Melida

When I was a licensed Real Estate Sales Agent in the state of Florida, I could never understand why there were agents at my office that consistently produced five, ten, even twenty times more listings than other agents, who were participating in the same sales meetings, receiving mentorship from the same broker, and had met the same licensing requirements. It always struck me as unfair, that I personally was investing in excess of 60 hours per week to barely make it, financially, in the Real Estate Industry, while colleagues were literally carving out a name for themselves as "super agents."

Have you ever wondered why one Real Estate Sales Agent has 50 or more listings at any given time, and you find yourself struggling to obtain listings in the single digits? Have you encountered a "super-sales pro," and thought he or she is really not that much different from you? Well, truth is, there is a major difference between the ultra successful Real Estate Sales Agent and you - and that difference is they know the secrets of being a "high-powered" sales professional.

I want to share the secrets I learned from a personal mentor, who did so well in this industry, he was able to retire and strictly do deals for friends, after only 5 short years. Imagine going from struggling to make a living, to having all of your financial and professional dreams come true. Think about going to work everyday, and not living with the dread of another day's work, and instead, be pumped up because you know you are about to have another profitable day. Let me take a moment and share with you, the secrets of being a "high-powered" sales professional in Real Estate.

First of all, you are going to allocate a certain number of hours per week to your Real Estate career. This requires sitting down with your calendar, and literally scheduling items such as family time, personal appointments, administrative time, prospecting time, client follow-up time, meal times, etc. After you've completed this task, you will come up with a pre-determined number of hours you can dedicate to your work. For our purposes in this article, let's say you have a family, and you've determined you have 30 hours per week to devote exclusively to your Real Estate business. If you're trying to make ends meet, you may be looking at 30 hours and be thinking - "there is no way." There is a way, and it's really about changing the way you're looking at the premise of work. Now, let's change our focus from working harder, to working smarter.

Your next task in becoming a major player in Real Estate Sales, is to hire a hard-working, experienced Assistant, to handle all of your administrative skills, answer EVERY phone call, set your appointments, do your outbound prospecting, provide follow-up with your buyers and sellers, and handle your transaction coordination. At this point, you may be thinking, "I need to be making big money in order to afford an employee," and as my mentor told me, "How do you ever expect to make money in Real Estate, if you don't have time to perform the tasks YOU were licensed for." Think about this for a moment. You make money, only when you're dealing with clients, closing sales, and dealing with referrals. Why would you ever choose to spend one moment of your precious time participating in non-profit generating items? It doesn't make good sense - and now that you're going to become a "high-powered" sales professional, you need to take an hour or so of your time to hire an Assistant. To obtain a reputable Virtual Assistant, visit my website at www.chrisarcherinc.com for more information.

Now that you have your assistant in place, you are probably beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 30 hours per week, or even less, can work for your Real Estate business - when you're working smarter. Let's move our focus to finding clients. This can be a complete drudgery for the novice Real Estate Agent, or this can be an absolute pleasure! If you're following my mentor's secrets, you're going to learn to love prospecting and talking to people.

Cold calling has a place in certain industries, but in Real Estate, you want ever call, every meeting to be a warm call. We want to get your telephone ringing, and this is how we're going to do it. You, or your assistant, are going to create some excellent ads that you can run in your local newspaper. I'm not talking about the major-metro newspaper. I'm talking about the community paper, your friends and neighbors leaf through to read about the high school football team, or for a REALTOR TO LIST THEIR HOME. These publications cost pennies on the dollar to advertise in, versus your major news publications, and they are more than worth their weight in gold. You're creating your own "local brand." You're going to have brand recognition - and customers will start calling you, because in their mind, they've seen you around town.

You're going to offer your services for FREE, on a website you may have heard of before - Craig's List. You can type a large advertisement that focuses on your city or area on Craig's at no charge in most cities. Be sure you have your own website in place prior to running the ads, because you will undoubtedly get hits, and many visitors. Again, because potential clients are seeing your name/your brand out there, you'll notice more and more sellers contacting you to list their home.

So let's recap what we're doing so far. You're hiring an assistant. You're assistant can handle email and direct mail campaigns contacting expired listings, and place outbound prospecting calls to FSBO's. This is getting your phone ringing. You're having an on-going local ad in the community paper, and running daily ads, locally, in Craig's List. You're phone is ringing. Your email inbox is filling fast. Our next step is to create some strategic partnerships in the Real Estate Industries, to get our referral base cooking.

You're going to have your assistant sign you up for MySpace, MyInvestmentRiches, Facebook, and any other major social networking site, so that you can search for individuals such as appraisers, Real Estate Agents, Mortgage Brokers, Property Investors, Rehabbers, people trying FSBO's, and you're going to send them an introductory email via the networking site. It's kind of funny, if you were to send a regular email to someone, it can be considered SPAM, but when you contact them through a social network site, your communications are read probably 100% more of the time! Alot a certain number of hours per week to this unique prospecting activity (for your assistant), and again - your phone is ringing!

Now, let's talk about local networking. We're going to make a name for you, and we can do it locally, within a very short period of time. Attend your local Chamber of Commerce gatherings, offer to do a "First Time Buyer Seminar" at your local library, partner with a local Mortgage Broker, and do a "Reverse Mortgage Seminar" at your local senior center. You're going to have business cards and brochures in abundance with you, EVERYWHERE you go. You're going to be the area, resident expert!

When you follow a solid plan like I've just outlined for you, you're going to be so busy, and having so much fun earning the "big-bucks," you'll wonder why you didn't know it could be like this before. You'll be the envy of your Real Estate office, and you'll be able to retire a "high-powered" Real Estate sales professional - on your own time-line.

Chris Archer is the owner of http://www.chrisarcherinc.com and has owned small and home-based businesses since 1992. Currently residing in Pickerington, Ohio, Christina is the wife and mother of 5 children, ranging in age from 1 - 18. When Chris is not working with small and home-based business owners, she enjoys visiting Florida, spending time outdoors, amusement parks, movies, reading, video games, computers, home-schooling, and engaging in lively political conversations. If you'd like to obtain a free Home-Based Business Resource kit via email, visit her website at http://www.chrisarcherinc.com