Trends in Top Producers - part 2

TRENDS IN TOP PRODUCING REAL ESTATE AGENTS
Part 2 of 2

So, what will drive Top Producers to select your company over the competition? The key herein lies in developing a business partnership that will help them to amplify their success. Remember, it is all about them. Based on our countless interviews, I recommend implementing the following sales approach when working with any prospect, but most importantly with Top Producing Agents:

• Target – Build and evolve your detailed target list of prospective top producing clients, including extensive business-related information. This allows us to be more prepared for each call.
• Conduct a Sales Interview – Be prepared to answer the following question “What’s in it for me?” spoken from the target’s perspective. The salesperson will then conduct a sales interview aimed at uncovering specific needs and opportunities.
• Provide Solutions – The salesperson should create tailored solutions based upon expressed clients needs and wants. Review this with the prospect.
• Obtain a Business Commitment – The salesperson obtains a specific business commitment from the client.
• Follow Up for Orders – The salesperson should create meaningful, consistent contact with the prospect, by solving transactional challenges, further building the business relationship and to insure receipt of multiple orders
• Ask for Referrals – The salesperson continuously adds to their target list by soliciting referrals from their new client.

The effective execution of this sales approach is far more important than any programmatic tools, resources or services we can provide. Top Producers want to feel like we are providing customized solutions. Recalling from our last discussion, since top agents have stated in their interviews they clearly aren’t interested in ‘stock’ solutions or services, I’d like to share a few specific ideas you can implement, or might already be implementing, on their behalf. Most agents and lenders have also said that the following issues are very important to them:

We should truly function as their partner. They want their clients to feel as if we are a part of their team, including the way we speak as well as the way we operate. How often do we hear folks say “My attorney says…” or “My doctor says….” “My CPA says…” This should be the same for you. “My business partner says…..” It is all about owning half of a business partnership.

We should be an extension of their sales machine. They want us to actively see ourselves as an extension of their business, asking for referrals and reminding their clients of the great services they received as a result of choosing their agent.

They want a high level, action-driven problem solver. The agents don’t want to have to “do our job for us,” meaning they expect us to help uncover, resolve, and communicate challenges in a way that keeps the transaction running smoothly.

Conclusions:

The most successful agents view their vendor partners as an extension of their team, not as a separate entity. As a business consultant, look for ways to make a direct impact with the very information we know they want to learn. This information will challenge them, and will offer solutions to their priorities for the next 12 months. This can only happen by asking them individually what their wants and needs are for their own unique business. The Bottom Line: Ask More Questions, and don’t provide “stock” solutions.

Trends in Top Producers

This is part of my Top Producer series that I'll be posting in the next couple of weeks. Due to market conditions in the Real Estate industry it's more critical now than ever to focus your efforts on people that do the business. The age old adage of the 80/20 rule applies. Focus on the top 20 percent and you'll see results.

Trends in Top Producers
By Joe Curtis
Senior Sales Management Consultant


Part 1 of 2
Everyone tells me Top Producers are a different beast. They are unique. And, they require more. After hearing this from our clients time and time again, I thought I’d pick up the phone and call a few, find out for myself. What does make a Top Producer tick? What is their approach to their business? What challenges do they face, and what do they want to learn?
Armed with these very questions, RightNow has interviewed over 100 top producing real estate agents, lenders, attorneys throughout the nation, including, but not limited to, the following major metropolitan markets: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Boise, Portland, Tampa and San Antonio, Texas.

The answers may or may not surprise you. But perhaps most importantly, we learned that regardless of the geographic market, there are consistent trends for these successful professionals. Below are just a few insights straight from the individuals themselves.

