The magazine, Fast Company, recently declared that Americans are becoming a nation of “free agents”. They described a generation of consultants and professionals, all selling their services for the length of a project or until a problem is solved. That brings tremendous freedom, and new responsibilities to run our careers as businesses! Unfortunately, many “free agents” have never run a profitable business. The following are my list of critical issues in creating a career/business that will remain profitable for years to come.

1. Customer Benefits. You and your customers must clearly understand the benefits that your services provide. What are the 5 benefits of working with you vs. anyone else in your market place? Can you communicate that clearly? Customers buy benefits.
2. Extra Value. Customers must receive more in value than you charge for your services. Most of us don’t want a “fair” exchange; we want a bargain, the sense that we got extra value for our money. Can you communicate the 5 extra your customers get from you?
3. Superb Service. This means attention to detail. Answering the phone on the first ring, providing an 800 number and 24-hour customer service numbers are examples. L.L. Bean has made a fortune with it’s “no questions” guarantee. Do you have a guarantee?
4. Know your Audience. Who are you 5 best customer types.
5. Location. In the old days, this meant the street address of your shop or store. Now it means getting your marketing messages into your customer’s hands when and where they are receptive. Be certain your website is located at the top of the search engines.
6. Convenience. Customers expect to shop at their convenience, to pay by credit card, to call an 800-number, and to have their questions answered correctly the first time. Make it easy to contact you!
7. Innovation. New is good, newer is better. Customers expect the benefits of the most modern technology. At a minimum, they expect the convenience of email, voice mail, and efax. If there is a faster, better, cheaper and more reliable way to do it, adopt cutting edge techniques before your competition does!
8. Reliability. Consumers assume they can rely on your services. If they are purchasing your time and expertise, they rely on your availability, your advice, your attention to detail, and your follow-through. Durability may be less important in a throwaway age, but consumers demand 100% reliability. Be there for them every single time!
9. Planning. Planning takes on strange twists when a computer chip “generation” lasts 6 months and a website may be “old” in 6 weeks. Planning is the ability to monitor, influence, and profit from change. Planning means having a mission statement and the flexibility to respond instantly when new information allows you to fulfill your mission more effectively. Planning means you control your destiny.
10. Communication. This means instant, 2-way communication between every level and every branch of an enterprise. It means communicating with your vendors and competitors, and working with your customers so they become your most important designers, researchers and customer service experts. It means an “open door” policy and flat organizational models. It means listening is more important than speaking. It means ideas rule the world.

Carpe diem,

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

“You have taught me how to look at my business as a business and build it to be profitable, predictable, stable and most importantly consumer centric. I just got back from a 6 week trip – without my phone – and my business is still growing and thriving! I would have never even concieved it as possable before we met; much less translated it into reality.”

- Gary H., RE/MAX Broker Associacte

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,

Every one of us need to learn the power of leverage.  It is essential if we are going to develop a profitable and consistent business that is saleable.   One of the key qualities of a saleable business is one that is system dependant not people dependant.  

We will be demonstrating the two key components in a business relationship, character and competence, in a calculated consistent manner over the course of the relationship.  We need to keep in mind that what we do after what we were expected to do will ultimately determine our success.  People are homeowners far longer than they are buyers or sellers.  Why not provide them value while they are homeowners to create loyalty?

Imagine for a moment, dictating how your business will produce and be able to count on the consistent income being generated by those people who like you, trust you and want to refer you.

Here is the proven program that will provide you a 15-40% yield (15-40 closed transactions per 100 people in the A-C categories).

Step #1 -

Identify all those people that you have a name, phone number and e-mail address for.

Please Remember!

•  The average person knows 120 people.

•  The average person knows 3-5 people who will buy or sell this year.

•  80% of people will find their next agent through personal referral.

Step #2 -

Make a qualifying call to each member of your Partner Program Database to receive permission to ongoing communication and to identify your supporters (call or e-mail me if you need the dialogs) – move those who qualify and who support you to your “Preferred Partner Program.”  Use the following categories:

“A” – People who have referred you in the past – regardless of how weak the referral was.

“B” – People who have the capacity to refer – look for people who either are in a service industry (doctor, attorney, manicurist, salesperson, etc.), belong to multiple social groups (church, scouts, little league, rotary, etc), or have Christmas Card lists of over 150 people.

“C” – People that know you, like you, and trust you

“D” – People that are out of your service area

Step #3 -

Implement a value-added monthly client newsletter for groups A-C. (Call our Marketing Department today!)

Step #4 -

Host a personal event three times a year for everyone.

Step #5 -

Implement a mail-merged irregular, but systematic, electronic communication system for everyone.

Step #6 -

Maintain consistent phone contact every month to you’re a list, quarterly to B list and 2x a year for C and 1x a year for D.

Step #7 -

Get a hand-written personal note in the mail within a few hours of all conversations, meetings, or referrals (add a small gift card for referrals).

Step #8 -

Track your numbers! Continually purge and update your database to increase your yield rate.  If you increase 26% per year you will double your business every 3 years.

Recommended Reading

Carpe diem,

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Being successful in business is less about having all the answers yourself than knowing where you can access expertise. Since you can’t know everyone, you often rely on your friends or trusted colleagues for referrals, which is where your professional network comes in handy.

After all, a basic truth of business is that people do business with people they know, like and trust.  Happily, this model works both ways. The more people who know you or about you, the more business will come your way.

Creating an extensive professional network is not nearly as time-consuming or intimidating as you might think, but it does take conscious effort.

Carpe diem,

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

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via email

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• Hand-write your message. And yes, penmanship does count!

• Use a wide-tip pen to fill the whole page with just a few lines.

• Always date and time it in the top right corner.

• Make the message clear and sincere. It need not be stiff or formal, but it does need to be appropriate.

• Use colorful, whimsical and creative cards if they reflect your business and/or professional personality.

• Always use a stamp. It looks more personal, and less like stuffy business correspondence.

• Send notes for all kinds of reasons: thanks, anniversaries, appreciation, reconnecting, meeting someone at a networking event, and so on.

• Keep track of what types of notes you send and to whom, especially if you’re using templates to help you find the right words.

• Use company courtesy cards for attachments, rather than personal notes. For example, if you’re sending a copy of an article, it’s fine to paperclip your company’s courtesy card with a short note from you to the article. But use a folded card when not including an attachment; it’s more personal.

Carpe diem,

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

To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via email To subscribe to the mastery coaching blog via RSS reader

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.