Posted by Michelle Smith/Director of Knowledge Services
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:07:00 GMT
By Desiree French
RISMEDIA, July 5, 2007—With the proliferation of lead generation firms, particularly in the online community, brokers and agents have access to an untold number of vendors. Thus, the dilemma today is not how to obtain leads, but rather how to convert them into customers and, ultimately, closed transactions.
KnowledgeStorm, a leader in business technology search, reports experts believe the percentage of leads “falling through the cracks” ranges from 40-80%. In conjunction with the Artemis Group, a full-service Internet solutions agency, it found poor processes for handling leads and assessing their value to be a key culprit.
So, having found a way to capture leads, brokers and agents now must find effective ways to turn those leads into real dollars. Which begs the question, “What really works?”
Gregg Larson, president and CEO of Clareity Consulting, insists “strategies that work today are the same that worked years ago. It’s all about systems. People who have fine-tuned these systems and who are patient are finding that leads are coming to fruition months, even years, later.”
The Time Factor
Experience has shown that the process of culminating leads into closed deals stand a better chance when the leads are responded to quickly, customers are qualified, and the personal touch is increased.
Take a recent report by the California Association of Realtors, Internet versus Traditional Buyer Study. It stresses the need to move quickly to capture Internet home buyers. When asked, for example, about the importance of the agent’s response time in the selection process, 86% of Internet buyers said it was “extremely important” or “very important.” This compares with 63% of traditional home buyers.
According to the report, generational differences are also telling. It found 16% of Generation Xers expect their agent to respond instantly, versus 0% of Baby Boomers. Moreover, 33% of Generation Xers expect to receive a response from their agent within one hour; only 16% of Baby Boomers expect such a speedy response.
In reality, “most people won’t remember what form they filled out three days ago,” according to Glenn Houck, co-founder of LeadQual, which helps companies generate, qualify, and close leads. The average Internet lead visits five sites and fills out three different forms, he says, therefore making no lead exclusive.
Because speed is of the utmost importance, LeadQual’s average response time following up on leads for clients is 2-1/2 to 3 minutes, Houck maintains. Conversion rates can climb up to 5%. As for determining which leads are worthwhile and which aren’t, “you can’t tell from looking,” he says. “You have to make contact. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You have to put effort against all of them until you can pluck your needle out.”
Investing in Leads
Ed Krafchow, president and co-owner of Prudential CA/NV/TX Realty, pays about two dozen different sources—including Lending Tree and Yahoo—to refer leads to his company. Several thousand leads arrive monthly. Their conversion rates can range from 1% up to 20%, if highly screened. Yet, hovering at an average conversion rate of “6 percent is a place where we would like to be; but we’re not there yet,” he concedes.
Each lead goes through an Internet group, a division of Prudential’s relocation company. For leads pulled directly from the company’s own Web site, agents have 15 minutes to contact the consumer. “It used to be okay to get back to the consumer in a day or so. Now, the expectation is getting higher and higher,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s that agent relationship and ability to connect to people” that will determine whether the lead becomes a customer.
Similar sentiments exist at Prudential Alliance Realtors in St. Louis, where Internet leads contribute annually to the brokerage firm’s growth. The company has two account managers who handle all leads. With a conversion rate of 3-5%, although some accounts close at 15-17%, “our target is to get our conversion rate up to 20%,” says Andrea Lawrence, co-owner and president. “Agent accountability is imperative.”
At Reply!, a company that generates consumer demand for real estate services, the expectation is 50% of consumers registering at its site will return an agent’s call. About 20% of them will actually meet with the agent; and 5-10% will complete a deal.
Payam Zamani, chairman and CEO, admits, however, that impatient agents sometimes cancel the service within two weeks if they receive fewer than five leads.
“We recommend agents call leads five times over five days. If they reach the leads, then they can judge if they’re someone who should be in their pipeline,” he says.
Investing in People to Manage Leads
Nearly 33% of real estate firms have agreements with a lead generation company to receive customer contact information in exchange for a fee, according to the 2005 Profile of Referral and Relocation Activity. The survey, conducted by the National Association of Realtors and Worldwide ERC, notes the conversion rate for leads is generally higher at company Web sites than other Internet sources.
