First and foremost, top agents are crystal clear on what their vision is.  If you ask any top agent where they will be in 5 years they will give you a detailed answer.  I want you to think about will you have a team, an assistant, how many deals do you want to be doing.  Where is your business mainly coming from?  Your answer should be direct referrals from your past clients and center of influence.  This is the number one source most real estate agents fail to build well.  I always say the fortune is in the follow up when it comes to building your business and that means you need to be in constant contact with your database, thru email, phone calls, newletters, and of course social media!

All top agents have standards, buyer standards and seller standards, if you don’t have any and are struggling with unrealistic buyers and sellers this is why you are frustrated with your book of business.   I want you to think about the perfect buyer experience you have had, write down what you liked about working with that particular buyer, those are your standards.  Same goes for your sellers, think about that perfect listing to close you have had and what you liked about working with those sellers, again those are your standards.  I know what you are thinking is that Tammy that isn’t that realistic, well think about this, if you don’t have standards and are spending your time with buyers that are dragging you all over town, and sellers that want you to spend a ton of money on advertising but they wont lower their price…. You are spending all of your time and energy with people that are never going to buy and sellers that you will never get sold.  If you were not doing this you would have a lot more time to prospect for quality business that keeps you happy and wanting to stay in this business in the first place.

The last thing I want to share with you is that all top agents focus on listings.  Your bread and butter is in the listing not in the buyers.  If you have listings your going to get buyers, and honestly which one would you rather have a seller that is motivated to sell or a buyer they may or may not buy?  When you have listings you are able to keep a better schedule for you and your family.  When you are working buyers, you could be working days in row, nights and weekends, and not have a day off in weeks, for some of you months!

This is exactly why I opened up my company Turning Passion Into Profits in this economy. You see like many people, I was working a J.O.B with another company as a real estate coach, but was unhappy because we had to work harder, take on more clients and work for less money. Sound familiar? Well I finally got tired of it and launched my own company in September of 2009. I have to admit I was a little nervous and thought to myself, Tammy you are the only one I know that has quit her job in this economy and started your own business. And you know that most businesses fail.

You see, I was crystal clear in what I wanted to do; to become a motivational speaker and coach, and train all over the world. I didn’t know how I was going to get there but I was determined to succeed. That is all you need, the determination to succeed. My business is thriving; I get new coaching clients every week that call me, mostly coming from social media. And just recently I was sharing the stage with Les Brown and Bill Walsh from Powerteam International speaking at the Rainmaker Summit in Newport Beach, CA. How cool is that? This was all done in the past 6 months, the connections came from going to events.

I have always said that your business is directly related to the quality of event you attend. There is a great event coming up in LA on October 7-10, 2010 at the LAX Marriott.

Find more details on the LA event here

This is a must attend event for anyone that is looking to turn their passion into profits. I am a big visionary, and I believe if you get clear on what it is you want and who you want to serve the money will come. When I opened up my own company I had no idea that half of the people that would come into my schedule would NOT be Realtors. Most were small business owners, entrepreneurs, even network marketing business. I also did not expect to have coaching clients from all over the United States. It was no surprise when I have business owners from Palmdale, Lancaster, Valencia, and most of the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita Valley coming into my schedule. However, just months after I started, I found myself coaching business owners from Los Angeles, Irvine, Sacramento, Las Vegas and as far as New York and Orlando. You see my coaching experience allows me to dig into what is really holding you back from succeeding in this economy. I mean you could go to the Internet and get everything you need to know about being successful in your business yes? Well I hear to tell you, you need a coach, and that person may not be me because there are a ton of great coaches out there.

Coaching changed my life. I hired a coach 6 years ago and I still use the principles and exercises he taught me still today. He taught me how to be passionate about what I do, and if I was in a business that I wasn’t passionate about to get out of it, and that is exactly what I did and could not be happier. You were meant to do something great with your life, something brilliant, and I can tell you it isn’t working for that boss you don’t like or that company that expects you to work twice as hard for half the pay. Go out today and be amazing!

This is the power of social media for Realtors, because as a real estate coach my clients biggest fault is that they don’t communicate often enough or at all with their past clients. Actually I was just having a conversation with another superstar Realtor who always markets to the buyer after the sale who was represented by another agent because the buyer’s agent rarely keeps in contact with them. Could you imagine if you connected with every client past client neighbor friend on a daily basis what do you think this would do for your business? I am teaching my clients how to build a database in less than 18months what took my over a decade to build!
If you are just getting started start with Facebook and add ten friends a day. When you first get started you don’t want to promote your product or service in fact I don’t want you promoting at all until you have at least a 1000 friends. This way you can build a good audience of people that know you and care about you and want to help you grow your business. Rule #1 is for every 10 status updates you want to do one about your service. You can promote a listing, a buyer need, or an event that you are doing in your local community.
Like I said, I only started 18 months ago and now I have capped out at 5000 friends and have been great for my business and my real estate coaching clients just by staying in contact. Be friendly, be engaging and look out for some of my webinars on how to profit from social media!