Hi guys. A new guy to the industry sent me a frustrated, but completely understandable letter in his third week in the game.
I cut and paste my letter below, I didn’t have a lot of time to answer with much thought, but this might be instructional for others, so I cut and pasted it here. No names to ID anyone, but my thanks to him for his letter so others can learn as well. My comments in red. Admittedly, not my best work, but of some value I hope.
Hi Glenn
How are things?
Fantastic mate, loving life, but busy as hell organising this QREAS thing.
Glenn, I got those platinum cds, thank you very much..
My pleasure, hope u enjoy.
Guys, This may be too soon to ask the question, sorry if I’m thinking out loud..
Definitely too soon to be panicking / complaining mate. Prepare for six months of struggle, and don’t compare yourself to other sales people. This is your journey, and you have tools that no one in your office (well no one on the whole island really) has access to, so don’t compare yourself to them now, and definitely not in the future.
Obviously, I won’t get any listings without prospecting in some way. I was thinking of doing a DL flyer or introductory letter to a small area of homes at a time… but I wasn’t sure if it’d have much effect, or what exactly to say to win their votes…
Make an offer that’s hard to resist.
I don’t want to be one of those annoying junk mailers, and always thought of offering something of value / a good reason to be contacting them… but the introduction message is a valid one…
There’s still the challenge of getting people to read it… then respond in someway… obviously a call to action… call for a free report or appraisal… Basically, I don’t really know what works, so I thought I’d ask the experts… (you guys)
A good way to make a junk mail type flyer better, is to get a string or hook attached to it and hang it on everyone’s doorknob instead of in the mail box with all the junk. Yes you increase the number of complaints but that’s a good thing, it means your stuff is getting read, but it still needs a compelling reason to contact you.
I cant collect any testimonials until I sell something…. I doubt my first listing, the guy that listed with another agent each day it didn’t sell, would give me a good word seems I’m not the one who sold his house… another agent put a contract on it on Saturday… I put it in the paper Friday with a price reduction and got 3 calls about it Monday.. I tried to find them anything on the island that suited 2 of the couples and results were nil… so no conjunctional income there…
You can get testimonials from people in your other job, hell anyone who knows you and thinks you’re a fair and honest bloke. Something like ‘…Rob’s always been fair, honest, professional and got the job done for me time after time….’ Or something. Maybe in your last business. Even that certificate I sent you is a testimonial of sorts. Get creative. Use video testimonials. Look at my you tube videos of video testimonials. You want lots of these too.
Internet doesn’t seem to bring any inquiry from what ive seen listed through our office so far… which is strange… many hits but no questions… wasn’t sure if there was too much info on there or too little… or if buyers are just either few and far between, or hitting other offices… ours is quite low on the food chain… possibly due to location, advertising or number of sales people…
The internet doesn’t discriminate between offices. The last thing buyers are looking at on the net is the brand logo when making their property choices. If you’re talking about buyers, the properties mustn’t be well photographed, well priced or have good headlines and copy. Period, that’s all it can be. As for sellers, they don’t often go to the internet to find their agents. They think to themselves
1 – who do I know in real estate
2 – do I know anyone who knows someone in real estate
3 – who do I want to know in real estate (this is where being a celebrity, having a profile helps)
My Boss reinforced open homes are a great listing tool… and I’ve seen it work for the other sales guy, he just picked up an appraisal for a penthouse at the fairways resort,… but so far I’ve done 3 opens, one I delivered 230 hand written (colour photocopied) invites, and spoke to the people I ran into in the street about it… still No one attended…
Too small a case study to make any determinations one way or the other. I’d have rathered you did 80 invites for EACH open that a massive effort for one and nothing for the others. This must become your system, that happens consistently.
I also went around to all the businesses I know and had a chat and let them know what I’m doing now and left business cards in their shops…
Did you ask for a discount for your customers and clients? Next time.
The other new salesman had a 1-2 month head start on me, fresh to the industry, and already sold 7 properties in that time… even though I’ve been in the office 3 months I‘m only into week 3 of actually being certified.. feel like im missing out on the action…. So ive pretty much turned all my attention to working out how to turn things around….
Good, look for solutions, but like I said, don’t compare, man you’re in your 3rd week, so keep going.
I’m in the situation where I’m a bit worn, putting in 6 days of work and 7 days of stress… I feel I need to either put something good in the paper or the letterboxes, just to get started… but need it to stand out…. Or need to impress one vendor and one buyer then go from there…
They don’t hand out $400,000 annual incomes without some pain mate, but we’re only just getting started. Hell man, our Prime Minister’s income is $320,000 or something man, so know that it is this time that is the price to pay. I went through it, my guys earning $600,000+ went through it. IT is the price to pay for out earning nearly everyone in your community. There is an apprenticeship to serve, luckily for us a paid apprenticeship, but it doesn’t just fall into your lap without hard work, consistency, dedication and learning. Follow the instructions on that email to xxxx I sent you (name deleted for privacy), tweaked to your situation, and go from there. (see the Ultimate Open for Inspection for what advice is comtained in that email, available at my web shop www.glenntwiddle.com.au)
Also, if this is truly important to you (like my current learning is to me, here’s my schedule of learning)
– Every morning I follow Kurek Ashley’s instructions (watch the you tube video of me and him for his daily recommendations.)
– Every time I am in the car EVER, I have Mal, Kurek, Tony Robbins or someone in there educating me. (and I’m in the car a lot, I go to Toowoomba often, Gold Coast etc, so literally an hour or two a day of learning there. Sometimes listening to the same stuff over and over)
– Every night, I go to sleep with an educational CD on. Lately I’ve been sleeping with Mal Emery banging on in my ears.
– I also am reading 2 books by Dan Kennedy.
–
Now the authors here aren’t the point, because they’ve changed over the years and I’ve listened to / read dozens, if not hundreds of authors. The point is, I am committed to this journey, I am an internationally recognised author and trainer who has sold CD’s and training products to 7 countries now (just got my first order from Spain and the Netherlands the other day), have a coaching program with 30+ people in it, and I still am learning and listening more than anyone in my coaching program, and arguably, on this subject, I already know the most in my group. I should be doing the least learning as there’s already so much in there, but I’m still doing the most. I think I’ll throw this challenge out on my blog, that if anyone out learns me in the next year and doesn’t out EARN me, I’ll send them a prize or something.
Whoever learns the most, earns the most…period.
So a great start mate, registering for QREAS, joining the cards thing. These are great tools. Now you need the fuel in the car and the rubber on the road. I hope this email helped mate. I’m gonna change the names and areas and post this advice on my blog.
