Brett was known for his great fielding efforts and was a nightmare to many pitchers around the league.His famous “pine tar” incident still lives on in infamy.  That is where an umpire disqualified a Brett home run after declaring the home run hitter had “illegally” put too much pine tar on his bat.  An irate Brett charge the umpire & mayhem ensued. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PrTYdlaqtxE

In a recent interview on his birthday a reporter asked him to try and describe why he thought he had been so successful in the sport.   Brett’s answer was nothing short of brilliant.  He basically said he would go out and give it his all and “then some.”

What if we all adopted that mantra for our own business?  How would that impact the service you currently give your clients?

Going the extra mile is more than just a slogan, it is a way of life.

We can all recall someone in our own world who lives by that standard.  They are successful and people gravitate to their business.

In today’s world where so many people give us average to mediocre service, someone who delivers an outstanding experience “and then some” is unforgettable.

All the Best,

The world was turned on its head when the financial meltdown occurred. Most of us who have been in the business a while had experienced short recessions but never anything like what we have all gone through. The question now is, did we learn anything from all of this?While most markets are experiencing some recovery in prices, there is still reason to take some cautionary measures. For example, many of today’s buyers are looking at less than what they can actually afford to buy and are choosing to build a larger rainy day fund with the excess.

The other obvious shift from yesteryear is the locking into longer term fixed rate loans as opposed to the once fashionable adjustable rate mortgages. The most obvious difference today is the price buyers want to pay is the most important factor over all others.

These “paradigm shifts” bode well long term for our industry. The more people who look at homes as a place to live or raise their families instead of as a speculative casino the better we are as commissioned sales people. The steadier the market the steadier will be your income stream.

The obvious question is, have you made the same adjustments that today’s buyers have? Are you building a larger rainy day fund? Have you locked in long term fixed rates loans, (for your home and business) Are you keeping your expenses in check?  Have you developing additional sources of income, i.e. rentals, investments, savings?

The real estate market is getting brighter which feels good. So now is the time to create those habits and systems that will see you through those rainy days ahead, whenever that might be. Because one thing is for sure, we live in a cyclical and fluid world that we can prosper from as long as we have the necessary staying power.

Warm Regards,

We have all received mail addressed to ourselves where it is obvious the sender had no clue who they were sending to. I love the impersonalized ones that start out, “Dear Resident”. Or, another favorite of mine is when they try to imply familiarity with me in the body of the letter but have addressed the envelope to Dennis Curtis.So this got me to thinking about how relevant is the material you are sending to your database.

Does it make sense to send the buyer who just closed on their home standardized information about current market prices?

As we all know, there are no perfect properties. Once a buyer gets in a home or commercial building, there are all kinds of little things that need fixed or painted. Maybe a list of handymen would be more appropriate to send them a few weeks or months after they have moved in and have had time to decide what changes or repairs the place might need.

It might make sense to arrange your database into similar groupings such as newly purchased, properties purchased 2-3 years ago, or clients who are approaching that magical 5 year mark.

That way you can send them materials that are really relevant to them when they need it most.

The idea here is for you to create in their minds eye that “you” are their real estate resource.

You can do that best by looking at where they are in the buying and selling cycle and relate to them accordingly. You can still standardize this process of contact but it now has more impact.

Give it a try and watch your relevancy meter spike in their eyes.

I realize these past few years it has been extremely tough carrying large inventories of listings on the books. The toll of having disgruntled property owners calling you constantly as their values continued to go down has been very difficult to handle. Many of you have even said you didn’t want anything to do with anymore listings.But the tide is turning and turning fast. Inventories have shrunk dramatically in most markets and once reluctant sellers are beginning to come out of their bunkers to test the market again.

Over the past 6 months, home prices have increased between 4-9 percent according to the major home price indices.

Now is the time to focus a lot of your energy on getting properties listed. Normally I would strongly recommend only listing them at “priced to sell” prices, but with a rising market that we find ourselves in, I would not be hesitant to push the envelope a bit, price-wise, if that is what it took to secure the listing. While we pride ourselves in knowing our individual markets, we also have to be conscious of the fact that pricing is still a function of what a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to sell for.

