Category: Sales Articles

Let me introduce you to Joan Carter, who retired on 30 June 2018, ending a successful twenty-four year career in real estate sales.

Before real estate, Joan was a school teacher. Throughout her career, she was often in the Top Ten Salespeople in the Pittard rankings. She was part of a very impressive pool of winners whose results far exceed typical industry averages. Joan was often in the top three. Continue reading Competence Doesn’t Just Happen

During the boom, I heard many salespeople talk up their results. Many of them are quiet now that the market has turned. Now I see many leaders and salespeople in a state of panic. They’re not making sales and they’re blaming the buyers.

It’s time to get out of panic mode and get to work. You need to get into the mindset of what a seller wants by reading guides like this.

Do you have listings? How many are you personally managing? If you have stock, you can talk to the owners about the state of the market. If they want to sell, they must understand that their properties are commodities on a market. Overpriced properties don’t sell. Continue reading When the Market Turns

Late last year, I read a Real Estate Business Online article entitled, Purplebricks already effecting ‘dramatic change’ in commission-charging agents’ behaviour. It quoted Purplebricks global COO Neil Tavender stating that since entering the Australian market, Purplebricks has caused traditional agents to reflect significantly on how they operate.

Tavender was quoted as saying, “We have seen in some instances where commissions have come down from 2.5 per cent to 1.8 per cent. But obviously with the fixed cost models that they have, with premises and associated costs, that is not a sustainable future.”

Continue reading What Is Your Value Chain?

An interview of William Danko, co-author of Richer Than a Millionaire with Richard Van Ness, will be released this month on Pittard’s streaming platform iTrain®.

In Professor Danko’s previous book, The Millionaire Next Door, co-authored with the late Thomas Stanley, the focus was on what it takes to become a millionaire. In Richer Than a Millionaire, the focus has shifted to two areas: what it takes to be wealthy, and what it takes to be well-adjusted.1 Continue reading Wealthy and Well Adjusted

You cannot watch, listen to, or read the news for long without being bombarded with bad news, gloomy forecasts and general negativity. Bad news sells.

Let too much of it into your head, and your performance will suffer. I believe that in life we get the ‘negatives’ for nothing. We must work for the positive. We must consciously seek out the good, the positive, focusing on what we can do instead of worrying about things that are beyond our control, much of which will never happen. Continue reading The Committee in Your Head

In an age where people can be quick to assert their rights but slow to live up to their responsibilities, we at Pittard advise our leaders to hold their people accountable. That is, accountable for doing winning actions, in large quantities, on a regular basis.

In Sales, there are right actions and wrong actions. The right actions lead to a listing, a sale, or a price reduction, and eventually to properties sold and fees received. The wrong actions are a waste of time and don’t lead to results. Continue reading Hold Yourself Accountable

To people of integrity, their word is their bond. They do what they say, when they said they’d do it, how they said they’d do it. People of integrity realise that those who promise are in debt.

When I say that our word should be our bond, I mean in matters large and small.

If we say we will do something, we must do it, even if we don’t specifically use the word “promise”. If leaders and salespeople forget this, their reputations suffer. Continue reading A Promise Is a Promise

Some people say you must love your work. I agree that this is desirable, but it’s not always realistic. Pursuing this ideal could cost you a great career.

Author Larry Winget says you don’t have to love what you do, but if you accept payment to do a job, whether you love it or not, you have a moral obligation to do it well.

Let’s face it, a sales job is tough. When you first start this career, chances are high you’re not going to like it, or at least not every aspect – prospecting for example. But this is irrelevant. Like the task or not, some tasks are essential to success and longevity – prospecting for example!  Continue reading Loving What You Do

Some years ago, I presented a Field Challenges workshop in Perth. Participants submitted for discussion challenges they were facing in the field. A few topics were offered and dispatched quickly as the solutions were obvious.

I then read to the audience a field challenge submitted by email and asked the audience if that challenge affected anybody. All hands went up. Continue reading Free Shots

Salespeople spend a lot of time trying to convince sellers how good they are. They talk about the advertising they do, the awards they’ve won, the results they’ve had. The trouble is, too many salespeople make the presentation all about themselves.

Whether your clients are buyers, sellers, landlords or tenants, they are all out to look after themselves. Most are fair, but in their minds, their own interests are paramount. Continue reading Why You?

Any person who wants to succeed in their career must study their craft.

Self-improvement isn’t a luxury. Winners realise that every dollar they invest in themselves has the potential to boost their income and job satisfaction.

But there is another benefit to studying that often gets ignored – the improvement to your marketability. Continue reading Studying in the 21st Century

Everybody wants to be a better closer. Of all the skills salespeople say they want to improve, it’s closing. But there is more to a GOOD sale than just closing.