Larson contends agent service centers operated by progressive brokerage firms can make a big difference. Besides generating leads from their own Web sites and those of lead generation companies, they also qualify the leads, incubate them, and then forward them to agents, usually for a fee. This way, they constantly fill the funnel with new leads in a way that’s manageable for agents.
John L. Scott Score in Medford, Oregon, forsook fee-based companies last summer, after the market turned. Broker-owner Lori Hawkins says the process didn’t prove to be cost effective because the fee-based companies generated an insufficient number of leads to impact the bottom line.
Instead, her company, with six offices spread across southern and central Oregon, now takes leads directly from its own Web site. Many are generated by search engines such as Google. Furthermore, each agent now has a page on the company Web site. They’re being taught how to enhance their profiles and use search engine optimization to attract consumers to their pages and respond quickly to requests.
Despite these strategies, Hawkins cautions “agents must understand that about 18 out of 20 leads coming to the company’s Web site are just for information gathering.”
As such, “agents should know how to nurture and incubate them,” she adds. “Today, agents get leads and blow them off because they’ve been trained to make a sale within 45 to 60 days. We’ve all been trained to do this. But the agent has to learn not to throw ‘the fish’ back into the pond. If they do, [potential] customers will eventually fall into someone else’s net.”
Keeping Up with Leads
If your efforts to convert leads into closed sales are not working and agents seem to be giving their all, then it’s time to stop flushing money down the drain. When you first sign on with a lead generation company, here’s what you need to do:
- Track all leads
- Conduct a controlled test with each lead generation company you employ to determine the effectiveness of their service and the quality of their leads
- Assess how the companies stack up filtering out leads that have inaccurate phone numbers, names, e-mail addresses and, in certain cases, unqualified buyers
- Measure conversion rates
- In the end, remember a proactive approach undertaken by brokers and agents also plays an important role in the conversion of leads to closed deals
A Different View
The way Gregg Larson sees it, many brokers are stuck in Web 101.
“They do search engine optimizations, spend a lot of money on leads, et cetera. But what we’re seeing in Web statistics is that brokers are getting killed by lead generation companies,” he offers. “There’s never a local broker in the Top 10, rarely in the Top 20, when it comes to real estate eyeballs, the number of consumers looking at their sites. But there’s proof that a strong local/regional portal can be in the Top 10.”
He points to the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR). As a service to its 26,000 members, HAR, through its Web site, www.har.com, delivered 550,000 e-mail and telephone leads to its members last year—for free.
While the association has no mechanism in place for tracking how many leads are actually converted into closed business, Bob Hale, president and CEO, says a monthly report sent to each member lets them know how many leads they received from the association and how often their sites were visited.
HAR’s Web site nabs 38% of all eyeballs from people conducting a search for Houston real estate. In one month, the site gets 920,000 unique visits, people who visit it more than once. It received more than 1 billion hits in April and visitors viewed Realtor listings 11 million times in March.
“A lot of large brokers are in denial, blissfully unaware that they and all of their competitors together have less than 10% of eyeballs in their market,” Larson claims. “As long as leads are trending upward, they think everything’s okay. But, individually, they may only get 2% of traffic in their market. Brokers can improve the quality of their leads by funding a local/regional online portal—and then get leads for free.”
“Ultimately,” he adds, “it’s a very level playing field. Consumers love not having advertising thrown in their faces and being forced to register for more information; and it reflects well on Realtors. The leads would come in free to Realtors, but it would be up to brokers how they would go about incubating them.”
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Posted by Michelle Smith/Director of Knowledge Services
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 12:02:00 GMT
By Steve McCann
Learning to change behavior permanently is one of the most important skills a person can develop in their life. Without this skill, any self-improvement intention will result in failure and frustration. All we need to do is to change the picture by investing time and energy.
RISMEDIA, July 4, 2007—Sometime back in 1995, I was invited to speak at a Real Estate Conference. One of the other speakers on the program for that day was a high-producing Realtor and had been for a number of years. He was the opening presenter so I got the chance to sit in on the presentation and I found it to be a memorable experience. He was motivated and his production numbers were strong.