While I cannot predict how long this transition from a buyers’ market to a sellers’ market will last, my experience tells me to act now and grab as many listings as you can. Those who have the inventory will win bigger in this emerging market.

Good luck and I wish you all a very Happy Easter.

While we all inherently know that the majority of one’s business comes from just a few sources, I am often amazed to see once good real estate producers struggle with their production because they wander away from some of the very “basics” that worked earlier in their career.Look at this recent statistic from NAR. “85 percent of agents quit communicating with their contacts after 6 months.”  A first I found that unbelievable until I verified the research. While the study was mainly referring to existing prospects it got me to thinking, I wonder if this could also be true of past clients and customers?

Over the years I have made it a habit to ask brokers and agents where their business is coming from. It started when I first became a broker of a traditional real estate office. I was always curious who and what was driving the business. More often than not, most top producers said “past clients and referrals”. The same is true today.

So it seems obvious to me there is a disparity between NAR’s stat that 85 percent of agents quit making contact with their database in six months versus what the real top producers (the other 15 percent), are doing.

Anyone who knows me understands, I don’t like swimming upstream. The stats tell the story.It would be prudent for all of us to double check our contact management systems to ensure we stay in that top 15 percentile of producers. Hope this makes as much sense to you as it did me.

Let’s assume we have a fantastic experience with a new vendor or service provider. What unconsciously happens next is we immediately set the bar at that level for all future interactions we might have going forward. This can blindside someone who has been providing you a service only to realize you now expect even more from them going forward.Look at this recent statistic. Buyers and Sellers use the first agent they contact 65 percent of the time. That is amazing when you think about it. Nearly 2/3 of your business is possibly dependent on how efficient you are in being the first one in on a listing presentation or being the agent who responds the quickest to an Internet enquiry.

Do you have your systems set up to respond immediately? If not, the tale of the tape is pretty overwhelming. Now 65 percent is not a number we can ignore.

This is our new world. We must adjust or be marginalized.

Together, I am confident we will develop a mindset to succeed.

Warm regards and Happy St. Patrick’s Day,

It goes something like this.

You decide it’s time you need a new car. For the next week, all you see on TV are car ads.

You deliberate and debate between your needs and your wants, your wants win out, and you opt for the little red convertible. Up until then, you rarely thought of or saw any little red convertibles on the road. That is until you drive yours off the car lot!

Mysteriously, it appears the whole neighborhood has done the same thing, red convertibles of all makes and models start appearing everywhere. How could this be?

Or consider this one… the family deliberates for months about what kind of new puppy everyone can agree on. Hundreds of choices and breeds are discussed over the dinner table and finally there is a consensus. It will be Dachshund.

The next thing you know, Dachshunds seem to be populating the earth, or least your neighborhood. I know each of us have experienced similar instances in our life.  This has a technical name; it is known as Selective Perception.

It is defined as “the personal filtering of what we see and hear so as to suit our needs”.  It often occurs when a person is paying attention only to information of interest to them.

So how can we apply this to our real estate practice? First, we have to remember that buyers and sellers think of real estate practitioners only when they need to buy or sell a property.  We are not always at the top of their mind, even though we hope that is the case.

Then, they start seeing signs, advertisements, billboards, TV ads and now internet and social media sites with real estate related content. Until then, we are mostly invisible.

As brokers and agents, we must devise strategies to keep our brand and personal name out there, all of the time. We live in a 24/7 world and so do our customers.  While we can never be exactly sure when our past and future clients enter into the present need for our services, we must employ strategies and tools to keep us top of mind for just this occasion.

Our national TV ads and increasing dominance on the web helps, but the more you can use the social media platforms and good old fashion marketing ideas to keep your presence in your clients’ minds, the better. Monthly mailing campaigns, drop byes, advertising, open houses and a host of other activities still work in conjunction with all the web based programs available today.

