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Articles by Dirk Zeller

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57 articles by Dirk Zeller · showing 50

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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

FIVE CLEAR RULES TO OPEN HOUSE SUCCESS

Featuring a high-appeal home Here’s a hard truth to swallow: No one comes to an open house to meet the agent. They come to see an appealing home, and your role as the hosting agent is to make that house shine. Your reward is the list of prospects you amass, and, one out of 20 times, a home sale to boot. So as you prepare for an open house, think of the home you’re featuring as the headliner of the show. Choose a home with star power by following these points: • Select a home in a high-demand, low-inventory area. Scarcity is a well-proven marketing strategy.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Making Your Presentation Useful and Interesting

Most Agent presentations put sellers to sleep, mainly because most presentations lack interest, usefulness, and structure. To increase the interest in your presentation, follow this advice: • Share market knowledge. Become a student of the local marketplace and share meaningful statistics. Also track trends in the national marketplace, both to enlighten your prospects and also to distinguish yourself as a well-read, well-connected, and well-informed Agent. • Ask questions.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Act On Your Thoughts Now!

Being successful seems to be everyone’s desire. We all want to achieve what our definition of success is in life. Have you ever wondered why successful people are successful; why they seem to go from one successful situation to another, from one victory in life to another? There is one thing ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CHOOSE YOUR CLIENTS – CHOOSE YOUR BUSINESS

The path to failure is trying to please everyone you come into contact with. I believe that I was not put on this earth to help everyone buy and sell. I can’t help everyone, and I don’t want to. Too many Agents believe that they are forced to work with anyone who shows up. By excluding people, you will create better and more loyal clients. Some of the people we meet are unreasonable and should not be clients of anyone. They don’t deserve the honor of any Agent’s time and attention.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
863 views3.5/5 (2)
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Hiring – New or Experienced Buyer’s Agent

The hiring of Buyer’s Agents has perplexed Lead Agents for years. I will admit that much of what I write about this subject comes from many mistakes in personally hiring and firing Buyer’s Agents. Some of the principles, skills, techniques, and evaluations have come from the frustration of the trial and error methods that my clients initially implemented to create a more effective process to hire their Buyer’s Agents. Few Agents have any type of rules or processes to follow when deciding on which Buyer’s Agents are suited to join their team.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Building Your Champion Team

I have shared with you my long version of what a Champion Team is. The truth is it matters very little what my definition is. The true question is what is your definition of a Champion Team? To be successful in life, we all have to affix the target. In order to hit our objectives, goals, and dreams, we have to know what those objectives, goals, and dreams are. You have to be willing to ask yourself the tough questions to get at the right answers.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Become a Champion Performer

Do you have the desire to receive recognition from your peers; to be recognized as one of the top Agents in the country? If you do, you need to start by taking dead aim daily. It is the disciplines we do each day that mean the difference between being on top or being part of the crowd. ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

EMPOWER YOURSELF AND YOUR STAFF

If you are looking to regain some free time with your family and increase your business, you need to get quality help. Cultivating a quality assistant or team of assistants is crucial to long-term balance and growth in real estate. There will always be a limit to the amount of business you can do by yourself. For some Agents, because of their organizational skills or systems, this production level could be quite high without the addition of staff. You can also raise the production level if you are willing to trade more time.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

ACHIEVING RELATIONSHIP EXCELLENCE

As a real estate Agent, your success depends on the quality and durability of the relationships you build with your clients, and the one and only way to build solid, enduring relationships is to deliver excellent, unrivaled service. To be an outstanding Agent you need to lavish your clients with ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CREATING REFERRALS

We all want an office in which the phone rings continually with offers of referral business. Does having this type of office sound like a dream? It doesn’t need to be such a far-fetched reality, though it requires diligent work with clients. There are a few key steps to creating a great referral business. The first step is to provide a high level of service in the first place. If the service is not exceptional, no referrals will be forth coming. One of the crucial factors in customer satisfaction is communication.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

