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Dear Friend,

This week we are going to wrap up our discussion about your before, during and after units.  And we’re going to talk about how to decide which is the best opportunity for you right now, how to decide and assess looking at your business where your best efforts would be spent to get the highest possible return.

So we’ve spent the last two weeks with my friend Joe Stumpf giving you a great overview about the before unit, the during unit and the after unit, and now you’re probably excited about implementing some of this stuff in your business and it’s probably time for you now to really look at it and say “Where is my biggest opportunity?  Where is my biggest need, and where does my greatest lie in going to work on my business?”

You know, it’s really a pretty exciting time for you right now, so let’s talk about your before unit and how to decide if maybe the before unit is where to start.  So just as an overview, what we’re looking for in your before unit if you choose to work on that, is an automated way to predictably and affordably get new business coming to you every single month.  Get one or two or three additional transactions where people are calling you without you having to do all that mind numbing cold prospecting or time consuming stuff to find people, we’re going to look at setting up and automated way for you to do that in your business. 

So it’s all about getting people to call you instead of you calling them, and the question that you have to ask yourself when you go into your before unit is “Am I already spending money trying to attract people right now?”  A lot of times people look at their before unit and count up all the money that they’re already spending.  If you’re spending right now anywhere between $100, $200, $500, $1000 or more a month on trying to attract new business and you’re not getting at least a 15:1 return on that investment, the before unit might offer a big opportunity for you.

You know a lot of times people get into doing things that they just get used to writing the cheque for them, they get used to spending the money, but they’re not getting any return for it.  I can’t tell you how many people I talk to that are spending, you know, $60, $80, $100, $150 a month on a website that doesn’t do anything for them.  They’re spending $150, $250 even $500 on display advertising in home magazines that doesn’t do anything for them.  You have to ask yourself “If I’m farming an area, if I’m sending full colour, expensive postcards into a farm area month after month after month and not getting any return on that,” you have to ask yourself “Is there a better opportunity for me?  If I knew what to do with that money, would I get a better return?”  And the answer is “Yes, absolutely there is.” 

So if you’re spending money right now the greatest opportunity for you is to stop spending money on things that don’t work, and start really getting into an education process where you’re starting to learn where can I spend my money that I will get a return on my investment.  So a couple of tools that you’ll need, because everything that we talk about revolves around getting people to call you.  And if you’ve been listening to Marketing Monday now for some time, you know that two of the things that I talk about using are a voice mail system with multiple extensions where people can call and listen to a recorded message 24 hours a day so they don’t have to talk to anybody, and a website.  A lead generating website where people can come and leave their information to contact them for more information about buying or selling or borrowing. 

If you’re already spending money on those things and you’re not getting a return on your investment, that’s a big opportunity for you right here.  So what we want to look at is if we’ve got the tools, if we’ve got the money, how can we start spending it by narrowing our focus to a single target market and doing everything that we possibly can to find buyers for that particular target market, or to get listings in that particular target market.  You know if you narrow down to a farm area say River Oaks, or say Oak Wood or Cyprus Wood or any of the named communities that you can think of in your area of a thousand homes, if you’re going to farm and area, that you look at what the total yield would be in that neighbourhood, there’s lot of opportunity for you, but it’s all about trying to find leads.  People who want to buy, sell or borrow in those neighbourhoods, that’s all we’re looking for here.

If you’re trying to attract buyers you’ve got to think about what type of buyer would you most be interested in.  What type of buyer would you most like to work with?  You can choose anything you want, and often the big mistake that people end up making is trying to choose too many people to work with, too many types of buyers.  You know, you’ve got to realise that when people are looking through home magazines, or they’re driving around neighbourhoods, or they’re looking in the classifieds they’re only looking for what they’re looking for.  You know, people look one person at a time, and the more that you can focus on attracting just that one person, the better off you’re going to be.

