Carla Cross, CRB, MA, International Speaker

Do you know the best motivators for YOU? Even though the market has improved in many areas, real estate professionals are still very challenged about getting their businesses back on track. Or, if you’re new, you’re probably experiencing some ‘negative vibes’ from those seasoned agents in your office. How are you going to motivate yourself to get into the swing of the market to meet your goals?

We’re Not Motivated by What We Think We Were…..

In his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink lays out a persuasive case, backed by extensive scientific studies, about why the traditional ‘carrot and stick’ motivational methods just don’t work for us today. It’s especially true with real estate professionals. Why? Because we in effect work for ourselves. We have to be self-starters, initiators, and tenacious in our pursuit of our goals. That means we have to be motivated by things other than promises of material things.

Why Money Doesn’t Work as a Motivator

First, as Pink points out, money and/or material things are good short-term motivators. (Read Herzberg’s studies on short and long-term motivation). In fact, just take a look at the number of real estate agents who are motivated to visit an open house when there’s food! But, as Herzberg and others have pointed out, money is a lousy long-term motivator. You know that if you’ve tried motivating your kids with money—or threats (the carrot and stick).

I know. You’re thinking, “If I just had more money, I would be fine.” So, let me ask you, what are you willing to do to get that money? Lead generate more regularly? Make more sales calls? We all know that lead generating is the answer to that money problem. Yet, the vast majority of agents avoid lead generating as if it gave us some chronic disease! So, money is just not an effective long-term motivator.

The Best, Deepest, Strongest Motivators We Can Use to Motivate Ourselves

Pink shows, via extensive studies, that there are three driving motivators which we should put to work today to fire ourselves up, keep those fires lit, and achieve what we want to achieve. They are:

Autonomy

Mastery

Purpose

Questions to Ask Yourself to Fire Yourself Up

About Your Autonomy

Are you in charge of your own business, or are you waiting for someone else to tell you what to do?

Do you expect your manager to make you go to work, or are you self-directed and self-starting?

Are you disciplined in your business, so you can enjoy that autonomy?

Seth Godin, author of Tribes, says about autonomy: The art of the art {of autonomy} is picking your limits. That’s the autonomy I must cherish. The freedom to pick my boundaries.

About your Mastery

Are you working just to get by, or are you consistently working to get better? What do you want to excel at? How does that translate into your business?

About your Purpose

What excites you so much you can’t sleep at night?

Is there a way to translate that to your real estate business?

The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business. Teresa Amabile, Professor, Harvard University

What motivates you? Do you know? How do you know? What if you’re motivating yourself in the wrong way? (Many managers unwittingly de-motivate with their strategies!)

More about effective motivation today

How to Effectively Motivate

I’m doing a webinar on how to effective motivate yourself and others for the National Association of Realtors’ Learning Library on March 17, at 2 p.m. EST. Click here for more information.

Carla Cross, CRB, MA, is an international speaker, coach, and resource provider, specializing in real estate business management. More of her resources are tested and recommended by CRS and CRB than any other speaker today. Carla helps companies optimize their ‘people power’–creative, practical strategies to double production and profits to recruit and retain the best.

Randy Eagar, CRS

What technological features/gadgets/programs have been more worrisome and questionable than that of all the various social media marketing and networks? Should you be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or even YouTube? As I mentioned last time, the answer is “YES”. But in this post, I’d like to deal more specifically with an overview of how to market your social media through the magic of RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication).

Randy Eagar

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr . . . which social media or social media sharing is best? The answer is “Yes”! With the advancements in these services, you can now post a video in your YouTube account and have it automatically post to your Facebook wall, Twitter account, etc. In marketing, you need to be everywhere.  Here’s a short video trailer showing this exciting session that you can get via 45 minute video or from BASB personal training showing some great social media marketing ideas.

Are you a ‘don’t have time to plan’ broker? Having been a manager and regional manager for two decades (yes, I really am getting that old….), I know how difficult it is to sit down and slog through writing a business plan. So, I’ve been working hard for you to make it fast easy—but accurate as a blueprint for 2010.