FOUR EASY STEPS TO HANDLING PRESENTATION OBJECTIONS

Sales objections are part of selling. For most people in sales, they present an immovable object in the road to your success. Real estate Agents often freeze when presented with a sales objection. They don’t know what to do or say in the face of this perceived danger. Let me share with you a radical concept. Sales objections are actually good. Now that I’ve blown your circuits, let me explain. There is no selling of anything significant without sales objections. Sales objections indicate an elevated level of interest, desire, or motivation to buy what you are offering.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Attitude and Expectations

There are two key words that lead to success in life. These words control the successful outcome of your business, marriage, and many other areas of life. Although you may have incredible talent and skill in life, you will fail if you do not master these two words – and vice versa. Even if ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

BECOME THE EXPERT

Do you have the skills that will make you massively successful? Are you making the most of them? The people who are compensated the best in life are highly skilled and highly specialized. They perform few functions, but the ones they do are performed exceedingly well, and they are paid ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Actions Or Attitudes

The two A’s of success are Actions and Attitudes. You have to have both to achieve sustainable success in life. Having one without the other will only allow you to achieve a mild level of success. Having both will enable you to accomplish anything! If you have the right attitude in sales but ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN EXCELLENCE

A Champion accepts nothing less than excellence. When you look at successful individuals and successful companies, good is not good enough. They are clearly striving for excellence. In Jim Collins’ best selling book, Good to Great, one of his premises is that good is really the enemy of great; that if we are willing to settle for good, we will never achieve greatness. I agree that to hit the Champion level as an Agent, you can’t be satisfied with mid-level skills, abilities, and mindset.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

The Power of Aligning Job Descriptions with Behavioral Style

What if you could predict, in advance, how a person would react to certain job performance tasks? What would the value of that knowledge be worth to you as a Lead Agent? What if you could predict how they will deal with challenges, make connections with others, deal with change, and respond to ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Barrier of Entry

Selling in the new millennium has moved away from transactional based selling to relational based, or values based, selling. For many years, real estate Agents could focus on “doing the deal” – get the consumers into the home and the loan, and move on. Consumers are looking for more than the ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

DO YOU DO WHAT YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD?

Most Agents know deep down inside that they need to do a better job of prospecting in order to increase business. They know that true long-term sales success is built through the work of looking for new business, but they do not do the work. Unlike those Agents, if you want to succeed, you must provide service to clients once you have acquired them, but you have to acquire them before you can serve them. The guy who builds the best mousetrap only has a great mousetrap. He still has to find someone to buy it.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Approach Your Referral Sources

Marketing for referrals with mailers, calendars, recipe cards, and other outreach and appreciation efforts is nowhere near as effective as prospecting for referrals by making personal calls and requests. The hard truth is that most consumers stand a far better chance of finding a poor agent ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Bullet-Proof Listing Presentations

There is an old adage that we make three listing appointments for every one we actually go on. We make a presentation on the way to the appointment as we run through it in our car. We make the actual presentation live – in front of the seller. And we usually make the final one on the way home from the appointment. Which one of the three is usually the best? Right – the one on the way home. At that point, we have the opportunity to reflect and say what we really should have said the moment we froze from their question or objection. How do we make the one that truly counts the best?

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
1,462 views2.7/5 (3)
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

We are embarking on a new year. The slate is clean for the first time in over a year. What a great opportunity lies before us right now. My question for you is: what are you aiming for? All great performers in life have a specific aim or objective. The archer is shooting for the bull’s eye. The ship’s captain is aiming for a specific port. What are you aiming for? This time of year holds the most promise for you over all other times of the year. You have a whole new year to create the outcome you desire. Your sales board for this year has a big zero on it.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

BUILDING CREDIBILITY AND TRUST

Selling and sales techniques go through evolution and sometimes revolution. Evolution is when we evolve and change slowly over an extended period of time. We experience revolution when our customers demand a change in approach quickly to be better served. Whether building trust is a new key concept in the sales person’s lexicon or not, it has come about through evolution or revolution; I am not completely sure which one. I do know that building credibility and trust are essential elements in the sales process in order to develop long-term sales relationships.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

GO AHEAD…PUT YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET!

