Ninja Coaching for July

We had our monthly session with Walt Frey (www.WaltFrey.com) for coaching in the Ninja style of real estate business.  I thought I would share my notes for the session here.  If you have any questions about these notes, please email me or add a comment of your own to the post.

The average person takes 9-21 months from the first thought of moving to the completion of the sale.  However, some 72 hour period during that time is when they pick their realtor.  This is why we must make regular periodic contact with our sphere – to still be on their mind when that 72 hour period hits.

We have tiers of contacts – the top tier is our Sphere of Influence (SoI) and should hear from us monthly.  The next tier could move into the SoI, but we don’t know enough about them or don’t feel close enough.  Send them a survey to find out more (and they self-select to move up by responding).  The survey can ask:

• Favorite Restaurant
• Favorite movie
• Names of kids
• Birthdays of family members
• Favorite nieghborhoods
• Anniversaries
• etc.

Preface the survey with a note to tell the contact that I am updating my database and would like them to fill in the survey and send it back to me.

We had a long discussion about scheduling – it is imperitive that we schedule ‘I’ time each day.  We MUST also track our PIE time every day or we will not have the data to improve our business. 

• Is ‘I’ high, but no clients?  This indicates that my ‘I’ time is being spent on low leverage activities and I should look to incorporate higher leverage activities.

A good goal is an equal split between ‘P’, ‘I’, and ‘E’, but a beginning realtor might have an equal split just between ‘I’ and ‘E’ (no ‘P’).  Remember that ‘I’ is any activity that will bring about ‘P’ time (making marketing materials, calling SoI, etc.)

The phrase ‘have to’ is a good indication that we are feeling outside pressure to do something.  The problem is that we naturally resist outside pressure.  The truth is that we don’t have to do it – we have a choice to deal with the task or deal with the consequences.  Don’t have to pay taxes – may go to jail, but still a choice.  Walt recommends we have only 4 categories:

• ‘Get to’
• ‘Choose to’
• ‘Want to’
• ‘Love to’

Walt recommended that we obtain the NAR House Buyer/Seller Survey from realtor.org – research. 

We discussed Patterns of Excellence – a list of daily or weekly activities that one of the Ninja’s use to generate $300K / year in commissions:

• Schedule weekly planning meeting with myself – 1 hour early in week
• Schedule exercise each day
• Get into the office by 8 am each day
• Schedule 2 RE reviews – unsolicited CMA’s – each week for people in my SoI.
  • “I was doing market analysis for someplace in your neighborhood and have some extra data.  When is a good time for me to drop it by?” – prepare and deliver a 1 page CMA
• Schedule 2 hours for customer service calls per week - call each current client (sellers and buyers) weekly and each closed client monthly for the 1st year after close.  Block out time in the morning to do these calls.
• Schedule 2 hours per week for other calls – birthdays, anniversaries, 8 x 8′s, etc.
• Send 10 notes per week – ‘thank you’ or ‘thinking of you’ cards – this is on top of the normal follow up cards to your SoI
• Schedule 2 lunches or breakfasts each week with a prospective referral source
• Schedule 2 one hour sessions per week for paperwork cleanup – meet with assistant or escrow officer to make sure paperwork issues are resolved.
• Visit with 50 people each week – could be new people or SoI – if new people, they need to be conversations that are likely to lead to relationships (1st contact could be chatting about being in line, next time you meet you exchange names, next time you talk about work, etc.) – ask FORD questions and listen for changes that lead to moves

Additionally, need to schedule time to contact each person in SoI monthly, so divide SoI across month and make that many contacts per day.

We closed up the session at this point – until next month!