Rules for Real Estate Success

There are over 1,700,000 real estate agents in the U.S. and Canada and over 500,000 new agents each year. Over 80 percent of those real estate agents will be unsuccessful and fewer than 20 percent will make the majority of the money. The major reason for this disparity is the lack of commitment, not having essential information to be successful, and not being prepared. My intent in writing this book is to help all agents, whether part-time or already top producers be successful in reaching their goals. Whether you are a student, part-time or full-time agent, reading this information indicates you already have the desire to want to be successful in real estate sales. Commitment: Now that you have desire you need to follow up with a decision to take the next critical step, a commitment to be serious in your career path. Unless you take this step seriously, no amount of training, advertising, or skill building will help you reach the end result, success. Oliver Wendell Holmes says, “He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.” Essential information: This textbook will offer hundreds of ways to find business and how to drive it to you, which is the concept of marketing and selling for business. Tom Hopkins says, “Selling is a two part component: one is to find people to sell, and two is to sell to people you find.” While this textbook offers hundreds of ideas, you cannot use them all. We are all different and prefer one marketing or sales technique over another. The goal in this textbook is to help you map your career by giving you the information and options you need, so that you can best decide what is best for you. Being prepared: If you had a crystal ball and you knew what your prospects were going to say the day before you met them, wouldn’t this be an enormous advantage? Knowing this would give you time to prepare for your best response; this is opportunity. “Opportunity in real estate is being prepared by having the best answers for the most common questions. You must know what to say, when to say it, and how to say it.” It is a fact that in your entire career, you will be asked the same questions or hear the same remarks over and over again, but in a thousand different ways. Nevertheless, the answer is the same. A simple truth is as follows; “Real estate success is simple: you only need to remember the 30 answers for the most common questions you will ever be asked. This textbook will give you simple answers to address nearly every question you will ever encounter, such as how to prepare by having the best answers for the following situations: • How to address For Sale by Owners • Open houses • How start a dialogue with a stranger • Phone calls • What to say in door-to-door sales • Working with sellers • How to win expired listings • Working with buyers