Arouse Emotions, Don’t Sell Logic

No skill that you can acquire in sales will enhance your earning power more than learning how to arouse emotions in your buyers in ways that are positive to the sale. The exact words you use will depend on your offering, your personality, your buyers, and market conditions. Positive emotions trigger sales; negative emotions destroy sales. As you work at developing the skills to evoke emotions in your potential clients, always keep that concept in mind. You can destroy sales as rapidly as you can create them through the clumsy use of, or the lack of control over, the emotional setting.

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“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” -George Bernard Shaw

Financial Stability – You DO Need Savings!

When I started in real estate I had $46,000 in debt over my head. This was a huge mistake! As a result, my first few months were fraught with anxiety and turmoil. I exhausted myself working as hard as I could, while the stress of my situation wore me down even more.

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“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
-Carl Jung

Customer demands are constantly increasing; the amount of pressure a salesperson encounters is also going up. Today, there are an overwhelming amount of things that a salesperson must battle to cater to ever increasing customer expectations, conflicting pressures, and office demands.

Salespeople are now expected to collect more information about their clients, research their needs, advertise in more sophisticated ways, use more complex computer programs, learn about iPad and Smartphone applications, get into the “Now” with social networking, and figure out how to get the attention of the millions of young-and-hip social networkers that spend billions of hours on the internet every year.

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“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

My success in August of 2008 is another prime example of how there is always opportunity to make money in real estate rentals. There’s no doubt about it, market conditions are tough. The current state of Wall Street, rising unemployment, and general precariousness of the economy have created a pessimistic atmosphere among many agents. Over and over I hear the question: it is still possible to make money in real estate? My answer, as you’ve heard throughout this book, is absolutely YES!

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“Talk does not cook rice.”
- Chinese Proverb

By the end of my first year I paid off $46,000 in debt. That was a tremendous relief. However, that meant I had only $20,000 left in savings. I still wasn’t living the life I wanted and I knew I had to take a chance!

Over the past year I had generated about $222,000 in gross commissions, but because I worked for a broker, he received roughly 40% of that. The split was $120,000 for me, $100,000 for the broker. That’s a lot of money to give up when you’ve done all the work! I knew my success depended on becoming a broker, opening my own office, and hiring agents to work for me!

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Prepare for Built-In Objections

Some apartments will have obvious down-sides, or elements that don’t meet up to every one of your client’s preferences. The good part about this is that you know every single one of these potential objections in advance and can prepare how best to handle them! The best preparation involves practice! Michael Phelps won eight Gold Medals in Beijing because he spent countless hours in the pool. He spent thousands of hours preparing for races that lasted mere minutes! Consistently practice confronting objections of every type and you’ll become virtually unstoppable!

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“The aim of life is self-development. TO realize one’s nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for.”
- Oscar Wilde

I want to take a moment to address the kinds of things that can make it very difficult for someone to become a successful real estate agent. Specifically, I want you to know what you’re getting into and to really evaluate if this business is right for you.

The real estate industry offers an exciting and lucrative opportunity for agents. Most of what you need to excel can be learned and perfected, however there are certain personality traits that will help, and others that will make it difficult to succeed.

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Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.” - Henry Ward Beecher

True success is dependent upon continual education and growth both as an agent and as a person. We only have 24 hours in a day and we only have a certain number of days on earth – are we really making the best use of our time? Personal development makes you question how you spend your time, where you put your energy and how you can improve your life.

Think about each hour in terms of your career. Some folks earn minimum wage for each hour, others earn $1,000 per hour! How much do you charge for each hour of work? How can you increase your level of prosperity?

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Leverage Your Time!

As an agent, you are generating leads, advertising, showing apartments, doing paperwork, etc…80% of this work can be delegated to an assistant. This frees your time to do only those activities that make you money.

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The following is the fifth in a series of Top Agent Profiles.

Originally from Westchester, I went to Suny, in Plattsburgh, and graduated with a degree in communications and broadcast management.

I started training to be a rental agent in the summer of 2005, at Starnest. I was in between jobs; I had been in entertainment PR, and worked at CBS evening news. I didn’t know anything about real estate at the time…I chose Starnest, because I wanted to start at a smaller company in order to get extra attention, and hands-on training in a small setting.

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The following is the fourth in a series of Top Agent Profiles.

After graduating with a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Connecticut in May of 2004, I found myself searching for a way to fulfill my childhood dream: to live in New York City. The summer after graduation, I landed my first real job in the art world; I was an assistant to a large scale metal sculptor in Connecticut. After about 8 months, I quickly learned two important lessons: I did not want to live or work in Connecticut. Also, I no longer wanted to create art as a career. These two significant events lead me to October of 2005, when I began my real estate career with Citi Habitats at the ripe old age of 22.

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An excerpt from my book, “How To Make $120,000 Your First Year As A Rental Agent”

The words we choose create our reality.
Does that sound like an exaggeration? In the realm of human experience, words have incredible power. They can inspire, entice, endear, or enrage. Words convey ideas, instill beliefs, and form the intricate weave of relationships. Words or phrases that have been spoken or written just once, have endured throughout decades and even centuries.

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“I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific.” ~ Lily Tomlin

Toyota was ranked #5 on Fortune’s 2007 Top 20 Most Admired Companies. I’m mentioning this here because Toyota creates goals for 500 years in the future. They actually have a charter book where they detail and update these goals. It’s obvious that none of the executives at Toyota will live much beyond 100 years; however, as a company they still understand the importance of making goals that span far into the future. In doing this they create a standard in which the direction of the company and its future achievements are so clear that they leave no room for doubt of their continued success!

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“Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Research by Child Development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that only 30% of the world’s population thinks only in words. That would indicate then, that 70% of the population is some variant of a visual thinker.

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Here are some words that rental agents should replace in their vocabulary. Do not use the old and false sounding words that most agents use.

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My Fellow Agents! I hope you’re having an outstanding weekend. Today we’ll learn that sometimes, more is really more!

“Success is never final and failure never fatal. It is courage that counts. ”

— George F. Tilton

Your primary goal when working with a new potential client is to get them to like you, trust you and want to listen to you. That’s the absolute most basic foundation of all of my training. The reason you take the actions and use the words I teach is that they’ve all been designed and proven to make you likeable, demonstrate trustworthiness, and say something worth listening to.

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Don’t Waste a Second!

We all have 86,400 seconds in a day; be careful about the choices you make.

My Fellow Agents! Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to strangers. For instance, “A guys walks into an elevator…”