Even top producing Real Estate agents have slow days… or weeks or months. Maybe the economy is slow or it’s that time of year. Perhaps you feel as though you have been saddled with some poor prospects or you are just another victim of the mortgage meltdown. Whatever the cause or the perceived cause of a slump, it really does not matter–those things are outside of your control. To dump your slump, you need to concentrate on what you can control. Here are ten tips to get you back on track.

1. Hold yourself accountable: As a Real Estate agent, you are an entrepreneur. This means that your compensation is tied directly to your production. You have to sell homes to earn your keep, so you cannot afford to sit around waiting for the economy to turn around or a slow season to pass. You have to start working to make something happen. When the housing market is slow, you need to ramp up your efforts, not scale them back.
2. Figure out what’s changed: Ask yourself, “What has changed?” If you can figure out what changed between the time when sales were brisk and when they began to slump, you usually know what you need to start doing. Perhaps when you were first starting out, you were making 200 cold calls a week, but you stopped doing that as soon as you had plenty of customers. In many cases, you simply need to get back to what you were doing when you were more successful.
3. Set a goal and reward: When you’re in a slump, it’s easy to lose your motivation. Set a goal and dangle a reward in front of yourself to provide some added incentive. Your goal may be process oriented, such as making 50 phone calls a day for the next month, or results oriented, such as achieving a certain gross dollar amount in sales for the month or quarter. Once you select a reward, create a reward collage by clipping photos that remind you of the reward and pasting them on a poster board. Keep your collage close at hand, so you can keep reminding yourself of what you are working toward.
4. Surround yourself with positive people: Both positive and negative attitudes are contagious. Avoid people in your office who poke fun at goal setting and other motivational tools, and gravitate toward those who have a positive, can-do attitude. People with positive attitudes will encourage and challenge you to do your best and have fun doing it. The others will simply sap your energy.
5. Focus on the fundamentals: When a professional baseball player is in a batting slump, the batting coach examines the videotapes and tries to find out what the batter is doing wrong. Then, he encourages the batter to focus on the fundamentals, the mechanics of swinging the bat. When you find yourself in a sales slump, focus on the fundamentals of selling. Are you building solid relationships with your clients? Are you following up after the sale? When you arrange to show homes, are you really listening to what the buyers want?
6. Pick up the phone: Every day, five to six days a week, I make 100 phone calls. I call it my Hour of Power. I call my clients just to touch base. In many cases, I get an answering machine and leave a message. I don’t spend a lot of time on each call, and I never try to sell anything. The sole purpose is to let my clients know that I’m thinking about them. Although this may not generate instant sales, you soon observe your sales numbers climbing. Try it. Start slow with say 25 to 50 calls per day, but work toward that magic number of 100. It really does make a difference.
7. Grow out of it: Sales slumps can often be caused by success. You achieve a certain level of success and for some reason cannot seem to break through the barrier to the next level, so you lose interest and sales taper off. Perhaps you simply need to grow out of it. Set a higher goal, figure out what you need to achieve that goal, and get to work. Need an assistant? Hire one. Need some new technology? Buy it.
8. Write something: The Internet has completely revolutionized the way everything is sold, including Real Estate. In the past, clients would hire us to obtain the information we had available through the MLS. Now we have to provide the information first to prove our expertise before a client will hire us. Now, content is king. Provide prospects with the information they need to make well-informed purchase decisions, and you are likely to earn a client. Create a Web site or blog and start writing, contribute to other people’s blogs and to online communities where prospective clients hang out, write articles for online publications related to your area of expertise. Establish yourself as an expert, and people will buy from you rather than from your competitors.
9. Hire a coach: Sometimes, you may be too close to your situation to view it objectively. A reputable agent coach can quickly assess the situation, tell you what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong, and offer several strategies and suggestions that you can immediately implement.
10. Start right now: Many people set a date when they plan on implementing changes. They say they’ll start dieting after Thanksgiving of stop smoking on Monday. Don’t put it off another minute. As soon as you have a plan in place, start working the plan immediately. Why wait? Seize the opportunity now!

