Ask For A Review

There is an old marketing saying that says: “Don’t tell people how good you are. Get happy clients to tell people how good you are”. References from happy clients improve the success rate of your marketing. In this short sales session, real estate business consultant, Gary Pittard, asks, “How many online reviews did YOU get last month?” Salespeople forget to ask for reviews, testimonials and references. Whether this is due to a lack of foresight or just plain forgetfulness, failure to ask for a review costs salespeople, and their agencies, serious money.

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Forwards or Backwards: there is no standing still

A question I often ask leaders is “Where are you taking your business?” The reply is sometimes “Umm..” meaning that the leader does not know.

You are either taking your business forward, toward worthwhile and meaningful goals, or you are going backwards. There is no standing still.

Businesses that attempt to remain static, those with the “business as usual attitude”, will face increased competition over time. If we are not training our teams on ways to improve, it is only a matter of time before competitors steam up behind, poised to overtake. Continue reading Forwards or Backwards: there is no standing still

Point Of Difference

Smart real estate agency leaders seek multiple Points of Difference for their agencies. When a seller says to your salesperson, “Why should I list with you?” what does your salesperson reply? In many cases it’s with rhetoric. Typical salespeople say things like “We’re the best” or “Our service is the best” or “We get higher prices.” In this short leadership session, real estate business consultant, Gary Pittard, says that if this is all you’ve got, you’re in big trouble.

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Personality Matters

Meet Brendan and Adam, chefs and proprietors of a new restaurant called 34bia in Redfern in Sydney.

Before this venture, Brendan and Adam owned a smaller café near my home which had a chequered history of success and failure before Brendan and Adam bought it.

The café was part of a block of serviced apartments so its clientele were apartment guests and residents. Continue reading Personality Matters

Willpower Exercises

When it comes to forming new habits, willpower is what you need. With willpower you can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to yourself and mean it. In this short sales session, real estate business consultant, Gary Pittard, says that if you feel that you lack willpower, take heart: willpower can be exercised. Start small. Make a short-term commitment and stick to it. Then increase the time and difficulty of the commitments. Your willpower will strengthen.

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Your Capacity To Market

Over the past year, I have spent a good deal of time visiting real estate businesses. To those clients who attend our business system presentation, Agency Profit System®, to those thinking of opening a real estate agency, and to those who are interested in rebranding their agencies (moving from a franchise or marketing group to independent) Pittard offers a business analysis to devise action plans for higher profits.

One of the items on my checklist is the business’s capacity to market for new business. This is an important component of business success and you may be surprised at the number of businesses that have very little capacity to market to potential clients. No wonder so many real estate business owners struggle! Continue reading Your Capacity To Market

Priorities

Successful people identify their priorities and spend the bulk of their time working on them. In this short leadership session, real estate business consultant, Gary Pittard asks real estate agency leaders whether they know their most important priorities. Often, short term priorities, such as rectifying a shortage of sales, require immediate attention, but these are survival priorities. In the long term, however, we need to set priorities that go way beyond survival. It is a given that we need to make sales, but how you make those sales is the difference between effective and ineffective leaders.

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What Will You Do Differently?

We are fast approaching the halfway mark of 2017. Now is a good time to reflect on your results so far. If correction is needed, the sooner you begin the better.

Are you happy with your present results and income?

If not, what will you do differently from this point onwards?

If you keep doing what you have been doing, your results for the second half of the year will be almost identical to the first half of the year. To achieve different results, you must do different actions and, often, more actions. Continue reading What Will You Do Differently?

Prospecting

In this short sales session, real estate business consultant, Gary Pittard, asks, “Have you ever put off doing a chore that you thought would be difficult? You dreaded doing it but it proved to be much easier than you thought. Prospecting is like that. It’s just not that difficult. All you have to do is start, keep going, and it will become a habit.” Prospecting is an essential activity for success and there are only 3 reasons why salespeople don’t prospect: 1. They are scared; 2. They are stupid; 3. They are rich.

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Teaching Results Focus

Over the decades, I have worked with many focused leaders and teams. You know these teams when you are among them – they have fun, but they never lose sight of their targets and the actions required to reach them.

I have also worked with unfocused leaders and teams. Almost everybody in these companies is caught up in ‘process’. These are the people who are most likely to tell you that they are busy, but they seldom show results for all this busyness. The work, not results, becomes the focus.