Top Producers Approach to Their Business:

• They have a business-minded philosophy, meaning they treat their real estate or title practice like a true business, complete with well developed marketing and sales plans.
• They are constantly educating themselves about their business, their market and the future direction of both.
• They are extremely customer-centric, staying completely focused on what their clients’ want and need.
• They have a systematic process for follow up with their current clients and future prospects.
• They have a well established marketing and advertising plan, systematically tracking and repeating what works well.
• They completely prepare themselves for sales calls (80% preparation, 20% execution). Many use a personal, business or lifestyle coach for their own development.

Consistently, RightNow hears comments like:

“I don’t sell houses. I educate people on how to buy them.”

“The most common good and bad business decisions are hiring decisions"

What They Want to Learn:

• Legal Trends: DRE rules and regulations.
• Technology Trends: What will help take their business to the next level?
• Marketing Trends: The latest and most effective means of, more targeted,
  marketing to different groups, how to measure if it’s working
• Streamlining Work-Flow: Using technology OR staff
• Time Management Skills
• How to Build Their Business: Providing support for their growth

Top 5 Business Challenges Facing Top Producers

• Competition: Many competitors are willing to cut commissions, squeezing margins
• Changing Laws and Regulatory Issues: Trying to keep abreast
  and ahead of them
• Time Management: Both for themselves and their teams
• Finding and Hiring Good People: Buyers agents, assistants
• Greedy Sellers: Setting client expectations around properly pricing a home
  

With annual planning for 2008 just around the corner, what are the top priorities over the next 12 months and how can you offer your assistance? Below are a few suggested websites that
will help arm you with solutions to THEIR needs:

THEIR PRIORITY:(For Brokers) Growing Their Agent’s Business
HOW CAN YOU HELP?

http://www.topproducer.com/ – Top Producer is the industry standard in full
featured real estate agent software. This company also offers other software
modules including Hot Marketer, Top Presenter 2 and Top Connector.

http://www.topproducersales.com/ reduced rates on the software packages.–

http://www.myonlineneighborhood.com/ very similar to the above site, however, it is focused much more on the real estate professional.

THEIR PRIORITY: (For Brokers) Hiring Agents, Increasing Staff to Accommodate Growth
HOW CAN YOU HELP?

http://www.salary.com/ – Look up what people make in your specific geographic region; Help an agent
figure out what they should pay to attract talent.

“Multiply Your Success with Real Estate Assistant” a book by Monica Reynolds

THEIR PRIORITY:Increasing Effectiveness of Marketing

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

http://www.colorforrealestate.com/ – outstanding and inexpensive color real estate marketing/follow up tools

“Power Real Estate Letters: A Professional's Resource for Success”, a book by William H. Pivar, Corinne E. Pivar

http://www.hobbsherder.com/ – a high-end real estate marketing company

http://www.idemandresults.com/ – excellent site for internet real estate marketing needs

http://www.serviceforlife.com/ – Real estate newsletters and email drip campaigns

THEIR PRIORITY:Having More Personal Time

HOW YOU CAN HELP?
http://www.createaplan.com/ – a comprehensive, easy to use web-based strategic & business planning software tool designed specifically for the real estate professional. This simple point and click software application program is designed to make business planning, budgeting, and tracking quick and easy.

http://www.isucceed.com/ – top producing real estate agents offer mentorship for pennies on the dollar. Why reinvent the wheel?

In Conclusion
I hope this provides you a little glance inside the mind and priorities of the Top Producer. In Part 2 of this series, I’ll focus on what we can do as Title Professionals to tailor our sales approach to selectively target and cater to these Top Producers. After all, in a downturned market (or a ‘corrected’ market, as some may say) who will be the agents that remain in business? Isn’t it time you focus on Top Producers?

TOP PRODUCERS: Get the Appointment

Knowing Your Customer: Who IS the Top Producer?

The average top producing realtor has been in the business for 13 years, the highest recorded number to date. What does this mean? Answer: More experience than ever. And most important, they have high expectations of their title company.

