Halloween Masks: The Key to Success in Real Estate

  

Halloween Masks: The Key to Success in Real Estate – by Dana Sparks

 

Every year at Halloween we see people wearing costumes & masks. Some of these are scary, some whimsical, some are cute & some are silly. Children and adults don masks and costumes to become a different persona for a night. Consider adopting a different persona in your real estate career to make more sales and close more transactions.  This “trick” may lead to more commission “treats!”

What do the most successful real estate agents and entrepreneurs possess that makes them so influential and accomplished? Is this quality unique to them or is it something you too can master? The answer is confidence and authority. So many customers and clients are simply looking for an agent who will exude the belief that they can get the job done for that client whether it be selling or buying a property. Do you radiate that type of belief in yourself and your own skills and knowledge to your customers and prospects? Do you feel that you can handle and successfully guide your clients through any situation you encounter in any transaction? If you do, congratulations and continue on! If not, then know that you can master this quality and in the meantime, pretend that any day is Halloween and put on the mask of confidence and leadership!

When one dons a mask, they can become whomever they choose a pirate, a fairy-tale princess, a zombie, or even an uber-successful real estate agent!  “Fake it ’til you make it” is the oft-used term for this same concept!  This catch-phrase means that you should imitate confidence in your business skills in any situation until you actually internalize this self-assurance. This imitation will garner success and will soon generate that core confidence in yourself and you will no longer be “faking it!”

6 Steps to Increasing Your Confidence in Your Real Estate Career:

1. Recognize Your Success

When you show a property, write a contract, negotiate terms, give a listing presentation, do you focus on what you did well or obsess over one minor part you missed cast doubt on your abilities?

Confidence and optimism breed confidence and optimism. Make note of things you did not do in this transaction so that you may do those in the future, but not dwell on these issues as “mistakes” and beat yourself up for items you omitted or bumbled.

Focus on the things you do well within your real estate business and celebrate your successes! Focus on what you did well and you will be increasingly optimistic about your real estate sales skills.

2. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can happen?”

Think about what is the worst that can happen given your latest           action/communication/omission.

Start with the absolute worst case and then work the scenarios backwards to a more realistic outcome. For example, the worst that can happen is your client fires you and you don’t get paid for all the time, work and effort you put into that client. If that happens, you simply go get a new client (and perhaps charge a retainer fee!)

More than likely, your client will vent their frustrations to you and then proceed on with this contract or terminate and you will go find them a new property or a new Buyer for their listing!

Consider that even in the “worst case scenario” you still have your health, your family and friends and the ability to continue in your real estate career and go get more clients!

3. Study Areas in Which You’re Unfamiliar

Build the knowledge you need to succeed. Find classes in areas you want to learn more about that aspect of real estate.

Find an agent who is knowledgeable in some aspect you want to learn and shadow that agent or mentor with that agent.

Get on Active Rain and network with agents from around the country to learn how others approach short-sales, foreclosures, first-time home-buyers, listing in today’s market, etc.

Attend classes related to a specific area in which you want to grow rather than just to get CE credit required for GREC.

Preview property & get to know your product.

4. Use Affirmations to Boost Your Confidence

Constant exposure to positive thoughts about yourself will quickly increase your self-esteem!

Affirmations are words with the power to impress upon your subconscious mind the way to achieve a desired outcome or result or way of thinking about yourself or a situation.

Instead of beating yourself up and that little voice in your head repeating what you did wrong in a situation, have that little voice repeat what you want to achieve or how you want to think about yourself.

With the constant exposure to a new song on the radio, over time, you have memorized those lyrics without even trying; so too will be your experience with repeated positive affirmations about your real estate sales skills – you will soon internalize those emotions and beliefs!

5. Focus on Your Strengths

We all have various strengths upon which to draw for our business. Whether it be that you are a great communicator, a good listener, well-organized, a great parent, a thoughtful friend, a magnificent spouse, influential and persuasive in negotiations, etc, many of our life-skills can easily be re-purposed in our real estate business.

With experience and exposure to a variety of real estate situations those strengths will grow specific to real estate skills.

Remember that your career in your chosen field of real estate is built upon relationships and customer service,, NOT on any one particular transaction.

6. Realize That You Have a Team to Assist You

You are never alone in your business!  Every agent has a “team” whether you realize it or not!

Given the nature of our field, we have many others that assist us and can help us in any situation! Closing attorneys, lenders, inspectors, appraisers, brokers, colleagues, support team, past clients, instructors to name a few!

