Elite Agents Real Estate Podcast With Debbie De Grote

Hello and welcome to Debbie’s Tips! I was wondering, is it time to expand your range, reach, and influence in your community? As a professional coach I have an opportunity to travel across North America to meet with some of the most elite agents and real estate professionals in the nation. They commonly share with me that 80% of their business comes from the people that they know, their past clients, sphere, and connections in the community. What they also tell me though is that they still need more business, that they are often disappointed by the lack of repeat and referrals from their database. When you consider the fact that the average homeowner is staying in their home longer than ever before and that most homeowners know more than one agent, and that customer loyalty in most industries has declined by 50%, you can see why you may need to expand what you do in order to grow your business. When a new coaching client hires us to help them, one of the first things we do is examine their system for working

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Tips! I was talking to someone today who said, “I've been listening to your tips about getting ready for the rest of the year ahead, and I realized that one of the things I'm going to have to do is to learn how to delegate more effectively.” This person was telling me that they feel like they must control everything are afraid to let go, what if a mistake is made? With this mindset, they're really limiting the billable hours in their day because they are so busy doing the servicing. I would encourage you to take a look - just start with the things that are affordable and easy to delegate, and let's start delegating them. This could even be working more efficiently with your vendors and your affiliates, letting them take on more of the load that they should be. Remember, if you try to - what is that old saying? If you try to be the chief cook and bottle washer, it's going to fall apart. So we must learn to run a business that's efficient, has predictable sources, and high efficie

Hello, welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. I was talking to someone just the other day about cross cultural selling. I'm a member of a couple of organizations that really cater to different cultures in the real estate industry, NAHREP and AREAA. And what always impresses me when I attend meetings put on by these groups is the variety of cultures that are represented. It makes sense when you think about it, because as a real estate professional, what a great idea to mix and mingle with agents of other cultures and to really work to improve our own personal sales versatility. The definition of culture isn't necessarily just about race, it's often a shared set of beliefs. For an example, I think that here at Excelleum we have a culture. It's a culture of service and commitment and dedication to our clients. If you have a team, maybe your team is a culture of integrity or fun. So if someone is born in America, they're going to operate inside the American culture. However, if they've moved here from a foreign country,

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. I'm wondering, do you talk too much? Certain personality styles do talk more than others. For example, if according to the DISC Index you're a high I, you are by nature likely to talk more than a high S. The high I being a high influencer, high S being very steady, amiable, and calm. But I’m sure all of us gone into a selling situation and said too much, whether we presented in too much detail or ran on with too much information, ultimately raising more objections than we would have had if we just kept our presentation simple. I want you to think about this. On your next listing appointment, you should not talk more than 50 percent of the time. Set a goal to refrain from talking more than 50 percent of the time, and make sure that 50 percent of the time you are talking is 50 percent of you asking questions. So that would mean 25 percent of the total time you are asking questions, 25 percent of the time you are making statements that are important, and 50 percent of th

Hello, welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. I wonder, are you prepared to handle any buyer or seller objection that comes your way? I did something once, where I created a list to see how many true typical buyer objections and typical seller objections actually exist. I came up with about 12 or 13 for each buyer and seller, and then I noticed that in any given market there's usually three to five that will consistently surface. Now if the objections never really change, and we assume we need to learn 13 for buyers and 13 for sellers, it's only 26 different objections total. If you had one, two or even three great answers to each one, and you really became a student of mastering those answers, can you imagine how competent you would be? You would not hesitate to make any prospecting call, to walk into any sales situation, to handle any challenging customer if you knew, no matter what objection they threw at you, you could handle it with confidence. See, over my career I have made this a science. I took it very seri

Welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips, and today I wanted to talk a little bit about persuasion. Here at Excelleum one of the things we work on a lot with our clients is building rapport, that sales versatility. We have the New Art Of Persuasion For Real Estate course because I believe that really learning to be a master negotiator and a powerful persuader is worth its weight in gold. Let's remember, persuasion will not occur easily without rapport. I thought for today’s tip, if I could just give you one technique to be more powerful at building rapport instantly with anyone, anytime, anywhere, what would that technique be? Here's what I have for you: mirroring and matching. Maybe you've heard of this before, maybe you even do it or you do it unconsciously, but it is a powerful technique. This means mirroring and matching someone’s rate of speech, mirroring and matching their tonality, mirroring and matching even some of the words and phrases that they use and say. Everyone talks a certain way and their mind process

Hello, welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. People are asking me lately, is the shifting market a good or a bad time to get into the luxury market? It's a great question. When you think about it, in a red-hot market, everybody's chasing those higher end listings because they sell easily and they pay well. The reality is, when the market starts to shift and it takes longer for the listing to sell, that can be a fantastic opportunity, a fantastic time to go after some of those higher end listings. There's the old saying that you’re better off to be the first born, the second wife or the second and third agent on an expired listing. Why? Because sometimes when those higher end listings come out of the gate, the seller wants too much. They're unreasonable, they're asking too much, and that first agent, wastes a lot of time and energy. What a great strategy, to break into the luxury market by going after those higher end expireds. Remember, it only takes a few to make a significant difference in your volume. How do you

