Introduction

W elcome! You’re about to move into the league of the most successful real estate agents.

Real estate sales is the greatest business in the world. Together, we have more than 35 years in the industry as business owners and entrepreneurs, and we’ve yet to find a business equal to real estate sales when it comes to income potential versus capital investment. In any marketplace, a real estate agent has the opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of dollars in income. (We coach many agents and teams who earn more than $3 million per year.) An agent’s income is especially significant when viewed against the capital investment required by the business. Most agents need as little as $2,000 to start up their practices. Compare that to any other business and you’ll find that most involve sizeable investments and burdensome loans to buy equipment, lease space, create marketing pieces, develop business strategies and hire employees — all to achieve what is usually a smaller net profit than what a real estate agent can achieve in the first few years. It’s almost too good to be true!

Because of technological advances, including the internet and social media, a new agent can create the appearance of success, marketplace stature and marketing experience, far beyond the early stages of a real estate career. This gives new agents better odds at carving out a career for themselves. The timing of your decision to enter the field of real estate or advance your career could not be better. The industry has just come out of a significant market correction, and the number of real estate agents has been greatly reduced. However, the good news is that we’re now re-entering a growth phase in real estate where home values are increasing and the number of homes sold is starting to climb again.

A real estate sales career paved the way to wealth, financial independence and exciting careers for both of us. It provided a solid income, many investment opportunities, an enviable lifestyle and a platform from which we’ve been able to help many others achieve their own goals and dreams in life.

About This Book

This book is about becoming a successful real estate agent, for sure. It’s also about acquiring sales skills, marketing skills, time-management skills, people skills, technology skills and business skills. It’s about gaining more respect, achieving more recognition, making more money and closing more sales. It’s a guide that helps you achieve the goals and dreams you have for yourself and your family.

We’re delighted to share with you the keys we’ve found for real estate success, and are keen to help you avoid the mistakes we’ve made along the way. (We’re both firm believers in the idea that we often benefit more from failures than from successes. Funnily enough, ‘failing forward’ can be the quickest way to long-term success. But you can learn from our failures, without having to repeat them.)

The techniques, skills and strategies we present throughout this book are the same ones we’ve used and tested to perfection personally and with thousands of coaching clients and hundreds of thousands of training program participants. Although technology has had an expanding influence on the real estate market in the past decade, the foundational skills of sales, time management, marketing and people skills have not changed as much. This is not a book of theory but of ‘real stuff’ that works and is laid out in a hands-on, step-by-step format. You can also find time-tested scripts in most sales-oriented chapters. The scripts are designed to move prospects and clients to do more business with you. (If you’re a junior member of the grammar police, you may find that some scripts don’t sit perfectly with you or your own way of talking or writing, but don’t stress. The objective of the sales scripts is not perfect sentence structure but rather maximum persuasion of the prospect or client. Just use these scripts as a guide, a template and a starting point, and change them to suit your own personality.)

If you apply the information contained in this book with the right attitude, and if you’re consistent in your practices and in your success expectations, your success in real estate sales is guaranteed.

Throughout this book we incorporate a number of style conventions, most aimed at keeping the book easy to read and a few aimed at keeping it legally accurate:

• Throughout this book, we use the term real estate agent to refer to a real estate sales person. In some quarters, the term ‘agent’ refers only to a fully licensed agent or an agency principal, but here in this book, we will use the term to refer to anyone who has completed either the entry level industry requirements or alternatively has gone through to fully licensed status.
• The word agency describes the office in which you work. The word franchise describes the brand under which you operate and promote your services. In Australia and New Zealand, both franchise brands (such as Ray White, LJ Hooker and REMAX) and marketing brands (such as The Professionals and Century 21) operate. These allow the licensee’s name to appear in all marketing material and signage. There are other agencies, for example those affiliated as Jenman agencies, where individual agents’ details do not appear at all. And, in addition, we’ve also seen a growth of independent agencies that choose not to be under a banner at all. As you can see, you have many choices and we will help you with strategies to know which one is right for you!
• The term client refers to a person with whom the real estate agent or agency has a written agreement and who is committed to pay for a service which the agent supplies. When clients list a home for sale, they enter a contractual relationship with the agent who will represent their interests. That agreement is called an agency relationship and the seller is bound into the contract with a listing agreement. Usually this agreement is with the agency and the individual agent is authorised by the Principal Licensee to enter into these agreements or contracts on behalf of the agency. Hence the clients always belong to the agency, unless an alternative arrangement is stated on the employment authority — this applies to commission-only agents as well as those on salary or similar.
• Agents have a fiduciary (primary) duty to put their clients’ interests first at all times. In each Australian state and in New Zealand, agents have a unique set of laws and practices stipulating how consumers and real estate agents work in an agency relationship. These legislated codes of practice have been reworked and clarified over the past decade. Throughout this book, when we refer to agency agreements, we’re describing the real estate agent’s relationship with buyers or sellers, depending upon whether the agent is the listing agent or the selling agent.
• When an agent works with a member of the public with no written agreement in place and no money changing hands, this person is termed the customer — for example this could be the buyer. The sales agent works with the buyer but receives no money directly (unless a buyer’s agent agreement is in place) This means that, in addition to the fiduciary duty to the client, agents have a duty of care to their customer not to engage in any activity that could put the customer at risk — economically, physically or emotionally.
• Bulleted and numbered lists present important information in a quick-skim format. Watch for lists marked by numbers or check marks. They contain essential facts to remember, steps to take or advice to follow.
• Whenever we introduce a new term, we italicise it and follow it up with a brief definition.

Foolish Assumptions

As we have compressed so much real estate experience and coaching advice into these pages, we had to make the following assumptions about you, the reader:

• You have already completed a course to become a licensed real estate agent — either at entry level or with your full real estate licence. If not, just google real estate qualification training for your locality and there will be both industry-run and private training companies for you to contact. Be sure to ask about their courses as (like most other things) prices and quality of service vary – look for feedback and testimonials from past students.
• You’re interested in working in real estate sales rather than property management. This book is about maximising your income through accelerating your real estate sales. While property management has changed after the recent market downturn, with higher salaries now being combined with greater incentives and bonuses for people in property management, this area is beyond the scope of this book. For some useful tips on property management, you can check out Property Management Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition, by Robert S Griswold (Wiley).
• You are looking to rev up your real estate business, whether you’re just starting out or have been in the business for a while. Some of you may be deciding which real estate company to join. Others may have already launched careers and joined good companies and are now looking for advice on how to climb the success curve faster and higher. Still others are interested in refining specific skills, such as prospecting, selling, running their businesses more efficiently or...