I was recently reflecting on the question, “What is the one characteristic that makes someone successful.” It was in one of those moments that you struggle to boil all of your knowledge down into one distilled thought. To remove all the dross of your thoughts to one true nugget of incredible value to all who come in contact with it. My mind zeroed in on the concept of how our effort dictates our reward in life. Our effort being our work or what we do. In life we create our reward, whether it is financial or relational, by what we do.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

ABE LINCOLN'S AXE

How much time do you spend improving your skills daily or even weekly? The skills of selling real estate include our listing presentation, follow-up systems, prospecting, negotiating, and qualifying, to name a few. It’s your mind, what you say, how you say it. How much time do we ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CREATING LEADS VERSUS CONVERTING LEADS

The creation, control, and conversion of leads determines the revenue and success of your business. Most Speakers, Trainers, Coaches, and Authors focus a lot of their time on the creation of leads. They try to sell you their “lead generation system” – the system that creates thousands of leads for you! We have all heard of these third-party Internet companies that, in most areas, are charging Agents lots of money for low quality and low conversion rate leads.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

DEMONSTRATING YOUR PROFESSIONAL VALUE

A Champion Agent can convey the six key rules that equate to professional value to any prospect or client. They are able to drive home the key points to raise their value to the prospect. 1. We don’t sell properties We are salespeople, but we are really selling something other than a property. What we really sell to the marketplace is our knowledge. Our knowledge is better and more complete than our competitor’s, which enables us to charge a higher fee for our service. Why is one Atto ey $500 an hour and another is only $100 an hour? It’s an hour for both.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CREATING SALES AND SALES VOLUME COMPARISONS

Evaluating your performance against the statistics of other agents or companies in your market segment is a great starting point, but it is rarely enough to uncover your unique edge or point of difference. When you compare your numbers to MLS stats for the number of units sold, number of listings taken, number of listings sold, and total sales volume in your market area you arrive at a picture of how you did compared to the market at large.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Diligent Salespeople

Many people in real estate sales think being called a salesperson is like being called an axe murderer. Being a salesperson is an honorable profession. It is a highly skilled and professional vocation. A professional salesperson is a critical cog in any company’s success. Just ask IBM a few years ago, when they were heavy on engineers and light on sales professionals. Because of the lack of sales, IBM stock went on a free fall until their sales increased. Many REALTORS® misinterpret what a salesperson’s function is for the client.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Better is Better

The business environment is getting more competitive every day. New companies and new concepts are being born daily. There is always someone trying to do it better and cheaper than what has been done previously. There is more competition in today’s global economy than every before. Do you remember when the US Postal Service was the only way to send documents? Now that age-old institution has to compete with delivery services such as Fed-EX, Airbo e, UPS, as well as fax machines and the Internet with e-mail.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

WISDOM WITH FINANCES

Most Agents begin their real estate career with the hope of gaining financial independence. They are attracted by the possibility of earning large sums of money. Even when Agents make more than a six-figure income, the vast majority have not dramatically improved their financial balance sheet. After looking at hundreds of Agents’ Profit and Loss statements and personal spending habits, I’ve determined that real estate Agents are poorly prepared for financial independence. Why should real estate Agents be any different from the American population in general?

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CUSTOMER SERVICE DOESN’T EQUAL ACCESSIBILITY

For 30 years we have been taught, as REALTORS® we must be there for our clients. I hear it all the time from Agents across North America; “I want to be there for my clients.” What does ‘be there’ mean? Does ‘be there’ mean we are available 24 hours, 7 days a week for our clients? Does it mean that we miss soccer games, tee ball games, and piano recitals? For many Agents that is exactly what it means! Many of us equate access with service. We have been trained for years that access is the primary vehicle of customer service.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Creating Daily Success in Real Estate

The journey to a successful life should be enjoyed. True success comes from accomplishing the daily activities that will lead you to your ultimate goals in life. Failing or neglecting to accomplish the daily disciplines will lead you down the path of lost opportunities and lost income. If the penalty for not accomplishing your daily activities or disciplines were implemented today, you would look at neglecting them differently. The truth is the penalty for neglect is more visible in the future than it is today.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Avoiding Closing Derailment

Like a train, a transaction can get derailed at any point on the track. A closing can be hit by a clouded title, a home not appraising for value, a rapid change in interest rates, an undisclosed credit or income issue, or one of countless other unanticipated issues. Choke points cause delays ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Adversity

In order for us to win in life, we must push through the adversity we face. Without facing it, we are poorly prepared for winning. The truth is most of us don’t welcome adversity like a long-lost friend. We don’t embrace with passion the pain and setbacks that occur. Alfred Russell Wallace ...