There are no secrets to selling success. Every salesperson knows what he or she must do to attract clients, grow business, and boost revenue. Sometimes, we just get so caught up in the day-to-day drudgery of doing business that we forget what we should be doing to build our business.

The following ten commandments of selling success can help you refocus your energy and enthusiasm on the factors that contribute most to your selling success:

1. Practice your craft. Practice selling at work, at home, at the airport, in the taxi, at the grocery store, and wherever else you happen to be in contact with other people. The key to selling is being able to establish personal relationships with your clients. Practice by making meaningful connections with everyone you meet.
2. Invest in your own success. As an entrepreneurial salesperson, you have to act like a business, and that means investing in your own personal and professional development, in the latest technology, and in support personnel, so you have more time to spend on what you do best and what earns you and your company the biggest profits.
3. Adopt new technologies. Tech savvy clients are relying more on the Internet for their information and are using a variety of communications technologies to keep in touch, including cell phones, e-mail, text messaging, VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol or Internet phones), and blogs. To stay in touch with the latest generation of shoppers, you’d better be tech savvy, too.
4. Hire an assistant. Hire or be hired. Hire people to take on tasks that they can perform better, faster, and for less money than you can, and then treat them well. The more work you can outsource to others, the more time and energy you can spend on dollar-productive activities. Instead of asking “What’s the cost of hiring an assistant?” ask “How much revenue am I losing by not having an assistant?”
5. Fire your worst clients. The customer is not always right. In fact, some customers can drag you down, sapping time and energy you could be devoting to other, better clients. You don’t have to be rude about it, but get rid of the clients who are squandering your time and resources.
6. Date your leads… or someone else will. Regardless of how you obtain leads, make sure you keep in touch with those leads until they are ready to buy. One great way to automate the process of keeping in touch with your leads is to add leads to a drip e-mail campaign. A drip campaign sends a series of e-mail messages to prospective clients over the course of several weeks or months automatically.
7. Give without expectations. Sales coaches often recommend that you “give to get.” I’m telling you to “give to give.” If you’re expecting something in return, you’re not really giving–you’re bartering. Give for the sheer pleasure of giving.
8. Take risks. The people who make the most money take the biggest risks, and that applies to sales as much as it applies to anything in the world of business. You have to be willing to invest money and take some chances. Otherwise, you’re not a salesperson. You’re an order taker.
9. Embrace change. The Internet, new technologies, and the global economy have combined forces to accelerate change to a dizzying pace. The only way to survive and thrive in this environment is to embrace rather than resist change. Every change, particular changes that cause problems and headaches, is packed with potential.
10. Achieve a balanced lifestyle. Being a successful human being means much more than achieving career success. It means remaining healthy, building rewarding relationships, supporting your community, and perhaps even raising children. Failing in one area of your life can lead to failures in other areas.

Work on being successful in all areas of your life. Without the strong relationship I have with my wife and children, I would not have achieved the same level of success in my career. Success feeds on success, and, unfortunately, failure feeds on failure. Encourage everyone around you to set goals and pursue their dreams. Surround yourself with success.

For more information on sales success, see my latest book, “Advanced Selling For Dummies,” which is available on Amazon.com and from fine booksellers and retailers nationwide.

The days of the lonely door-to-door salesman are over, thank goodness, but I often observe salespeople who have placed themselves in a sort of self-imposed exile. By falsely assuming that nobody can do it better than they can (whatever “it” is), they end up working themselves to a frazzle and never achieve the sales success they really deserve. The fact is that you can do more and do it better by harnessing the power of people.

If you need proof, just look at any major corporation. They never would have been a major corporation had they not hired people. Think of yourself as a mini corporation–You, Inc. Hang out a Help Wanted sign. Start interviewing people. Establish productive partnerships.

Fuel your sales with people power:

1. Find out what’s missing. What do you want to do that you can’t do because you’re lacking the time or expertise? As soon as you know what you need and don’t have (time, expertise, resources), you have a pretty good idea of the people you need to hire or partner with–people who have what you need.

