1. Be consistent with advertising, especially direct mail. Use the same marketing tag line, the same photo, and the same logo on all your materials—brochures, business cards, Web site, everything--for at least a year. The constant repetition helps fix you and your marketing in people’s minds and creates a brand identity for you.

2. Stick to the basics: dialogues that build relationships, prospecting, listing, and buyer presentations. Technology may allow you to add new twists and communicate faster, but don’t let it take your focus away from the core tasks that build business.

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William Barnes
Gracious Living Realty Inc.
Mechanicsville, Va.

1. Let the property sell itself. Even if you read people well, you may not hit on the one feature that makes them ready to buy. Sit back and let the buyers tell you what they like, then reinforce their ideas.

2. Be honest and admit your mistakes to clients as soon as they occur. Problems will seem worse if you try to hide them and the clients find out later. It will destroy their confidence in you and could even lead to a lawsuit for misrepresentation.

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Lillian Montalto
Lillian Montalto Signature Pro
Andover, Mass.

1. Set daily goals for yourself, and then hold yourself accountable. List each activity you plan to do and the time spent doing it, as well as any unplanned interruptions. If you have assistants, require that they do the same. Time is your most valuable commodity so you can’t afford to lose your focus and waste it.

2. Enroll in a coaching program. I have two coaches—one a top real estate producer and the other more of a life guide. I fax a daily report of my activities—listing presentations, prospecting calls, and sales negotiations--to my real estate coach, who helps keep my focus on dollar-producing activities and shows me ways to increase my productivity. Thanks to my coach’s direction, I’m meeting my income goals working an average of four and one-half days a week. Learn more about coaching.

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Joye Kuhn
Re/Max DFW Associates
Dallas

1. Don’t be a slave to every technological bell and whistle. Although we typically carry about 200 listings on our Web site and get 50 percent of our business from the site, we don’t feature any virtual tours. Instead we showcase a couple of great exterior pictures of each property, and encourage interested buyers to give us a call to see more. Virtual tours take too long to load and view and can crash a computer if you don’t have a high-speed line. We want to move prospects from high tech to high touch as soon as possible. After all, you still can’t make a sale until you see the whites of their eyes.

2. Don’t be so anxious to get the prospect into the car. Instead, use extensive prescreening to narrow down the number of properties you show. We spend between one and two hours asking people about everything they want in a home: Do they need room for entertaining? Will the configuration of the bathrooms let everyone get out on time in the morning? What sorts of academic and extracurricular program do they want their schools to have? How far are they willing to drive to work? Then we get out a map of the entire metropolitan area and pinpoint exact neighborhoods. Even though 40 percent of our business is relocation, we are frequently able to sell buyers a house the first or second time we go out. It’s a tremendous time saver.

3. Encourage sellers to set a realistic price by getting them to look at their home from a buyer’s perspective. We use very detailed prior-sales information from the title companies to give sellers a realistic picture of what houses recently sold for in their area or even on their block. This research lets sellers see what actual sales have been, how long sales are taking, and what the competition for their home is. Then we ask them to walk through their home and look at it as if they were buyers. Finally we ask them what they would offer to buy the house. Often their suggested sale price is lower than one we would have suggested.

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Marc Willcuts
Coldwell Banker Professional Group
Newberg, Ore.

1. Use a non-standard advertising medium to separate yourself from the pack. I currently use radio advertisements that combine promotions for actual properties with my own personal marketing. In my most recent radio campaign, I spent $18,000 over 60 days promoting myself and the properties in a particular subdivision. I got extra coverage by becoming a sponsor of the radio’s Jazzfest. I’ve also done spots for individual homes. Many salespeople don’t believe that these non-standard ads really attract buyers, and I agree. Most of my buyers come from referrals and drive-by signs. But sellers love the promotion, and if you attract more sellers, you have more properties to attract buyers. In promotion, perception is everything.

2. Under-promise and over-deliver. If you promise to have information to a customer in three days and they receive it in two days, they will recognize your attentiveness. Help ensure you make these impressive deadlines by building in a little cushion for yourself. If you think you need three days to complete a CMA, tell the clients they will receive it in four days.

3. Take personal time to avoid burn out. I take a walk during my lunch hour with my wife. Long-term, plan vacations for yourself periodically so you always have a break to look forward to.

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Ron Campbell
Campbell and Campbell Real Estate
Albuquerque, N.M.

1. Get the seller to sign a price-reduction addendum to the contract when you take a listing. This way, if you need to adjust the price later to save a deal, you’ve already got the sellers’ agreement.

2. Make direct dollar-producing activities, such as listing, your first priority. Set aside a specific number of hours for each money-making task, and don’t let anything interfere with that time.
3. Don’t procrastinate. Forget saying, “Just do it,” and say, “I just did it.”

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Tim Wood
Coldwell Banker Mountain Gallery
Big Bear Lake, Calif.

1. Always make your dreams bigger than your excuses. Use visualization to keep your goals—early retirement, a new car—in mind. Live Your Dreams, by Joyce Chapman, is a great source for learning how to use this technique. Then have the discipline and mental toughness to do what it takes to make your dreams realities. Other salespeople can copy your marketing brochures, they can copy what you say on the phone, but few will be willing to copy your hard work.

2. Use specific targeting to reach your prime buyers. Most of the buyers of the vacation homes that make up 75 percent of our business come from the Los Angeles area. More than 15 years ago, we began using title records to pinpoint the seven Zip codes with the largest numbers of second-home owners in my area and then did extensive phone marketing to other prospective buyers in these same areas. And because we targeted such a relatively small group, about 7,000 in the Los Angeles Basin, we found that the prospects we called already knew someone who lived in Big Bear and might have already heard good things about the area. This targeted approach to marketing saves us significant amounts over the shotgun approach other practitioners use.

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