If you haven’t already set goals for the new year, its time to pull out a pen and a piece of paper. To get you started, we collected inspiration from some of our favourite coaches, trainers, mentors, high achievers, and industry specialists to inspire you to deliver your best results.
01 Enough Corporate Guff In Your Social Media!
Make the commitment to stop boring your clients in 2012 by putting a creative strategy in place for your social media – that includes Facebook, Twitter, and your all-important blog. No more re-posting articles from the newspapers – put that thinking cap on as a team and come up with weekly articles you know will enrich your community and help grow your reputation. Try and collaborate with complimentary businesses in your catchment area – let the social media network help you grow! If this sounds a little difficult –you can always outsource!
Iolanthe Gabrie, Ruby Slipper Consultants, www.rubyslipper.com.au.
02 Manage your energy, not your time
Energy is infectious to those around you – both positive and negative. So, while we start the year on a high and full of optimism and enthusiasm, as it progresses we need to make sure we regularly audit the energy we bring into our day, our work and our lives and reflect on how it affects others. Observe your day, take note of when your energy is best, and schedule your most important work then with more mundane tasks when your energy slumps. The world has got so fast we all have trouble keeping up and the fall out is that we are all busy, time poor and tired much of the time. According to Dr Adam Fraser, a specialist in human performance, businesses need to focus on ‘energy management’ not ‘time management’. Low energy levels cause us to be unproductive, uncreative, overly emotional, difficult to deal with and with low tolerance for customers and staff. Make sure your audit covers your physical, emotional, and mental energy levels.
Helen Lowy, B2B Offers, www.b2boffers.com.au.
03 Be the healthiest you’ve been in five years!
Our industry in general is terrible when we look at health and wellbeing. In a time when business is tough, we need more energy than ever. Physical fitness allows for superior thinking, fuelling your ability to be more creative, make better decisions and become highly desirable to potential business through an improved confidence.
We have long days and nights. The best of the best can turn it on if the appointment is at 8:00am or 8:00pm. You can raise the bar on your career goals all you want in 2012 but if that drains more energy than you have in the tank what will be the price? The cost can easily be a marriage, friendship, or time with your children when all you do is “crash” when you hit home. Energy is highly contagious, extremely attractive and a clear sign of personal management and leadership.
Paul Tonich, Altitude Real Estate, www.altitudere.com.au.
04 Take advantage of the resources boom
This is a new year with a new and somewhat different set of features driving the property market. The so-called resources ‘boom’ will continue to drive the Australian economy for some time, not just as a boom effect.
Look at long-term ways of tapping into this market. The employment structure in those mining jobs is changing from the ‘get rich quick and spend it quick’ young guy, to the more stable family oriented person who is looking to set up long term real assets for their family. Those people will be looking for safe and secure investment options. Despite the ‘doom and gloom’ preached by some publicity seekers the Australian property market values have held up extremely well, despite a slowdown in sales.
The smart agent will be putting plans in place to attract that investment and will be looking at ways other than running investment seminars. The ‘fly in / fly out’ nature of the employment means that almost every community in Australia has highly paid mining workers needing a permanent home in these locations.
Rod White, COO Yong Corporate office, www.yong.com.au.
05 Find your niche
Find your niche and become a specialist in a particular type of Real Estate, for example apartments, price ranges, beachside homes or an “area specialist” of your particular suburb or town. Get to know everything that it is possible to know: the facilities and services on offer; the people who live there; the motivations of the people who want to live there; what community events occur that make it desirable; what is happening from a development perspective; what businesses are doing in the area and how that can impact. “Specialists” understand their market and their potential client base. They know the details, and they can articulate it in the format that best suits their target market – and vendors will pay for it!
06 Simplify and clarify your pitch to vendors
Agents provide so much information and reporting to your clients, but sometimes it is difficult for them to sift through a whole ton of information; sometimes less is more. Think about providing an “Executive Summary” in your market analysis, which includes costs and inclusions in your service. Make it simple for your vendors to make a decision to choose you.
Tony Rowe, BPG Training, www.myrealestatetraining.com.au.
07 An article gets read 22 more times than an ad, so make your ads look like articles
We are thumped with between 5000 and 30,000 marketing messages every day, so we have been psychologically trained to ignore advertising or we’d go insane. People still do read publications, watch TV, surf the net and listen to the radio though, but NOT to read, see or hear the ads. So, even if you are going to put an ad in these publications, do your best to cleverly disguise it as an article, or interview, and give your audience a reason to say thank you. I promise you, you will get a much better response.
08 Until you have an assistant, you are an assistant!
There is very little in our business that cant be systemised and done bya $20-$50 an hour employee. Everything from admin duties, filling out forms,collating marketing material, escorting buyers, prospecting phone calls,follow up procedures, even negotiating and listing appointments could besystemised and trained to a staff member (after all you learned to do itdidn’t you?)
Glenn Twiddle, Rogue Real Estate Trainer, www.GlennTwiddle.com.au/blog.
09 Focus and be entertaining
Be a big fish in a small. Keep your marketing consistently in your prospects faces, don’t be boring, be entertaining face, be entertaining and not boring, and doit often!
Chris Gilmour, All Properties Group, www.allpropertiesgroup.com.au
10 Sponsor a sporting club
In 2012, I’m aiming to spend a certain proportion of my annual income on sporting club sponsorships, not only is it a great marketing opportunity, but it allows you to give back and engage with the community.