The ideas he shared with the audience, with a little bit of license on my part, went something like this: You wake-up at 5 a.m., from 5-7 a.m., you plan your day, every hour. Be in the office by 7a.m. and by 9 a.m. get out and prospect and be in the community. At 5 p.m. get back to the office to do your follow-up with all your prospective clients. From 7 p.m. – 9 p.m. you do your administrative work. After that, get into bed so you’re ready for 5 a.m. again.
There were about 200 Realtors in attendance, many of which were inspired by his ideas. And my guess is that many of the agents took action after that day because they wanted his results. So they probably started getting up at 5 a.m. and arrived at the office at 7 a.m. and they started making the cold calls they normally weren’t making. But pretty soon, within a few days or weeks, most will stop doing it. Their activity levels go back to normal. Why? Because their productivity rose above their self-image and their self-image squashed their productivity down within their comfort level—a level consistent with their self-image. They took an afternoon off here and there, maybe they watched Oprah, maybe Jerry Springer; it was hard to say. Their actions were becoming inconsistent with their self-image.
You will always perform at a level equal to your self-image
Our self-image is the portrait we have of ourselves. It’s the picture we’ve created about ourselves and is commonly based on past experience. So if a new desire for improvement is introduced and it conflicts with our current self-image, it is doomed to fail.
Our actions, behaviors and yes our discipline, are all heavily influenced by our self-image. Even if you force yourself via will power to do things beyond your self-image, you won’t be able to sustain it for very long. You will go back to the old behaviors consistent with your own self-belief because you believe it and you act from this belief. What caused the Ali’s and Jordan’s of the world to work as hard as they did? What causes the top 1% in selling to consistently sustain their mind-boggling activity levels? Answer for both: their self-image. Major changes occur in income and production for the average salesperson when they understand the importance of changing their self-image. Salespeople comfortable with average client sizes but nervous and fearful with the high end client - who learn to grow their self-picture, become more confident and succeed in the large client arena.
As we raise our self-image we raise our behaviors and the discipline we bring to our activities
Learning to change behavior permanently is one of the most important skills a person can develop in their life. Without this skill, any self-improvement intention will result in failure and frustration. All we need to do is to change the picture by investing time and energy.
Our self-image is held in our subconscious mind. This is the inside part of our brain where all of our habits and beliefs are stored. Many estimates in the field of psychology suggest we are only utilizing a small part of our brain - generally 5 to 10%. Which means that nearly 90% is untapped and waiting to serve us. Our subconscious mind is this under-utilized resource. It’s the part of the brain that allows our body to do things naturally and consistently with such ease and proficiency that our conscious mind could never match.
Great things that seem impossible become possible when we learn to communicate to our subconscious mind. Here’s how: when a thought and feeling match, and are focused on over and over again, it becomes accepted by the subconscious mind. When we add pictures or visualization, which match this thought/feeling combination, we are actually changing our self-image with a new self-belief. Our self-image is only communicated to in pictures, hence the term self-image. When this ‘pictured thought with feeling’ intention is accepted by the subconscious mind it becomes a belief that executes itself automatically.
Follow these steps to a new level of discipline by changing your self-image:
Step one: Decide exactly what you want.
This is critical. Is it a habit change you’re after or how about a new production goal?
Whatever it is, be crystal clear on the outcome you desire
Step two: Determine the activities that would lead to this outcome
This is an easy step; just determine what you would need to be doing in order for this result to come naturally. It’s simple cause and effect. For this step, make sure you choose activities that you could see yourself doing. There are often many ways to an outcome. Avoid the activities that don’t fit your personality, but make sure the one’s you do choose will ensure your goal.
Step three: Invest 20 minutes a day in focused quiet time
10 minutes in the a.m. and 10 minutes in the p.m. Here is the place you need to invest the time and energy. In this time, find a quiet place in which you will not be interrupted and close your eyes. With eyes closed, put your attention on the goal. With thoughts on the goal, see yourself doing these activities with ease day in and day out. Picture yourself becoming proficient at these activities. Bring in more and more clarity to the picture every time you do this. Visualize the time of day and the reaction from those around you. The more detail the better! And finally feel the feelings you would feel as you would engage in these activities, also feel the feelings, with intensity, that you would feel accomplishing this goal. See yourself actually doing the deal!
