Chris' Blog

Pull don't push, people.

Get input from the team - What do you think we should do?

Cast the vision and make sure everyone understands where it is you're heading with the business.

Acknowledge and appreciate people.

Put people in the right roles.

Understand your team and build systems around their roles and strengths.

Set expectation and then give people the freedom to get the job done in their own way.  Remember, there's more than one way to sell real estate.

Mentor without judgment and in complete honesty.

Don't blow off steam with your team.

Don't hire an audience to impress with your flair; hire achievers.  With that said, don't hire people with more potential than you have space on your team for.

Be intentional, about where you're trying to grow, because it's easy to be enticed by opportunities all over the place.

Establish solid boundaries so that the professional relationships with your team member always come first and the personal relationships second.

Make sure your open-door policy doesn't give your team members the impression they can interrupt you whenever they want to.

Don't let your "l can't lose" attitude allow you to exhaust yourself trying to save people who aren't getting the job done.

No longer hire challenging people; hire great people who have challenges you can work with them on.

Carpe diem,

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Moving to a new area is difficult enough without having to face the challenges that come with uprooting a teenager. Studies have shown that teenagers are generally more angry about having to move then their younger siblings.

These teens are not only having to deal with the thought of changing schools, they also realize they are losing friends, social clubs, athletics, performing arts activities and a way of life they've come to love. For them, life may seem to be over. Here are some tips to help your teens make the transition:

Recognize Their Hardships and Address Their Concerns
Make sure your teenagers realize how much you understand their sadness and their difficulties with accepting the move. Listen to their objections, and no matter how angry they may get, try to remain as calm and understanding as possible.

Answer all their questions. "Why do we have to move?" " Why do you have to take this job?" "Why can't we stay here for a few more years?" Emphasize that we're in this together and in the end, this move will be great for everyone.

Make Plans to Visit Old Friends
While you are still planning your upcoming move, think ahead and arrange for trips back and forth to visit old friends. Remind them that with phones, emails, and online chat rooms, staying in touch with their friends will be easy. Then be sure to plan a going away party with all their special friends. Be sure to take a lot of photos to place into a memory book.

Include Your Teen in the Moving Process
Studies have shown that teens who provide their opinions and thoughts with moving decisions are generally happier with the move and adjust better to their new surroundings. If possible, have your teenager accompany you on your home tours. Check out the local schools, parks, shopping malls, sports facilities and libraries. Get them excited about their new surroundings. If your teenager is into athletics, help them find new training facilities. If performing arts are a big part of their lives, help them find new instructors and studios.

Make Sure Your Teenager is Set Up for School
As soon as you know where you are moving, contact the local school and be sure you have all the information on how to transfer your teenager's credits, registration dates, and audition/tryout dates for the school's athletics and performing arts groups. Then before school starts, take a trip to observe how the local kids are dressed. Making sure your kid "fits in" on the first day of school is an important step to helping them make the transition to a new environment.

For more moving tips, school and community information please visit - http://www.parentrelocationcouncil.org/

Your family's move can be an exciting time for your children and for you. It can also be a stressful and sad time. Your child may have different feelings about your family's move: scared about going to a new school, excited about your new home, sad about leaving old friends or angry with you about moving.

Every year, one out of five American families move. One of the most important issues to anyone with kids is their reaction to the news that they're moving, and their adjustment to the new home. Being informed is very important to children. One of the worst mistakes we can make as adults is to assume that kids don't care or won't understand the details. Keeping them "in the loop," consulting them about choices whenever possible, and including them in the family game plan will work wonders toward their adjustment.

Preschool Children:
Kids under the age of six may worry about being left behind, or being separated from their parents. If you go on an orientation or house-hunting trip beforehand without the children, it's important to reassure kids this age that you will be back; bring something unique back to them from the new town. It's very important for them to express their feelings and fears about the move. Give them a job to do -- have them be responsible for boxing up their favorite toys, and "labeling" their boxes with crayons and stickers.

Ages 6 to 12:
Elementary age kids are usually most concerned with how the everyday routines of their lives are going to change. Showing them pictures, videos and magazines of their new home will help a lot, especially if you can find new places in advance for the things they like to do. If your child takes dance lessons, find and share information about the new dance studio she can go to. If he takes karate, or plays soccer or baseball...even if her favorite thing to do is the park or the pizza parlor, find these places in your new neighborhood and get brochures, pictures or videos.

Teenagers:
These kids are most concerned with fitting in. They may react angrily to the move, even insist they're not going. This is usually due to the total lack of control they have over everything important in their lives--friends, school and jobs--being disrupted. These children can be very worried about making new friends, and what will be different in the new school. They are curious about the clothing, hairstyles, bicycles, cars, etc. that kids in the new city will have. Pictures of all these things are very helpful, so if you take an orientation trip be sure to take many detailed photos/videos of the schools they will be attending.