2. Do what you do best and hire out the rest. Figure out how much you earn per hour. If you earn $50 an hour selling and you’re cleaning your house over the weekend when you can hire someone for $10 an hour to do it, that’s borderline insane… unless, of course, cleaning your house is therapeutic or something you enjoy doing.

3. Hire an intern. Colleges and even some high schools have internships or co-op programs in which students are willing to work for free or for a low wage in exchange for job experience. Look into these programs for some cheap and often highly qualified workers. Many of these “kids” are very tech savvy and can teach you a thing or two.

4. Hire the talent you’re missing. Salespeople rarely hesitate to invest in a gadget or service they think they need, but when I recommend that they hire an assistant, they immediately find all sorts of excuses. The fact is that hiring an assistant has never been easier. You can even hire a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant works as a freelancer, so you don’t have to deal with messy payroll issues and benefits. For additional information, check out the International Virtual Assistants Association Web site at www.ivaa.org.

5. Cash in on R-Commerce (Relationship-Commerce). As Terry Brock (www.terrybrock.com) explains, on its surface, the economy is driven by the exchange of goods and services, but beneath this surface economy is the real economy, driven by relationships. By focusing on your relationships with customers, colleagues, and even your competitors, you can grow your sales infinitely more than by focusing solely on the exchange of goods and services.

6. Team up with a personal partner. It’s far too easy to skip out on your responsibilities when you’re accountable only to yourself. As Terry Wisner explains, by teaming up with a personal partner to set goals and keep one another on track, you can achieve much higher levels of success than by acting alone.

7. Get connected with a mentor or coach. Success leaves big footprints, so follow those footprints by taking on a mentor or hiring a sales coach to advise you. A mentor or coach can often point out shortcuts you may have missed, expose you to new opportunities, and make sure you’re doing everything you need to do to stick to your plan.

8. Become a mentor. You may think that mentoring a student or a salesperson who’s less qualified, less experienced, or less successful than you would be a huge expenditure of time, and perhaps it is, but what you get in return usually makes up for it. A younger student can often teach you a thing or two about using the latest technologies or expose you to new marketing and sales techniques. In addition, if you establish a solid relationship, your student promises to become a major networking asset later in his or her career.

If you start to feel the urge to fly solo, think again. When you open the doors and start connecting with people, you soon discover infinite opportunities. Try it!

A while back, I realized that my last name, “Roberts,” spelled backwards is “Strebor,” and I designed a system for effectively implementing any plan for success.

When you’re ready to put your plan into action, follow the Strebor System:

S: Sticktoitism is the dogged determination required to ensure that you follow through on your plan.
T: Training provides you with the know-how and skills to properly execute your plan.
R: Results are what you build on as you attain higher and higher levels of success.
E: Enthusiasm provides you with the ambition and energy required to follow through.
B: Benefits give you the motivation to succeed.
O: Optimism is the confidence that enables you to overcome obstacles.
R: Reach is your commitment to taking risks and seizing opportunities that make you grow both professionally and personally.

The Strebor system starts with a positive attitude that gives you the enthusiasm, optimism, commitment, and sticktoitism required to pursue and ultimately achieve your goals. Although some people are born with eternal optimism, others of us have to work at it. Here are some suggestions on how to put yourself in a better frame of mind:

Identify your sales heroes. Success leaves big footprints, so follow the trailblazers to lessen the burden of your journey. Over the years, I have followed in the footsteps of my heroes, including Julia Rowland (my grandmother), Tony & Noel Fox of Fox Brothers Real Estate (my first mentors), Ira Hayes, Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, Art Fettig, Joe Girard, Ed Keim, Lee Iacocca, Norman Vincent Peale, Mark Victor Hansen, Og Mandino, Tom Antion, Les Brown, and a host of others.

Shadow top producers. Network with the top producers in your area and ask if you can observe them for a day. You can pick up a wealth of information and new techniques in a single day in addition to discovering a new source of motivation.

