There have been times when I wanted to tattoo these truths on people’s foreheads, but that probably wasn’t my best idea ever.

What is a good strategy is to share these with you now, and beg you to learn them, not because I made them up (because I didn’t), but because they are true and you need to know them to succeed in business.

1. People do business with people they know, like and trust. It is not hard to develop a relationship with your prospects, but it is essential. The good news is that you can do it passively, and the bad news is that so can your competitors.

2. People buy solutions or experiences not features. This means that people buy what they want, not particularly what they need. For example, we all need to eat, and most of us need more fiber and greens in our diets, but still the majority of us choose burgers or pizza for lunch rather than steamed broccoli and a side salad.

3. People want specialists to handle their problems because they feel more confident that someone with experience and specific expertise will understand their situations more completely, and will handle it better than a generalist. Who do you want handling your brain surgery: Your general MD or a neurosurgeon?

4. Your real estate service is not the right solution for everyone, but that is no reflection on its (or your) value. You may not know all the reasons people choose not to buy from you, but you should know all the reasons they do buy so that you can find more of those people.

5. When you invite a prospect to work with you, you’re not begging for money, you are offering a valuable solution to a problem. But if all you care about is the sale, then you are a beggar.

Carpe diem,

Promise Little, But Deliver Everything

When you promise less than clients or recipients are asking for and reduce their expectations, you have room to maneuver and the freedom to deliver something different (not just more) than perhaps either you or the client was expecting. You can create and invent. This may serve clients better than what they had even considered possible at the beginning of your association. Remember, clients don’t usually know what they really want, so don’t let yourself get too tightly boxed in.

Be sure to give clients what they paid you for, but don’t stop there. You need to build a reserve or a gap, between what you promise and what you ultimately deliver. The wider the gap, the more vacuum you’ll create and the more people will be affected or surprised by you. The more pleasantly surprised people are, the more their voices will sing your praises.

Why Do You Make Promises?

Are you constantly in a promise and deliver mode? Some people feel that if they don’t or can’t promise, they won’t have the motivation or structure to deliver consistently. This turns promises into deadlines so that keeping your word becomes necessary. Of course, you should keep your word, but most people give it too readily. Some of the people you know might think they need you to make promises, creating a dependency. This type of promise and deliver system will cause you grief. You’ve got to stop promising anything at all and end your performance anxiety. Promising less provides freedom and begins progress.

Promise For Pleasure

Some people are so relieved when they deliver something that most of their joy comes from the delivery instead of the creation of what they delivered. Some people can enjoy both the doing and the delivery. You need to discover both what’s motivating you after you made the initial promise and how you feel throughout the project.

You may produce greatly under the pressure of deadlines, but you may come to the realization that the personal and opportunity cost of doing so is far higher than the rewards or results generated.

Don’t Promise, Just Deliver

Rather than telling people what you can do for them, rather than getting people interested enough to say yes, just be spontaneous and do something for them, without even offering to do it first. Most people enjoy surprises and there’s no delay or performance anxiety because there was no promise, just delivery.

Deliver Something Different

Add a twist or an additional component to what the client expected. Don’t just deliver 11 apples instead of 10, but toss in an orange too. The orange is something to surprise them with, but you haven’t given them less apples. Perhaps the client will be fascinated by the orange and that can lead to your next piece of work.

Deliver All That Occurs

While you deliver the product or service, you may stumble upon something surprising about either the client, the product or service, or the situation the client is in. It may be totally unrelated to what you’re being paid to deliver, but usually it makes sense to advise clients what you discovered so they become fully informed. These “chance” discoveries can lead to additional work or end up being worth more to the client than the project they paid you to deliver. Don’t push what you discover; just casually advise clients of it.

Deliver Everything

Everything means you can create a bigger solution or product instead of just delivering what the client asked for. When you focus on delivering everything, you create more, and evolve both your skill set and the client. In this way, both of you progress instead of just getting current needs met. Make sure to always deliver what the client asked for, but orient what you’re working on for clients so that it brings them (and you) to the next level.

Promise Nothing

Have enough reserve to do all of these things, but do them with such grace and style that your grace and style become as much a part of your service or product as what you’re delivering. When you focus on delivering because you enjoy it, instead of delivering because you promised to, you are fed by joy instead of fear. You’re working from reserve, instead of striving to meet targets.

Can you realistically promise nothing and still be successful? Yes, but you may need to start by underpromising and over-delivering. The gap between these two is pure profit – not just financially, but also in good reputation and self-esteem. People think more of you when you deliver far more (of what they want) than they were expecting. That gap starts people talking. If you delivered even the same amount, but had promised or over-promised it at the outset, the recipients would equally benefit, but they wouldn’t be as impressed and they wouldn’t talk about you. This is a key distinction for anyone in business who wants to build a strong reputation quickly.

Promise almost nothing to your clients (just enough to close the sale), but then begin the engine of over-delivering. Every time you over-deliver, you build up a reserve, of self-confidence, self-esteem, and referrals.

Carpe diem,

Session Description -

Tony Dove is a master on-line marketer. He has been able to make the connection between on-line draw to off-line sales and service.  He joins us to share some of his key distinctives, how he works and some of his secret marketing tactics as well as answer questions from our guests.

Click here to Download the Interview

Visit Tony’s Website

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Are you busy or are you productive? 

These are two very important questions that have to do with activity.  The first is what most agents will tell their friends, their spouse and themselves when they evaluate how they are doing.  The second is the one that matters. 