What is a good sale? It’s one where all parties – clients, salespeople and the agency – are satisfied with the transaction.

To make every sale a good sale, there are things to do before the major close, the close for the ‘order’. Continue reading There’s More To a Good Sale Than Just Closing

Relentless – I like that word. It means “unceasingly intense”.

I also like the word Persistent, which means “able to bounce, withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions”. And “continuing firmly or obstinately in an opinion or course of action despite difficulty of opposition”. These are good attributes for salespeople.

Sales is not for everybody, especially those who give up too easily or are easily discouraged. Salespeople need to press on, especially when things aren’t going their way, which is often. Continue reading Relentless

There can be many barriers to success, but one of the greatest challenges for some people is perfectionism.

Perfectionism is the enemy of success. People who suffer from it will not ‘launch’ until everything is ‘just so’. Most often, they fail to launch at all.

I find myself wondering if the problem really is perfectionism and not some kind of fear. I have seen salespeople getting ready to prospect spend so much time ‘getting ready’ that they run out of time to make the calls. Continue reading The Enemy of Success

Here we are at the beginning of a new year. But before we get too far into this new year, how were your results last year? Were you happy with what you achieved? If not, why not?

Far too many business people drift from year to year, without ever setting goals, determining the targets necessary to achieve those goals, and without planning. These people are unfocused and lack direction.

And so they drift – spurts of ‘busyness’ interspersed with long periods of unfocused work that does not produce results. Compound this over a full year and the lack of consistent, focused action manifests as low income.

For these people, unless their thinking and actions change, they are doomed to repeat their previous year’s results.

Habits

Habits can be good and bad. Unless we consciously work at developing good habits, we will, by default, develop bad habits.

Action, and lack of action, are habits. We can become used to high levels of focused, productive action, and we can become used to low levels of actions and unfocused drifting.

If you want your results in this new year to be better than last year’s results, you must break the cycle: do things differently than you did last year.

Goals

Without something to focus on – a clear goal that is important to you – you will almost certainly drift. What goals are you going to achieve in this coming year? Choose goals that you really want, and are willing to go the extra mile to achieve.

Targets determined from goals

Worthwhile goals require bigger targets. What targets will you need to achieve so that you earn the income necessary to reach your goals?

Plans

Targets that are higher than you are used to hitting must be planned. Don’t just plan for the number of listings and sales, plan for the number of people you will need to speak to each day. Hint: if you aren’t speaking to 200 potential sellers every week, your goals aren’t big enough!

Affirmations

If you want to focus, write Affirmations daily. Affirm your major dominant goal by writing it 15 times a day for 21 unbroken days.
You will find more information on affirmations and goal setting in my book, Why Winners Win.

Study

Unless you study your profession, you will not improve. By not studying, you rob yourself of the opportunity to get better results from the many great ideas offered by experts.

Practice

Knowing what to do isn’t enough – you have to perform actions competently. You can study all you want, but if you don’t practise what you learn, and keep practising until you get it right, you will never develop skill.

Study will give you knowledge, but knowledge alone is not sufficient to make you successful.

KNOWLEDGE + PRACTICE = SKILL

Study and improve your knowledge. Practise what you learn and develop your skill. Do this and your actions will become more competent.

All you have to do now is increase your level of actions and success is assured. And, provided that you have goals that you really want to achieve, you will stay focused.

You can make 2018 your best year ever – indeed, a very happy new year!

Show me an industry where you can earn six-figure incomes without knowing what you are doing. I’ll bet that you cannot name one. Yet this is what many real estate people – salespeople and leaders – seem to think. Many believe that they can earn high incomes without learning, study and practice.

The real estate industry demonstrates a low regard for training. The real estate industry is also one of the most lowly-regarded for honesty, competence and integrity. I do not think this is a coincidence. Continue reading The More You Learn

Good salespeople are always on the lookout for new lines and for new ways to deliver their messages, but there is one word that many should consider using more often. That word is ‘No’.

People-pleasing salespeople are too quick to say ‘yes’, and doing so causes them to agree to actions that are, or should be, of a lower priority.

Beware of questions that begin with: Continue reading A Little Word Salespeople Should Use More Often

An age-old question for presenters is, “Should I use visual aids?”.

While I agree that people can become overly reliant on visual aids, resulting in a boring presentation, I believe that good presenters use every tool at their disposal to foster understanding with their audiences. Visual aids do just that: they aid understanding.They don’t say, “A picture is worth a thousand words” for nothing. Continue reading Visual Aids