Success as a Real Estate Agent for Dummies, Australian and New Zealand Edition

Terri M. Cooper, Dirk Zeller

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780730309116
• eBook ISBN: 9780730309123
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Real Estate
• Index: Business

Your no-nonsense guide to becoming a successful real estate agent in the Australian and New Zealand markets

As the Australian and New Zealand housing markets begin to recover, now is the time to make the jump to your new career as a real estate agent. If you're already an agent, it's a great time to sharpen your skills and increase your commissions. Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies provides the foundation and advice you need to become a real estate superstar. Written specifically for agents and potential agents in Australia and New Zealand, this handy, plain-English guide gives you all the tools you need to bring in new prospects, close sales, build a referral base, plan open houses, present and close listing contracts, and give yourself a leg up on the competition. Whether you want to get involved in commercial or residential real estate, you'll find all the guidance you need to do it right.

• Includes handy tips and tricks for working with buyers
• Offers practical advice on prospecting and generating leads online, including how to use social media
• Presents tried-and-true tactics and fresh ideas for closing deals

Whether you're looking to get started in real estate, or you're a working agent who wants to up your game, Success as a Real Estate Agent For Dummies gives you the tools and insight you need to compete—and succeed.

Part I

Getting Started with Real Estate Sales Success

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In this part …

We provide an overview of the skills you need to swing the odds for success your way. Find out the basic fundamentals that place agents on the right path to reach their target.

We guide you through the process of evaluating, choosing and joining a real estate company.

We show you how to act and work like a top-producing agent to make your goals a reality.

We help you research and understand the marketplace in which you’re working.

Chapter 1

Discovering the Skills of a Successful Sales Agent

In This Chapter

Defining financial success

Understanding the role and importance of a professional real estate sales agent

Knowing the importance of lead-generation and sales skills

Building your success as a listing agent

Choosing the right path to real estate success

E ach agent defines sales success slightly differently. Some agents set their goals in dollars, some are attracted to the opportunity to be their own bosses and build their own businesses, and some want the personal control and freedom that a real estate career allows. Achieving success, however, requires the same basic fundamentals regardless of what motivates your move into real estate. Agents who build successful businesses share four common attributes:

• They’re consistent. They perform success-producing activities day in and day out. Instead of working in spurts — making 50 prospecting calls in two days and then walking away from the phone for two weeks — they proceed methodically and steadily, day after day, to achieve their goals. And, instead of slamming their Facebook friends with a barrage of posts over a two-week span, they consistently post, engage, respond and add value multiple times a week.
• They believe in the law of accumulation. The law of accumulation is the principle that says with constant effort everything in life, whether positive or negative, compounds itself over time. No agent becomes an overnight success, but with consistency, success-oriented activities accumulate momentum and power, and lead to success every time.
• They’re lifelong learners. The most successful agents never quit improving. Their passion for improvement is acute, and they commit the time, resources and energy it takes to constantly enhance their skills and performance. You’re reading this book because you have a desire to be better, but that quest can’t stop with this book. It must continue with additional reading, watching, listening and attending events to improve your skills, strategies and systems.
• They’re self-disciplined. They have the ability to motivate themselves to do the activities that must be done. Successful agents show up daily and put in a full day of work on highly productive actions such as prospecting and lead follow-up. They make themselves do things they don’t want to do so they can have things in life that they truly want. Personal discipline is a fundamental building block for success. One of the greatest things about being a real estate agent is being an independent contractor. You’re the master of your domain. You’re the only one who can ‘require’ you to show up to work. That also has a downside if you can’t force or discipline yourself to do the harder success-producing actions.

You’re already on the road to real estate success, demonstrated by the fact that you picked up this book to discover what it takes to become a great sales agent. This first chapter sets you on your way to success by providing an overview of the key skills that successful real estate agents pursue and possess.

Our own inauspicious beginnings

Both Dirk and Terri began their real estate careers from inauspicious beginnings, but went on to become highly successful and respected agents. They came from very different backgrounds and life experiences, but what they had in common was a burning desire to succeed and the commitment to do whatever it took to reach their goals. This was the key to their success and it can be the same for you!

On Dirk’s very first listing presentation, he went to the wrong house. Can you imagine arriving at the wrong address for your first presentation? The worst part is that the man who answered the door let him in. To this day, Dirk is not sure why he was let in and allowed to begin his listing presentation. Even worse, he was nearly halfway through the presentation before he figured out the mistake! The homeowner just sat quietly listening to Dirk talk about listing his home. He actually did have an interest in selling his home in the near future, so he just listened. Dirk finally realised that he was in the wrong house when he glanced over and saw the address on a piece of mail on the table. What he had done was transpose a number on the address, which put him in the wrong house. All the while, the real seller was waiting down the street. The good news was that, in spite of this mix-up, Dirk successfully listed the man’s home a few months later.

