When I was younger, I remember asking my dad why he chose to live in Fremont, Calif., rather than Palo Alto. The reason I posed this question was because my friends in real estate in Palo Alto were selling homes much more expensive than the ones I was selling. In other words, they were spending about the same time selling, and they had a much higher average sales price, which meant a much higher commission per closing.
I also had an uncle who worked in real estate, and he actually moved his family to a much more expensive neighborhood so that he could begin to sell higher-priced homes by living among the people and selling the homes of his new neighbors. And it actually worked.
On a more serious note, if you’re looking to make more money in less time, there are some simple ways to make it happen.
- Spend more time with your top 50 contacts from your database. The more you talk to them, encourage them to pursue their dreams, help them move up when the time is right—and continue this over the years—your average commission dollar will increase.
- Spend more time on your entire database, and continue to grow it regularly. There’s nothing like people you already know to help you in your pursuit of selling more homes, and, of course, more expensive homes at that.
- Pick a higher-priced area to pursue. Farming, door-knocking, mailers and events can be done in an area where you’ve never worked. The problem with this idea is that most real estate agents will talk themselves out of it because there may already be a dominant salesperson in that area. Don’t let that stop you. It’s been proven over the years that any area of 600 or more homes can easily support two or three well-loved agents.
- Make friends with agents who have higher average sales prices than you. Take one or two agents out to lunch every quarter and pick their brain. Ask them how they broke into the price range, and what specifically you’ll need to do differently to make your presence known.
- Volunteer to do the open houses of agents with higher-priced listings. Make it an event with balloons, open house signs, flowers throughout the house, cookies and water bottles. If someone in your office has a high-priced listing that’s vacant and in a good traffic area, make it your office for a day.
As a coach for Workman Success Systems, I find that when ideas are laid out for us to use, we often have our mind clicking into gear with negative thoughts. But we have to remember this statement: “Everything works, and nothing doesn’t.”
I can confidently say you will increase your average sales price if you consistently focus on any of the ideas above. And, you’ll be happy with yourself for having applied them.
Rick Geha of The Rick Geha Real Estate Team began his real estate career at age 22, and has been selling for over 36 years; he has run, managed or owned real estate offices for the past 23 years. His love of people and mentoring their passions has led him to a successful career as a speaker, trainer and coach. Over the past 15 years, he’s led more than 1,000 classes and workshops throughout the U.S. and Canada. He is currently a coach with Workman Success Systems. Contact him at Rick@RickGeha.com.
For more information, please visit www.workmansuccesssystems.com.
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