A Networking Script for Agents Growing a Team

In The Millionaire Real Estate Agent (MREA), Gary Keller broke the keys to being a successful real estate agent down into three Ls – leads, listings and leverage. Leads in the most traditional sense will probably make you think of cold-calls, conversions and closed transaction. Leads also encompasses another category – talented potential team members.

As Jay Papasan, co-author of MREA and vice president of publishing and executive editor, says, “If there is one thing I could encourage our agents to do, it would be to build the habit of consistently networking to find talent. Waiting for the moment of need will not work.”

What Papasan is talking about, of course, is lead generating for talent.

An easy way to do this is by tacking on the following simple networking script to every referral and networking call:

“I’m always on the hunt for talented people to add to our growing team. After all, we’ve grown 40 percent over the last year. Do you know of anyone who might be looking for such an opportunity?”

“I’m always on the hunt for talented people to add to our growing team. After all, we’ve grown 40 percent over the last year. Do you know of anyone who might be looking for such an opportunity?”

Networking is a numbers game, and the more referrals you receive of talented potential team members, the more choices you will have when it comes to building the best real estate team that you can.

Where should you start? Pinpoint three people in your business you’d like to network with who could improve your search for talented team members for your successful real estate team.

How to Keep Your Clients Coming Back for More

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Buying or selling a home is an overwhelming monument in most people’s lives. And for most people, it is not a singular event, but rather a reoccurring process as their family grows and moves on. As a real estate agent, most clients expect hand-holding and comfort throughout the entire process. If done correctly, this relationship can be not only a fruitful and profitable one, but also one that lasts for life. 

The typical real estate sales funnel begins with leads that filter down into appointments. Appointments filter into signed business, which ultimately become closed deals. But what if you could keep those clients in your current funnel? It is said that each person knows about 250 people. If you have 100 clients, your funnel is potentially open to at least 25,000 possible future clients. As a real estate agent,  you should always be working to generate new business through prospecting, but make prospecting your past client list your highest priority. While this might seem obvious, the truth of the matter is that the industry does a poor job in this area. Previous studies have shown that the typical agent loses 20 percent of their current database each year by failing to stay in contact with past clients.

There are several ways to keep your past client base at the forefront. NAR’s 2013 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers confirms that the industry is continuing to fall short in the area of retaining past clients: “Forty-two percent of buyers found their agent through a referral from a friend or family member, and 12 percent used an agent they had used before to buy or sell a home.” Which, when you calculate it out, means that 59% of sellers end up listing their home with a different agent from the first time around. So why aren’t agents retaining returning clients? While there are several possible explanations for this scenario, the most likely cause is that the agent failed to stay in regular contact with the client. The average homeowner buys a house 3 times in their lifespan: 1. a starter home 2. a larger space for a growing family 3. downsized home for the empty nest. By failing to stay in contact with clients, real estate agents are missing out on multiple opportunities and lifelong relationships. 

But how does an agent manage such important relationships while also balancing a full work load? These three tips will help real estate agents in all stages of their career cultivate and maintain fruitful relationships with clients and have them coming back for more:

1. Utilize your database

Whether it be through weekly email newsletters, Facebook, or any other form of social media, the best way to keep in contact with your clients is to have a constant presence in their lives. And what better way to do that than through technology? There are so many options for communication these days, it is almost unheard of to be out of touch with the human race. 

2. Connect with your Clients Every 90 Days

Three months is the perfect amount of time to reconnect with a client. Anything shorter and they might feel bombarded or even worse, spammed, and will eventually stop taking your calls. But a quick call to touch base and check in every 90 days feeds the relationship and maintains the familiarity. If your client feels in constant connection with you, they are much more likely to give out referrals to friends and family members, as well as securing their own sales or purchases with you. 

3. Make it Personal

There’s a lot to be said for going out of your way to make a client feel recognized and appreciated. Whether it be sending a card on their birthday or anniversary, or sending a personalized email, the personal touch goes a long way. It is important to be authentic, empathetic and to focus on gratitude. Saying “Thank You” goes such a long way these days. Behave in a way that turns these words into actions and you will have a customer for life. 

Nurturing relationships with your customers is a crucial part of growing a successful business. In this age of automation and innovation, caring for your customers has never been more important. Your clients trusted you once to make them happy and provide a life changing experience, so it is essentially the job of the real estate agent to follow through and solidify these life long relationships. 

