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In the Zone | vV i2 | Shortcut to Track Your Real Estate Advertising

In the Zone

Volume V Issue 2

  1. What Successful REALTORS(R) Are Saying
  2. Motivational Quote of the Month
  3. Prospecting: The Seven Deadly Sins Of Real Estate Prospecting
  4. Negotiating: The Right Time to Play Stupid
  5. Listing: Very Shrewd Shortcut Method to Tracking Your Real Estate Advertising
  6. Selling: The Dreaded Silent Treatment: How to Reopen Communication by Ari Galper

 

Dear Friend and REALTOR®,

It may sound like a contradiction, but playing dumb actually does give you position in a negotiation scenario. The trick is to make your counterpart feel smarter than you are. How to do this? Find out in this month's Negotiation article.

In this month's Prospecting article, uncover seven prospecting mistakes that could spell big trouble for any agent of any stripe. (This is not a study on systems. It's deeper than that.)

For this month's Listing article you'll learn about a real estate advertising method that will show you when your ads aren't working so you can spend the money on ads that are working. (Doubling, even tripling, your profit and production.)

And finally, Ari Galper will help you reopen the lines of communication with prospects that are giving you "the silent treatment" in this month's Sales article. This is a must read if you want to see a non-invasive, gentle approach to corralling sales back into your business.

And here's to your success,

Gary Elwood
Proquest Technologies
1-800-959-3959

Any questions about anything you've read about in this newsletter?
Just call 1-800-959-3959 and ask to speak to Brad or Ann.

Find past issues of ITZ, click here.

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1. What Successful REALTORS(R) Are Saying

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"I just wanted to say thank you. I've had my license for 3 years and never was helped in anyway....Oh, yes, they said they would, but I never got any help other than here's the fax machine, the phone and the copier.... Well, I was given no motivation or knowledge on what direction to go or how to even choose a direction. I've read all of your motivation letters and listened to you speak and I have more knowledge now than ever. I ran an ad like you said and got a listing from it. From that listing I got a drive by....I HAVE TWO LISTINGS. More than anyone else did for me. So thank you. Please keep going and going and going."

Madeline Hall
New Haven, Connecticut

If you don't already know, see how Provantage can become a key, indispensable ingredient to your success--like it is for Madeline Hall. Click the link below for more information:

http://www.realestategrowth.com/how_to_grow.asp

 

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2. Motivational Quote of the Month

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"What I know is this: if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come."

Oprah Winfrey

 

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3. PROSPECTING: The Seven Deadly Sins Of Real Estate Prospecting

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Real estate prospecting is essential to success in real estate. It's a key ingredient that will help you earn and get paid the amounts of money you want to make each year. Yet, so many agents disregard, forget, ignore or flat out neglect prospecting. These are simple mistakes that could take you away from success. These mistakes are what I refer to as The 7 Deadly Sins of Real Estate Prospecting:

1. Not Prospecting Enough: Prospecting is THE PATH to finding the leads that will become your successfully closed transactions in the weeks and months ahead. If you don't search for and cultivate the best people to work with in your territory, your competitors WILL find these people...and successfully close transactions with them instead.

2. Prospecting With a Poor Attitude: People respond to you based upon what you are putting out to them. When you have a great, positive, fun-loving attitude people will like talking to you more.

3. Not Following-Up With Prospects: Following-up on the leads you've uncovered and enrolling your prospects in follow-up systems is really what being a successful real estate agent is all about. Follow-up systems are essential.

4. Prospecting the Wrong People: Are you prospecting the people you ideally want to be working with? Are you prospecting in the geographical area that has the properties you really want to list or sell? Make sure you're prospecting the people who will be closing the exact kind of transactions you want to be working on.

5. Not Asking Your Prospects for Referrals: When you are prospecting you will maximize your results when you ask your prospects who they know that might be interested in buying or selling in the near future. When you ask the right questions you can also begin prospecting everyone else they know. Don't be afraid. Just do it!

6. Not Continually Mailing to Your Circle of Influence: Mailing to your circle of influence keeps you "top of the mind." You get their attention and remind them of who you are every single month. And the more you consistently mail the higher the probability that one of your circle of influence (or someone they know) will buy or sell right around the time that one of your mailers arrives on their doorstep.

