

The most successful agents never quit improving. The real estate market adjusts, trends, and shifts, and the great agent’s passion for improvement is acute, so they commit the time, resources, and energy it takes to constantly enhance their skills and performance. You’re reading this book because you have a desire to be better, but that quest can’t stop with this book. You must continue with additional reading, watching, listening, and attending events to improve.

They’re self-disciplined.

They have the ability to motivate themselves to do the activities that must be done. Successful agents show up daily and put in a full day of work on highly productive actions such as prospecting, lead generation, and lead follow-up. They make themselves do things they don’t want to do so they can have things in life that they truly want. Personal discipline is a fundamental building block for success.

MY OWN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING

As an original dummy in real estate sales, I’m the perfect author for this book. On my very first listing presentation, I went to the wrong house. Can you imagine arriving at the wrong address for your first presentation? The worst part is that the man who answered the door let me in. To this day, I’m not sure why he let me in and let me begin my listing presentation. I was nearly halfway through my presentation before I figured out the mistake! He just sat quietly listening to me talk about listing his home. He actually did have an interest in selling his home in the near future, so he just listened. I finally realized I was in the wrong house when I glanced over and saw the address on a piece of mail on the table. I had transposed a number on the address; the real seller was waiting for me down the street. The good news was that I successfully listed the man’s home a few months later.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter where you start in your career or what mistakes you make in the early stages. Everyone makes mistakes in new endeavors. What matters most is having a plan or process that keeps you moving down the track toward your goals. Many people would have quit with such a rocky start as mine. However, the sure way to lose is to quit. The only way you win is to keep going.

You’re already on the road to real estate success, demonstrated by the fact that you picked up this book to discover what it takes to become a great agent. This first chapter sets you on your way to success by providing an overview of the key skills that successful real estate agents pursue and possess.

Having Goal Objectives and Sales and Income Targets

One of the first steps toward success is knowing what you want out of your real estate career. However, “financial independence” is not sufficiently specific.

I’ve been in real estate, either working in direct sales or teaching, speaking, training, writing, or coaching people, for nearly 35 years. I’ve spoken to sales audiences on five different continents. I’ve met hundreds of thousands of agents, and nearly every one of them started selling real estate with the same goal of financial independence. Countless times I’ve asked the question, “Tell me, how do you define financial independence?” What I usually hear in response is some variation of “So I have freedom and don’t have to worry about money anymore.”

The key to freedom — financial, time, and choice freedom — is establishing a financial goal that you need to accumulate to achieve the quality of life you want to enjoy. Financial independence boils down to a number. (It can be a gross number, net income, created annually or monthly from your asset base.) Set that number in your mind and then launch your career with the intention to achieve your goal by a specific date.

By having your financial goal in mind, you find clarity and can see past the hard work that lies ahead of you. When you have to endure the rejection, competition, disloyal customers, and challenges that are inevitable along the way, your knowledge about the wealth you’re working to achieve helps you weather the storms of the business.

I must share that this focus on a financial independence number is more real to me today than ever. Thirty-five years ago. I created a plan exactly as I have described for you, and I have worked that plan ever since. It has compounded to the point where I don’t have to work. The financial piece of the puzzle has been accomplished. I choose to work because I enjoy what I do, not because I need the money it brings. That is true freedom. I can choose who to invest my time with, the activities I participate in, and the locations for my life. These freedoms are due to financial independence. I wish that for you as well.

Acting Like a Top Producer from Day One

Real estate agents join doctors, dentists, attorneys, accountants, and financial planners in the ranks of licensed professionals who provide guidance and counsel to clients. The big difference is that most real estate agents don’t view themselves as top-level, highly paid professionals. Many agents, along with a good portion of the public, perceive themselves as real estate tour guides, as home inventory access providers, or even as mere cogs in the wheel of the property sale transaction. The best agents, however, know and act differently.