The Not-So-Secret Formula to Building a Million-Dollar Real Estate Business

Many real estate professionals dream of building a million-dollar business. However, to hit that $1 million annual revenue mark, you need to have a solid sales system and abide by some basic good practices.

So, let’s get back to basics, shall we? Starting with the infamous “red book.”

The Millionaire Real Estate Agent (MREA) by Gary Keller offers a well-defined and easy-to-grasp model and systems to hit that million-dollar mark.

Keller recommends that real estate businesses follow the MREA Economic Model. In short, it’s based on three concepts: What goes in, what goes out, and what’s left over. In financial circles, those concepts are called income, expense and profit, respectively. The MREA model recommends that the proportions look like this:

What Goes In (Income): Gross commission income (GCI) is 100% of the revenue your business takes in.

What Goes Out (Expenses): Expenses have two categories:

• Cost of sales (COS), which are the costs of making a sale including marketing, should be limited to 30% of GCI.
• Operating expenses include your real estate business’ overhead, including your office and your staff. That should also be limited to 30%.

What’s Left Over (Profit): When you keep your expenses to those levels, you’re left with profit. Some of that is for you to enjoy as the fruits of your labor, some of it is for savings, and some of it is to reinvest in your business to grow it.

It’s often easy to get caught up in more complicated financial measurements, but keeping it simple frees you to focus on the real drivers of wealth in your business and in your life.

Keep an eye on the bottom line, including meeting proper gross income levels, as well as keeping expenses in check. The latter is critical because even “minor” expenses can add up and eat away your profitability.

When you abide by these thresholds, your profit margins are healthy enough to provide enough income for you and your team members, allowing you to attract new talent and grow your business to that million-dollar mark and beyond. 

Keller and co-author Jay Papasan, share their own insights in this video from the Keller Williams You Tube Channel.

Mega Agent Recruit Select Coming May 2nd!

Mega Agent Recruit - Select | Finding & Hiring Talent Coming to Salt Lake City May 2, 2014!  | Is 2014 the year to build your team and take full advantage of the market improvements? The Mega Agent Recruit - Select course will help you find and choose the best candidates to build your business.  It enables you to emplement proven hiring systems that ensure the best and brightest candidates. If you are currently in the market to build your team or plan to build your team in 2014 - Mega Agent Recruit - Select is for you! Training Information:   SEATING IS LIMITED SO MAKE SURE TO REGISTER TODAY!     Early Bird Registration: $55 Instructor:  Matt Green Date:  May 2, 2014 Time: 9:00 am - 4:30 pm (8:30 check-in) Location:  Salt Lake Board of Realtors 230 W Towne Ridge Parkway, Sandy Deadline to register is April 23, 2014 Registration at the door is $75 Change your life and the trajectory of your business by employing the Recruit-Select system to find and select talent for your team. This course enables you to implement proven hiring systems to ensure the best and the brightest – the candidates most likely to succeed – join your team. Mega Recruit-Select for Agents is the first course in a series meant to help agents find, train and retain talent for their businesses now. The Recruit-Select-Train-Lead-Motivate™ (RSTLM™) system has been exclusively licensed to Keller Williams Realty International by Corporate Consulting to use within the real estate industry to select business partners, support them through training, and effectively lead and motivate them for long-term success. The Mega series abridges the full version of RSTLM and is intended as a first step toward developing mastery in this powerful system. Objectives: Build a pipeline of quality candidates. Determine the qualities you need in a candidate. Use and appreciate behavioral analysis in the hiring process. Learn to utilize and customize job profiles for roles on agent teams. Consult with individuals about their DISC and AVA behavioral assessments. Utilize a comprehensive interview process that builds trust and quality relationships.

Here are four ways you can ramp up your business at the 1st Level without hiring a full-time assistant:

As a 1st Level agent, you don’t have a real estate team to help you out. Instead, you’re handling all aspects of your business yourself, from lead generation to going on appointments to completing all of your transaction paperwork. To grow from the 1st Level to the 2nd Level, you have to reach a point where you would lose business if you didn’t find someone to help you.

At some point between those two levels, you may find yourself at a bit of a Catch-22: You must grow your level of transactions in order to reach the next level, but it’s a challenge to do that when you have no administrative help to allow you to focus solely on lead generation.

So what is an ambitious 1st Level agent to do? Take a ramp instead of the stairs. Instead of viewing the growth of your real estate business as steps or jumps, look for ways to ramp up your production.