Terri’s beginnings were equally unimpressive! Her real estate career started out with fear and trepidation. She had changed careers midlife and so needed to get up to speed quickly. She listened to tapes constantly (in those days, CDs weren’t available!), went to every seminar she could find, picked the brains of her principal and her colleagues, read numerous books and was almost an expert — or so she thought! Everything was great (in theory) until the day came when she actually had to show a real live person through a property. She worried about what she was supposed to say, and how she should ask them to make an offer. Terri stumbled through the inspection. Then the buyers wanted to do a contract! Oh dear! She drove them back to the office to find everyone had gone home for the day — she had never written out a contract before so found a photocopied blank form, filled it in and (thankfully) it was accepted!

So, you see, in the end, it really doesn’t matter where you start in your career or what mistakes you make in the early stages. Everyone makes mistakes in new endeavours. What matters most is having a plan or process that keeps you moving down the track toward your goals. You will learn so much from every mistake you make. It’s called ‘falling forward!’ Every mistake you make will take you further along the road to success. The only real failure is doing nothing — waiting until you are perfect before you get out there and have a go. Just remember to fall forward and you will be fine!

And this book will also give you awesome advice and strategies to keep you from spinning wheels, repeating mistakes and getting nowhere fast.

Having a Monetary Target

One of the first big steps toward sales success is knowing what you want out of your real estate career. However, ‘financial independence’ is not a specific enough answer.

We’ve been in real estate, either working in direct sales or teaching, speaking, ‘training, writing or coaching people, for many years. Between us, we’ve met hundreds and thousands of agents, and nearly every one started selling real estate with the same goal of ‘financial independence’. Countless times we’ve asked questions like: ‘Tell me, how do you define financial independence?’ What we usually hear in response is some variation of ‘So I don’t have to worry about money anymore.’ Or we ask, ‘Why have you chosen to be in real estate?’ and the answer is usually ‘To make money of course!’ or ‘Because I love to help people.’

These answers are too vague and, if you’re using them, you could very well be setting yourself up for failure!

The key to attaining financial independence is to be very clear on what this goal means to you — that is, how much, how soon and, importantly, what do you plan to do with this new-found wealth? The answers to these questions will give you your big ‘why’ — and knowing the big ‘why’ will fuel your passion, make you resilient and guarantee your commitment to whatever it takes to succeed!

The key to eliminating money worries is establishing a financial goal — an actual dollar amount — that you need to accumulate in order to achieve the quality of life you want to enjoy. Financial independence boils down to a number. (It can be a gross number, net income, created annually or monthly from your asset base.) Set that number in your mind and then launch your career with the intention to achieve your goal by a specific date.

By having your financial goal in mind, you find clarity and can see past the hard work that lies ahead of you. When you have to endure the rejection, competition, disloyal customers, and challenges that are inevitable along the way, your knowledge about the wealth you’re working to achieve helps you weather the storms of the business.

Acting and Working Like a Top-Selling Agent

Real estate agents join doctors, dentists, attorneys, accountants and financial planners in the ranks of licensed professionals who provide guidance and counsel to clients. The big difference is that most real estate agents don’t view themselves as top-level professionals. Many agents, along with a good portion of the public, perceive themselves as real estate tour guides, as mere cogs in the wheel of the property sale transaction. The best agents, however, know and act differently.

The internet and the open access to real estate information have accentuated the erroneous view that agents are simply people who can organise property inspections. Consumers in the real estate market are able to find so much information online that they often view themselves as the experts. Agents are no longer seen as the gurus, the sole keepers of the information. To succeed in these technological times, we must expand our offerings and demonstrate that our services go well beyond basic real estate information and access into homes. An important thing that can’t be found on the internet is personal client service, along with strong marketing and negotiation skills.

Real estate agents are fiduciary representatives and financial advisors — not people paid to unlo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents at a Glance
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Getting Started with Real Estate Sales Success
• Part II: Generating Leads for Buyers and Sellers
• Part III: Developing a Winning Sales Strategy
• Part IV: Running a Successful Real Estate Business
• Part V: The Part of Tens
• Index
• About the Authors
• More Dummies Products
• Connect with Dummies