Hello, welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. I'm answering a question that came up in an email today. The question was, how do I prepare an elevator speech? What is it and how do I write it? An elevator speech, when you think about it, is really like this - let's pretend you and I are riding an elevator and you have less than a minute until we hit the ground floor. On that elevator ride I ask you, “What do you do for a living or why should I hire you?” If you can't sell me on it by the time we've hit the ground floor, you may have lost my business forever. The reason it's so important to grab someone's attention in 30 to 60 seconds, whether it's on a prospecting call, out doorknocking, at an open house or at an appointment, is because the attention span of the average person is very, very short before their mind begins to wander off to other things. Let's face it - your customers and prospects have a lot on their plate and a lot on their minds. If they don't determine quickly that you're worth listening to, they'll

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. Today we're talking about how to network, even if you're afraid of talking to strangers. As we helped our clients get ready for 2019, one of the suggestions that we had for them is that they find a networking group. That they find something they are passionate about and where they can meet people, hopefully people that have their ideal clients, or even put together and form their own networking group. But of course, depending on your personality, that might be terrifying to you because you hate to talk to strangers. I was thinking a little bit about this. What would be a few things to make it easier for you to talk to strangers? Well, one thing would be choosing your audience, right? Who do you have a lot in common with, so that there'd be a lot to naturally talk about? Also, maybe you bring a wingman. Bring a friend, bring someone with you so that you're not there on your own. Plus, they may even know some of the people in the room. Another thought, it’s good to alwa

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. Today I thought we could talk about how to improve your daily efficiency. I know that sometimes we all feel overworked and overwhelmed, and our business day just extends far beyond what is reasonable, sometimes consuming our quality of life. I was having an interesting conversation the other day with a friend of mine who is the largest independent distributor of batteries in the entire nation. This is an individual owner, so I know he's incredibly busy. He has hundreds and hundreds of employees, locations across the nation, and a battery factory in Asia. He is just a really busy guy. I said to him, “How come you always seem so calm? You must be overworked and overwhelmed!” And he said, “You know, Debbie, there's one thing that I do that I think is very important to my sanity and my happiness. At the end of each day, I take a couple of minutes and I write down my five critical items that I must do the next day. So that old saying, you know, come heck or high water, no

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips, and I wanted to talk to you today about the fear of failure. I wonder if the fear of failure is stopping you from setting bigger goals or tackling new things. I was on an airplane and I was reading an article in the Harvard Business Review and they had an article on this topic, a terrific article. Some of the points really made me connect it back over to what may limit performance in the real estate industry. If you think about it, fear is really worrying about doing something wrong. In our case, in a sales position, maybe it's the fear of being rejected or the fear of failing and having a major setback in a situation. I look at this and, in the business of being an entrepreneur where every day we're faced with challenges, I always tell my team, we're going to innovate. We're going to try new things. We're going to embrace new opportunities. We must be agile, we must be flexible, and we also need to understand that sometimes we're going to make mistakes. Another tip o

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. Today we're talking about shifting market opportunities. What are some of the opportunities that a shifting market can present? One can be the opportunity to break into higher-end expired listings because you see, when the market makes it not as easy to get the home sold, what you'll often see impacted first is the higher-end properties. Oftentimes what happened is that an agent overpriced the home initially, didn't work their price reductions, and these properties ended up expiring. Now the great news about it is this. There's an old saying that you're better off to be the first born, the second wife, and the second or third agent on an expired listing. Why? Because the seller is potentially more ready than before to take your wise advice as an agent. Expired listings, especially the higher-end, in a shifting market can be a great opportunity. Now for sale by owners, they can also be a great opportunity. When the market is red hot and they can put a sign in the yard

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. I wonder, do you ever wear a name tag or maybe a branded polo shirt, or another piece of career apparel that identifies you as a real estate agent? I get it, some of you listening or reading may be very fashion forward, always making sure you are dressed sharp and look right. And I totally understand. However, every day I hear stories of people who are at the grocery store, at the carwash, putting gas in their car, picking up their kids from school, sitting on the soccer fields, all in their branded career apparel or wearing a name tag, and they pick up a fabulous lead. Because you know what people love to talk about? Real estate. The fact that you are easily identifiable as a real estate agent makes you approachable. In fact, I remember when I was a young agent and I was doing well, I was selling on average 12 to 15 homes a month, working hard. I had an agent in my office that always was just right behind me. Our difference was always right around just a couple homes