The internet and the open access to real estate information have accentuated the view that agents are simply home access providers. Consumers in the real estate market are able to find so much information online that they often view themselves as the experts and think of agents as simply the key holders. The increasing strength online of third-party sources of real estate information like Zillow, Homes.com, and Realtor.com has created another gap between agents and consumers. I’m not advocating a return to the dark ages of MLS (multiple listing service) books the size of a local telephone book with property information printed biweekly. That is certainly a bygone era. But to succeed in these technological times, you must expand your offerings and showcase that your services go well beyond basic real estate information and access into homes. You must clearly communicate with the online consumers what they don’t have access to, what information they are lacking, along with your benefits and value — even in their early researching period.

Real estate agents are fiduciary representatives — not people paid to unlock front doors of houses for prospective buyers. A fiduciary is someone who is hired to represent the interests of another. A fiduciary owes another person a special relationship of honesty, commitment, exclusivity in representation, ethical treatment, and protection. Build your real estate business with a strong belief in the service and benefits you provide your clients, and you’ll provide a vital professional service while being recognized as the valuable professional you are.

Serving your professional representation

Real estate agents represent the interests of their clients. As an agent, you’re bound by honor, ethics, and duty to work on your client’s behalf to achieve the defined and desired results. This involves the following functions:

Defining the client’s objective:

To serve as a good fiduciary representative, you need to start with a clear understanding of the objectives your client is aiming to achieve through the sale or purchase of property. Too many agents get into trouble by starting out with uncertainty about the interests of the people they’re representing.

Delivering counsel: In the same way that attorneys counsel clients on the most effective way to proceed legally, it’s your job to offer similarly frank counsel so that your clients reach the real estate outcomes they seek. That counsel can vary based on the clients’ goals and objectives as well as the state of the marketplace. You will counsel a client differently in a seller’s market than in a buyer’s market. Turn to Chapter 3 to understand how market conditions influence what to say and do. Also read Chapter 4 about positioning yourself as a marketplace expert.

An attorney may encourage a client to proceed with a lawsuit when the client has a high probability of winning, or they may recommend an out-of-court settlement when odds point toward a court loss that could leave the client with nothing but legal bills to pay. Likewise, you need to be able to guide your clients toward good decisions regarding the value of their homes, the pricing strategies they adopt, the marketing approaches they follow, and the way their contract is negotiated to maximize their financial advantage.

Diagnosing problems and offering solutions: A good agent, like a good doctor, spends a great deal of time examining situations, determining problems, and prescribing solutions. In an agent’s case, the focus is on the condition and health of the home a client is trying to buy or sell. The examination involves an analysis of the property’s condition, location, neighborhood, school district, curb appeal, landscaping, market competitiveness, market demand, availability for showing, and value versus price. The diagnosis involves an unvarnished analysis of what a home is worth and what changes or corrections are necessary.

Some say that agents should present all the options available to their clients and then recommend the course of action they feel is best. By doing this, agents allow their clients to make the final decision. Although many experts praise the virtues of this approach, I prefer the diagnostic and prescriptive approach because it positions you better as the expert. When clients make poor choices such as setting the wrong price on their home or making an initial offer that is too low, you may still receive some or all of the blame even though they chose the wrong option. No matter the style of your counsel to a client, whether more advisory or assertive, your success in guiding your clients to a successful outcome is based on your expert analysis and application of the variables to the marketplace.

Many agents get into trouble because they lack the conviction to tell clients the truths they don’t want to hear. If a home is overpriced or not ready for showing, or if an offer is too low for seller consideration, it’s the agent’s job to speak up with sound advice. In these situations, you could get blamed for a poor outcome. You may also run the risk of doing all this work and not getting compensated for the time you invested.

To prepare yourself for the task, flip to Chapter 13, which helps you determine a home’s ideal price and advise sellers accordingly; Chapter 15, which helps you counsel clients regarding changes they need to make before showing their property; and Chapter 17, which helps you counsel clients through the final purchase or sale negotiation.

Troubleshooting: Unavoidably, many times you have to be the bearer of bad news. Market conditions may shift, and the price on a seller’s home may need to come down. A buyer may need to sweeten initial offers to gain seller attention. A loan request may be rejected, or you may need to confront sellers because the animal smells in their home may be turning buyers away. Or, a home that buyers really want may end up selling to someone else.