Selective Perception, we all do it daily. Keep it foremost in your mind as you design your promotional activities.

Write out your life/career history in 300 words and it will be an enlightening exercise.

It will let you see if your dreams line up with your current reality.  If there is a difference between your dreams and your reality, that tension can bring attention to the gap and help divert resources to making the dreams closer to reality.

I bet if you look back over your time on this planet you will see that your childhood dreams have dramatically changed from then to now. As kids, we get the luxury of changing our dreams every week or two, Fireman one day, professional baseball player the next. But as adults, the demands of adulthood get in the way, making a living, raising kids and paying the mortgage, just to name a few.

Truthfully answering these three questions can help us regain our compass so we can actually see in our own words if we are on the correct course for ourselves.

Many real estate professionals, like me, backed into this business from other initial occupations. I started out in the grocery business then had a short stint as a commodities broker and finally stumbled my way in to the real estate business.  It is a business that I am passionate about.

I have known a few “lucky” individuals that actually started out in life knowing they would go into the real estate industry from the get go. Many of them had relatives who had guided them in that direction from an early age. Most of us had to take a more circuitous route to get there.

I read a recent quote from Mark Ford, a newsletter author, which summed up my feelings about my career. “The What To Do” question in my life was not the result of thoughtful choice but of expedient decisions based on circumstances. It took me to a good place eventually, but the path, in retrospect, seems half accidental.”

Once we have clarity on question one, we then have to identify two more very important factors.

Whom do we want to spend time with, both personally and professionally and where do we want to do that? In my case, being around true real estate professionals is a blessing I do not take for granted and one that I cherish every day.

As to where to hang out, the world has become my oyster. As many of you know, I love to travel and while the good old U S of A is still the best place in the world to call home, I consider myself a citizen of the world. Being part of a global brand has made that goal so much easier.

The What, the Who and the Where…

Thoughtful questions for sure and certainly ones that will give us clarity and more importantly, direction. In this ever more complicated world, simplicity can be a wonderful thing. Knowing that you are doing what you love to do, with the right company and people and in the place you love being, it does not get much better than that.

My hope for you is you are one of the “lucky ones” who have figured it out.   And if you have not, seriously contemplating these questions and their answers may just be the ticket to get you there.

Being an avid book reader, I am constantly reminded of how much I really don’t know. There are so many subjects and topics of interest that I wish I knew more about but have never taken the time to really dig into and explore.

This got me to thinking about what I really “do know”.  The one thing that jumped out at me is that having spent time in one field or subject helps you see a roadmap clearer than if you just entered the business. For example, I am always getting pitched to get involved in some sort of business deal that I have no real knowledge about.  I usually listen to the presenter, smile and politely decline the offer.I have made the mistake of getting involved in something foreign to me more than enough times in my life to do it again.

This brings me back to a truism in life, “We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes”. Once we get past being upset or angry about a particular failure or shortcoming in life, the quicker we are able to take that experience and turn it into a lesson opportunity.

For example, the next time you don’t get the listing or fail to close the sale, ask yourself what is the lesson for me here? It will totally change how you look at things. Instead of beating yourself up or being mad at someone else, you can switch into learning mode and imprint the lesson learned into your mind for future reference.

Failure never feels good while you are going through it, but Wow, does it pack a powerful punch of immediate feedback and knowledge. Now don’t get me wrong, success is what we all strive for, but I suggest we use those times we come up short to create valuable learning moments.

Enjoy your weekend,

I don’t know about you, but I have barely learned how to use what I have, when a new application or device makes what I have nearly obsolete.

So what is the message here? Well to me, it means I must adapt my mindset to one of constant learning and more importantly to staying relevant. You see, if we fight this trend we will be left behind. Our future customers are not standing still and their expectations will continue to grow.

New software and new technologies will continue to change how we do business.

Stay open and embrace a lifestyle of constant learning.

Together we will share and learn these tools together, that’s one of the powers of our network.