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No Use Cryin’ Over the Market

Get motivated with these 13 tips from top producers.

Be determined. Watch the trends. Don’t go it alone. These are the back-to-basic strategies that top producers use on a daily basis to maintain their success. .

1. Get help. REALTOR Joe Guli understands that real estate can be a career filled with plateaus. As leader of the Hot Properties Team with Keller Williams Premier Realty in Libertyville, he is continually increasing his staff as business grows and listings multiply.

“You need to understand that you can’t handle over a certain amount of listings on your own,” says Guli, who closed 276 transactions and sold $42 million in volume in 2007. “Knowing when to grow and add on will only help you break through that ceiling and gain more business.” Already with a support staff of nine, Guli and his team are still growing.

“Once we reach levels in our business, we continuously increase our staff to handle it which in turn brings us more business,” says Guli. “For example, when we reached 50 listings we hired one assistant. At 100 listings we hired another assistant. When we got over 100 listings, we hired a marketing director. Right now we are at 178 listings and getting ready to bring on another listing agent and two more buyers agents.”

2. Build a well-rounded team. According to REALTOR Mary Ann Knell, a team approach is necessary to reach a top-producing level, but it helps if your team is knowledgeable in various areas of the business. Knell, a 22-year veteran with Coldwell Banker Devonshire in Peoria, believes that incorporating specific jobs with selling strategies is a great way to develop synergy within the office.

“You never want to work alone,” says Knell. “You can call them what you want—assistants, partners, etcetera—but you need someone working with you from the beginning.”

For new additions to Knell’s team, jobs usually start out as clerical and develop with added responsibility. As a leader, Knell believes that any of her team members can be just as successful as she is if they continue to work at it.

“I feel very strongly that everyone on my team has to know how to work the entire business,” says Knell, who sold $58 million in 202 transactions last year. “We have no buyers agents and everyone in my group has their license. Without understanding the entire business, you can’t do a good job in any one aspect of it.”

3. Stop whining about the market. “Clients today are not waiting a minute before going on to the next agent,” says Guli. “Today it seems like everyone is crying about the market. Persistence breaks down resistance so if you are doing these things each and every day it is impossible not to be successful. Those who don’t succeed spend more time whining about the market than actually doing something about it.”

Guli and his team understand that communication is key if you want to thrive in today’s market. Whether it be incorporating video within e-mails, shaking a hand or creating global virtual tours, he finds the right fit in a balance of basic tasks and the use of innovative technology.

4. Be a trend watcher. For Knell, a former job as a buyer for a department store prepared her for the trend-watching aspect of real estate. “We update our market supply and demand every week,” says Knell. “Whether it is massaging listings, open houses or price changing, we are constantly watching the market and reacting to it with our clients.”

5. Spend upfront to brand yourself early on. Melissa Dowson Vorreyer, broker with Re/Max Professionals in Springfield, jumped into real estate after graduating with a marketing degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Today, she can credit most of her business to the time and money she invested in her marketing plan years ago.

“I invested heavily in branding myself early on,” says Vorreyer, whose $30 million sold in 2007 was almost entirely referral-driven. “I think the extra education really helped me once I got into real estate. You just need to start with a story to tell or a sales record to report and it is much easier to market yourself.”

6. Offer a free service. Vorreyer has taken advantage of the excess inventory of homes and slower pace in today’s market by offering a staging service to each of her clients.

“We are staging every house we list,” says Vorreyer, who recently obtained her Accredited Staging Professional (ASP) designation. “Staged homes are proven to sell quicker and for more money. It’s a free service that we provide to all sellers.”

7. Respect your peers. “Fellow REALTORS are your number one customer,” says Knell, who always makes it a point to thank the other agent in front of both clients at an appointment. “We get our inventory from other agents. We have to acknowledge them professionally for supplying appropriate information to our buyers. It shows us as a partnership and we will more than exceed our goals if we continue to work together.”

8. Be there for your clients. For Mario Greco, keeping in constant contact with past clients is essential to his business. As a broker-associate with Rubloff in Chicago, Greco leaped to top-producer status just months after making the switch from law to real estate in 2002. With $103 million in volume and 248 transactions in 2007 alone, he is no doubt a busy man.

Greco says that top producers can never be too busy to keep in touch with former clients. “I know this industry can be busy, but you have to make time to follow up with past clients,” says Greco. “It’s never too difficult to take a few minutes to ask what is going on in their life or ‘how’s the new kid?’”

With the help of his 15-member team, Greco follows up at least four to six times per year via e-mail to past clients. Recently, he had a client call him for an opinion on the color of the built-ins they were adding to the property Greco had sold them nearly three years ago. “They probably had a whole list of people they could have called for advice, but they called me,” says Greco. “I know that the moment they are ready to sell they will contact me because I have kept in touch with them.”

9. Work with a coach, act like a coach. Knell has worked with a real estate coach for 16 years and encourages those looking to make the leap to top producer to do the same. She says finding a mentor outside your marketplace is the best way to stay enthusiastic and break through that next level of sales. "Even if you are only three months into the job, you will not have to fix bad habits if you start immediately with a strong coach,” says Knell.

She suggests spending some time interviewing coaches and attending seminars with them to see how they look and react before you settle down on one. Says Knell: “Sometimes as a top producer you feel like you are all by yourself. My coach helps me realize that everyone is going through the same thing and allows me to continue with what I do best.”

Having trained with a coach for so many years, Knell now finds herself acting as a coach to her team. “I am their mentor,” says Knell. “I have trained most of them in my systems, customer relations and office styles. I know that any one of them would be very successful on their own and I hope someday that they will do so.”

10. Find your inspiration. For Guli, motivational speaking and self-help have been his source of inspiration. “I have always been intrigued by Anthony Robbins, Tom Hopkins and other self-starters. These people wake up and enjoy every minute of their life,” says Guli. “I eat, sleep and breathe real estate and I absolutely love it. Half the battle is knowing you want to reach that level and the other half is finding the balance and working hard to get there.”

11. Do something different. Greco is currently redesigning his Web site to be more blog-centered and understands the importance of using the Internet and social networking as a means of communicating with clients.

“The new Web site will allow for better search engine optimism,” says Greco. “For example, when someone searches in Google for Bucktown, my name will pop up at the top of the list.”

12. Tirelessly work on goals. “We work totally on goals,” says Knell, whose says her team is in the office every day working on the goals they set up both individually and together. “These include how many people to call, how many listings, how many sales and hours on the phone. Each person within the staff has these goals. They are very attainable and everyone can make their goals if they stay on target.”

13. Work very hard. Greco insists that there is no substitute for hard work and correct pricing in real estate. “You cannot be afraid of 100 hour weeks,” says Greco. “I treat this profession as a full-time job even if I have some free time. Every minute you can be doing something for your business.”

“I probably have anywhere from three to 10 appointments each day, but I also make it a priority to attend all of my kids stuff,” adds Vorreyer, who makes it a daily routine to drop her 7 and 9-year-old children off at school. “The great thing about this job is that I am able to schedule around my family, but still get in a good 60-hour work week.”

By Sarah Murphy, assistant editor

May 2008 Illinois REALTOR magazine