At times like these, your calm attitude, solution-oriented approach, and strong agent-client relationship will win the day. Chapter 18 is full of advice for achieving and maintaining the kind of relationship excellence that smooths your transactions and leads to long-lasting and loyal clients.

Making the right financial decisions

When you help clients make real estate decisions, your advice has a long-lasting effect on your clients’ financial health and wealth. Their decisions based on your counsel will affect their short-term equity as well as their long-term financial independence. According to a study by PEW research, the equity in one’s home on average represents 40 percent of one’s total assets. In most cases, home equity is the single largest asset that people own. Your ability to guide clients to properties that match their needs and desires, fit within their budgets, and give them long-term gain from minimal initial investment impacts their financial health and wealth for years to come.

Your influence as a wealth advisor reaches far beyond clients who are in a position to own investment real estate. In your early years, many of your clients may be first-time buyers who are taking their first steps into the world of major financial transactions. Advise them well, and they’ll remain clients and word-of-mouth ambassadors for years to come. See Chapter 19 for more information about keeping clients for life.

Today, consumers can go online instead of going to a real estate office to launch their real estate searches. With a few keystrokes and mouse clicks, they have access to a greatly expanded version of the kind of information that agents used to control. There are tens of thousands of sites that offer access to real estate information and access to properties for sale. However, when consumers discover a home they want to see, they must contact either the owner or an agent to gain inside access. This is where things get tricky.

AGENTS AS NECESSARY EVILS

The mindset that agents are overpaid and unnecessary to the real estate sale process continues to gain traction. This mindset gains momentum especially when a robust market leads to low home inventories and the quick sale of homes that often receive multiple offers during the short time they’re on the market — all factors we have had during the last few years. Sellers feel that their home will sell no matter who lists it, so they go cheaper.

This general opinion about real estate agents has been even more pervasive since the verdict of the Burnett v. NAR (National Association of REALTORS) lawsuit. The media coverage has advanced the narrative of agents being overpaid and delivering limited value and the industry being a cartel. Throughout many chapters, I connect the changes that are a result of the lawsuit and highlight best practices for real estate agents who will be affected by this ruling and changes.

Furthermore, agents who post on social media about their online conquests of selling a home in 3.5 seconds with multiple offers and bids well above the asking price only feed the this-is-easy narrative. It’s important to market your success and the success of your clients to establish your quality service and outcomes is part of an effective marketing strategy. However, you should be measured in sharing how fast you created a positive outcome for your clients especially with listings. Online observers could misinterpret your success and think you priced a house too low or that the market made it easy.

This mindset has increased in intensity and breadth with expanded online access to real estate information. It has been further developed as companies like Zillow and Realtor.com grant broader information services in the real estate industry segment.

When times are booming, a segment of consumers and new homebuilders begins to question the value of the agent’s services against the associated fees. During the best of market times, some homebuilders even go so far as to sell their houses without offering buyer agents compensation via the MLS.

The silver lining is that when times are good, so many properties are moving that the few listings affected by the agent-is-unnecessary mindset hardly limit opportunity. Plus, booms don’t last forever. When the market swings back and forth, as it will many times during your career, you need to be prepared to adjust your offerings. The ability to master your present marketplace trends while working to prepare for the next market shift is the skill of elite agents.

Twenty years ago, only 8 percent of buyers found the home they wanted to purchase on their own through the internet. Last year, 48 percent of buyers found their home online and then contacted a real estate agent. The consumer is clearly doing more online research and finding what they want.

Often a consumer signs off the web and contacts an agent to get inside the home, as if the agent is simply an entry device. As an agent, you need to demonstrate special skills to engage the customer. Then you need to add value to your skills by having inside market knowledge, keeping up with trends in the marketplace, being aware of technological advances, and having other properties you know about that might be similar to the property that has created the inquiry. With this added know-how, you have an edge over other agents, which allows you to convert the inquiry into a committed buyer client for your business.

Securing Customers and Clients

Imagine that you’re on the game show Jeopardy!, and you’re given just seconds to provide the most important response of your career. Imagine that you’re asked to write down the question that prompts the answer: The function that makes or breaks a real estate agent’s success. (If this book contained music, you know what tune would be playing right now.) Okay, time’s up. How did you respond?