Not sure how to handle a financial question, contact the lender involved in the deal or one of our affiliated lenders! Not sure about how to handle a title issue, contact the closing attorney! Wondering how to assist a Seller who has decided to put his home up for rent, contact a colleague or our support system at Maximum One!

The hallmark of a good leader is not to necessarily know all the answers but to know where to go to GET all the answers!

Self-confident people inspire confidence and trust in others. When you assert your leadership skills and confidence with your prospects, you will be able to persuade them into becoming your clients so that you may help them achieve their real estate goals… and get paid for doing a job well-done! When someone hires you as their real estate advocate, they are merely looking for leadership and confidence that you can get the job done for them! So, this Halloween, put on a mask and become the confident expert in whatever area of real estate you choose; after all, new prospects know nothing about you other than what you present to them!

The 14 Keys to Wealth Building Mentality

 

 

The 14 Keys to Wealth Building Mentality – by George Ansong

 

George Ansong is an agent at Maximum One as well as being an entrepreneur  and author!  The following article is courtesy of George and this article and more may be found on George’s website: www.GeorgeAnsong.com  Thank you George for sharing your wealth of knowledge and insights with us all!

1. The ability to develop the capacity to see – in your mind’s eye – a vision – if you will – ability to spot opportunities that might not be obvious to people – it is a gift that is nurtured and acquired over a period of time.

2. The ability to develop an intuitive ability (ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason- a six sense if you will that many people don’t have – ability to “smell” deals miles away.

3. Being educated is just a part of it, but most often than not you have to acquire the mindset through trial and error and the school of hard knocks – you learn through apprenticeship.

4. A level of street smarts that you acquire by being involved in everyday rudimentary tasks of entrepreneurship and business practices – business as an art or science is boring and you have to be able to maintain the repetitive tasks and discipline required to get you going – for example, you want to raise capital – you should be disciplined to call or talk to a number of people per day.

5. The ability to know the difference between income and wealth -It is possible to have a higher income and not be wealthy – Always remember that building wealth does not require a large income, however, it requires a mindset that is disciplined and a long term perspective.

6.  The ability to achieve the wealth building mentality and have a balance in all areas of your life – spiritually, physically, financially, emotionally and your relationship.

7.  The ability to know that you have a conscious and social responsibility to be av good citizen in your entrepreneurship, investment and business dealings.

8.  An attitude that says that no matter what happens I will continue my journey – If I lose my millions I would be able to go back to the drawing board and start all over again without any shame -or the ability to have the emotional or psychological attitude to have things done no matter what!

9.  Knows that you learn through having mentors and updating your knowledge through short focused courses and building a library of books where you are always learning and updating your knowledge base – I don’t think there will ever be a time when the entrepreneurs say “I have arrived!”

10.  Don’t wait to get fired before you start thinking about developing a wealth building mind set and starting your own side line business – the forecast for the economic trend would dictate that people would be laid off – just discover your passion and set up your own sideline business – always have a business on the side – don’t wait to get laid off before you start thinking about starting a business.

11.  Get into the habit of attending seminars on specific topics that interests you that would help you accelerate your knowledge base – for example if you are interested in real estate investments, look for inexpensive courses at continuing education department at the universities.

12.  Always explore new ideas and challenge existing norms – exploring new frontiers will always get you motivated to do the unusual – and if you are starting a business do think big and go for it!!

13.  To know that your ideas on wealth creation is what makes you wealthy and not working for somebody else – working for somebody will make you live comfortably, but will not make you wealthy.

14.  The ability to know the mechanics of business management – the functional areas like accounting, marketing, financial controls etc., that makes business run.

6 Ways to Start Using Twitter in Your Real Estate Business Today

               

6 Ways to Start Using Twitter in Your Real Estate Business Today – by Rebekkah Radice

 “As a real estate professional, creating a strong social media presence is an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. Not only does it create visibility, but it can also lend credibility and authenticity to your business, thereby positioning you as the local expert.

As the number of buyers and sellers turning to social media sites for information increases, it is important to identify and understand how to best use social networking tools like Twitter to your advantage. Unfortunately, for many real estate professionals, connecting the dots on how to effectively use Twitter can be a challenge.

So where do you begin and how can you quickly and easily get started with Twitter marketing?

The 6 ways below can help you begin to use this undervalued and underused tool in your real estate business today!