For those of you who have been in the business a while, you have probably noticed how the average real estate professional changed over the past 10 years. Not only do they now require a higher degree of professionalism, but with the progression of the computers, they are much more technologically saavy ~ websites, online selling, etc. You have probably already noticed a shift from print to online media as a huge trend for the real estate industry. What does this all mean to you? As the needs of a top producer change, so will your ability to address the needs of this future business partner. The first step to becoming a true business partner to this individual is knowing who your client is.

What Do Top Producers Want?
RightNow routinely interviews top producers nationwide asking this exact same question. Over 300 interviews later, and over the course of the last six months, we have found their top tiered WANTS quite interesting:

• Their Check – First and foremost, top producers want to be paid in a timely and efficient manner. This is clearly the one thing that matters to them most.
• Referral Business – More often than not, the closing process is the final step for the buyers/sellers, and makes the most lasting impression. If the closing is bungled, it reflects badly on the agent. Top producers require a smooth closing process in order to ensure future business from these buyers/sellers. Not only that, but their desire is to gain referral business as a result of their efforts. When was the last time your escrow officers or sales representatives asked (on behalf of the realtor) for referrals upon close of a file?
• To Be Perceived as an Informed Expert – Their choice of vendor support reflects directly on how they are perceived by their clients. If the closing process is smooth, they will perceive that the realtor knows their business, and knows the professionals to trust with their transaction.
• To Look Good – Because closing is the final step in what could be the most significant purchase a client has made, the final impression will be the most lasting. They want the agent on the other end of the transaction to think highly of them; they need their client to think highly of them, and they want you to think highly of them, too. We need to feed this notion at every opportunity.
  

It all starts with making your top priority knowing what their top priority is ~ to increase their business, or a way to improve their business by working less. You are bringing VALUE to them.

Getting the Appointment
Let’s examine some examples of a hierarchical relationship, where one party contributes more value than the other. A parent/child, a teacher/student, a doctor/patient. Now let’s examine some examples of an inter-dependent relationship, where both parties are on equal footing: A sibling/sibling, a husband/wife, a good friendship.

The key lies herein on your ability to have the relationship be perceived as valuable ~ the early stages of the interdependent relationship. You need to position yourself as a professional and be able to communicate the potential impact of YOUR involvement in their business. Top producers will not meet with you unless you can convey a compelling reason to do so. But, if you feel you have nothing to offer a top producer, then you better develop a skill that would support them, to create their efficiencies.

We know that the two core needs of most top producers are to grow their business or improve efficiencies with in their business (so that they have more free time). Do your homework. Research your targets by their use of internet, MLS, newspaper and real estate magazines. Find out how they market themselves and what they’re saying in their advertisements. Often times your targets will give you all the information you need in order to approach them.

Communicating Your Value
In person, it is a concise declaration of the value you could potentially bring to an agent’s business, following with a request for an appointment.

1. My goal is ~
2. A percent or number ~
3. Define with a timeframe ~
4. End with a request for an appointment

As an example, if I were calling the top agent of ABC Realty, I might use the following:

“Mr. Top Producer, when I work for an agent, one of my goals is to bring them 4 additional transactions to their business a year, as a direct result of my efforts. Do you have some time Monday to meet with me and allow me to tell you how I would do this?”

This statement has to be sincere. You must mean what you say. Remember although this is a goal, it not a promise, and you will do your very best to achieve it.

Do NOT interview on the phone. Every time you receive a ‘no’ to an appointment, set a specific time and day for follow up. Your follow through in calling will demonstrate your attention to detail and the fact that you have systems in place. Your prospects will notice this. They don’t really think you’ll call, but when you do, it’s impressive. Sales is about perseverance.
Not every top producer will meet with you. But, RightNow has measured time and time again the impact of using this approach, and, we continue to find that our clients have doubled their ability to get in front of top producers.

Asking for an appointment is a BIG first step. Start there and work up to the interview. Most success in sales is gained simply asking in the first place. Remember the answer is “No” unless you ask. If 80% of the business is handled by 20% of the agents, aren’t top producers worth the investment of your time?