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Burn Bright or Burn Out

Are you burning bright or heading for burnout? Many people are heading fast toward burnout or just recovering from burnout. Burnout is a real happening for many REALTORS®. Daily we get calls from Agents who are struggling with this dilemma. Burnout occurs when reality and our expectations don’t align over time. Burnout can also trigger anger. The anger is seeded in the feeling that life is not working out the way we had thought it would. We also feel powerless to make the changes needed, or we don’t know the changes that we need to implement.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

COUNSELING CLIENTS ON HOME IMPROVEMENTS

Before you start to counsel owners about home improvements, remember these two rules: * First and foremost, never counsel before you are hired. Counseling happens after a client-relationship is established. Atto eys don’t offer legal advice before their services have been officially retained. Doctors don’t diagnose without assurance of compensation. Realtors should follow suit. Wait until the listing agreement is signed.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CHECKING YOUR PROSPECT’S “DNA”

Based on your qualifying efforts, determine the likelihood that your prospect will convert into a good client for your business by conducting a DNA analysis. This involves measuring the prospect’s level of desire, need to take action, and ability and authority to make a purchase or selling decision. D for Desire Desire or motivation is the strongest indicator of a successful business outcome.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

COMPETING WITH OTHER AGENTS

All agents are at different stages of their career and different levels of production. Each has their own philosophy for running their business and different levels of staffing for accomplishing it. I get asked constantly, “How do I compete with agents that have more listings, staff and production tha I do?” That is certainly a valid question since there are a whole lot more new agents, inconsistent agents and average agents then there are mega-producers. How do you compete against a mega-producer?

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

CHALLENGES FOR SALES PROFESSIONALS

The most significant challenge for sales professionals is their time control. How a sales professional uses their time determines income. The sales professionals in the top 10% of their industry control, use, and invest their time more wisely and effectively than the lower performing sales people. The Champion Performers are more effective with their time blocking schedule than lower performers. The concept of time blocking is not new. Most of us have been exposed to it but have yet to master it.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

DEFINING LEADS

One of the major challenges facing a real estate salesperson is managing leads. Selecting the right lead becomes critical to your success. The first key step is defining what a lead is to you. I have found from coaching and training real estate agents worldwide that, for even the best of them, the definition is rather broad. Most real estate agents define a lead as a human being who will create condensation on a piece of glass held up to his mouth. In other words, it is anyone breathing. The most successful real estate agents have clearly defined definitions of what is a lead.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

BUSINESS PLAN

The business plan is a foreign tool to most REALTORS®. After studying, observing, interviewing, and coaching hundreds of Agents, I have concluded that very few have taken the time to create a quality business plan. Fewer still review their business plan on a regular basis. The few who have good business plans often make them so complicated that they possess little value. Those Agents create such a complex business plan that they will never carry it out. What kind of value does this complex business plan have to them? . . .

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Building a Referral-Based Clientele

Salespeople love referrals. They’re the sincerest form of compliment and a remarkably cost-effective route to new business. The idea of attracting referrals is so popular that sales trainers who bill themselves as referral gurus make fortunes promoting magical systems that supposedly deliver more referrals than an agent can handle, all in return for tuition at a three-day seminar. What they talk about for three days is a mystery to me. Referrals are really pretty simple stuff.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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By Dirk ZellerRecently published1 topic

Business Clarity

One of the most difficult tasks in life is defining your purpose. The pay off of clarity of purpose is enormous. In working with some of the top Agents across North America, I have found that clarity is a big concern. There is a direct correlation between clarity of purpose and success. The more clarity you have in your business, the more profit you will make, and the time spent in business mode will be reduced. The people with clarity achieve more with less time worked. The most successful people spend time thinking, evaluating, and re-evaluating their progress.

Primary topic: Career Coach and Career Coaching
Career Coach and Career Coaching
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