Now you’ve got to ask yourself how much would you cheerfully pay for a transaction?  How much would you cheerfully pay to work with one buyer from one particular target market, or one seller form one particular neighbourhood?  How much would you happily pay to do that?
You know a lot of times when I talk about this at The Main Event, we ask straight out saying “Would you pay a relocation company 20% of a transaction to get a guaranteed transaction?”  And of course most people would because guess what the going rate for relocation transactions now is probably closer to 30% or 35%, and a lot of people would happily to that, but the difference is that when you’re doing that the reason that you’re willing to pay so much is because it’s a guaranteed transaction.  There’s certainty in it, you’re going to get a big cheque and from that big cheque you’re going to write a smaller cheque of 30% to pay for that referral.

Well what we’re really looking at is boy wouldn’t it be better if we could write the smaller cheques ahead of time, and make the bigger cheques?  You know if we had that kind of confidence you’d be happy to spend $200, or $300, or $500 per transaction all day long, wouldn’t you?  I hope you would.  I mean if that’s something that you would do, then your before unit is a big opportunity for you because that is very easy to do.  You could get to a point where you could write $200, or $300 or $500 cheques all day long depending on what your market is, who you’re trying to attract to get guaranteed transactions.  So it’s worth investing your time, investing in yourself to learn how to develop that skill.

Let’s talk about your during unit a little bit.  If you’re somebody who’s already doing a lot of transactions, you know, you’ve got lots of listings, you’ve got lots of buyers in your pipeline, lenders you’ve got lots of loans in your pipeline, if you’re got people that you’re working with right now and you’re always very busy, the easiest thing for you to do is to start looking at “How can I make an impact in my during unit?”  

Now remember your during unit is the timeline from the time that you get an appointment with somebody until 30, 60, 90 days after the transaction has closed.  So you’ve got that whole window of opportunity there to work with people, you’re talking with them very frequently, they’re hypersensitive about what’s going on in the real estate market now, they see everybody else who’s going through the transaction process, all their conversations are revolving around real estate or getting a loan, all of their friends as soon as they move into their new property are coming to see their new house in that first 90 days, real estate and this transactional process is at the peak of interest to them.  They’re never going to be more consumed with thinking about, talking about and being around people who are in the process of buying, selling or borrowing. 

So that opportunity gives you a great chance to bring up and presence the referral language.  To recognise when you have those referral opportunities, and to be able to respond with referral language so that you will convert more of those opportunities into actual referrals.
Now remember our goal for you in your during unit is that you convert half the people that you go through a transaction with into another transaction before the end of that transaction is over.  Before that 30, 60, 90 day period.  Now that means that that could increase your business by 50% right there, you know?  And it doesn’t cost you any more.  It doesn’t cost any money to know what to say in a specific situation so that people will refer somebody to you during that transaction. 

That’s a great investment, is to know the words to say and when to say them.  And that’s really what we talk about at The Main Event.  Every time we do a Main Event we spend an entire day on referral language, we talk about your during process and how to recognise those referral opportunities and respond with referral language that will get people to refer their friends and their family.

You know it’s a very natural process for people once they’re in that process, once they’re talking about it with their friends and family, it presents lots of opportunities for them to refer you.  If they knew how and if they knew that you needed their help they’d be more then happy to do it. 

So you ask yourself “Where on my timeline right now do I have people who are through the transaction process?”  I mean, if you’re just constantly bringing people through that process and less then half of them are referring somebody to you before the end of the transaction, you’re missing out.  You’re missing out on lots of lost revenue. 

You know it requires a little different thinking when you start going into your during unit with the goal of getting half the people that you do business with to refer somebody to you, because you’re playing a much higher level game now.  It’s not about just let’s get the transaction closed.  It’s about how can I create such a world class experience, such a great experience that people feel comfortable and confident enough to refer me to their friends and their family before they even wait until the end to see how it ends.

You know, if they’re going through this roller coaster process where their emotions are up and down and up and down all the way through the process they might be thinking to themselves “I’d better wait to see how this ends before I refer somebody else to this.”  You know, the more confident and comfortable you can make people feel, the more happily they will refer their friends and their family.  So that’s why we spend so much time looking at your process, looking at your what we call your ‘customer experience timeline.’  Looking at where we can shore up those experiences, where we can create those ‘wow’ opportunities, create those ‘wow’ moments where people are receptive to referring people to you.  So that’s a great opportunity for you if you’ve got people in the process right now.