The moneymaking reply is What is creating customers? How did you score?

Did you answer What is customer service? If so, you gave the same answer that more than 95 percent of new agents give. In fact, more than 90 percent of experienced agents don’t win points with their answers, either. Only a rare few agents see customer creation as the golden approach that it is.

In this section, I coach you through lead-generation strategies, discuss how to win customers, and explain why your success is not determined by the market.

Generating leads: The most important factor

You have to be excellent at customer development and customer service. However, in terms of priority, you have to first be exemplary at lead generation. Following are a few reasons:

You can’t serve customers if you don’t create customers in the first place.

And because customer-service excellence results from customer-service experience, customer development is a necessary prerequisite to outstanding customer service.

Most consumers have been provided with such poor service that their expectations are remarkably low. When service providers do what they say they’ll do in the agreed-upon timeframe, consumers are generally content with the service they receive. An internet-based customer, which is a growing segment, wants ease of service, faster service, and lower-cost service. The truth is that competing on the first two is better than the lower-cost service model. The real estate industry is more personalized in the service it renders than many other internet-based businesses. Responsiveness is one of the keys to success in the internet realm. Certainly you want to develop the kind of expertise that delivers exemplary, outstanding service, but if you commit from the get-go to do what you said you’d do when you said you’d do it, your delivery will be better than most.

Between creating customers and delivering service, customer creation is the more complex task. Customer creation requires sales skills and ongoing, consistent, persistent prospecting for new clients. It requires marketing, promotion, and branding of yourself and your service offerings. To develop customers inexpensively and effectively, you have to gain the level of skill and comfort necessary to create valuable content and engagement on social media that markets your unique service offerings effectively. You must pick up the phone and call people you know (or even people you don’t know) to ask them for the opportunity to do business with them or to refer you to others who may be in the market for your service. That phone work might seem “old school and out of touch” but I can assure you your ability to connect and influence is much more significant in a live conversation than in a text, direct message, or email.

Success requires a level of encouragement and interaction via social media avenues. You need to be able to engage with Facebook and Instagram to connect with people you know. You also need to be effective in marketing your message online through targeted ads and boosted posts. Additionally, you must be watching for clues about life changes (think: new baby, kids going off to college, divorce) in those social media interactions and platforms.

If you attract the right kinds of customers into your business, your clients will match well with your expertise and abilities, and service will become an easier and more natural offering.

If you attract the right type of customers, you’ll also reap a greater quantity and quality of referrals.

Developing sales ability to win customers

The single most important skill for a real estate agent is sales ability, and sales ability is how you win customers. Your sales ability is based on how effective you are in generating prospects, following up on those prospects to secure appointments, preparing for those appointments, conducting the appointments to secure an exclusive agency contract, and then providing service to that recently created client. People also base your ability on how quickly you can accomplish all of this.

Because you’re holding this book, I’m willing to bet that you’ve either just come out of training to receive your real estate license or you’re in the early days of your career. In either case, decide right now to master the skills of selling to fuel your success.

In my view, sales skills in the real estate industry are at the lowest level I’ve seen in 35 years. So much effort and emphasis has been placed on technology and social media training in real estate that companies and agents have lost their way through the sales skills and sales strategies that are foundational to success in a sales-based industry.

You might be a younger new real estate agent. That means you are more native to technology. It also means you naturally communicate through technology platforms but may lack the face-to-face interpersonal skills that older real estate agents grew up with. Typically, selling in real estate is done, even in the technological world, face-to-face. According to NAR, 69 percent of buyers buy through the first agent they meet with.

It’s hard to believe that probably 95 percent of agents lack top-level sales skills. In my career in training and coaching, I’ve met close to a million agents. Very few, even at the top echelon of earnings, have had any formalized sales training. Whenever I speak to agents, I always ask the audience how many have taken any formalized sales training, and I usually see only a few hands out of the hundreds in the room.

