Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies^®, 3rd Edition

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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.

About This Book

This book is about becoming a successful real estate agent, for sure. 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 we often benefit more from failures than from successes — but that doesn’t mean you 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’re a junior member of the grammar police, you may find that some don’t perfectly align with your expectation of the English language. The objective of sales scripts, though, is not perfect sentence structure but rather maximum persuasion of the prospect or client.)

If you apply the information contained in this book with the right attitude, and if you’re consistent in your practices and in 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.
Bulleted and numbered lists present important information in a quick-skim format. Watch for lists marked by numbers or check marks. They contain essential facts to remember, steps to take, or advice to follow.
Whenever I introduce a new term, I italicize it and follow it up with a brief definition.

Skills and Strategies of a Successful Agent

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Defining financial success

check Understanding the role and importance of a professional real estate agent

check Knowing the importance of lead-generation and sales skills

check Building your success as a listing agent

check 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 basic 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 with a barrage of posts over a two-week span, they consistently post, engage, respond, and add value multiple times a week. They balance the personal postings that create a window into their personal life with business postings periodically to deliver interesting and relevant value.
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. I read an article on Warren Buffett recently. It said 90 percent of his wealth was accumulated after he was 50 years old! That’s compounding!
They’re lifelong learners. The most successful agents never quit improving. Their passion for improvement is acute, and 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. It must continue with additional reading, watching, listening, and attending events to improve your skills, strategies, and systems.
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. One of the greatest things about being a real estate agent is being an independent contractor. You’re the master of your domain. You’re the only one who can “require” you to show up to work. That also has a downside if you can’t force or discipline yourself to do the harder success-producing actions.

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.

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, which put me in the wrong house. All the while, 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. Most 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.

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 agents as simply the key masters. The increasing strength online of third-party sources of real estate information like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com has created another gap between agents and consumers. I’m not advocating a return to the dark ages of MLS 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, we must expand our offerings and showcase that our services go well beyond basic real estate information and access into homes. We must clearly communicate with the online consumers what they don’t have access to, what information they are lacking, along with our benefits and value — even in their early researching period.

Real estate agents are fiduciary representatives and financial advisors — 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.

An attorney may encourage a client to proceed with a lawsuit when the client has a high probability of winning, or she 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 steer 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 in order 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 12, which helps you determine and advise sellers regarding a home’s ideal price; Chapter 13, which helps you counsel clients regarding changes they need to make before showing their property; and Chapter 15, 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 16 is full of advice for achieving and maintaining the kind of relationship excellence that smoothes 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 the Society of Actuaries, the equity in one’s home on average represents 70 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, that fit within their budgets, and that 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 16 for more information about keeping clients for life.

Avoiding the role of Designated Door Opener

Before the advances of the Internet, the consumer’s only avenue to information about homes for sale was through a real estate agent. Every other week, agents received phonebook-sized periodicals presenting information on properties for sale, with each new entry accompanied by a small, grainy, black-and-white picture. I know that seems hard to imagine in our information-rich technological world.

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.

Fifteen years ago, only 8 percent of buyers found the home they wanted to purchase on their own through the Internet. Last year, 44 percent of buyers found their home online themselves 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.

AGENTS AS NECESSARY EVILS: A MIND-SET THAT COMES AND GOES

The mind-set that agents are overpaid and unnecessary to the real estate sale process continues to gain traction. This mind-set 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. Sellers feel that their home will sell no matter who lists it, so they go cheaper.

This mind-set has increased in intensity and breadth with expanded online access to real estate information. It has been further developed as companies like Zillow and Trulia 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 allowing agent representation — or compensation.

The silver lining is that when times are good, so many properties are moving that the few listings affected by the agent-is-unnecessary mind-set 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.

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.

Rule #1: It’s about lead generation

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 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 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. It also requires a level of encouragement and interaction via social media avenues. You need to be able to engage with Facebook 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 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 in order to fuel your success.

In my view, sales skills in the real estate industry are at the lowest level I’ve seen in 30 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, 67 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 hundreds of thousands of 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

40% Building trust and confirming needs

30% Presenting your benefits and advantages

20% Discussing price

10% Closing or getting confirmation

Time allocation in days long past

10% Building rapport

20% Qualifying

30% Presenting

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 8 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 10 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 12 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 the National Association of Realtors, more than 40 percent of agents didn’t close a single transaction last year, 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 inevitably will, 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, 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.

The Reasoning and Rationale 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 need to eventually 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 eventually 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, Trulia, Realtor.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.
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 have 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.
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 but by your seller through the commission structure.

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

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.

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Showing Up for Your Own Success Story