Driven people produce record results because of their belief in themselves. They grew their self-image by this ‘pictured thought with feeling’ process. Many probably didn’t even realize they were doing it. Whether they intended to or not doesn’t really matter because this is how it works and it can work for anyone. Apply this process and remember the importance of vivid pictures and concentrated feeling. Do this and you’ll never again have to be stuck in undesirable patterns from your past. With new information can come new results. Get after it!
About the Author:
Steve McCann is owner of McCann Research Corporation, an organization committed to the discovery and development of human potential. For sixteen years Steve has researched, studied and trained in the areas of psychology, natural law and self-image motivation. He has become a published authority in teaching the correlation between the self-image and production levels in business. He has discovered his bliss as a speaker and now teaches business people to find their bliss and helps them to incorporate it into the practice of their work.
For more information on his speaking programs or consulting please contact: steve@mccannresearchcorp.com.
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Posted by Michelle Smith/Director of Knowledge Services
Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:27:00 GMT
By Lauren Rikleen
RISMEDIA, July 3, 2007—The fantasy persists. We arrive at work, reflexively start our computers, and find an automatic “Out-of-Office Assistant” universally displaying the following message across the country:
“The endless stream of e-mails – and the expectation that people are constantly available to read them – is leading to incalculable inefficiency and impairing the quality of life. Accordingly, if you would like to reach me, please call.”
The fantasy invariably leads to the urgent recognition that we must gain control over this burgeoning behemoth. In just a few years, e-mail has evolved from a convenient way to communicate into a demanding, incessant tool that has blurred any remaining boundaries between the workday and personal time.
The problem of e-mail overload has become so intrusive that the Washington Post recently wrote about the growing trend of declaring “e-mail bankruptcy” in order to assert freedom from responding to old e-mails. But for the majority of us who cannot truly opt-out of the e-mail world, there is a need to develop some reasoned expectations about the effective and controlled use of e-mail and to create a semblance of order in the unregulated universe where e-mail resides.
It is time to become aggressive about decreasing the trillions (yes, trillions) of e-mails sent annually. With no regulating body, and nothing but our own self-restraint to guide us, perhaps it is time to develop consensus around how we should control – rather than be controlled by – e-mail.
The following are six suggested rules to try to reclaim control over our computer-driven lives:
1. Stop the proliferation of illiteracy. We know how busy everyone is, but there is a reason why grammar and punctuation were invented; they make words easier to read, and create order out of written communications. Stop wasting other people’s time trying to discern where one sentence ends and another begins. What worked for e. e. cummings’s form of prose does not translate into today’s electronic communications.
2. If you must forward nonessential e-mails, have the courtesy of deleting the endless stream of “Re: Fw: Fw:” that precede the text. It is a waste of the recipient’s time to endlessly scroll down in search of an actual message. And the message is generally lost on blackberry users who give up rather than wait for the screen to continually be prompted to search “More.”
3. Do not “Reply All” unless you absolutely, positively must – and even then, check to be sure it is necessary. Very rarely do others need to see your reply to a sender’s inquiry, especially when so many group e-mails are simply announcements, scheduling inquiries, or a notice of some sort. Other people do not care that you have said “thank you” in response to the sender. Really.
4. Do not use e-mail to lessen your own burden by placing an unnecessary burden on someone else. Too frequently, e-mails are now used to escape tasks by leaving the follow-up burden to others. A prime example would be the e-mails that ask someone else to call you. In the old days – that is, two or three years ago – if you wanted to talk to someone on the phone, you would call them. Replacing telephone tag with e-mail tag is inefficient and annoying.
5. Speaking of unnecessary burdens, simplify efforts to schedule calls and meetings among multiple parties. The only thing more inefficient than the old way of scheduling meetings and conference calls via telephone is to use e-mail alone. A sender’s e-mail listing preferred dates is generally followed by a steady stream of “Reply All” responses which invariably are not responsive to each other. Moreover, the burden is then placed on the recipient to continually click back and forth between dates proposed in the e-mail and one’s calendar to check for availability. Recipients then often suggest new dates, with no offer to coordinate the numerous options. Even worse, however, is the request for a meeting that begins: “Please send me some available dates.”
6. Stop incorporating e-mail into your family life. You are not doing your children any favor if you cannot look up from your hand-held device to watch their sporting events. They know your head is not lowered because you are praying, and they also see how unengaged you are in their activities while sitting in the stands. Being present requires your physical and mental presence.