 The ‘Spring Ahead’ Approach to Get it Done

 For my business planning webinar (see below), I created four steps to think through a business plan. What’s great about analyzing with these four steps is that you are making immediate decisions for your action plan for 2010. So, as you draw conclusions from your analysis, use a template to get those action plan ideas in place. You’re virtually done, then, with your plan.

 Four Steps: Two Down, Two to Go

 You’ve got cracking on those first two steps to business planning that I gave you in my October 29th blog. Now, let’s tackle the last two steps. Admittedly, you won’t have an in-depth plan with these steps, but, you will have thought through the most important aspects for you to get ready to tackle.

 Step three: Evaluating YOU. Rate yourself in the various management areas: recruiting, selection, coaching, training, retention, staff management, etc.

 Email me at Carla@carlacross.com  and ask for my Management Evaluation—a detailed rating document to assess your strengths and your challenges (great, too, if you’re hiring or managing managers).

 What have you mastered? What do you want to improve? This becomes your personal/professional training/coaching program for next year.

 Step Four: What if: Complete this sentence :”If I did these three things next year, I would increase my productivity and profitability”:

Now, you have your ‘big rocks’ for your business plan for next year done.

 Business plans: Active and Breathing, or Stuck on a Shelf?

 You’re not making a business plan as a financial plan to get money from a bank. You’re not creating this wonderful, mushy visionary plan. You’re thinking about your specific situation, and then creating an action plan. You will actually put these actions into your monthly and weekly schedule, and act on them! This is the plan you will revisit at least monthly, to measure your actions and results against what you planned.

                         Make it an action plan and you will get into action.

 For a comprehensive business planning system, with fill-in forms for each part of your plan, see The Business Planning System for the Owner, Manager, and Team Builder at www.carlacross.com.

 P. S. Use this same approach with your agents. Provide them a format and template to analyze their last year’s business. That gives them the answers to the next year’s action plan (that spring ahead approach I mentioned).

 (Forms for analyzing and planning available for agents, too. See The Business Planning System for the Real Estate Professional.

 Want help with getting your agents to plan: Join me Dec. 8 when I do a webinar for NAR’s Learning Library: Not Your Grammy’s Business Plan.

 Carla Cross, CRB, MA, is an international speaker on productivity and profitability through ‘people development’. Her book on business planning has been published internationally. A course writer and presenter for CRB on business planning, Cross’s business planning workshops, presentations, and resources provide customized systems for real estate professionals. 

Rich Levin

Marketing guru Jennifer Cummings describes an “Aha” experience as “An idea that inspires action.  The combination of the our Daily Coaching webinars and working with individual Agents on their 2010 business plans created a few huge “Aha” moments. 

1.      There are three distinct phases to planning.  It is best to complete one phase each week over three weeks to gain insight and add depth to each.  The three are:

a.       Your motivation, mindset, attitude, and psychology

b.      Your measureable goals by the numbers

c.       The activities, skills, and habits necessary to achieve your goals

When you focus on each of these separately in this order you get motivated by the first week, excited at the possibilities of the second week, and eager to put your plans into action by the third week. 

2.      Your daily and weekly habits are more important than your plan.  Many Agents spend a long time planning and the plan is mostly ignored as the year ensues.  However, Agents who develop simple daily and weekly habits of prospecting, marketing, quality service, and planning achieve consistent success with greater ease.  Habit focused Agents achieve more even if they have a weaker overall plan. 

3.      A results (goals) focus produces results.  Focusing on activities leads to frustration and never achieving a sense of completion.  Focusing on the number of appointments you need each week and the sales volume each month leads to satisfaction, insight, and self-motivation.  Focusing on how many things need to be done leads to anxiety, frustration and damages your motivation even while you are planning. 

We have built our newest (most comprehensive and least expensive) coaching program around these new insights and we can see already, even before the year begins that the Agents are more focused and excited about their future. 