Write and repeat positive affirmations. Negative self-talk can drag you down into the depths of self-defeatism. Replace that negative self-talk with positive can-do affirmations. Mr. Positive, Dave Boufford, made his own leap to pursue his dream of guiding others in developing and maintaining a positive attitude through his inspirational e-zines Positive Thoughts and Positive News. Let Mr. Positive pump you up by visiting www.MrPositive.com.

Surround yourself with positive people. When I am around someone who has a negative attitude, I can feel the energy and enthusiasm being sucked right out of me. Positive people bring me up, make me believe in myself, and encourage me to strive for higher and higher levels of success. Avoid people who drag you down, and gravitate to those who lift you higher. This includes family, friends, colleagues, associates, and supervisors.

Wake up with a positive plan. The first 15 minutes of any day can make or break it for you, so spend that first 15 minutes developing a positive plan. Once you have a plan in place and the sticktoitism to execute it, you are well on your way to a productive day.

Define “success” in your own terms. Don’t let other people dictate what “success” means to you. Spending more time with friends and family, getting involved in your community, and pursuing other interests may mean more to you than earning millions of dollars. Of course, doing all of those things and earning millions of dollars are not mutually exclusive.

Reward yourself. I reward myself in two different ways: I reward myself upon achieving a specific goal, and I reward myself in anticipation of achieving a specific goal. Some people don’t understand that second approach–why should I get the reward before I achieve the goal? Well, once I reward myself, then I know I have to work harder to pay for the reward. I usually charge the reward on my credit card. That gives me the added motivation of earning enough to pay for the reward before the balance comes due.

Tip: If you are a part of a Real Estate agent team, make sure that everyone on your team is contributing to creating and maintaining a positive attitude in the workplace. Deal immediately with any conflicts that arise, shut down the gossip mill, and find a way to relieve tensions and create an environment in which people are eager to come to work the every morning.

I encourage you to put the Strebor system into action in all areas of your life. I have found it effective for achieving both personal and professional goals. Remember, however, that it all begins with a positive attitude.

With the proliferation of online Real Estate lead-generation services–including Zillow.com, HomeGain, HouseValues, and HurryHome–seasoned real estate agents who haven’t exactly embraced 21st Century technology are beginning to get a little nervous. How are these Internet lead-generation services going to affect the industry? More importantly, what effect will these services ultimately have on my bottom line, and what can I do to remain competitive?

Although Internet lead-generation services are certain to shake up the industry, this technology is only the most recent to affect the way we do business on a daily basis. When colleagues ask me what they can do to remain competitive, I offer the same advice I have been giving throughout my career as a real estate mentor, coach, and author:

1. Embrace change.
2. Master new technologies.
3. Market wherever your customers go.

1. Embrace change

Whenever a new technology affects your industry, you have three choices: resist it, accept it, or embrace it. Those who resist almost always lose their competitive edge. As soon as the competition adopts the new technology, you fall at least one step behind. The early you adopt the change, the sooner you can master the new technology and the easier it is to keep up with changes as it matures.

Real Estate agents who adopted Internet lead-generation technology in its infancy (2003-2004) have discovered ways to reduce bad leads, optimize their conversion rates on good leads, and minimize costs. Those who wait face a much steeper learning curve. I encourage you to get started today.

2. Master new technologies

At first, adopting a new technology may cause a slight dip in productivity, but over time, they almost always boost productivity. I can remember the time when the only gadgets I used to run my real estate office were a telephone and a handheld calculator. Now, I have computers, fax machines, a PDA / Blackberry device, a digital tape measure to estimate room sizes, broadband Internet access, numerous websites and blogs, email, instant messaging, access to a conference call center, and more. I can travel to Kenya while closing on a house in Detroit and talking with a virtual assistant who works out of her home in Mexico City.