The bottom line is that e-mail should be a tool that serves us, rather than the form of slavery it has become. As we all experience the proliferation of e-mails overtaking us, we need to gain control and create a more ordered cyber-universe that evolves from a common ground of e-mail etiquette.
We cannot start soon enough. So please, e-mail these recommendations to a friend. Just remove all the forwarding details.
About the Author:
Lauren Stiller Rikleen is the author of Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law a book about the institutional impediments to the retention and advancement of women in the legal profession. An attorney and mediator, Lauren is a senior partner with Bowditch & Dewey LLP, and Executive Director of the Bowditch Institute for Women’s Success, which works with law firms and business organizations to improve the retention and advancement of women in their workplace. A former president of the Boston Bar Association, Lauren has been recognized in Chambers USA America’s Leading Business Lawyers, and The Best Lawyers in America, and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards.
For more information, visit http://www.bowditch.com/success/.
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Posted by Michelle Smith/Director of Knowledge Services
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:35:00 GMT
By Dennis Walsh: Home builders continue to face numerous economic challenges that run in stark contrast to the boom times of recent years. Exactly what the impact and how long these challenges will continue is a hotly debated topic in real estate circles. Some of these issues include:
Economists and housing analysts widely agree that current unsold housing inventory still remains at historically high levels. Data reported by the Census Bureau and National Association of Realtors estimates unsold new homes at almost a six-month supply, while the supply of existing resale homes approaches a seven-month supply.
While these numbers are troublesome, according to David Seiders, NAHB Chief Economist, they do not reflect the huge number of pre-sold new homes that have resulted in cancellations. With cancellations also running at historically high levels, estimated to be currently around 25% for the nation?s largest builders, the supply of available homes inventory is actually much larger than many reports reflect.
Further, subprime and other aggressive mortgage programs that fueled the recent housing boom are resulting in a significant increase in foreclosures. This too is expected by many experts to increase the inventory of available homes. It?s estimated that as high as 50% of subprime mortgages that end in foreclosure will result in those homes being owned by lenders REO departments. These homes will also increase the current oversupply.
At the same time these factors are occurring, the mortgage industry is tightening up lending practices, which is expected to have the effect of reducing the number of buyers who can qualify for the purchase of this large inventory.
Some economists maintain that the loss of subprime mortgages would only affect a small portion of builders, particularly those who focus more on entry-level and affordable products. However, as the majority of new home buyers are moving up from lower-priced homes, the ripple effect could be felt in the higher-priced markets as well. Further, some analysts contend that many higher-priced and luxury homes have been purchased with no-doc, interest-only and in some cases, negative amortization instruments. Since most builders do not break out sales on the basis of mortgage types, the percentage of sales financed by more exotic mortgage products is difficult to determine.
Another factor difficult to measure is the impact of the large inventory of investor-owned homes. Many sit empty waiting for a buyer, while many others are being rented in hopes that market conditions will improve to allow a more profitable sales price at a later time.
While debates continue to rage over whether our nation?s economy is experiencing a housing bubble, many realities make it clear that we?re entering a very different business environment. More and more analysts are also agreeing that a return to a healthy market may not happen for a number of years.
One question that begs answering is what exactly would a ?healthy? market look like? From my perspective, a market that operates with some measure of balance between supply and demand would be a step in the right direction. Further, a market where this supply was available at price points within the affordability of the buyers in demand would also offer greater stability for the long run.
With all of this in mind, I think it?s important for us to recognize today?s market as the market we?re living and working in?right now. Rather than waiting for a healthier market to return, those of us who hope to survive and thrive will accept the realities and build a business plan around meeting the needs of those who truly wish to buy and sell.
Unlike many individual resale sellers, builders and developers must stay in the market?they must continue to build and sell homes. More than ever before, they?re considering and pursuing whatever alternatives that will allow them to continue to build and sell successfully.
What?s great is that we can bring excellent solutions that will help them meet their goals. Our assistance in helping builders deliver the ?right? homes at the ?right? pricing in the ?right? locations to meet the needs of real home buyers will bring tremendous value to all involved. As competitive factors heat up, we can deliver sales and marketing solutions to support builders, developers and their communities. We can also assist move-up buyers in the marketing and sale of their existing homes, as well as facilitate financial solutions to meet their needs.