Have you heard???? It’s one heck of a kick-off!

We’ve got over 12,000 agents registered for the Realtor University Webinar series starting tomorrow at 11:00 EST and WOW do we have a lineup!

I’m lucky to be the host for each of the six calls tomorrow starting with the most requested seminar seat in the series featuring former chief economist, John Tuccillo on the 2010 Economic Forecast & how you can prosper!
This is an amazing series featuring industry leaders:

Randy Eagar – Everyone wants to know how to build an Internet Marketing Presence through Blogging!  Expert Randy Eagar’s insightful presentation will tell you!  He offers the 20 Types of Dynamic Blogging Posts!  You won’t want to miss this incredible program and begin blogging like a pro!

The Dynamic Duo of Michael and Stacy Spickes have the full low down on “How you can successfully close short sales!” – They’ve got what you need to know to get a good solid understanding of what a short sale is and what you need step by step to get a short sale to close!

Amy Chorew is our Tech goddess and she’s on the webinar sharing “How Top Agents are Using VIDEO on the Web to Generate Business Now!” To harness this powerful web tool…be sure to check out what Amy has to say

Verl Workman, master sales expert offers the Top Ten Money Making Tools you can use in Real Estate. As a master coach, following his 10 steps is guaranteed to increase your sales.

And our final presenter is Rich Levin sharing 14 Proven Systems to keep your Transactions intact….and who doesn’t need that to keep those contracts from sold to close!

I can’t WAIT to be hosting each of these dynamic presentations! So be sure to visit: www.LearningLibrary.com/RU/Webinars and get registered for these FREE events! And be sure to get your $5.00 discount coupon for the upcoming seminars scheduled in October and November.

Terri Murphy, Author of 5 books, her latest with Donald Trump. She is a Speaker & Consultant and can be reached by email: Terri@TerriMurphy.com or for more information visit www.MurphyOnRealEstate.com

1. Instructional -

a. Instructional posts are meant to tell people how to do something. I find that my Tips posts are generally the ones that are among my most popular both in the short term (that is loyal readers love them and will link up to them) but also in the longer term. One of the reasons people search the web is to find out how to do things and if you can rank highly with your tips post you can have traffic over a length of time.

b. Make sure you give instructions on interesting topics and you will make your blog posts more compelling to read and more likely to be linked. It’s getting others to link to your post that will build back-links for you.

c. Instructional blogs are highly recommended and bookmarked. The reason for this is in the nature of wanting to just click back to the instructions rather than take copious notes on how to do something of interest.

2. Informational -

a. This is one of the more common blog post types where you simply give information on a topic. This is an easy one for most agents to use but also a very good one as we are constantly being asked about interest rates, appreciation/depreciation, foreclosure rates and so forth.

b. You can give information on any topic of your choice. The better the information that you give here, the more of an expert you appear. This is the nice thing about the Informational blog post. It sets you up as the expert.

c. It could be a definition post or a longer explanation of some aspect of the niche that you’re writing on. The more of a niche that you target the more interesting the post becomes.

d. This is the crux of successful sites like wikipedia. In fact many of my posts will reference Wikipedia and other reference sites to validate my point.

3. Reviews -

a. Another highly searched for term on the web is ‘review’ - I know every time I’m considering buying a new product that I head to Google and search for a review on it first. Reviews come in all shapes and sizes and on virtually every product or service you can think of.

b. Give your fair and insightful opinion. Make sure that in your post, you mention the word “review”, as this is what will be used in the search engines. Think like a buyer might think for these.

c. Ask readers for their opinion. This is a great way to get input from your readers, is to ask for it. It also makes people feel special to have their opinions valued.

d. Reviews can be highly powerful posts that have a great longevity. People will bookmark and re-reference reviewed posts as purchasing decisions are often delayed for longer periods of time.