Other tips for making the transition:

• Give young children an entertaining travel kit for the move.
• Give older children a diary for recording the trip and move.
• Give children of all ages a special address book and stationary set for keeping up with old friends.
• Take videos of the new home if the kids won't get to see it before the move. arrive well before the movers so kids can explore and become acquainted first.
• Give children a chore to do, such as working on their room (younger), supervising little siblings (middle), and painting or arranging furniture (older kids).
• Take a break with the family as soon as possible to explore the museums, sights and recreation in your new city.
• Arrange a visit to new schools and a meeting with the teacher before the actual first day of attendance.
• Encourage the children to bring new friends home.

For more moving tips, school and community information please visit - http://www.parentrelocationcouncil.org/

I had an interesting meeting with an agent this week - one that has been a reoccurring theme over the last 18 months with agents across the nation.  We started the meeting under the auspice of setting goals, markers and expectations for the next 90 days.  We ended with tears, hugs and a new lease on life.

After 20+ years in the business, a full pipeline and momentum shifting in her favor the dark cloud that has been hanging over her business was starting to clear.  Despite the rays of sunshine a haunting depression and frustration was finding its way in each morning.   Bitterness was building and the excitement of real estate was waning.  She struggled with tears as she admitted to a growing distain for both houses and people.  She was faced with burn-out and wasn't sure how she got here or even if she wanted to continue in this crazy business.

We talked at length about finding purpose, and the importance of having the significant as fuel for our success.  We talked about the realities and destructive road that lies at the end of a life that is being lived out of integrity.    We can only fake it for so long, and while I am a believer in positive thinking, there are times in which we need a radical adjustment to our perspective.

I have discovered that integrity can be defined as morality (not doing wrong) plus character (doing what is right).  You cannot do what is right when you are doing what is wrong.  When we start to make choices from the place of what I need to do versus what I want to do, our lives (and businesses) take a very dangerous turn.  She is moral and good, but neglecting doing the right things because of demanding clients and lack of good boundaries.

She is working on finding herself by exploring some places she can give back.  We will re-visit whether she wants to leave her real estate business or not in a few months, until then, she is going find something that she can throw her heart in, because it is the right thing to do and it is the quickest way to avoid burn-out.  Investing in the significant and being in integrity is the quickest way to give a shot of vitality and life to a business that is stagnant and struggling.

When struggling, down or feeling a bit defeated, recognize that our fulfillment must come from something outside of the real estate business - our lives and business depend on it.

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer,

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The following issues represent the new issues behind business formation and creating hyper competitive business models of the future--in my opinion.

1. Aggregation
   Mainstreaming of "demand aggregation" where aggregation is no longer supply-driven. In new models, giving things away first aggregates demand and then demand is exploited.
2. Knowledge Worker Productivity
   The critical issues to being able to leverage your organization's core competencies in real time. If you want to optimize your enterprise--start here. Peel away everything and allow your knowledge intensive players do what they do best--more of the time.
3. Networks
   The knee bone is connected to the thighbone is connected to the hipbone. Every form of network will become self-enabling to contact, communicate and share information with other networks, forming a vast complex global brain--nothing new here. However what will be...are the things that the networks will create--intelligence --networking intelligence.
4. Complexity
   Incredibly simple. Layers and layers of technological complexity have created... layers and layers of all forms of complexity. A simple gas pump talks to our car while we refuel and the data is downloaded to a database that triggers service, marketing and additional complex transactions--never before imagined.
5. Connectivity
   Everything we do will be recorded, catalogued and "served-up" from everything to our toaster, automobile, our children's progress in school--to real time appliances that work in the background to make decisions for us. We will be constantly in contact with anyone and everyone--even those we choose not to be in contact with.
6. Value
   Value will direct everything! People will jump brands, organizations and friends for higher value in their lives. Reducing risk will be a moniker of perceived value.
7. Self-Leadership
   We used to rely on organizations to provide leadership to the masses and since the organizational structure has now become fluid and ubiquitous through connectivity, self-leadership will pervade all growth and adaptability--in fact, it will become living leadership.
8. Learning
   Kind of tongue-in-cheek here, but learning competency will far exceed our ability to know, as one requires investment and the other requires ability.
9. Light Speed
   Not only because light offers increased bandwidth for data movement, but also that things in the environment will literally change before your eyes--in real time.
10. Personal Customization
    It follows with our ability to transform the environment through all of those connectivity issues, it is clear that we literally will customize every experience for the person involved--right before their eyes. Expect customized marketing, service delivery and communications, all controlled by ERM (Enterprise Relationship Management) Systems and inter-developmental databases.