Now if you’ve been in business for quite some time, you know a lot of people, or you’ve lived in an area where you know a lot of people, if you’ve come from another occupation into real estate where you had a lot of relationships with people, you may have the biggest opportunity in your after unit.

Now your after unit is where we talk about building lifetime relationships with the people who know you, like you and trust you, to the point where they would either do another transaction with you, or they would refer somebody to you.  And we talk about getting a 20% annual yield on your relationship portfolio.  Now if you listen to that language, you know, we talk about like it’s a financial portfolio, and we talk about it like its an asset, and that’s really what it is.

It’s your most uniquely competition proof asset that you have.  You know, you have relationships with people that nobody else can have.  You’ve got a personal relationship with probably 150 people, that’s what we find is a typical scenario that most people if you really think about it know personally 150 people.  And those are the people that we’re looking for you to build this relationship with.  We’re not talking about 1500 people that you have on a mailing list, or a thousand people on a mailing list, we’re talking about 150 relationships.  150 people that if you say them at the grocery store you’d stop, you’d recognise them by name, you’d have a conversation with them, and certainly you would hope that if they had a real estate or lending need that they would consider you to be their realtor or lender.

If you’ve got that list whether you have to build up to 150 people, you know, maybe you don’t know 150 people right now, or you might not think that you know 150 people, get the names and the addresses and telephone numbers of all the people that you know in one place, and really start paying attention as you’re going through your day over the next 30, 60, 90 days, you’re going to start recognising and running into people that you didn’t think of when you maybe were making your list, but you’re thinking to yourself “Oh yeah, they should be on my list.  They should be in my top 150.”  And then we start thinking about what kinds of things can we do to communicate and build our relationship with that to 150 so that 20% would be a yield that we could get within one year.

Now 20%, what the means is one time in five years.  That means they either would do one transaction with you or refer one person to you in the next five years.  That’s very doable.  You know, when you start thinking about it, it might not work out like that though.  It might work out that 20 people refer you two times a years, you know?  And yet 150, that’s a manageable number for you to keep in touch with, that’s a manageable number for you to have a concentrated effort on trying to build your relationship with these people and let them know (a) that you need their help, and (b) how they can do it.

If you are constantly presenting to these people how you are helping other people, how you’re helping people in other situations that they might not even know that you help people.  You know it’s interesting because a lot of times people think that the only thing that you do is what you helped them do.  If you helped a young couple buy their first home, they may think that you only work with people who are buying their first home.  They might not think that you can help people buy a horse farm, or whatever other things are in your area. 
So start thinking to yourself and asking yourself “Where would my best efforts be spent right now?  If you’ve got some money, you’re spending some money on advertising right now, look at your before unit.  Start concentrating on what can I do to get a 15:1 return on every dollar that I spend. 

If you’re busy right now, if you’ve got lots of people that you’re working with, business just seems to kind of come to you, you’re probably looking at the biggest opportunity for you in your during unit.  You know, you want to start thinking to yourself “Right now the last ten people that I helped buy, sell or borrow, none of them referred me somebody before the end of the transaction.”  What if you could bump that number up to 20, or 30 or 40 and ultimately to 50% of those people?  Five out of ten of the next people that you work with referring somebody to you before the end of the transaction, you may get to a point where you never ever need to work on a before unit, that you never have to go in and get new business from people you don’t know; everybody could lead you to the next one.

And you might think if you’ve got all of these relationships that you haven’t maybe stayed in touch with, or you haven’t made any kind of concentrated effort with, what is it that you could do in your after unit to start building that relationship with people so that you could yield a 20% annual return on your relationship portfolio. 

You know, look back at some of these ideas that we’ve been talking about on Marketing Monday and see which ones would be the best suited for you.  Which ones are the best ones that you feel most resonate with you so that you can start concentrating on building your business to the level that you want it to be.

That’s it for this week.  Tune in next time and we’ll talk about even more ideas to get more listings, find more buyers, and get more referrals.  Have a great week.