How to Earn Solid Commitments
from Realtors
by Making Strong, Effective Presentations
"I really am grateful for all that I have learned from you. Today I was actually busy talking to new leads who called me from my new Realtor partners' referral recommendations. It is much better to receive incoming sales calls for new purchase loans rather than cold calling for refinances!"
-- Julia Maio, Fremont Bank, San Diego, CA
If you've been attending or watching my series of online seminars, you know that Realtors are a big key to purchase market leads, and that I recommend a 3-stage strategy:
Stage I: Increase your visibility and credibility with the real estate agents in your market by providing them with relevant, useful, and interesting content.
For maximum effectiveness, provide that content through multiple channels: e-mail, your website, and social media.
Every piece of content should provide the Realtor with a way to take a "next step" toward finding out how you might be able to help them be more successful.
Stage II: once a Realtor has initiated contact, your next step is an Interview – a telephone conversation, usually lasting 10 to 20 minutes. In this interview, your goal is to understand what the Realtor believes are the primary obstacles he or she faces in their business.
It isn't enough to just get a one sentence description of the Realtor's problem. You need to get them to talk about the problem(s) in depth, and you do that by being interested and curious, simply wanting to know more. The more they talk, the more comfortable they feel with you.
By the time you're done doing a skillful interview, you'll know how many leads the Realtor receives each month, on average, and from what sources. You'll also know (if you didn't already know before you did your interview) how many transactions the Realtor is closing each month. Those two pieces of information make it possible for you to show the Realtor how much potential commission income he/she is walking away from every month.
Stage III: Combined with the rest of the information the Realtor provided you, you now have enough to put together a compelling presentation that will explain, in a logical, step-by-step way, how you can play an instrumental role in helping the Realtor solve the problems that prevent them from having the business they want.
This presentation will be the main focus of the next online seminar on September 19th: How to Give Effective Presentations to Realtors.
Giving an effective presentation to Realtors means that you have helped them reach a new understanding about exactly why it is that so many of the buyer leads they generate slip through their fingers like water through a sieve.
They'll understand that the events of the last 6 or 7 years have fundamentally changed the psychology of home buyers and sellers. This change in their thoughts and feelings about buying and/or selling a home can be summed up in three words: Fear, Caution, and Skepticism.
The psychology of today's homebuyers simply doesn't match well with the traditional approach that Realtors have taken (and still take) when talking to new leads. The Realtor approach is to deflect buyer questions about specific homes for sale with personal questions about the buyer: how soon do you want to buy? How much do you want to spend? What kind of work you do, and how much money do you make? Are you currently working with a Realtor?
The strategy behind this approach to talking with buyer leads was designed for a true Sellers Market, where you have buyers coming out of the proverbial woodwork, and your goal is to identify only the most "serious" buyers, and get rid of the rest. (We are NOT in a Seller's Market today.)
Realtors today are smart enough to know that there aren't so many buyers out there that they can afford to be getting rid of them, but most Realtors still haven't changed their basic approach. This results in a huge fallout rate of buyer leads (50% of whom, according to the NAR, will be buying a home within the next 12 months). As a result of this approach, the best agents will succeed in taking maybe 5% of their leads to the closing table, when 50% of their leads will be buying a home – which means their true closing rates on qualified leads is 10%. Another way of putting this: 90% of the good leads Realtors get will end up buying a home from a different Realtor.
This is where you come in.
You have 3 goals:
In Thursday's online seminar (September 19 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time), I will show you how to give a Realtor presentation that will accomplish all three of these goals. If you are registered, you have already received a confirmation with instructions for joining the seminar.
If you haven't already registered, you can do that here, but you should act now, because time and space are running out.
-- Julia Maio, Fremont Bank, San Diego, CA
If you've been attending or watching my series of online seminars, you know that Realtors are a big key to purchase market leads, and that I recommend a 3-stage strategy:
Stage I: Increase your visibility and credibility with the real estate agents in your market by providing them with relevant, useful, and interesting content.
For maximum effectiveness, provide that content through multiple channels: e-mail, your website, and social media.
Every piece of content should provide the Realtor with a way to take a "next step" toward finding out how you might be able to help them be more successful.
Stage II: once a Realtor has initiated contact, your next step is an Interview – a telephone conversation, usually lasting 10 to 20 minutes. In this interview, your goal is to understand what the Realtor believes are the primary obstacles he or she faces in their business.
It isn't enough to just get a one sentence description of the Realtor's problem. You need to get them to talk about the problem(s) in depth, and you do that by being interested and curious, simply wanting to know more. The more they talk, the more comfortable they feel with you.
By the time you're done doing a skillful interview, you'll know how many leads the Realtor receives each month, on average, and from what sources. You'll also know (if you didn't already know before you did your interview) how many transactions the Realtor is closing each month. Those two pieces of information make it possible for you to show the Realtor how much potential commission income he/she is walking away from every month.
Stage III: Combined with the rest of the information the Realtor provided you, you now have enough to put together a compelling presentation that will explain, in a logical, step-by-step way, how you can play an instrumental role in helping the Realtor solve the problems that prevent them from having the business they want.
This presentation will be the main focus of the next online seminar on September 19th: How to Give Effective Presentations to Realtors.
Giving an effective presentation to Realtors means that you have helped them reach a new understanding about exactly why it is that so many of the buyer leads they generate slip through their fingers like water through a sieve.
They'll understand that the events of the last 6 or 7 years have fundamentally changed the psychology of home buyers and sellers. This change in their thoughts and feelings about buying and/or selling a home can be summed up in three words: Fear, Caution, and Skepticism.
The psychology of today's homebuyers simply doesn't match well with the traditional approach that Realtors have taken (and still take) when talking to new leads. The Realtor approach is to deflect buyer questions about specific homes for sale with personal questions about the buyer: how soon do you want to buy? How much do you want to spend? What kind of work you do, and how much money do you make? Are you currently working with a Realtor?
The strategy behind this approach to talking with buyer leads was designed for a true Sellers Market, where you have buyers coming out of the proverbial woodwork, and your goal is to identify only the most "serious" buyers, and get rid of the rest. (We are NOT in a Seller's Market today.)
Realtors today are smart enough to know that there aren't so many buyers out there that they can afford to be getting rid of them, but most Realtors still haven't changed their basic approach. This results in a huge fallout rate of buyer leads (50% of whom, according to the NAR, will be buying a home within the next 12 months). As a result of this approach, the best agents will succeed in taking maybe 5% of their leads to the closing table, when 50% of their leads will be buying a home – which means their true closing rates on qualified leads is 10%. Another way of putting this: 90% of the good leads Realtors get will end up buying a home from a different Realtor.
This is where you come in.
You have 3 goals:
- Get a clear acknowledgment from the Realtor that he or she has a problem that's costing them money.
- Get the Realtor to understand the systemic, root causes of that problem, and that the conventional fixes won't solve.
- Get the Realtor to see that you are a vital and integral part of the solution.
In Thursday's online seminar (September 19 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time), I will show you how to give a Realtor presentation that will accomplish all three of these goals. If you are registered, you have already received a confirmation with instructions for joining the seminar.
If you haven't already registered, you can do that here, but you should act now, because time and space are running out.