How are you positioned to take advantage of these market shifts?

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer,

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Let us assume your current financial needs were covered by income from a job/business or investments and you had the following two choices:

1. Work on a project for a year that had an excellent chance of earning you an extra $100,000.
2. Spend a year learning Internet, communication and entrepreneurial skills, (which probably would not earn you any extra money during the first year.)

Which would you select?


The first option, (Jerry McGuire's "Show Me the Money!") would seem to be a logical choice. However, before jumping in, I would suggest that you look at the potential OPPORTUNITY COST of that choice. Especially when you compare it to the opportunity cost and potential revenue stream from the second choice. Depending on where you want to be in 5 or 10 years, the second choice may be the least expensive one for you. Especially if you have any inkling about how you might leverage what you learn during that year to generate much MORE revenue.

Numerically, if you ended up making an extra $1,000,000 over your lifetime, after taking a year to learn as described in the second choice above, the opportunity cost of $100,000 in the first choice would be $1,000,000, giving you a net loss of $900,000. Now, opportunity cost is one of those hard-to-measure costs, but simply asking yourself the question "What is the opportunity cost of this choice?" will improve how you make decisions.

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer,

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You should focus on shifting from attempting to serve any and all potential customers to identifying and serving your ideal clients better. This upgrading process ultimately helps your viability and is continual, so keep losing the average customers and replacing them with those that are loyal, profitable and enjoyable.

Some key points to keep in mind -

- Remember profitability is dependent on serving your ideal/best customer not every customer. It's ok to lose customers that are too costly.

- Pay attention to all customers for niche and innovation ideas, but get to know the top 20% of your customers.

• Why they use your service.
• What they want improved about their lives.
• How they feel and talk about you.
• How you can improve your service.

- Define your great clients as the ones that keep using your service and refer others consistently.

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer,

To subscribe via RSS reader

This is a continuing series - if you want to start at the beginning it's posted at - http://activerain.com/blogsview/437365/Getting-15-Closed-Transactions

The Private Client Group campaign employs a four pronged strategy to ensure adequate interaction for optimal ROI and highest yields. We also divide our SOI into four groups to maximize our effectiveness. While we are not discriminating against those who live outside our service are, we also recognize that we are responsible to use our hard earned marketing dollars in the best way possible. Out of the four groups we will establish four separate mini-campaigns based on the following four pronged approach.

Live Interaction - No one can discount the importance of personal contact. You Private Client Group is your "Book of Business" and it is essential that we create time in our calendar to spend belly to belly. We want to guarantee that we see these people several times a year through live events, lunches, or drop-bys.

Phone - Not everyone likes the phone, but it is an essential piece of the Private Client Group puzzle. In the businesses we've studied over the years those that use the phone calls increased their return 70% over those that didn't. Each piece of this campaign is designed to either demonstrate our competence or our character. We will be using the phone for the latter.

Mail - Having a monthly piece that goes to your SOI is the safety net to make sure you never have a past client, friend or relative call you to tell you the exciting news - that they just made an offer on their dream home and you are not the one who wrote it. You can get a marginal return if this is all you do. It is important and a valuable tool as a generic competence piece. It's the one time you get to flaunt your abilities and real estate prowess without it being offensive to those who are closest to you.

Email/Txt - We want to establish a systematic, irregular email that goes out that is always welcome, relevant and timely for the recipient.

Tomorrow we'll get into the specific tactics...

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer, Trust me in saying that you don't want to miss out on this weeks series.

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We got a real nice testimonial this last week that I thought I'd share -

Instead of reveling in what stroked my personal ego, I thought I'd share with all of you something we worked on with Gary to get him to say such nice things so that you may also benefit...

Your Sphere of Influence (SOI) is any veteran agent's greatest asset.  Over the years, we have done some research and tracking as to what yield (the amount of return) agents are able to expect to receive from a healthy, vibrant and active SOI.  We then took those that had the highest averages and distilled down what they are doing and systematized their ideas.  We then gave them the turn key marketing system and their yields increased even further. 

Do you want to know our secrets?

Let's start at the markers we measure. 

First, if I asked how much of your business comes from your SOI, you'd probably tell me that it is 70-90%.  Although that is true, it is very hard to use that in a meaningful way when we are trying to grow our net income.  With our coaching, we use the yield number.  You would work through your individual yield during your initial coaching session and re-visit it annually during your yearly check up so you can stay on track.   But as a reminder, your yield is how many transactions out of every 100 SOI relationships you generate a year.

When we launched our PCG (Private Client Group) program we saw first year yields average around 15%, during the second year they increased to an average of 25% and as agents continued to use the Private Client Group program, some agents were experiencing yields that were topping 48%.  That's 48 closed transactions per 100 relationships in your SOI!

