Jeff Quintin Real Estate Training Blog

Agent Reference: One Week Business Plan

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This past week, my team and I have really been looking at our business plan and short-term goals. Having a business plan is very simple. Here are some of the items we went over in establishing one week business plan.

First of all, determine how many days and hours that you are going to work. Determine how many hours you want to spend prospecting. How many contacts are you going to make during these calls? How many leads will you generate?

Then take a look at how many presentations you're going to make in a week. How many listings do you plan on taking? If you're going on buyer appointments, how many buyer-controlled sales are you going to take?

One very important thing to do is determine how many hours will be devoted to practice. Role play sessions can be very helpful when it comes to making prospects calls or delivering presentations. In addition, identify who your seven-day leads were. The seven-day lead is somebody who will sign a contract with you within the next seven days. You always want to look at your timeline, and stay focused on who's going to do business with you right now.

If you have any questions, simply email me, post a comment down below and please forward this to someone you know. Also, send us your referrals if you know someone who wants to buy or sell real estate; we want to send you a bunch of referral fees this year! Thanks and have a great day.

Agent Reference: Personality Styles

This past week, we talked about understanding personality styles. What does that mean? Over the last six years, Mike Ferry has taught my team and I about understanding personality styles. The four that Mike has taught us are the driver, the analytic, the expressive, and the amiable.

You've got to be clear on which type each of these are in order to know who you're speaking to. For example, if you're speaking to someone with an analytical personality, you want to present facts, figures, and procedures within the buying or selling process. They understand structure of some sort. You need to understand the personality styles in order to communicate with them according to their decision making process.

It's important to be versatile. Mike says the lack of versatility costs us anywhere from 25 to 35 deals per year because we're not adapting to someone else's personality. We only want to work with people like us, whose personality matches ours. If you can be flexible, you can work with more clients.

Agent Reference: Goal Setting and Motivation

This week, my team and I discussed goal setting and motivation. We talked about setting goals in five areas of life; physical, mental, spiritual, family, and financial.

Creating goals in each of these categories is important, but make sure to have a time frame for each goal. For example, how do you view the physical aspect of your life one year from now? What about five years? Look at the financial aspect of your life. How much do you want to earn within one year? What about five? How much will go to savings? This exercise will keep you motivated and focused.

We also discussed the fact that a goal is nothing more than a dream with a deadline. If you commit to your goals, you can turn that dream into a reality.

Create a goal following system:

Decide on what you would really like to have in your life.
Write them down.
List any obstacles to your goal, and plan solutions.
Set deadlines for obtaining these goals, and visualize your goals daily.

Agent Reference: Mindset

In this week's team meeting, we discussed the importance of having a strong mindset for success. Here are a few thoughts and ideas on how to have and maintain a strong mindset.

We have to understand that negative thinking is always more powerful than positive thinking. For some reason, we are just wired to remember more bad than good. We have to eliminate negative thinking in order to focus on the positive. Try to remove all the drama from your life. Drama costs you time and money. It's also important to realize that we become like the people we associate with. Ask yourself this: Are the people around me contributing to my power to succeed? Or are they subtracting from it?

There are some things you can do in order to keep a strong mindset. Read inspirational books, or listen to inspirational CDs. Spend time with people that do more than what you do. You will want to do more yourself. Attend at least three, if not four, Mike Ferry events a year. To sign up, simply visit www.mikeferry.com.

Affirmations can be positive or negative. If you repeatedly tell yourself you can't do something, in your mind, you will believe that you cannot do it. Make sure that your affirmations are positive. Don't focus on what you don't like about the business. Focusing on these issues will just bring you more of the same.

Finally, make sure that failure is never an option.

Agent Reference: Customer Service

This past week, my team and I had one of the most important discussions that we could have. We discussed great customer service, and how customer service affects business long-term.

Great customer service will always lead to a huge number of repeat business and referrals. We must be obsessed with giving great customer service. Regular communication is key to creating a pleasant customer experience. Be sure to communicate with your clients throughout both the listing and sales processes. Update them often. If you need to, create a simple checklist for yourself, and refer to it so that providing great service becomes part of your routine.

Of course, make sure to treat your clients as you would like to be treated. Our customers are our biggest asset, and we must treat them with respect.

In order to ensure good service, my team and I discussed sending a survey to all of our clients after closing. This way we will get feedback on whether the transaction was positive or negative. We can see what we are doing well, and what we need to work on.

Agent Reference: Working with Buyers

This week, my team and I went over some of the basic rules for working with buyers.

First off, one hundred percent of all buyers need to be pre-qualified by lenders. No exceptions. Once they're pre-qualified, make sure that they are motivated, and that you know exactly the type of home they want to buy.

There are three types of highly motivated buyers:

Clients who are motivated to buy;
Seller who have been priced to sell and then decide to buy; and
Qualified, motivated referrals.

Make sure develop a list of four or five standards that you have while working with them. Stick to those standards. These standards may be things like working with the buyer after they have been pre-qualified, or say that you will never show more than five homes at a time.

Finally, only show properties when all of the decision-makers will be present. Confirm ahead of time that the decision-makers will be there before you go any further with showing a property.