The other reason I know sales skills are lacking is that I coach some of the best and highest-earning agents in the world, and even they believe their sales skills can use improvement. Many agents record their prospecting sessions or listing presentations, but I have yet to meet one who feels that they’ve nailed their sales skills. The difference between these high-earning agents and other agents is that the high-earning agents realize that sales skills are vital to success, and they continuously seek excellence in this area.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Years ago, salespeople were taught that a great presentation involved making the case, going for an early and repeated close, and then bullying the client into submission to secure the deal. Believe it or not, some trainers in the real estate industry still teach this antiquated sales model, which resembles verbal judo more than client development.

Look at the following breakdown of a great presentation today, compared to what one looked like in days long past.

Today’s presentation time allocation

Time allocation in days long past

40% Building trust and confirming needs

10% Building rapport

30% Presenting your benefits and advantages

20% Qualifying

20% Discussing price

30% Presenting

10% Closing or getting confirmation

40% Closing

The big difference: Today’s best agents spend nearly three-quarters of the presentation giving prospects a reason to say yes — by focusing on the prospect’s situation and needs and how the agent can provide the best solution. Yesterday’s agents spent virtually no time defining their clients’ situations or their own unique solutions. Instead, they spent nearly three-quarters of the presentation making the sale and going for a high-pressure close. We’ve come a long way!

To follow the high-earning agent’s example, make it your priority to develop and constantly improve your sales skills for the following reasons:

To secure appointments:

Chapter 9

provides practically everything you need to know about winning leads and appointments through prospecting and follow-up activities.

To persuade expired and for-sale-by-owner listings to move their properties to your business:

Chapter 11

is full of secrets and tips to follow as you pursue this lucrative and largely untouched field.

To make persuasive presentations that result in positive buying decisions:

Chapter 13

helps you with every step from pre-qualifying prospects to planning your presentation. It’s packed with tips for perfecting your skills, addressing and overcoming objections, and ending with a logical and successful close.

A real estate market won’t dictate your success

According to NAR, more than 40 percent of agents didn’t close a single transaction in 2023, and another 20 percent closed only one transaction. This clearly demonstrates the lack of sales and lead-generation skills in the industry.

In robust market conditions, leads are abundant and relatively easy to attract, especially buyer leads. But when the market slows, as it did as interest rates increased in 2022 and 2023, real estate success becomes less automatic. Only great sales skills guarantee that you — rather than some other agent — will win clients no matter the market conditions. The best agents make more money in a challenging market than they do in a robust market.

Regardless of economics, every market contains real estate buyers and sellers. No matter how slow the economy may be, people always need and want to change homes. Babies are born. Managers get transferred. Couples get married. People divorce. And with these transitions, real estate opportunities arise for those with the strategies to target those opportunities and the skills to sell their unique value.

The way to build immunity to shifting market conditions is to arm yourself with skills in prospecting, lead follow-up, presentations, objection handling, and closing.

Understanding the Reasoning for Being a Strong Listing Agent

In real estate, there’s a saying that “you list to last.” In your early days, you’re likely to build your business by working primarily with buyers. But in time, you begin to develop your own listings, and after that you begin your climb to real estate’s pinnacle position, which is that of a listing agent.

Typically a larger percentage of referral business will be buyer based. This means that you eventually need to develop a method outside of referrals to create and attract listings.

To create long-term success, a high quality of life, and a strong real estate business, set as your goal to join the elite group — comprised of fewer than 5 percent of all agents — who are listing agents. The advantages are many:

Multiple streams of income:

Listings generate interest and trigger additional transactions. Almost the minute you announce your listing by putting a sign in the ground, uploading the property on your website, and placing the listing in the MLS — syndicating the listing to sites like Zillow,

Realtor.com

,

Homes.com

, and thousands of others — you’ll start receiving calls, emails, and texts from active buyers; calls from neighbors; inquiries from drive-by traffic; and queries from people wanting to live in the area. These leads or inquiries represent current and future business opportunities that only arise when you have a listing with your name on it.

Promotional opportunity:

A listing gives you a reason to advertise and draw the attention of prospects whom you can convert to clients or future prospects. And when your listing sells, you can spread the word of your success with another round of communication to those in the neighborhood, on social media, and throughout your sphere of influence.