7. Discontinuing Your Prospecting Once You Generate Activity: To be the best you can be in your real estate career you need to prospect constantly. If you get busy and stop, or substantially reduce, your prospecting you will most definitely experience a gap in your incoming commissions in the weeks and months ahead. Don't delude yourself about this. Know with certainty that whenever you slow down your prospecting you will substantially decrease your income for the year.

 

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4. NEGOTIATING: The Right Time to "Play Stupid"

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Playing stupid sometimes pays off.

See, it's a good practice to ask a question even when you already know the answer. The reason why is to verify the accuracy of your counterpart’s information...or to test his honesty. Plus, this tactic works because people tend to want to help you more when they think you are handicapped by a lack of skills, knowledge, or information.

Say you have a client who is in the market for a new home. Wanting to help them make a good investment, you visit six different homes looking in three different neighborhoods. After about four homes, you've probably began to realize that you and your client know more about the homes available than the agents selling the homes. But because too much knowledge would probably intimidate or annoy the other agents and cause them to keep their guard up, you begin "Playing Stupid," explaining that your client has never bought a home before. And don't volunteer the fact that you already stopped at several other homes.

In closing, remember to reveal information slowly, if at all, in most negotiations. Any information you yield may be used against you.

 

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5. LISTING: Very Shrewd Shortcut Method to Tracking Your Real Estate Advertising

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Don't you hate it? Spending advertising money without really knowing what is working...and what isn't.

So, you ask, if that's the case, then why do you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month advertising? Good question.

In essence, every home seller likes to be assured that their listing agent or the real estate company will run ads featuring their home. Newspaper ads could be large display ads with lots of listings or small classified ads featuring just your property. Ads may also appear in local real estate magazines and will also show up on the Internet. But why all the fuss when you're ads aren't producing?

You see, the main job of advertising is not to sell the house directly. Advertising creates phone calls. And you want your ad to create these phone calls. That's what makes call capture systems like Provantage so appealing. It not only helps to make your phone ring off the hook with interested new buyers and sellers, but it also provides you with real time data on how your ads are performing.

If you knew an ad wasn't working, you'd pull it in a flash. You'd save the money. Or spend it on ads that are working. Doubling, even tripling, your profit and production.

That's one of the reasons the Provantage response hotline is so special. It can save you hundreds of dollars in wasted advertising dollars.

Like one client put it: “I can analyze my advertising and Provantage helps me get an accurate assessment of what is truly working. This thing has saved me a lot of money I would have continued spending on advertising that wasn't making my phone ring.”

Plus, Provantage creates across the board savings. How? I'll share that with you next month.

 

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6. SELLING: The Dreaded Silent Treatment: How to Reopen Communication by Ari Galper

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If you’ve been selling for a while, you’ve probably had at least one experience in which your prospect suddenly started giving you the “silent treatment.” In essence, you no longer hear from them.

When a prospect gives you the “silent treatment,” it doesn’t mean you’ve lost the sale. It just means you don’t know the truth yet. What you need to do is call and learn the truth.

* First, simply give your prospect a call. (E-mail and voicemail are very impersonal, so use them only as last resorts if you can't reach your prospect after several phone calls.)

* Second, take responsibility and apologize for having caused the “silent treatment”. Here’s some language I suggested to a client named Anthony that will make prospects feel safe enough to open up and tell you the truth about their situation:

“Hi, Jim, it’s Anthony. I just wanted, first of all, to call and apologize that we ended up not being able to connect. I feel like somewhere along the way maybe I dropped the ball, or I didn’t give you the information you needed. I’m not calling to move things forward because I’m assuming you’ve probably gone ahead with someone else, and that’s perfectly okay. I’m just checking to see if you may have some feedback as to where I can improve for next time.”

When you respond to the “silent treatment” this way, the results will probably surprise you. You may even learn that the prospect has legitimate reasons for not having gotten back to you.

You’ll also find yourself more productive and less frustrated. It’ll make a world of difference in your productivity level, your stress level, your income, and how much you enjoy what you’re doing.

Want to learn more? Get FREE Access to 10 Audio Mini-Lessons (sent via e-mail) from the Teleseminar that put the old 'sales gurus' back into sales pre-school.

Just visit http://www.UnlockTheGame.com.

 

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Proquest Technologies, Inc.
inthezone@proquest-tech.com

1-800-959-3959
In the Zone: Focusing on the 4 Profit Pillars of Real Estate

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"In the Zone" is a Proquest Technologies publication.
(C) Copyright 2007, Proquest Technologies.