Americans will continue to seek out solutions to meet their housing needs while builders and developers will continue to work to meet these needs. Our Certified New Home Specialists? are trained to deliver the professional guidance and service to help all achieve these goals.
So as today?s housing market presents competitive challenges for us all, these same challenges open up doors of opportunity. My advice: leave it to the soothsayers to do all the ?soothing and saying?, and start knocking on those doors!
Based in Newport Beach, CA, Dennis Walsh & Associates, Inc. is a leading source for training and sales tools for success in both new home sales and resale real estate business. More than 30,000 real estate professionals have participated in their Certified New Home Specialist? and Residential Construction Certified? certification courses.
For more information, visit www.sellnewhomes.com or call 800.428.122.
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Posted by Michelle Smith/Director of Knowledge Services
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:40:00 GMT
What to do when agents are slumping By Eugene L. Meyer
If a high tide lifts all boats, a slack tide can leave many aground, and so it goes, too, in real estate. But how do you get the grounded boats off the shoals or, in homes sales, the non-producing agents back in the game?
In boom times, brokers agree, it’s a non-issue. But the question is more than academic in a slow market, when customers aren’t knocking down doors in a frenzied rush to buy before already inflated home prices soar even higher.?
Back to the Beginning “Sometimes there is no answer for that,” suggests Kelli Todd-Amundson, CEO of RE/MAX All Cities Realty in
Manhattan Beach, California. Or, she adds, there is a one-word answer: “termination.” But just as often, Todd-Amundson and other brokers say, the answer is three words: “Back to basics. “The answer lies in consistency,” she says, “choosing whatever works for you and sticking with it. Back to basics. That’s really what’s working.”Ralph Roberts, a Detroit-based real estate coach and broker, also subscribes to the back-to-basics approach. Look back at everything that made you successful, he says.Give yourself an order to get out there and pound the drum harder.Steve Baird, CEO of Chicagos Baird and Warner, sounds the same theme. That’s absolutely what it’s about, said Baird, whose company has 1,850 agents in 31 offices.Our feeling is this [market] is an opportunity for agents finally to get back to and get trained in the fundamentals, Baird says. When the market is really good, they basically wouldnt listen to you. They didnt think they needed to prospect, because business came to them.
Now, they are actually coming to us, saying, We need the tools, the training. At Baird and Warner, he says, “We are doing more training than ever before. This kind of training is really basic, fundamental prospecting, cold calling, getting price reductions, all the things good agents do. This is something we’ve always done. But now agents are more receptive or willing to listen than before. For Many, a Brand New Market He finds that younger agents are most receptive, but all need help navigating this part of the cycle. What’s different now, he says, is that the sellers market lasted so long, few active agents have been through a down market.
If you’ve worked for the company less than 15 years, in our Chicago market, you haven’t been in a down market. Meanwhile, the process of letting agents go continues as before. All our agents are supposed to be on a business plan, Baird said. If they’re not doing things we think they need to do be successful, we’re asking them to find a new career. But that’s no different from what we do all the time.
That is a forever process. Still, the down market has created a new urgency for brokers with too many under-producers. Over the past 18 months, we’ve eliminated some who don’t belong in the real estate profession, says Todd-Amundson, whose sales force has shrunk from 700 to 580 agents.
This has been a signal to others to get serious. Meanwhile, Todd-Amundson has been holding lunches with top producers to highlight what makes them succeed, and then using that information to assist othersnot just new agents unaccustomed to todays challenging environment but also underperforming veterans, who may be going through a divorce or nearing retirement. For agents who in the past have been good performers and are in a slump, she says, All Cities offers a coaching and mentoring program. It’s the coach’s job to help the agent set goals and meet them.The agent then has two chances to make measurable progress.
The simple message is back to the basics. Specific Steps to Take Roberts, who coaches agents all over the globehe recently spoke inNairobi, Kenya, where, he said, the issues are not all that different says he is on a mission to help others sell real estate. Experience, he says, has helped him to succeed in all markets. For starters, he makes 100 phone calls a day. It takes a lot less time than you’d think, Roberts says.