A business multiplier:

Talk to any listing agent and you’ll have this fact confirmed: One listing equals more than one sale. You’ll receive buyer inquiries online, over the phone, and through your open houses. Neighbors will see your sold sign or receive your just sold postcard prompting them to call you to help them as well.

Creates quality of life: Being a strong listing agent creates quality of life as well. By my fourth year in real estate I was on pace to sell 150 homes. I also was in construction of a vacation home in Bend, Oregon. Joan, my wife, was a general contractor. She needed to be onsite on Fridays to meet with subcontractors. I shifted to working Mondays through Thursdays, and taking Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays off. It was totally unheard of for an agent to take weekends off then, and even now.

I would not have been able to accomplish the high level of sales and time off without being a strong listing agent. I didn’t work a buyer the rest of my real estate sales career. They typically want to see property on weekends. I was enjoying my lifestyle at my vacation home playing golf, snowshoeing, hiking, and biking.

The amount of time you invest on average in representing a buyer versus representing a seller is dramatically different. I estimate that it requires five times more time to help a buyer than a seller. So, although the compensation is relatively the same because it’s based on the sale price, the listing agent makes more per hour than the buyer agent on most transactions because of the amount of time invested.

A free team of agents working for you:

The moment you post your listing, all the other agents in your area will go to work on your behalf. And the best part is that they don’t require payment until they deliver a buyer, and then they’ll be paid not by you personally but through the commission-sharing structure of most MLS agreements.

Much of the information in this book focuses on developing listings because, to achieve top-level success, listings are the name of the game.

Choosing Your Avenue to Success

Agents typically follow one of these four basic approaches in the quest to achieve real estate success:

Become a workaholic:

More than 80 percent of agents who generate a reasonable income achieve their success by turning their careers into a 7-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day job. They answer emails, texts, direct messages, and business phone calls day and night; they make themselves constantly available to prospects and clients; and they work on demand with no restraints or boundaries because of technology. That can lead to burnout.

Buy clients:

The second-most-frequent pathway to success is to buy business through excessive marketing campaigns. Marketing can be a valuable tool, but you must monitor, track, and measure the return on investment. You have to be consistent in your marketing and branding. You can’t start and stop campaigns. Some agents buy their way to top-level real estate success by investing in large branding or marketing campaigns — you will get called, texted, and emailed endlessly with both online and offline marketing and lead generation companies claiming they have created the best source of leads. The challenge is the risk-versus-reward position, and earlier in your career the risk is even greater. Others buy their way to the top by lower fee options. By offering themselves at the lowest prices, these agents eliminate the need to emphasize their skills, abilities, and expertise.

Take the shady road.

Another avenue to real estate financial success is to abandon ethics and just go for the deal and the resulting money. Unlike the vast majority of agents who advise and advocate for their clients, agents who take this route choose not to be bound by ethics or any codes of conduct. They put their own needs first and put their clients’ best interests in distant second place. Fortunately, these agents are few and far between.

Build a professional services business. The fourth and best pathway is to create a well-rounded, professional services business not unlike that of a doctor, dentist, attorney, or accountant. The balance of the two connected and complementary segments of prospecting, lead generation, lead conversion, and marketing is essential to reach this level. Fewer than 5 percent of all agents follow this route, yet the ones who do are the ones who earn the largest sums of money — some exceeding $1 million annually while also having high-quality lives and time for friends and family. Plus, when they’re ready to bow out of the industry, they have a business asset they can sell to another agent. (See the sidebar “Mining gold from your professional services business” for more details on creating an asset you can sell.)

This is the route I urge you to follow. Each of the following chapters in this book tells you exactly how to build your own professional services business.

MINING GOLD FROM YOUR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BUSINESS

The best professionals provide ongoing services to clients who wouldn’t think of taking their business elsewhere. These professionals develop reputations and client loyalty that reside in their company name, even after the founding professionals move on to other ventures or into retirement. Doing more than just earning an income and building a clientele, these professionals build an asset that they can sell, which allows them to receive compensation from the value of the successful businesses they’ve built.

As a favorite example, my father was a dentist for 30 years. When he decided to retire, he sold his practice to another dentist. He sold his building and equipment, but most important, he sold his patient roster, which raked in the majority of the money he received.