11 Basic Categories of Need

We have identified eleven basic Categories of Need that you can and should research to be a valuable resource for your clients:

1. Consistency in business flow: Marketing plans that provide consistent leads, avoiding peaks and valleys, analyze competitors in their market area, help to develop speaking opportunities for lead generation.

2. Hiring, managing, training assistants: Training, vendor relationships, job descriptions, identifying qualified candidates, transaction management.

3. Understanding business planning and forecasting: Goal setting, creating quarterly business plans, planning transactional volume and calculating buyer/seller split, turn time analysis (avg. length of home ownership in their area).

4. Utilizing technology to increase efficiency: Keeping in touch with past and current clients, using PDA’s, Blackberry’s and other technological tools, products a title company may offer to help them access information remotely and 24/7 for current orders and ordering customer service products.

5. Using technology to increase sales: Increasing value of websites, database management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.

6. Improving the response of marketing and advertising efforts: Working with professionals to increase return on marketing investment (logos, tagline, etc), marketing pieces have a “call to action” and focus less on them and more on what benefits they can provide to their client.

7. Cultivating referrals from past clients/sphere of influence: Creating strategy and follow up plans, CRM systems to support goals, client apprecia¬tion parties.

8. Tax and financial planning issues: Tracking expenditures, calculating real profit, find a good CPA who specializes in real estate professionals and small business owners.

9. Increasing average transactional value: Strategy to “move up” in home values.

10. Increasing sales volume: Goal setting, marketing efforts, farming, prospec-t¬ing, sphere of influence.

11. Increasing personal time: Delegating, hiring an assistant, specializing in something rather than trying to be all things to all people, goal setting.

By understanding these categories, you are better prepared to identify one need on which to base your solution and put yourself in a position to truly negotiate a percentage of business from your clients or prospects.

Happy Selling!

Top Producers: Opening the Door to 'Closed' Offices

Ten years ago, if a salesperson told their manager that an office was “closed” it would have meant that there was no one answering phones, no cars in the parking lot and the door was locked. Today, over half of all real estate offices are “closed,” meaning that they do not allow title representatives, lenders, and the like to stroll thorough the office aimlessly without an appointment. Believe it or not, closed offices represent the best opportunity to develop new customers and virtually eliminate the competition.

Let’s examine some reasons why closed offices present such an opportunity for our industry.
In a more discriminating market as we have seen in recent months, it has become more apparent than ever that the top-tiered real estate and mortgage professionals will be those that remain in a down-turned, unpredictable market. You must turn this corrective market into a clearly defined opportunity for success. The highest level producers work in closed offices because they get more work done. They have earned the right to be left alone, without constant interruption of someone bringing a “new pad of paper and a title company pen.”

According to consistent polling of top producers nationwide, RightNow has found that realtors who earn more than $200k per year believe that title company representatives provide “little to no value to their business.” The reasons they cite are many, but include such remarks as “I can buy my own bagels”, and “I hate when people ask me if there is anything they can get me today.” To top producers, title representatives have earned a reputation, deserved or not, comparable to used car sales.

Since many of your competitors sell in this manner, this is an opportunity for you to clearly differentiate yourself in order to reach this seemingly unattainable market. When we provide a higher level of professional service, we are seen as time savers rather than time wasters. The key is in the value you provide to increasing THEIR business.

Working by appointment is more efficient.

Doctors, lawyers, CPAs all work by appointment. In other non-retail industries, such as real estate sales, salespeople go out with a distinct purpose for every sales call. Even a real estate agent, for example, goes on a listing presentation appointment. Can you imagine a real estate agent knocking on your door one Saturday, and asking if there is anything they could ‘get you’ today? Let's agree not to do this.

Why not create an opportunity for us to ask direct questions that relate to the development of agent’s business, such as “What portion of your business do you want to focus your energy on in the next 90 days, therefore producing more sales?” When our salespeople ask intelligent questions, they become more professional and dramatically increase their effectiveness and results. You are creating an opportunity to provide Value to the top producer, giving them exactly what they want.