How productive are you?  How much of your day and week is spend in dollar productive activity?  Not administrative things, not organizational things, not file management things – but those things that bring in dollars, those things that directly affect income. 

How much of your time is spent in the following areas -

Carpe diem,

Session Description -

If 90% of buyers are starting their search on-line, why aren’t those numbers being translated to our business?

More often than not, it’s because of the dramatic communication and expectation gap between the internet buyers and the traditionally trained real estate agent.

Chris Pollinger will show you that this group can be tapped, why they think the way they do and how to capture and convert web inquiries to provide an ongoing source of fresh leads for you and your team.

Click on the Marketing Module button to check out this week’s Mastery Coaching Marketing Module.

Carpe diem,

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“The first step to success is to stop lying to yourself”

I would dare say that the vast majority of people would consider themselves honest, ethical people.  In fact, I was in a room of 500 top producing agents when the speaker asked who in the room felt they had integrity.  98% of the room raised their hands.  When asked to lower their hand if they had ever lied to themselves or made a promise, resolution or goal and not kept it all the hands went down. 

Our quest for success starts within and to truly address the issues that are getting in the way of our achieving our wildest and most audacious dreams we need to have an honest look at ourselves.  Our justification, excuses and reasons are all hindering us.  The first step to our success is to face the truth about our situation. 

I am not talking about condemnation, guilt or shame – none of those have a place in helping us.  But honesty and truth, yes, honesty and truth will allow us to see things for what they are.  Once problems and issues are identified our mind has a way of seeking answers that were previously hidden from us.  I’m not talking in a meta-physical way, but in a very practical way.  Our mind blocks millions of things a day from our 5 senses that it doesn’t feel are relevant.  When we face our issues, the possible solutions become relevant and our mind will allow us to see and hear them.

If we want to achieve success, whether it is an increase in income, growth in business or overall life balance, we must first face the truth of where we are and the very real disparity of where we want to go and seek the solutions that will allow us to bridge the gap. 

Remember, The first step to success is to stop lying to yourself.

Carpe diem,

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Daily habits are actions we take every day to make our lives better-flossing our teeth, eating five servings of vegetables or making our bed. Habits are great, but when they become a “should” or end up on your “to do list,” they become a “thing” vs. being “part of you.” You want to make the daily habits transparent so they just occur instead of you focusing/remembering/working at doing them. They will continue to be work until they hit your subconscious, then opening up mind share to start incorporating other things you want to start pursuing in your life.

Carpe diem,

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What is really causing your problems?

Stop struggling and target areas of your life to make life better with this quick assestment.

To download the tool click here

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Do you have a vision for yourself and for your business? Most people do not.

What is a vision? By nature, a vision is unreal, not necessarily logical, and certainly not commonly regarded as available today. In other words, with your vision, you’re carving out a new reality, much like an inventor or pioneer. It’s actually a fun process once you learn to ignore the nay-sayers and devote your energies to creating what you have in mind.

You can accelerate your vision discovery with a few “simple” questions:

1. What is something that you deeply want to do for or give to others that seems out of your present reach?
 
If you’re even thinking in terms of vision, you’re probably a forward thinker and a person who desires to provide service to others. Given this, why not go for broke? If you had the strength, the power, the delivery technology, and the language, what is the ultimate thing that you would want for others to have in life?
 
Think big. Be unreasonable. Be willing to be scoffed at. Rather than think through every linear step that it will take to reach your goal, simply identify the end. The vision must be bright enough to light your success path to it. With a bright enough vision, the needed solutions will also appear and ignoring the small minds around you will be easy.

2. Who wants what I’m thinking of? A vision that is only yours becomes a monument to your ego. After getting in touch with what you most want for others, it’s time to go find those “others” and discuss your idea with them. Listen to what they want and ask for help with how to apply the idea to what they want today, not what they should want or need. Most of us won’t buy something just because it will help us or because we need it; we must also want it (or the consequence of not getting it must appear so great) so that we just must buy it. You don’t want to have to sell your vision. You want ready buyers. Don’t get caught up in having to have your vision be a particular way. The whole idea behind a vision is to serve, not prove.

3. Let your “customers” coach you in customizing your vision.

Whether it’s the board members of your local non-profit, the employees in your company, or a few of your key customers, it’s much easier to include others in your vision from the very start. Ask them to become your partners as you develop your vision from an idea to a measurable improvement in the quality of life.

By developing your vision and applying it, you will create a new and stronger community of colleagues, customers, friends, and partners. And some of your associates won’t keep up. I suggest that you keep serving the ones who are ready and love the ones who aren’t. Don’t try to serve the ones who aren’t ready.

Carpe diem,

Do you read a lot? Listen to tapes a lot? Go to seminars a lot? Study a lot?

Are you someone who seeks to acquire knowledge more than someone who seeks to really learn? Acquiring knowledge, while a good thing, is still a push structure because you’re primarily in the acquisition-of-external information mode.

Learning is quite different. Learning doesn’t require just external information (although information does help in the true learning process). This learning is the ability to observe, be influenced by your environment (others, events, physical environment), and evolve as a result, instead of just “knowing” more.

When your behavior changes, you’re happier, your life gets a whole lot easier, and you’re learning. If you use this approach, you’ll learn what matters and have a natural learning system, instead of thinking that what you need can be reached with just books and tapes. Books and tapes are great, so use them as a springboard for learning.

Carpe diem,

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