Ten Steps to Increased Wealth in Your Business and Your Life

Ten Steps to Increased Wealth in Your Business and Your Life

1. Make a decision. The power to decide and understand that you will have to do something is one of the most powerful decisions in the universe. The process of deciding that you will be a success, have a great marriage, strong relationship with your children, or certain type of business or wealth will cause you to move forward towards your goal. Most people never decide what they truly want in life therefore they get nothing. Your conscious decision will cause your mind to diligently search and create the reality that you have chosen.

2. Creating a schedule. Your schedule should encompass your whole life. Your business and personal life need to be factored in to create balance. I have seen far too many Agents sacrifice their family to achieve a production or commission goal. When they finally reach their goal, they have no one to share it with or they realize what little importance that goal had compared to their family. I have a friend who tragically lost a child and now is reflecting on the years of decisions made for the sake of a few plaques and personal production goals. Those plaques or even the money earned are little comfort to her at a time of great sorrow. What a hollow feeling for that highly successful Agent!

3. Value of Time. To decrease your time worked and increase your production, you must know and understand the value of your time. Anyone can make more money if he trades more time for it. Even the ditch digger can do that. He merely needs to work overtime. The secret is to trade less time for more income.

People who understand the value of time trade less and less time for more and more income. You must first know the value of your time today. What are you worth per hour? Do you know? If you do not, it is a simple equation. Determine your gross commission for last year and divide it by the total hours you worked. 

4. Invest your time in high payoff activities. You must invest your time and define what the high payoff activities are for you. Once you have defined the activities, you need the discipline to do them daily. These are the only activities you can do to pay yourself well. You need to also understand that these activities will change as your hourly value increases. For a new Agent, there are a lot of high payoff activities compared to a top Agent in the office. For a top Agent, who makes $300.00 plus per hour, there are very few high payoff activities. You must invest the time to define what the high payoff activities are for you. The following were my high payoff activities when I was a real estate Agent.

1. Prospecting.
2. Lead follow-up.
3. Going on listing appointments.
4. Negotiating contracts.
5. Coaching staff.
6. Planning my business.

5. Developing a philosophy. By philosophy, I mean guidelines for doing business both personally and professionally. If you understand your value per hour and your average commission check, you can determine the type of people you are willing to work with, i.e. personality types, price range, and the type of clients to look for. You may not be able to work in a certain price range or with certain types of people. When a buyer does not provide you the answers you need, you can refer him to another Agent or drop him because he does not meet your philosophy. You need to understand you were not put on this earth to help everyone. There are people you cannot help. This fact does not make them or us bad people or you a bad person. It just makes you a business person who expects a reasonable profit for the amount of time invested. 

6. Understand your business. Know what generates your business. What are the top three income producing activities that you do? Where do you spend your time daily? Compare those two answers and look at what you are worth per hour. Do only those activities that earn you the highest return the bulk of your day. I will give you a hint; high payoff activities are not putting up signs and lock boxes. 

7. Prospecting. There are as many ways of prospecting, as there are people. The key is you must prospect daily to bring in the business. You can prospect via the phone or in person. You can prospect expired, FSBO, cold call, appointments for buyers, investment properties, your sphere, and out of area owners. The list is endless. If you are not spending a minimum of one hour everyday prospecting for new business, you will have difficulty during stretches of your career. Even calling your past clients and asking for referrals is an excellent way to prospect.

This is the time to focus on prospecting and bringing in more clients. You have momentum, so keep going. 

8. Qualifying the potential client. This step is crucial to success. I see more Agents make mistakes in this area than in any other. They are afraid to qualify people to the point of excluding them out. Do not be like these foolish Agents. The whole goal in qualifying is the exclusion of the unmotivated. If you do not become skilled at excluding out the unmotivated buyer or seller, they will waste your time. They will eventually drive you out of the business, both emotionally and financially.

The most valuable commodity you have in life is your time. We all have a finite amount of time here on earth. We do not even know the amount of time we have left. If we choose to work with unqualified, unmotivated, unloanable, unable to sell people too often, we are out of business. By properly qualifying all leads, you are saving yourself from putting them in your car or going to their house to find out they are not a lead at all.
You can always create more leads. You can get more leads than you can handle. Why not pick only the best ones?

9. Create Strong Systems. Systems enable Agents to leverage themselves while still servicing their clients and prospects. You need to develop systems that create the desired result without your involvement.

10. Delegation. You need to delegate the low payoff tasks that need to be completed to other staff members. You need to teach and train your staff to replace you in certain functions. You need to monitor their progress with praise. And finally, you need to get out of the way and let them do it.

The last step is the most difficult step for most Agents. They hire assistants then never turn over ownership of the tasks to the assistant. You need to be able to relinquish control. They are going to fall down and bump their knee. They will ruin some deals and make some clients angry. But you have made mistakes, why wouldn’t they make similar mistakes?

Source: realestatechampions.com/realestatetraining_articles/ma/4.asp