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. Today we're talking about effective pieces to mail to your past clients and sphere of influence. One of the things I love is a newsletter, although I’m not talking about an e-newsletter. Nothing wrong with an e-newsletter, other than only 20 to 25% will open it. And that's being optimistic. We know there's a large group of people that you might send your e-newsletter to that would never actually open or read it, but if you physically mail that interesting, informative newsletter, they are likely to lay it on the counter and leave it there for a couple of days. Now with most other pieces they won't do that, so we want to make to have a variety of interesting content. It could be home improvement-related, something to do with general hobbies, travel, you could have a recipe or a puzzle, and certainly at least one real estate article that's directing them to reach out and contact you for more information. Ideally, I would love to send that out monthly, but if your budget

Welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. Today we’re going over some assumptive techniques. This is a favorite subject of mine, because I do believe that one of the best closing techniques of all time is just simply the assumptive close. And I thought, before I give you a couple of tips, I would tell you a quick little funny story. I call it Melanie's near disaster. One of our coaching clients shared with me that she had just hired a new assistant, and the assistant really didn't quite understand the difference between a listing that had already been taken and needed to be processed, and a listing appointment where the listing was still just a potential. So, Melanie had a very expensive home that she was super excited about trying to attain as a listing. She got everything ready, drove over to the appointment, and as she pulled up in front of the house, she noticed that the “For Sale” sign has already been put up in the yard. Instantly Melanie panicked. This is what typically happened as soon as a listing was taken, t

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. Today I wanted to talk about pre-listing packages. There was a time in the market when lots of agents were sending out a pre-listing package. The purpose of this was to prepare for the sale. It was to sell the seller in advance on all the great stuff that you do, your track record, your credentials, etc. It was very popular for a while, and then I noticed that agents kind of just stopped doing it. I will sometimes ask them, why? Why did you stop? One of the common answers is, “I found that the people didn't read the package, so I felt that it was a waste of my time to do it.” My marketing expert, Pete Mitchell, and I were talking about this just the other day and he reminded me of something called the thud factor. If you do choose to deliver a pre-listing package, keep in mind that emailing is probably not that effective. Are they going to open it up? Are they going to download it? Are they going to print it? Are they really going to read it? Probably not. Everybody's

Hello, it’s Debbie De Grote and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. We're getting ready for the year ahead so that we will be in great shape and ready to roll on January 2nd. One of the things I encourage you to do is to really sit down and work on your schedule. Set a starting and ending time each day, select a day off, and also time block for your prospecting, your lead follow-up, and your other critical activities. If you look at this now, that will give you a chance to keep a time log as you're getting ready for the New Year. At the end of each day, I want you to label each hour of the day. Was that an income producing hour, something directly related to listing or selling? Was it prospecting? Were you out on appointments and negotiating contracts? Or was it an income servicing hour? This could be meetings and inspections, or getting documents signed with an appraiser. Or lastly, was it just stuff? IP is income producing, IS is income servicing, or just S for stuff. Meaning, I don't know what I was doing, but

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. We're talking about a strong finish to 2018. One of the things I'd like to like you to do in this last quarter of the year is get together with your vendors and your affiliates. Tell them how much you appreciate them and their hard work and how committed you are to being loyal, supportive, and sending them as many referrals in the New Year as possible. If there are ways that they can improve their service to you, be more helpful so that you can grow your business without hiring more staff, tell them. Even ask them, “What might you be able to do for me that would be fair and reasonable to request, but I just don't know that I could ask for?” And then also ask them for a referral. Now I get it that because many of them are going to be working with multiple real estate agents it would not be fair that we would expect all of their referrals, so just ask for one name a month. Say, “You know, I don’t even know if it would work out, it might amount to nothing, but if you cou

Hello, it's Debbie De Grote and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. As we work hard to a strong finish for 2018, one of the things I'd like to put on your project list is to update and upgrade your listing presentation. Look at it and start from scratch. Do you need to add new materials? Do you need to remove some pages because it's too cumbersome? Do you have fluffy pages in there that are unnecessary? What about your reviews? Are you showcasing your reviews, your track record and your performance? Remember, it's great to give good service. What they're really looking for is expertise and results. Next, what about how you dress for your appointments? Do you prepare by doing advanced research on the seller? How much customizing of the marketing proposal do you do? Remember, we're asking them to pay us a lot of money and we are facing a lot of disruption. Part of that disruption is the flat rate commission cutting companies, so we've got to be prepared to go in to those appointments and look strong. Be powerful. S

Hello and welcome to Debbie's Daily Tips. As we talk about the strong finish of 2018, something that I say a lot is, “Stand out as the wise adviser.” Here's what I mean by that. As you prepare for the year ahead, think about increasing your market knowledge and expertise. Today’s consumers can go online and check their values, which may or may not be accurate. They can do a Google search and get answers to any question imaginable. But to put it all together really requires the wisdom of a wise adviser. My husband and I recently sold our house and purchased another. My husband has been active in the real estate business for over 35 years and he said to me, “You know, Debbie, you are the most annoying buyer and seller I've had for a long time.” It is amazing how challenging it can be to navigate the buying, the selling, the ups, the downs, the waiting for contingency removal, the inspections, the walkthroughs – it’s all very, very stressful. So we need to hold their hand through that process, right? They're not