Every technology, no matter how easy it may be to master requires some investment and “getting used to.” The same is true of Internet lead-generation services. If you are accustomed to “by referral” prospecting and print-marketing techniques, this new method may feel a little awkward at first, but I would bet that when you first entered the business, the whole thing felt a little awkward.

3. Market wherever your customers go

To thrive in sales, in any industry, you have to market via any and all media that your customers rely on for information. In the past, that meant marketing in print publications, via direct mail, on television and radio, on billboards, and by word of mouth. With more and more people seeking information on the Internet, you had better have a presence there, as well.

I encourage you to have your own website or blog, where people can find information about you and your business, homes you have listed for sale, information about the neighborhoods in your farm area, and any other information that current and prospective clients will find useful.

In addition, sign up for an Internet lead-generation service. These services provide one of the easiest ways to tap the power of the Internet for leads without having to market extensively. Lead-generation services do the heavy lifting — marketing a service to prospective home buyers and sellers, gathering their information, filtering out lower-quality leads, and delivering promising prospects right to your computer.

Remember, only you hold the answer to the ultimate question: “Internet Lead Generation: Boom or Bust?” By embracing new technology and new ways of doing business, you can capitalize on a host of new opportunities. Resist the change, and you’re likely to become technology’s latest casualty and the Realtor everyone used to talk about.

A funny thing happens when you become a top-producing salesperson. You stop selling. You stop worrying about the numbers—about sales quotas and profits and the bottom line. You start talking to people. You build relationships, partnerships, and business synergies.

You stop selling, but you end up selling and earning far more than you ever did when you were trying to sell.

What’s the explanation behind this phenomenon? It is captured in the quote at the top of this article: “…it’s always about the people, and the people only.”

When you achieve a certain level of financial success, when you have money in the bank and no longer have to worry about paying bills, you can afford to focus more energy on people and relationships. And when you do that, sales begin to soar! Your clients and prospective clients, which pretty much consist of everyone you meet, can sense your genuine interest in their lives and their businesses and your commitment to serving their best interests, and they feel more comfortable buying from you than from a salesperson who appears ambitious to the point of being desperate.

If you have not quite achieved the status of top-producing salesperson, I recommend that you stop waiting for the time when you have enough money to afford shifting your focus to people and relationships. Do it now. Drop the profit motive. Give up the mentality of bottom-line thinking. Stop worrying so much about sales quotas. Start thinking about people and establishing personal relationships with the people you want to do business with.

As Terry Brock of Achievement Systems Incorporated explains, the underlying force that drives commerce is not E-Commerce but “R-Commerce” (Relationship-Commerce).

Through Internet discussion forums, blogging, and social networking sites like MySpace, R-Commerce is increasingly influencing the way people shop for and ultimately buy products and services. Before shoppers even consider contacting a salesperson, they may spend several hours or days researching online resources and discussing their situation among friends and acquaintances on blogs, discussion forums, and via e-mail and instant messaging. As a salesperson, you have much less influence over the decision-making process. Shoppers’ peers wield much more influence. In other words, prospective customers care far less what you say about yourself and your products and far more about what their peers say about you and your products. And that means that building strong relationships and lots of them is more important than ever.

To be an effective salesperson in this age of R-Commerce, spend less time marketing your products and services and more time marketing and branding yourself and nurturing relationships with clients and prospective clients. In short, start pounding the pavement online and off and leaving people with a positive and lasting impression. As you gain traction and your circle of influence begins to grow, the community you create will begin to spread the word far and wide. Your message will begin to spread like a virus. You can then stop selling and let your bottom line take care of itself.

One of the not-so-secret secrets to sales success is to build on past success. That is what the 10/10/20 technique is all about, and here is how it works:

When you list or sell a house, knock on the 10 doors to the left and right of the house you just sold and the 20 doors across the street and distribute your postcard with a handwritten note letting the neighbors know that you have listed or sold their neighbor’s home.

That is it. That is all it takes to start generating new clients. It should take you less than an hour. Most of the neighbors are not going to want to talk with you at length. In less than an hour you have the potential of reaching 10,000 people.