Just ask

Asking for the appointment is never easy. In truth, closed real estate offices require us to be more creative in our sales approach. They are the gate keepers to top producing agents. Not only do the top producers congregate there, but your competitors are scared and they go largely unsolicited. The most efficient sales approach in any office is appointment based. In closed offices it is the key to your success. Focus your attention on creating appointment-based sales opportunities within closed offices and you will leave competitors in your dust. Where would you rather be ~ in an office that has already seen seven of your competitors this morning? Or, in an office that hasn’t seen any of your competitors this year?

Secrets of the Great Rainmakers

by Jeffrey J. Fox

In companies that use salespeople to sell directly to customers, rainmakers are the people who bring in the business. Rainmakers bring in big revenues, big money. Rainmakers bring in new revenues, new customers. Rainmakers sell new applications, new products, and price increases. Rainmakers make the cash register ring. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

And, rainmakers make big money for themselves. Rainmakers are always the highest paid sellers, and it is not uncommon for rainmakers to be among the highest paid employees in the organization. Rainmakers are rare, but they are everywhere. They are in corporations as super sellers. They are commission only salespeople, entrepreneurs, small business owners, solo practitioners, agents, brokers, and partners in professional firms.

Here is what rainmakers always do that other salespeople don’t: First, they sell more! Rainmakers generate more sales revenues than the other people. They sell more through thick and thin. They sell more in good economies and bad. They sell more regardless of the competition. Rainmakers sell more by relentlessly doing things that other salespeople sometimes do or never do.

Here are some “secrets” of the great rainmakers:

Secret One: They carefully and thoroughly do pre-call homework and pre-call planning for every sales call on a decision maker. They spend at least three hours planning a 15-minute sales call. They might spend three weeks pre-call planning a five-minute sales call.

Secret Two: They dollarize. Rainmakers don’t sell products or services. They don’t sell features or benefits. They don’t sell technology. Rainmakers sell the dollarized value that their customers get from the product benefits, or get from the technology. Rainmakers don’t sell MRI machines; they sell hospitals 10 MRI exams per day at $2,000 per exam.

Secret Three: Rainmakers always know the answer to one question: “If I (the rainmaker) were
the customer, and knowing what I know about my company, about my product, about the competition, about the customer, why would I do business with my company?” The rainmaker becomes the customer and honestly answers “why the customer should do business with me.” Knowing “why the customer should do business with me,” in dollars and cents, gives the rainmaker a rock solid foundation for confidently pursuing the sale. Learning the answer to this question must be part of your pre-call planning.

Secret Four: On every sales call with a decision maker or influencer, rainmakers always ask for the order, or for a customer commitment to a customer action that will lead to an order. The rainmaker does what 90% of all salespeople never do: The rainmaker asks for the business.
Secret Five: In a baseball game, a hitter or batter gets to the plate about four times a game. This means that the batter, barring a strikeout, and regardless of whether he gets a hit or not, has to run to first base three or four or five times a game. Even though running to first base three or four times a game is nothing, a small effort in the totality of the game, some players give up on their hit, assume they will make an out, and dog it to first. The rainmaker never dogs it to first base!

The rainmaker never assumes he or she will be thrown out. The rainmaker runs out every hit, and runs full tilt, because the few times the opposition fumbles the ball, or the ball drops in, the rainmaker ends up safely on base. The rainmaker never quits in the sales cycle. The rainmaker always sprints, always goes for the sale. That’s why rainmakers are known as “big hitters.” One motto and deep belief of the rainmaker is the “if you, the customer, don’t do business with me, then we both lose.” So the rainmaker works every second to make sure the customer wins so the rainmaker wins.

And these are some secrets as to why rainmakers sell more and make more money than the rest of the selling crowd. Now go make it rain!