The person responsible for instilling a results focus in the team is the leader – unfocused leader, unfocused team. Continue reading Teaching Results Focus

The Second Tier

Regardless of their structures, even the most complex of hierarchies can be broken down into two tiers, and these two tiers have nothing to do with title. In this short leadership video, real estate business consultant, Gary Pittard, explains that the value the individual gives to the company, and the degree of difficulty in replacing them, are important factors that leaders ignore at their peril.

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What and How Do You Study?

If you aren’t studying your profession, it is only a matter of time before your competitors overtake you. A rusty salesperson is a broke salesperson.

What are you studying now? And how do you study?

Mix it up

There are mountains of good study material and my advice is to mix it up so we stay interested. The material we study for business purposes falls into three categories: Continue reading What and How Do You Study?

Aim High

In this short sales session, real estate business consultant and author of Why Winners Win, Gary Pittard, illustrates how Adam McMahon, from Dignam Real Estate in Thirroul, NSW, Australia, lifted his performance from ordinary to extraordinary. Adam now produces fees in excess of $1.4 million, but earlier in his career he had difficulty getting past the “$100,000 barrier”. That was until Adam sought the advice of another winner who told him to aim high. Adam has never looked back.

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What’s Your Plan?

I don’t want to alarm you, but we are nearing the end of the first quarter of 2017. Are you following a plan that you devised in late 2016, or early January 2017? Put another way, what’s your plan?

Pittard works with some highly profitable real estate businesses. Several make over $1 million profit just from their residential sales departments.

In many of these businesses, the owner does not list or sell. Some have a huge rental department, but neither the sales department nor the rental department occupies a large amount of the business owner’s time. These owners are running businesses, not departments. Continue reading What’s Your Plan?

The Leadership Curse

Business leaders are faced with many challenges, but for some, overcoming the Leadership Curse should be their number one priority. In this leadership session, real estate business consultant and author of Why Winners Win, Gary Pittard, explains what the Leadership Curse is, and what needs to be done to eradicate it.

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Plan Your Training


David Farrugia, from Macquarie Real Estate in Casula NSW, spoke at Pittard’s Real Estate Agents’ Convention in Brisbane, November 2016. He made many interesting points, including explaining how he plans his training. David trains ‘on purpose’.

Each month, David selects a topic and studies that topic only for the coming month.

For example, if he selects Communication, David will train for the month exclusively on communication. He will enter this into the search box on Pittard’s streaming portal, iTrain, and listen to or view every program he finds there on communication. He will go through his and his company’s extensive training libraries and find what he can on communication. His reading for the month will also be on this topic. Continue reading Plan Your Training

Contact Creates Contracts

In this short sales session, real estate business consultant and author of Why Winners Win, Gary Pittard, explains why staying in touch with clients is good business. Contact creates contacts. You must go out and meet people. This is the beginning of relationship building and salespeople who sit waiting for business to walk in the door are almost certainly stifling their careers. It’s an old adage, but still appropriate in the 21st century: TTP – Talk To People.

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Growth Isn’t Always Good

Growth appears to enjoy good press, but is it always a good thing? I don’t think so. Here are two examples.

A person contacted me saying that he was thinking of opening a real estate agency. He and his wife had another business that still required a good deal of input from them both and would for the foreseeable future. I advised him not to open just yet – wait until the other business was profitable, established, and didn’t need input from the one who was going to run the real estate agency. They opened anyway. Now they are nearly broke.

Another couple has a real estate business and wants to move into another town. Their first business still needs work to make it consistently profitable and it needs a lot of input to get the team right. Some people need to be terminated, some need to lift their game, and others need to be hired and put on a path to peak performance. Continue reading Growth Isn’t Always Good

How To Make Less Profit

Real estate business consultant and author of Why Winners Win, Gary Pittard, acknowledges that this title is a negative one, but success is not always about doing the right actions: it is just as important to stop doing certain actions. Real estate businesses are notorious for ‘following the herd’. They offer clients few, if any, points of difference. This short leadership session will guide you on what to stop doing and on what to do to boost your real estate agency’s profit.

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Self-Management

We hear much about Time Management, but can we really manage time? Every one of us has the same 1,440 minutes each day. Why, then, do some people do more with their time than others?

The answer is that those people manage themselves and not time: They manage themselves within the time they have available.

The basic tool for self-management is a diary. It doesn’t matter whether you use a hard copy diary or an electronic calendar, what matters is how you use it. Continue reading Self-Management