Whoa! Where did that 10,000 number come from? According to my estimates, from attending weddings and anniversaries, every person knows at least 250 other people. By contacting 40 people in the area, you indirectly contact nearly 10,000 more, and everyone in sales, particularly in real estate, know that selling is all about meeting people and building relationships.

The 10/10/20 technique is just another way of networking, but this form of networking is much less formal than most and creates a grass-roots marketing campaign that spreads like a virus. As the neighbors begin to talk about that agent who had the courtesy to knock on their doors and let them know what was going on with that house that was for sale down the street, word will begin to spread far and wide, and prospective clients will begin calling.

I recently shared the 10/10/20 technique with a coaching client of mine, Domenic Manchisi. An excellent student, Manchisi actually practices what I teach. He even decided to add a little of his own flair to the technique. After he helps clients find and purchase the home of their dreams, he takes a photograph of them in front of their new home and places the photo on the postcard that he hands out to the neighbors. This nice touch helps introduce the new family to the neighborhood.

Manchisi reports that the response has been overwhelming. As soon has he sells one house, he has two more listing appointments waiting for him.

According to Manchisi: “The people who are home when I go to the door are very impressed, as no other Realtor in my community does this. The sellers love it and see first-hand how hard I work for my clients.”

More from Domenic Manchisi:

Recently in my home town of Milton, Ontario we had a home show a three-day event held in the local sports arena showcasing local businesses. My office, Prudential Town Centre Realty, had a booth, and my team had a majority of the floor time. We handed out my personal brochure along with a copy of our Marketwatch newsletter and spoke to everyone who walked by.

At the time of the home show, I had been doing the 10/10/20 for about a month and I was surprised at the recognition I got for just that. Many people commented on me coming to their door. My marketing campaign to my farm of 10,000 has been going on for four months. Between that and knocking on doors, everyone seems to know my name. I am really starting to see how all this comes together. Not only am I enjoying the experience of getting out in the community and meeting my neighbors, but my profile in the business community is also growing.

Although you can adjust the technique by handing out business cards, instead, the postcards are something a little different and less business-oriented and they give you more flexibility do add a personal touch like Domenic did.

Try this new guerilla marketing maneuver, and then write to me to let me know how it is working for you.

The pace of change both in the world and in the real estate industry is rapidly accelerating. Technology is streamlining operations, transforming neighborhoods into global communities, and enabling real estate agents to go mobile. You can now vacation on the French Riviera while following up with clients in Colorado. In addition, real estate is becoming more of a team sport, empowering agent teams to increase efficiency and boost both productivity and profits.

To thrive in this world of ever-increasing change, you have to keep up with the latest information and technology. You must constantly educate yourself in order to adapt and take advantage of new tools and opportunities that change delivers to your doorstep. You must become a lifelong learner.

Yet, when I talk to agents, I hear all too frequently that they just “don’t have the time to keep up.” I know agents who subscribe to RISMedia’s
Power Team Report and Power Broker Network Report and don’t even take the time to read these valuable publications-publications that could ultimately save them tons more time than is required to read the articles!

Some agents refuse to attend industry conferences, falsely assuming that they are a big waste of time and resources. Many agents won’t even crack open a book to learn a new sales or marketing technique or listen to a book on tape or CD. All of these agents are losing out big-time-in time, profits, and personal fulfillment.

Becoming a lifelong learner means plugging yourself into the industry grapevine. Here are some suggestions on how to do just that:

Attend at least one real estate conference every year. You can usually find one or two valuable sessions or speakers, and even if you don’t, the networking opportunities alone make the investment well worth it.

Read several articles a day on industry-related topics that interest you. Go to Google News, click “News Alerts” in the left navigation bar, and set up news alerts to have Google automatically notify you about late-breaking news on topics of interest. (Enter very specific search instructions, so you are not inundated with articles that do not interest you.) You need to know what’s happening in your industry as well as in your market. I spend about an hour every morning checking and reading my Google News Alerts stories.

