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The
Common Patterns of Success
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The first
line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina tells us that
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way.”
Today, we might draw a comparison and say that
successful salespeople are all alike; each unsuccessful
salesperson is unsuccessful in his/her own way. It seems as if Tolstoy hit upon a truism here.
That may be why he is so famous and still read and
quoted almost 100 years after his death. The good news is
that since successful salespeople are all alike, it should
be relatively easy to identify their successful patterns
and copy them. Let’s
give it a whirl.
PERSONAL
ATTRIBUTES
You have
heard all this before so I will not dwell on these
well-known characteristics that experts claim successful
salespeople must have.
They are the ability to listen, an outgoing
personality, a high tolerance for rejection, empathy,
aggressiveness, and sociability to name a few.
Some people come with these traits as standard
equipment while others have to learn them. Having all the
right personal attributes in just the right amounts is
very helpful once you are face to face with a motivated
and qualified lead. But
what are the characteristics and behaviors that successful
salespeople have that seem to put them in front of an
inordinate number of qualified leads?
LEAD
GENERATING BEHAVIORS
You have
probably heard this before as well but these behaviors are
so darned important that it bears repeating.
In order to generate qualified leads you must start
with a PLAN based on tried and true marketing principles.
You must IMPLEMENT the marketing strategies in your
plan faithfully. EVALUATE your activities on a regular
basis to find ways to improve your results.
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Not
All Plans Lead to Success |
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course it is possible to develop a lead
generating plan that has absolutely no chance to
succeed. People
do this all the time.
There are many ways to go wrong but let’s
look at the ways to do it right.
FOOLPROOF
PLAN 101
You
cannot go wrong if you simply visit me online at http://www.sellrealestate.net/FreeWebPlan.asp
and answer the questions about the kinds of leads
you want to generate. Either I or my assistant,
Tina, will contact you to set up a personal phone
consultation and the result will be a professional
lead generating plan that can be used to guide all
your marketing materials including your Website.
It is called a Custom Web Plan but it is much
more than that—it is a complete marketing plan and
it is FREE.
REALISTIC
& UNREALISTIC PLANNING
In
order to know whether or not a particular strategy
is realistic or not you usually have to know
something about the environment. For example,
sometimes a real estate agent will tell me that the
reason behind his/her poor marketing results is poor
or no Web placement on the major search engines.
A little bit of checking reveals that poor
search engine showing has nothing to do with the
agent’s poor results.
It is possible to use Yahoo’s keyword
search tools to determine how many people searched
for real estate information in your area in the past
30 days. If
there are a lot of people looking to buy real estate
in your area then search engine placement might be a
big help BUT if there are not that many people
looking to buy real estate in your area then search
engine placement is not going to do you a whole lot
of good. |
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is by far the most common reason that real
estate salespeople fail to reach their goals.
It goes something like this.
The agent sets a goal—maybe to double
the typical number of listings and sales for
2006. The
agent develops a series of smart marketing moves
that will surely do the job.
But then, six months later we find the
agent following the exact pattern of old and, of
course, getting the same-old results. What happened to the brilliant plan? Sometimes the plan is implemented for a while but when
monumental success is not instantaneous, the
plan is left to die.
Sometimes the plan is never implemented.
Why would someone go to all the trouble
to create a plan, possibly set up a
knock-their-socks-off Website and then ignore it
all? Because
change is hard and that is something you have to
plan for when you decide to take your business
to the next level.
Change is hard.
TODAY
YOU HAVE TO EMBRACE CHANGE
Some
people have been doing things in one way for so
many years that when the Internet came along and
required a great deal of change, they simply
could not make the switch.
Others saw the possibilities and even
though change is hard, they made those changes
and now their marketing is easier than ever
before. That
is the paradox of Internet Marketing.
The Internet will make your life easier
but first you have to go through the pain of
making a few changes…and that is never easy.
FOLLOW
THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
You can make the process pretty easy on yourself
by adopting my recommended formula for success.
First, start with a realistic plan for
success and growth.
Remember, I’ll help you with that step
and it won’t cost you a penny.
Next, create your Website to mirror that
plan.
Finally, don’t Ignore Your
Plan…Follow It!
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