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1. Create a Plan (and Plan to stick to it):
Creating a plan is not so difficult. Sticking to it is where so many agents fail. Set yourself a plan for your first year. Start by setting yourself an income goal, let’s be realistic about this. Don’t set a pie-in-the-sky number, do your homework. Work out the average fee (commission) per settled contract based on the area you plan to build and grow your Real Estate Network of prospects and sales. Then aim to sell one home every two months (6 in your first year). If you find yourself blitzing this target, you can always re-budget and amend based on your performance. It’s only paper, not set in concrete. Let’s say your gross average commission for each settled property is $12,000. Your aim will be to write $72,000 gross in your first year. Can you hear the other agents laughing at you when you tell them this. Don’t worry, because majority of the ones laughing will do no better. Generally, the split between your agency and yourself when you commence will be about 46%//54% (each agency is different so find an agency that gives you the best starting rate). Yours will be the lesser. At this rate, you will earn an income of $33k for the year.
 
2. Location (choosing a Farm area)
Most agents tend to choose their local area, the area where they live. It makes sense, easy to commute, keeps costs down and a few other benefits. Choose an area with a high turnover of stock and limit yourself to 1000 homes when starting out. Now some agents will agree with my statement, others will say, work on mass profits (area’s where properties are worth 7 digits) and higher commissions, but like any business, turnover of sales and continual cash flow must be the foundation for any successful business, especially when starting out. Choosing an area with high turnover can be assessed by number of listings and number of sales. An area such as a “mortgage belt”, generally sees homeowners feel the purse-strings tighten and ultimately can’t afford, nor want to afford the monthly repayment and sell. Do some demographic research and find an area populated with 18 – 27 year old culture. They can’t sit still, forever changing partners and thus properties change hands more frequently, (no punches please). The analogy here to reflect on is this; you wouldn’t open up McDonald’s in a town of 200 people, there’s not enough people to eat take out that often. Apply the same with choosing your area.
 
3. Prospect
Include in your plan, time for the most important part of your business, prospecting. The typical pattern when you start out in your real estate career is you will spend most of your time prospecting. Once you do numerous appraisals and list one or two properties, you will find yourself doing lesser prospecting, if at all, because your brain will tell you your so busy with home opens, organising sign boards, writing ads, vendor reports, writing offers and so on. The most important rule that will see you make it through your first year, your second year and your entire career, NEVER STOP PROSPECTING FOR NEW BUSINESS. Ensure that you set aside a few hours every day to build the pipeline of future clients that will bring you ‘Withdrawls for the future.’ There are many ways of prospecting for business and as your real estate business grows, your prospecting methods will change. You may prospect by door-knocking in the initial stages of your business. As you generate income you may re-invest that into outsourcing telemarketing techniques to find more prospects faster. You should also look at gaining an online presence and feeding off social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and many others.
 
4. List Everything
Do not become an agent that picks and chooses the listings they want on their “to sell” list. LIST EVERYTHING. You can not condition without control. There are many agents out there that will not list a property because the potential sellers expectations of market price are high, sometimes tens of thousands higher than the expected market estimate. This is where the best agents will LIST, DISTURB, EDUCATE (CONDITION) and CLOSE. If you want expansion on this, you will need to contact me directly after reading my entire article. Every time you list a property, you build profile through your signboard, you attract buyers and future vendors to your home open, you add to your growing database with the ultimate objective to sell the property for a premium market price. He who lists, lasts.
 
5. Data Manage (Build and nurture your Database)
As your ongoing prospecting continues to build your pipeline of clients, create a database that you can easily manage. Every appraisal you see, every listing presentation you do, every homeowner showing any interest of moving immediately or in the future, put them in your database. Every day I speak to agents that started with a database, but don’t know how to manage it, how to generate an income from all the hard work they put into it in the first place. Once you enter a prospect into your database, you will need to determine what sort of follow up will be required, whether it be by phone, email, personal letter, personal greeting and the intervals you will need to carry out the follow up (eg: every month, quarterly, half yearly). Notice I left out yearly, because if your contact with a prospect is yearly I can guarantee that by the time you speak to that prospect, that phone will be disconnected and they would have sold their home with another agent in your area. Your prospects should get to know who you are months, sometimes years before they list with you. This is how you become the preferred agent and gain maximum market share in your farm area.