Pick up a book about selling or any real estate topic that interests you and start reading. You can find plenty of great books on the market that reveal new techniques you may never have discovered on your own and can teach you new skills.

Listen to tapes, CDs, or podcasts from the top salespeople, real estate professionals, and motivational speakers. If you usually listen to music as you’re driving to meet clients, consider listening to something that’s a little more educational.

Take classes and obtain certifications. Taking a class can help motivate you and hold you accountable for learning the information. You can take classes on real estate and mortgage fraud, listing homes, representing buyers, or a host of other topics. Get certified in a particular area and you obtain instant credibility.

Learn new technologies. Spend time learning how to make optimum use of your computer and the software installed on it. Explore your software’s help systems, read a book, or take a class to learn how to boost productivity with features you may not even be aware of. Focus your efforts on learning more about Internet marketing through Web sites and blogs.

Connect with a mentor or coach. One of the best ways to learn fast is to connect with a top producer. Consider shadowing a real estate professional whom you admire or asking the person to act as your mentor or coach. Success leaves big footprints. Follow them.

I know, I am probably preaching to the choir. The fact that you are reading this is proof that you are part of the minority of Real Estate agents who actually care enough about your profession to study up on it. Others in our field, perhaps even some of your closest colleagues haven’t gotten the memo. Do them a favor. Send the link to this article to 10 of your colleagues who need it most and cc me when you do it. Working together, we might just be able to convince our colleagues to take at least one step toward improving their future.

Back in 1901, Ransom E. Olds created the assembly line. Soon after that, Henry Ford and his employees took the concept to the next level by creating the moving assembly line with the use of conveyor belts and by pushing for the standardization of parts.

Since I hail from Michigan, I figured I would apply these same concepts to selling houses. Instead of doing all of the work myself, from meeting with buyers and sellers to actually filling out all of the paperwork required for closing, I would create a system in which I did what I was good at (selling houses), and outsource the rest of the work to people who could do it better, faster and for less money than I could do it myself.

My decision to apply the assembly line concept to the process of selling houses resulted in phenomenal success. I began selling 10 times as many homes annually as I was previously selling by doing everything myself, and the amount I paid assistants to take on the additional work was almost negligible. I made far more in increased commissions than I needed to pay my capable assistants.

In addition, I was now much happier. I was doing what I loved to do, and someone else was taking care of everything I had hated about my job. Now, as soon as I sell a house, I simply call back to the office, and someone starts preparing the paperwork. I have applied this concept time after time to expand my business by adding new divisions. I highly recommend this approach to anyone seeking success when selling just about anything.

Identifying procedures

Assembly line selling is a systems-based approach. You create a system that covers every step in the process, break the system into a collection of procedures, break the procedures into task, break the tasks into steps, hire personnel, and then start delegating procedures.

The first step is to identify procedures, such as:

• Sending out a marketing packet
• Sending out a pre-listing packet
• Color-coding files
• Following up with clients
• Processing transactions
• Developing a sales presentation to deliver to sellers
• Developing a sales presentation to deliver to buyers
• Assembling a pre-closing packet

Your goal is to make each procedure as easy to accomplish as possible, so you do not have to answer questions or show a new hire what to do. You simply show the person where the procedures manuals and any required tools and supplies are located. The new employee or team member can then follow the required steps.

Breaking procedures into tasks

Once you have a set of procedures, break each procedure into a series of tasks. For example, sending out a marketing packet to a prospective client may include:

• Writing a personalized letter to the client
• Gathering the latest marketing materials
• Dropping the packet off at the prospective client’s home
• Breaking tasks into steps

Every tasks consists of a series of steps, so break each task into steps. You may even want to illustrate the steps. For example, you may include in your training manual one or two sample letters to clients, so a new hire has a model letter for guidance.

Hiring assistants

After you have a system in place, you can begin to hire assistants to perform the procedures that you haven’t the time, expertise, or desire to perform yourself. You may even consider grouping the procedures based on job title.