6 Ways to Start Using Twitter in Your Business:

1. Claim Your Brand

Your online brand should echo the brand you have established offline. Allow the look and feel to seamlessly blend between your traditional and online marketing by using the same profile picture, design and color scheme throughout. As real estate professional’s, your picture is often the defining mark of your brand. This makes it especially important to transfer the same picture that has graced everything from your business card to listing presentation, to your Twitter profile. Your online marketing efforts should also match your style. For example, if you are conservative and reserved, stick with a professional or more traditional business photo.  If you have a passion or hobby that defines your life outside of your business, make sure to include that in your profile picture, your bio or both. People want to know the you that exists outside of your real estate career.  Whatever qualities or characteristics make up your personality let them shine through!

2. Choose Your Twitter Tools

Between listing appointments and showings, juggling your day and your duties is no easy task. To make better use of the time you devote to Twitter, try using tools that allow you to listen, respond and interact with your followers.

A few of my favorites are:

• Sprout Social A social media management tool created to help businesses find new customers  & grow their social media presence.
• Buffer Analyze and automatically schedule your tweets to post at the best possible time.
• TweetBeep Twitter  alerts where you can keep track of conversations that mention you, your  products, and your company
• Social Oomph Schedule tweets, track keywords,  welcome new followers
• TweetLevel Monitor,  analyze and calculate your influence and that of your competitors

3. Establish Your Goals

Before you begin marketing your business with Twitter, establish your goals. Whether you are interested in gaining the attention of buyers, sellers or top recruits within your area, determining what your specific goals are will offer the clarity needed to properly market your business with Twitter.

To get started, answer each of these questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What problem can you solve or need can you fulfill?
• What unique outlook can you share that positions your business as thought leader within your local market?
• Will you manage your social media or outsource? If it is you, how much time can you commit on a weekly basis?
• What end results are hoping to achieve? Be specific in what outcome you hope for whether it’s to generate new business or gain new recruits.

4. Determine Your Audience

Far too often I see real estate professionals making the same Twitter marketing mistakes. They decide it is easier to become a “one stop shop,” rather than defining whether consumer or real estate professional is their target audience.

Here is what that might look like.

Amy is a managing broker that wears multiple hats.  She finds that in her online marketing efforts, she is torn between her sales orientated, business generating duties and her managerial, recruiting duties. Unfortunately, instead of choosing one group to focus on, Amy decides to serve both. On a daily basis, Amy creates and curates content that is both for the real estate professional, homebuyer and seller. Due to the hodge-podge of content, Amy struggles to find her voice and an audience. Ultimately she  decides that Twitter just does not work and gives up on Twitter marketing.

If this scenario sounds familiar, don’t dismay. You still have the opportunity to define your audience and create a community that craves your content.  Before you dive back into Twitter marketing, take some time to determine who your target audience is and what content they are eager to consume. Now work to provide that in a fun and engaging way on a daily basis.

5. Engage and Inspire Your Followers

While running from listing appointment to showings may keep you tied up throughout the day, it cannot be an excuse to simply pop in and out of Twitter on an inconsistent basis.  Create a strategy that includes relevant and newsworthy content along with inspirational and motivational tweets that inspire your followers to get engaged in the conversation. You also want to create share-worthy content that spreads your message, and your brand, across the Twittersphere. This can include invites to your next open house or a link to your latest video explaining the top mistakes made by homebuyers.

Remember, it is important to keep it fresh and mix it up. When creating a content strategy, work to integrate fun and topical with relevant and timely.

Your tweets should consist of:

• Link to your own blog or website content 20%
• Link to other people’s content 20%
• Talk business or share your own marketing material  20%
• The remaining 40% should consist of personal interaction, small talk, commenting and networking

6. Monitor Your Activities

There is nothing worse than sending out a tweet only to find that it fell upon deaf ears. The best way to avoid this situation is to monitor how your tweets are performing. This includes identifying when your audience is actually online.  There are several tools to assist with this including SocialBro and Tweriod. Each will analyze your account and then determine your optimal time to tweet based on the maximum number of followers online at any given time.  Once this is accomplished, schedule your tweets accordingly.

Get Started TODAY!

The idea behind social media is to establish an online presence and create local connections through similar interests. Promoting your real estate business through Twitter can  open the door to opportunities never before available, so get out there and start creating those moments today!

Need help with your overall social media strategy? Check out my  Social Media Starter Kit for Real Estate Professionals!”

http://maximizesocialbusiness.com/using-twitter-in-your-real-estate-business-7410/