4. Lists -

a. One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list. Posts with content like ‘The Top Ten ways to….’, or ‘7 Reasons why….’ Or ‘ 5 Favorite ….’, or ‘53 mistakes that homebuyers make when….’ are not only easy to write but are usually very popular with readers and with getting links from other bloggers. One tip on lists - if you start with a brief list (each point as a phrase or sentence) and then develop each one into a paragraph or two you might just end up with a series of posts that lasts you a few days.

b. Examples:

i. Resource lists. The useful list of resources requires two ingredients: time and a good eye for quality. If a resource list seems useful many readers will bookmark or vote for it on face-value alone. If your blog is struggling, a useful resource list can be an effective way to spark up your traffic and links.

ii. Best-of lists. At this time of year you’ll see a lot of ‘Best of 2007′ round-ups, though best-of lists seem to work well at all times. They’re effective because people are constantly searching for the ‘best’ of everything. It’s a term that promises high quality. It also generates interest because ‘best’ is subjective - what’s best for you might be mediocre for others. Ranked lists always seem to generate links, traffic and debate.

iii. Lists of tips. Quantifiable lists of tips are really attractive to readers because they explain in just a few seconds what a visitors stands to receive in return for their attention. You see them everywhere - and that’s because they work.

5.   Interviews -

a. Sometimes when you’ve run out of insightful things to say it might be a good idea to let someone else do the talking in an interview (or a guest post). This can not only be good for you, but for your guest as well. I’ve done several interviews with those who do the same thing that I do, and I have just as much fun being the interviewer as the interviewee.

b. This is a great way to not only give your readers a relevant expert’s opinion but to perhaps even learn something about the topic you’re writing yourself. One tip if you’re approaching people for an interview on your blog - don’t overwhelm them with questions.

•c. One of two good questions are more likely to get you a response than a long list of poorly thought through ones. Make sure that you always give those that you are interviewing the chance to send you questions that they would like to answer.

Q&As with high profile people. Interviews with well-known bloggers always seem to get links, comments and traffic. The nice thing about this method is that the only work involved is writing questions and approaching bloggers. The success rates for getting interviews are pretty high as most bloggers love talking about themselves!

Randy Eagar, CRS
President WebsTarget SEO
www.WebsTarget.com
Randy@WebsTarget.com

I am excited about the amount of training available to eveyone in every business online. What other time in history could you take a course on business management and moments later log on to learn about Feng Shui?

I for one sincerely enjoy the diversity of subject matter and thanks to products and services like GotoWebinar and Twitter, we as the general public have instant access to leading experts from all over the world on subjects that interest us, make our businesses stronger and our lives better.

I won’t deny the pleasure of dining with others, or the exciting front row seat at a riveting speech by Tony Robbins, but I love e-learning. It’s affordable and it’s just plain convenient.

Many of our the speakers at the bureau have worked on their online skills and become quite accomplished. If you like webinars and online classes, don’t miss Randy Eagar’s webinar on driving traffic to your web site. It will amaze you. Carla Cross has one coming up for managers titled “Light ‘em On Fire! Best Innovative Strategies to Motivate Your Agents in Tough Markets! To learn more go to www.LearningLibrary.com/ru/webinars

Happy Learning!

Are you getting hundreds of emails a day? Dozens of requests to buy products, attend webinars, try out new software? Join the club! We are all inundated with more and more ‘clutter communication’. We want to ignore all of it. But, as salespeople, we have to assure that our communications actually cut through the clutter! 

First, Just Stop Selling……..

I just finished a webinar for the Learning Library of the National Association of Realtors. It was for seasoned Realtors, and I explored 5 strategies for getting back on track in this transitioning market. (Seasoned but Stuck: 5 Business Strategies for Seasoned Agents to Get your Business Back in the Groove).  One of the major points was to

stop selling!!!!!!

Now, I don’t mean to actually stop selling real estate, but stop using those old communication methods, like the ‘alternate choice’, the ‘getting them to shake their heads,’etc., etc., etc. I advised agents to review their scripts and dialogues and determine if they were really serving the client of today. That’s not creative, and clientrs are really tired of feeling manipulated by ’sales techniques’.