Keep in mind that assistants can be visual or virtual. A visual assistant is one who is physically present-an in-house staff member. A virtual assistant is a freelancer-a self-employed business owner who conducts business primarily over the Internet. You can use both types of assistants to increase your office productivity.

Delegating the work

Once your procedures are in place and you have one or more assistants, you can start focusing on what you do best and delegating the rest. Delegating becomes a matter of simply finding something that needs to be done and handing it off to the person most qualified to accomplish the task.

Now, you have no excuse for not having enough time to “get around to it.” Do it, delegate it, or ditch it.

What happens to those hundreds or thousands of letters you send to prospective clients every year? My guess is that 90% or more of the recipients simply crumple up those letters and toss them in the trash. But what if that letter came back? Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Wouldn’t that catch the recipient’s attention?

That is exactly what I was thinking when I came up with the idea of using a crumpled letter as one of my key marketing tools. For years I would send letters to people who were trying to sell their homes themselves-whom we in the real estate business refer to as For Sale By Owners or FSBOs-and to sellers whose listing contracts had expired. In the letter, I would explain that I knew the homeowner’s listing contract with the other agent was about to expire or that the person had been trying to sell her home for several months without success, and offering my services as a listing agent.

These letters generated some extra business, but I was not getting nearly the conversion rate that I had expected. I knew that most of the people receiving my letters were going to do the same thing as I do when I receive similar sales letters; they were going to crumple them up and throw them away.

Tired of spending time sending out letters that were just going to end up in the trash, I decided that I would take action whenever someone tossed my letter in the trash or simply ignored me. I would resurrect that letter and use it to my marketing advantage.

About four days after I sent out the original letter, if the prospect had not gotten in touch with me, I would send out a nearly identical letter, but this time, I wadded it up first, smoothed it out a bit, and wrote with a red marker at the bottom of the letter, “Please Don’t Throw Me Away Again!” I inserted the letter in a plain envelope, addressed it by hand, and mailed it to the original recipient.

When I started this new marketing program, I saw an instant boost in conversion rates. I was receiving more than double the responses to my crumpled letter than I had ever received from the originals. Some people thought that I had actually dug through their trash to find the letter and resend it! Even prospects who knew it was a marketing trick thought it was clever and were willing to hire me. It showed that I would stop at nothing to sell their homes!

What made the crumpled letter approach so successful was that it was a unique twist on an old strategy. I was still using traditional direct-mail marketing, but I had discovered a way to freshen it up and make it new. People who were so accustomed to tossing unopened letters in the trash took notice of the crumpled letter. That’s the one letter in the whole stack that they did read.

I employ a similar tactic whenever I deliver marketing materials to prospects prior to meeting with them. Instead of sticking them in a plain brown envelope or one with my company’s logo on it, I place the materials in a FedEx or DHL envelope and drop the package off at the prospect’s home, leaving it inside the screen door.

When the owners arrived home from work, they drive up, get out of their car, collect their mail and perhaps their newspaper, open the screen door, and see a package from FedEx or DHL. Now which envelope are they going to open first? I can almost guarantee that it is going to be that unlabeled FedEx or DHL envelope. The shipping companies do not mind, because you are advertising for them, and the people receiving the package are usually delighted to receive a little surprise when they get home from work.

I use a similar approach with e-mail messages, adding a catchy description to the Subject line and offering something of value in every message I send out-my signature, containing my name and contact information and a list of Web sites where the recipient can go to find out more about me and what I do. Send me an e-mail at RalphRoberts@RalphRoberts.com, and I will respond, so you can see exactly how I use my signature to draw attention and opportunities my way. I also regularly broadcast e-mail messages with valuable insights or gifts attached, such as inspirational or entertaining poems or presentations.

Remember, the ultimate goal of any correspondence you send out is to have the recipient read it. Just think of the number of messages that an average person receives every day from newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, e-mail, Web sites, postal mail, and while driving to and returning home from work. Ask yourself, “Why would anyone want to read my letter?” If you expect someone to read your letter, you had better come up with a good answer.