Read by More Than 30,000 Agents

2. Why Listening is Much More Important than Broadcasting

1. The Two Most Important Ways to Increase Your Business

In it's simplest form there are really only two ways to increase the amount of real estate business that you successfully close each and every year:

1) Increase the amount and/or quality of prospects that you begin working with

2) Close business with a higher percentage of the prospects that you begin working with

And it's been my experience in our industry that most of the focus in these two arenas has been on finding more new prospects whenever an agent is interested in making more money. While I feel this can be great and that it can certainly work very effectively, I feel that there is so, so much to be gained by also focusing on increasing the percentage of people that one successfully closes transactions with.

What I'm talking about here, most succinctly, is improving one's people skills. When your people skills are truly outstanding your prospects simply feel that you are the best choice they can make in a real estate agent over all of your competitors. And anytime you work on your people skills so that you continually close transactions with a higher percentage of your prospects, it will pay unbelievable dividends to you.

Let's say first of all that you normally close transactions with 35% of the people that you initially identify as prospects that you'd like to work with. If during the year you identified 100 prospects, this means that you'll successfully close business with approximately 35 of them.

Now let's say that you begin prospecting at a whole new level, and you increase the number of prospects you locate that you'd like to begin working with by 20%. This gives you 120 prospects for the year which means that you'll probably now close business with approximately 42 people throughout the year. This is a great, great increase in your business through just taking it up a notch in your prospecting efforts.

Now let's see what happens if you also work on your presentation skills so that you increase the percentage of prospects that you continually close new business with. So let's say you've been working on these skills and you're now closing business with 50% of your new prospects instead of 35%.

Taking a look at the numbers, if you have 120 prospects for the year you're now closing transactions with 60 people a year instead of only 42, which is almost a 43% increase in business from working on your people skills alone. And when you work on your people skills, going from closing business with 35% of your prospects to 50%, is relatively easy to do. And with this, even if you never increased your prospecting at all, you'd still be closing 43% more business! Now that's making incredibly effective and efficient use of your time!

So you may want to find people you can work with who can help you to improve your people skills. Talk with your manager. Talk with other agents who already have great people skills. (Hint--these are usually the people who are doing a ton of business.) Or find someone who you know can teach you how to take your people skills to a whole new level.

Oftentimes as an agent you fall into a routine of how you make your presentations to your clients and prospects. And, all things considered, it's the best routine you know of based upon everything you've learned, tried, and revised over the years. But when you work with people who can give you honest feedback on your presentation skills, you'll then learn what you're doing that's working against you and actually keeping business away from you. And once you put in the correction, you'll now enroll a much higher percentage of your prospects in doing business with you every year for the rest of your career.

2. Why Listening is Much More Important than Broadcasting

About 18 months ago, after living in Los Angeles for my entire life, I moved to Temecula, a smaller, more rural city between L.A. and San Diego. The city is much, much quieter than both L.A. and San Diego and has beautiful new homes, ranches, horse properties, great schools, old-time family values, and great housing prices, too. Apparently the word is quickly getting out also as Temecula is now experiencing the fastest population growth in all of California.

Several weeks ago Rick, one of my best friends, came out to visit me to take a look at this city that I now call home. So we got in my car and I drove him around for a tour...

While taking the tour we noticed an Open House sign on a home and decided to walk in and take a look at it. I thought it would be great to show him how much home you can get here for your money as compared with most other cities in California. So when we walked in the home we were immediately greeted by the listing agent who proceeded to go into full-on "Broadcast" mode.

I mentioned to her that I lived in the area and that Rick was visiting from Los Angeles. But that was the only personal information that she ever learned about us.

Not once did she ever ask us anything about ourselves. She simply proceeded to tell us about all of the features of the home and followed us around the home giving us her opinion on what we needed to know about every single section of the home. We also heard about her career in real estate, how she now owns her own real estate brokerage company, and how she was only sitting on the Open House because she was feeling pressure from the owners of the home to do so.

At this point I was getting really curious to see if I could induce her to ask me anything about myself, so I began mentioning to her trends that I was observing in real estate both on a national and local level. However, not once did she ever ask me anything about myself, or whether or not I was connected with the real estate industry.

Quite frankly, I couldn't believe what Rick and I were experiencing. And this agent was not someone new in the business--- this was an agent who had years of experience, owned her own company, and had other agents working for her, too.

When Rick and I walked out of the home we just turned, looked at each other, and began laughing. The presentation that we had just experienced was clearly, in our minds, one of the ones that gives salespeople bad reputations.

So in telling you this story I want to ask you something:

How good are you at taking an interest in your clients and prospects and finding out about them instead of simply broadcasting the information that you feel they need to know?

Think for a moment about the different times you've been with a salesperson trying to sell you something. When you're with a salesperson, does it bother you when they're constantly pitching you on all the reasons why you should buy their product or service from them right now? Well, I'll tell you this---it certainly aggravates the heck out of me!

Your clients and prospects will want to do business with you when you genuinely take an interest in them. So ask them questions that show you care about what's important to them and then listen intently to their responses. 

Interestingly, people often get into commission sales because of the opportunity it provides to make great money. But oftentimes they then develop a sales style that can repel a lot of people from wanting to do business with them. And, ironically, this then keeps them from successfully making the kind of money that they originally wanted to make.

The best, most successful salespeople are the ones who never have their clients feeling that they're being "sold." In real estate, these agents simply have their clients feeling that they're receiving great service from the agent, and that the agent truly cares about what's best for them at all times.

So pay attention to your clients and prospects and care about them. And if you ever notice yourself "broadcasting" to them about what you think they absolutely must know, it may be time for you to back off, take a genuine interest in them, and find out what's really important to them instead.

Your subscription to my real estate E-zine entitles you to receive FREE online training. My training course is designed to take you to the next level in your real estate sales career regardless of where you are currently at in your career right now. To receive my FREE 7-Day Online Real Estate Training Course send a blank e-mail to the following E-mail address:

RealEstate101@RealEstateSalesCoach.com

You will receive your first of seven lessons within minutes after sending your E-mail. You will then receive six additional lessons, one each day, for a total of seven lessons in seven days.

If you arrange for me to lead a seminar or training for your real estate company you qualify for FREE coaching! Call me or email me for more information.

Please forward this E-zine to anyone you know who is interested in becoming a better, more productive real estate agent.

To subscribe to Jim Gillespie's 
ADVANCED REAL ESTATE SUPERSALES E-ZINE
 click here
and send a blank E-mail.

To unsubscribe and bring tears to my eyes follow the directions below.