Use Your Right Brain, for a Change

As a musician, I’m fascinated by creativity–and repelled by blatant copying. Now, creativity is becoming key in business, and it’s my pleasure and background to help real estate professionals apply creativity to their businesses.

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink explores creativity and states that the creative people will be the next people to take over the world! Good news to this leftie/right brainer/musician! But, how do we use creativity to sell real estate?

Blend Relational Selling with Creative Messaging

Pink gives a real estate example of a card sent by agents to introduce new buyers to the residents in the area. On the card, the agents explain that the 90-year-old seller was assisted in making her move with the agents, who went beyond the call of duty in getting the home ready to sell. The agents then introduce the buyers. Nowhere is the selling price stated. This approach provides a human view of seller and buyer, and demonstrates the ‘value-added’ service the agents provided.

Blending Social Media with Creativity

Nowhere is creativity more needed than in the realm of social media today. In my webinar, Seasoned but Stuck, I suggested agents first develop a ‘theme’ and use social media to reinforce the theme. Taking my own advice, I just created a blog to serve what I believe is the least served section of the real estate community: the newer agent. So, I created a blog based on my best-selling resource Up and Running  in 30 Days. This blog provides solid, immediate information and inspiration to newer agents, to help them stick to it until they get success. It too reinforces my ‘theme’ as a productivity coach.

Developing a creative, conttemporary approach with your unique ‘theme’ assures you cut through the clutter of over-communication, and create the best kind of long-term relationships.

Carla Cross, CRB, MA is a National Association of Realtors’ Educator of the Year, coach, and author of 6 internationally published books. She was just named among 50 of the most influential women in real estate. Carla speaks, coaches, and writes on productivity and profitability with creativity, with a specialty in real estate management.

According to NAR and other research we have done independently, 80% of leads generated by you or your company over the internet are lost, marked as dead or simply thrown out? Why is this happening?

An online consumer contacts you by email. They want an immediate response to their question. And As we know the first one to contact the consumer has the better chance of engaging the consumer.  Speed matters, and the speed of the internet has created this consumer need.

The reality is that the online lead many times is not ready to commit right way.
So we give up, or just lose interest, or don’t have systems in place to keep track of them to convert them at a later date.

Todays online consumer does not want to be captured by the real estate agent. They want to stay in control of the process.They feel if they give information the agent will bug them to they buy or die.

The technology needs of a buyer-based marketplace are so different than those of the past five years that many real estate professionals find themselves back at square one.

Here are some of the challenges:
Knowing who today’s consumeris and how they consume information  on the internet
Having all the tools to respond properly

In other words The challenge today is to understand which values are desired; and retool our business around them.

What about the leads that you send information to and then won’t give you enough information for your to qualify them as a lead?
One import fact to remember is that buyers are on line way before they are ready to purchase. Try to eliminate the 45 day mentality we attach to leads. Remember? A buyer walks into your office. You speak to them, read their tells. Wihtin half an hour you know if you have a commission check in your inbox in 45 days. Ahhh . . . memories. Those days are gone forever.

Many buyers enter the real estate search arena up to 4 years before they sit at a closing table. This is the subconscious stage. When something triggers to them to the next phase they actively engage into pre research. This is the thinking about it stage.

Another trigger sends them to active research. They are finally pre-qualified and they actively Search online for homes,  and areas.

The actually buying stage is when they need help on the  Offer, Negotiating and Closing.  Keep in mind the actual buying phase can last as long as 4 months.

What are these triggers? Job change, income change, family change, you name it.
Managing all these leads can be overwhelming,  so look through all the software, programs you own, especially products attached to your website and see if there are any automated email campaigns availble to you.

Please note - I am not an advocate of just pushing unwanted data to these people. AND I NEVER recommend this type of product to your sphere and past customers. Watch for my next post when I review products who pass my 3 Point Marketing test!