Booking Listing Appointments

I don’t know about you, but one of my pet peeves is going to an appointment and then getting stuck waiting 15 to 20 minutes for clients to show up.  It seems that in every relationship either the husband or the wife is a late person by habit.

To eliminate this problem, I make my listing appointments flexible.  More specifically, I book my appointments giving me the option of showing up between a given time period.  If you show toward the later of this time slot, both decision makers are normally present.

For example, if I book a time to show up between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. to meet at a property, the people that have scheduled to meet are not late, as they are rushing to make it for the earlier end of the appointment in case I arrive then.  In addition, if you show up with 15 or 20 minutes to spare before the end of this scheduled time slot, you can use this toward your presentation without worrying that the Vendor has gone and squeezed in another appointment derailing your presentation.

This format also gives you the benefit of not having to rush to avoid being late or having to make excuses because you were.  In addition, you gain flexibility in scheduling in any additional appointments that come up.

The buyer agents on my team often complained about buyers always being late. I suggested this strategy to them, only book the time period little tighter. Instead of making the slot span one hour make it 15 minutes.

If you have buyer agents working with you and if they are working to their max, I would suggest that you have one of your administrative team members book all their showing appointments.  If they are, slackers have them book their own appointments, this will enable you to direct your team to the most productive tasks.

Work your business plan

This is the time of year to start working on next years business plan.

I have laid out a guideline for my team to follow and I believe if they work on these simple steps, success is all but guaranteed.

The first step is to block out your calender, with your prospecting being your most important appointment of the day.  Use a pencil (in case of changes) and block out all the times that are going to complete your day and do this well in advance of the day you are going to work on the task at hand.

Many of you will say that your family is more important; it is acceptable to build  your calender based on this approach.  However, remember that airlines will tell you to put your oxygen mask on yourself first in order to be able to help the people beside you. 

Prospecting is the oxygen you will need to be successful is real estate sales, if you want to help your family – look after your business and your business will look after you.

You should also try to do some of your prospecting at the office as opposed to calling at home.  If you have a hard time disciplining yourself to make the calls that are required to reach your goals it is probably because the couch is winning out over the phone.

Follow these simple rules you will be on top of your game and sales will follow.  More importantly if you can not master the phone you might want to consider another career other then real estate sales.

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Telephone prospecting the easy way

We all know that prospecting for buyers and sellers is essential to the success of any good salesperson, the problem is that we all seem to chase the same carrot.  I believe that there are easy ways to go about this sometimes daunting task, and there are hard ways.

My team and I met recently and because the holiday season is upon us I gave them what I think is the easiest telephone technique in building their business that I know of.  This suggestion in my opinion is a golden nugget and it is based on building your direct contact business and your referral business.

Many of the people that I have worked with over the years are timid when it comes to getting on the phone to look for business, this is something that pretty much all salespeople can relate too.

These fears prompted me to think of ways to get people to work on their business using methods that get people around these fear tendencies.  As I mentioned, at this time it just so happens to be the holiday season, however this technique can be used many other times of the year and be just as effective.

This nugget involves putting together a list of every person that you know, with the intent to call them and wish them a Happy Holiday and to verify their mailing information so that they can mail out a holiday greeting card.  No one will be upset that they are going to be getting card from you.

While you have them on the phone, ask if their email address is handy and be sure to close off the conversation by asking them to pass along your name to anyone that they might know who will be selling in the new year.  By pushing out this suggestion to the new year, you will not be looked upon as being a pushy salesperson.

Each month this column will be added to as I suggest to my team how to go about getting in front of their clients in a friendly way.

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Streamline Your Delegation

This letter will focus on time saving strategies designed to benefit you in the area of delegation and putting your business on auto pilot.  For the greater part, this is a low-cost idea that anyone can implement.

I have gone to the office of several REALTORS(R) to see how they run their business.  In doing this I have observed almost all of them take notes or use a Dictaphone to remind themselves of the things they need to do.

This works well, however with this method, I find that you often have to duplicate the delegation of tasks to various team members.  Or you have to hunt for pen and paper when the need arises to scribble down what it is that you want to have delegated,  often misplacing the note.

To streamline this task, it is far more effective to have an answering system setup on a private phone line, beside the desk of your Service Coordinator so they can deal with the delegation of these tasks.  If you have a voice mail phone system in your office, you may not need a private line.

This eliminates the need to remember to call in at specific times to speak to someone on your team in order to have things done.  For example, when you get out of an appointment you can get any special requests asked of Buyers, Sellers or other REALTORS(R) off your plate immediately.  An even better benefit is that we are often closer to a phone then we are to a pen and paper, especially when driving a car.

I have found that on those occasions that a phone is not available and I have to use my Dictaphone, the natural inefficiency is that you have to repeat every task and you often have to sort through the messages to find the one that is relevant.

You can also have your clients leave messages that are not of immediate importance, such as the name of showing agents for following up, or the need for new feature sheets etc.

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