By Darryl Davis
RISMEDIA, June 6, 2008-Your office will give you certain building blocks to get you started – a phone, some powerful policies and procedures, and maybe a bit of advertising. But it’s up to you to build your business and take your career to the next level.
If you are truly a “business within a business” in your office, then as a business you need to focus on managing yourself effectively. This includes servicing your client-base and farming. This also means that you must focus on self-promotion. As you read this article, consider what you can do to distinguish yourself from all the other agents out there.
Concepts of Self-Promotion
1. You’re a business within a business. There’s your company and then there’s you. Your company office provides you with an infrastructure and history to boost credibility, an office, a phone, and perhaps some advertising to back up the name, but it’s up to you to build the sales, generate the revenue, promote yourself, create supportive business relationships and, in some cases, hire people to work for you, such as an assistant.
You’re responsible for your career so start thinking of yourself less as a salesperson and more as a businessperson.
2. Your objective should be to become a local celebrity. Being a celebrity means people in a specific area know your face, your name, and what you do for a living. This area doesn’t have to be based on geography, it could be style of home, waterfront property, clubs, organizations etc. What are you doing to stand out from every other agent out there?
3. You must be the center of your marketing. You should be the focus of your self-promotion, but at the same time, don’t diminish your company. Does your company have a lot of area clout? Is your broker spending money to promote the office? You want to ride the coattails of those efforts. With this in mind, an effective promotional piece or ad should have the company colors, logo and name and might have big lettering and a photo of you.
4. You need to be unique. In show business lingo, you must have a gimmick or a hook. The same concept is true in sales and real estate. What makes you unique and different? You might embody this in your logo and slogan.
5. Think perceived value. When I got into speaking many years ago, I knew I had to have a brochure. So I spent $3,000 for 1,000 brochures; that’s $3 a piece. Full color, several photos, it was gorgeous. If you looked at it, you would have thought, “this guy’s been around for awhile.” But that was the first thing I came up with and that was the only thing I had. I didn’t have demo tapes or a video, I didn’t have cassette programs. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t even delivered a seminar yet. But that brochure was my foot in the door to some major companies and the efforts paid off. I’ve promoted a lot of things in my life, and what I’ve learned is this concept of perceived value. Meaning that people have to think you’re very successful. You may not be yet, but you have to send out that image. It’s better to have one expensive looking piece than five shoddy ones.
6. Expect to wait one year for results. All your marketing and promotional efforts – slogans, logos, ads, flyers, etc. – need time to sink into the public’s mind. It might take up to a year. That’s why you should master basics like prospecting first. Prospecting is a short-term method of creating inventory and it requires many hours of direct effort. Self-promotion takes fewer hours of direct effort, yet provides phenomenal results in the long run.
7. The key to success is repetition. If you are going to start doing some kind of self-promotion campaign, you’ve got to stick with it. You need to be consistent and persistent to make it work. Remember that your goal is to be the first real estate agent people in your service area think of when they think of real estate in any way. You want to be their resource which means that they must see your name and face so often that they think of you when they see or hear anything real estate-related.
8. Focus on building a client base. If you do your job to build your client base – prospecting, servicing listings, etc. – and you are getting great testimonials for the work you did, within five years you should be in a position where the “machine” (the procedures and systems you put in place to work for you) you’ve created will provide you with 80% of your income or more. That’s having eight out of 10 closings provided by “low direct effort” activities like farming and self-promotion. Pretty good, huh?
For over 15 years, Darryl Davis has traveled around the country coaching agents and brokers on how to achieve their Next Level of success. He is the creator of the nationally acclaimed POWER Program, the only yearlong coaching and training course where Power Agents, on average, double their production over their previous year. Darryl is a best-selling author, one of the highest rated speakers at the NAR Convention each year, and has a career-curriculum that brings agents from “Rookies to Retirement”.
For more information, visit www.DarrylDavisSeminars.com or call 1-800-395-3905.