We work a lot as an industry on the marketing needed to build your SOI and spend very little time talking about how to market to those that are already in our list of "Friends."  Loyalty from past transactions and a job well done are great things and we have them on our side with these people, but it doesn't give us the license to ignore them.

In my posts this week, I will share with you our step-by-step program that has literally revolutionized a number of our client's lives. 

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer, Trust me in saying that you don't want to miss out on this weeks series.

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Do you want the Private Client Group system sooner and in one package?  Leave comment and I'll shoot you the link.

To make money in business, you need to add value to customers. And to have a very attractive life, adding value is, of course, key. With this short list, you'll learn how to add value to others in ways that can also bring you joy. In fact, the aspect of the practice of adding value which will make you most attractive is the joy that you experience in doing so, not the quantity or quality of the value you are adding. Big difference. The bees do it right. They do their thing, going from flower to flower collecting pollen as they go. What is the byproduct/value being added? It's pollination of the trees and flowers. Often, the best value is the byproduct to others of what you do for joy.

1. Find out what the other person places a high value on.
   Everybody has their own opinion as to what adds value to their life. Take the time to ask and get to know what other people define as value. You may not want to package or deliver what you have to fit their exact description, but the process of being open will add value to you because it will sensitize yourself to what matters to others. With this expanded perspective comes wisdom.
2. Discover what brings you joy and do lots of that.
   Very few people know what brings them joy, but when they find out, they become more attractive to themselves. What does bring you joy? Is it intellectual pursuits? Giving to others? Solving problems? Designing something? Usually when you're expressing your values, you'll feel joy. When you experience joy, you're probably adding a lot of value to others at virtually no cost to yourself.
3. Find ways to broadcast/share what you have/know, without a cost to yourself.
   Thanks to the Internet and electronic distribution of information, you can add lots of value to others, without it costing you any extra time or money. Set up a weekly e-newsletter, teach a class, train trainers/teachers, write a book, or create a podcast. These are all ways to increase the distribution of what you know, which add value all along the way.
4. Stop trying to sell, convince, enroll or hype yourself or what you offer.
   Part of the process of becoming more attractive is to stop pushing yourself or what you offer onto others. Adding value occurs least expensively to both parties when one party takes it from 'your doorstep' instead of you knocking on their door. It's a pretty big change in style, but few people who are pushing hard experience joy. So, stop, and find a better way to make your business work or reach your goals.
5. Help others create tremendous value from what you provide; instead of just giving them more value.
   You can overwhelm your customers and potential customers with too much value, just as you can fill your mouth so full with food that it's hard to chew. So, one way to add more value without adding a thing is to show your customers/potential customers how to make the most of what you've got. Giving them instructions, coaching them, staying with them as they use your product or service, challenging them to invent new ways to use it, etc., are all ways for more value to be created without you having to give more product.
6. Don't get your personal needs met by attempting to add value to others.
   'Adding value' is an attractive mantra, but it becomes less so when it is simply a way to get your needs met. When this is the case, the buyer feels the added value as a hook or a setup, not as a gift. It's pretty subtle, but it affects the buyer negatively. Add value because it brings you joy, not because it fills a need for you personally.
7. Match what you have to the people who need/want it; customize.
   One of the easiest ways to increase the value you deliver without a lot of extra work is simply to repackage or customize pieces of what you offer to fit the exact (and I do mean exact) needs of your best customers. Buyers are getting very picky and exacting; each of the forty shades of beige/ecru/bone matters a great deal to the person buying those shoes. The same is true for almost every product or service today. Plus, it's fun to customize if you're at all creative.
8. Get into synch with a large trend and move forward to the head of it.
   Because the bulk of what is called value added in our information age is intangible (information and skills, not brick and mortar), the more you can add value to other people's intangibles, the better. And keeping up with trends which will affect the value of information and other intangibles, is the perfect lookout-position! Right now, two meta trends (that's meta, although these are mega as well), are the Internet and 'meaning.' Perfect your knowledge of these, and their implications, and you'll be adding a lot of value because it will upgrade what you currently offer without you having to upgrade that.
9. Put people together in networks that mean a lot to them.
   You can add a significant amount of value by doing what may come naturally to you - putting people in touch with each other. Whether you have a big Rolodex or are developing one, the more people you put together, the more value that everyone receives. And if you can sponsor, host or create a special-interest network that is even better. People need to belong (emotionally) and need resources (professionally), now more than ever. You can provide this service without any extra work.
10. Think about the best examples of someone else adding value for you.
    Simply by taking some quiet time to reflect on how people either close to you or not close have added value to your life in past or are doing so right now brings value to you.

Carpe diem,

You can also click on one of the following links to have my daily blog with helpful life and business tidbits geared to real estate's elite delivered to your computer -

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