Often you’ll get voice mail and leave a message. If the market is down 20 percent, it doesn’t mean you have to be down 20 percent. Roberts says he has 10,000 names on his Rolodex and advises all agents to do the same. Once a month, they get an e-mail; every third month, they get a handwritten note, he says. The key, he says, is to know 66 things about each customer the wife’s and kids names, their pets, where they vacation, so when you phone you’re not making a cold call, you’re making a warm call. He even makes a point of calling husbands a week before their anniversary to remind them of it, and we call our past clients and wish them happy birthday.
He asks underperforming agents, Did you quit sending out thank you notes, putting out Sold signs, putting out 10-10-20 notices,letting ten houses on each side and 20 across the street know about your listing.The more people know what you’re doing, the better. Candor also pays off, Roberts says, even if you are telling clients what they might not want to hear. I’ve told at least 50 families in the last six months that we’re going to have to wait 18-24 months to sell their property, and not one put their house on the market with someone else, he says.
Even agents who succeed in down markets have slumps, he confides. So I teach people to get out of your chair, he says. I have slumps three or four times a day. After all my calls, my e-mails, I kick myself in the butt, take a walk around the building or outside and come back and get refocused. I want to be working100 percent.
At Risk: Broker Profits The bottom line in all of this is profit for the broker. Industry consultant Kenneth L. Jenny estimates it costs a broker $18,000 to $20,000 a year in overhead (such as rent, insurance, phones, faxes) to carry each agent. If the agent isn’t producing and paying the broker at least his or her overhead cost, the broker’s balance sheet takes a hit. Traditionally, brokers shoulder the overhead costs but take a larger percentage of the agent’s sales commissions. RE/MAX uses a different rent-a-desk model, where the agent keeps a higher percentage but pays the broker a monthly maintenance fee. Either way, there’s not much difference in cost; it’s just how you pay it, says Todd-Amundson.
I think there’s a dilemma in the industry, says Jenny, who used to sell real estate but now advises others on marketing and media strategies. Lower-producing agents turn over a higher percentage of their commission to brokers, so there is a love-hate relationship with them. Higher-producing agents may keep 85 or 90% of the commission, with the brokerage keeping only 10 or 15%. If I’m a broker, do I keep a few who produce few deals and collect less, or keep higher producing agents and keep less he asks. You must reach break-even in the real estate brokerage environment. If you don’t, the desk is costing you money. At a minimum, every broker is trying to make every desk break even or make a profit.
New agents, he adds, must, must have constant coaching. If management is not doing it, they need to find a coach wholl work with the agent. The reason is twofold: to cover the desk cost and to assure the agent sufficient income. Agents who don’t do deals usually leave the industry, Jenny says, because they didn’t get the help they needed to produce a successful marketing and sales program for their business. In real estate, Jenny says, There’s no Hamburger U like McDonalds has to train their restaurant workers. Operations are customized market to market. No one size fits all. In the current market, it’s even more challenging, because the size of the pie has changed. Transactions are no longer flowing through the front door, so you have to work harder, or get agents with a foothold in the business. Fewer deals always go to more experienced agents because of their reputation and relationships.
The Ripple Effect of NegativityLeadership IQ, a management training and research firm inWashington, D.C., has its own take on what makes some people under-perform, and its largely tied to the attitudes of co-workers. The firm posed 45 questions last year to 70,305 executives, managers and employees in 116 organizations last year. According to CEO Mark Murphy, it all boiled down to this: What kind of impact are underperformers having on your workplace Eighty-seven percent said working with a slacker actually made them want to change jobs; 93% said it had hampered their development or decreased their productivity.
The slacker problem has a direct impact on people working with slackers, Murphy concludes. Executives were further asked, To what extent does you organization do a good job in dealing with these folks Only 14% said they did. In follow-up questions, 6,241 workers were asked the characteristics of low-performers. The biggest problem was attitude.? They were negative, territorial, complained a lot, Murphy says. Often, people with the most negative impact have some of the best skills, but their attitude is so difficult it has a toxic effect. And that could sink the boat, or beach a whole fleet. In all industries, there have been movie stars, says Todd-Amundson. In real estate, there are big egos.
We have to figure out a way to deal with those and see if they are a good fit. In an independent contractor environment, it’s important to have good camaraderie. The queen bees we let go, but it is a real tough decision to make.?
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