Tony DiCello, vice president of research and development for MAPS Coaching, discovered exactly how to do that when he was growing his real estate business. “I realized I needed to get help because I was referring too many buyer deals out, and yet I wasn’t ready for a full-time assistant,” he says. “I spoke with two other top agents in my office, and we came up with the novel idea of sharing an assistant. As my business grew, I took over two-thirds of her time and then finally hired her full-time. I scaled up my use of her with my business.”

1)    Share an assistant.

2)    Hire a virtual assistant. (Read more about what a virtual assistant does and how to hire them.)

3)    Use a market center transaction coordinator.

4)    Utilize a part-time showing assistant.

Have you found anything else that works in your office?

BOLD Law: “You Can Have Reasons or Results, And You Can’t Have Both”

“I would’ve gotten it done, except for…”

“You don’t understand! I had so much to do…”

How many times have you given reasons for something you didn’t do? Wouldn’t you rather have given results instead? As the BOLD Law states, “You can have reasons or results, and you can’t have both.”

We’ve seen this law proven again and again from the time we were kids all the way through to our adult working lives, and if you really want results, it’s time to stop giving reasons. When you commit to producing results, you may find yourself having to learn how to say “no” to keep from accruing any of those dreaded reasons. And once you give up on giving reasons, your results will follow in a big way.

“You can obtain more transactions in seven weeks than most people do in a year,” says Dianna Kokoszka, CEO of KW MAPS Coaching and Keller Williams University. “BOLD will teach you how to get results and to forget about all the reasons.”

So are you giving reasons, or are you producing results? Hear more from Kokoszka on the BOLD Law of “You can have reasons or results, and you can’t have both.”

How Keller Williams Agents are Dominating Real Estate by Putting People First

ORE SHARING SERVICES

2013 was the year that Keller Williams conquered the real estate industry. Their agent-centric, education-based, technology-driven culture were all major components in their record-breaking year, during which they shattered their records for growth, productivity and profit gains. But while all of these elements were instrumental in their success, the number one distinction that fostered their progress was their unwavering commitment to people. 

Communities are built around passion and purpose, not features and functions. Are you passionate about giving back to your community? Are you someone who focuses on helping your clients to make the best possible decisions about the home they will purchase rather than treating them like a lead with a commission attached to it? Keller Williams agents answer yes to both of these questions. Ultimately, your role as an agent or as a company is to implement your plan, delivering value without expecting anything in return, and providing a service that is better than merely useful. 

One of the greatest feelings as an agent is helping a family find their dream home. Keller Williams agents approach these sales without dollar signs in their eyes, as opposed to most other real estate companies. A pivotal trait of KW agents is their ability to shift from short-term to long-term thinking. How would you treat this customer if you wanted to maintain a lifelong relationship with him or her? When you care for your customers as if they are family or friends, trust grows. So does their support and passion for your business. 

Keller Williams agents are focused on delivering the best experience possible to not only their clients, but to their business family as well. As the largest real estate franchise in North America, Keller Williams employs over 90,000 agents from all over the world. With numbers that large, most people would feel lost in the shuffle. However, Keller Williams takes extensive measures to ensure this is not the case. Just last month, Keller Williams agents and team members gathered for “Family Reunion” where they networked and socialized, all while fostering their connections with everyone in their organization. How many massive organizations are there out there that not only nurture the relationships between employees, but cherish them as well? Keller Williams agents have taken this focus on relationships and people and carried it into their own personal business practice.  

As Steve Jobs once put it, “Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” Keller Williams agents know that it is vital for each transaction to not only meet, but exceed the customer’s expectations. While technology is a vital tool in real estate, Keller Williams agents know that it is essential to maintain their focus on what has alway mattered most: people. 

BOLD Law: “Come From Contribution”

Have you ever looked at a script and your first thought was “That’s too direct” or “I could never say those things”? As long as you’re coming from a place of contribution and helping people to get what they want, yes, you can!

The BOLD Law of “Come from contribution” is all about adopting a mindset and a philosophy of contributing to the lives of other people. As BOLD coach Steve Schlueter says, “Amazing things happen when you come from this philosophy.”

If you adopt the philosophy of coming from contribution, you can be direct and to the point in your interactions and scripts. By coming from the right place, you can tell clients the truth and tell them what needs to be said, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.

Whether you’re engaging with a past client, trying to secure a new listing, closing or conveying your gratitude, coming from contribution frees you to say the direct, truthful thing and trust that the scripts will work for you.

Come from contribution, and you’ll learn how to move clients to do what’s best for them and improve the reach of your influence at the same time. Schlueter tells you how below.

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