Do you know? Do you really know what it takes to succeed? Perhaps the most generous teacher on Active Rain, certainly on closing short sales, my friend Melissa Zavla recently wrote an article on determining median commissions per closings How to Set Your Income Goals for 2014. She goes on to determine how many closings per month you need to meet your income goals.
Now that you know how many closings you need to meet your goals you need to know what to do to what to do to create the closings you need!
I had hoped to find Melissa’s approach to prospecting. You need/must know what to do to generate the required closings.
It’s all well and good to know you only need 1.58 (Use her work sheet and your own numbers) closings each month to meet your goals, but it’s all for naught if you don’t or can’t determine what you have to do to generate that many closings each month!
I can presume to know why Melissa stopped short. Her approach is irrelevant, she’s wonderfully unquiet! My approach to prospecting was equally different after I left the Westdale Company (before many of you were born) but there are repeatable formulas that work and are repeatable!
When I started in real estate at the Westdale Company they had the biggest advertising budget (Pre-internet) in the state, (In ‘74, 1974 not 1874!) they knew how many ads it took to generate a phone call. Their salesmen kep records to know how many phone calls it took to get an appointment and how many anointments it took to get a sale. They also knew how many business cards we had to pass out (3-400 a month at $0.02 each)) to get an appointment and how many cold calls we needed to make near new listings (20 in each direction from the listing on both sides of the street!) To generate another listing and a sale. I was privileged to be one of only 30 salesmen at The Westdale Company in Kalamazoo. The 30 of us represented 1/3 of all real estate sales in our market except for those months when we did over half of all business. At the time The Kalamazoo Board of REALTORS® went from 1,000 members to 1,500 and yet the 30 of us dominated the market. We knew what we had to do and we did it. That’s 0.03% to as low as 0.02% of the local Board being either the listing or selling agents, offen both on 1/3 to ½ of all real estate closings! Only 30!
We had a repeatable system and it worked! A more diverse group you couldn’t find, our numbers varied greatly from person to person and as we gained experience an expertise, but the system remained the same.
When I left Westdale I started teaching real estate and real estate math for the local college they paid me $15.00 an hour, but my net was huge! You wouldn’t believe it. I did that for 11 semesters until my investment sales business didn’t leave me the time! The investment business had it’s own requirements including 5 days a month away from home with FLI and CCIM marketing groups.
When I opened a mortgage broker/banker office at Lake Tahoe it didn’t take long to discover what it took to get the referrals I needed, later it worked at Las Vegas, too. I’ve written about that on AR in a series starting in May of 2007, Two and a Half Days To Success / A Mortgage Sales Blog
Many are going to ask "If it’s so easy why aren’t we all rich?"
The answer is simple, most salesmen get a little success and become to big headed to continue doing what the newbies are taught!
If you don’t know what you’re making per-closing, how many closings you need and how to repeatedly get them good luck!
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