To learn more about LarsonEd’s Florida real estate and Florida insurance courses, visit LarsonEd.com or give us a call at 239-344-7510.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 40 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online. We are an approved Florida Real Estate School (License #ZH1002299), Florida CAM School (License #PRE31), Florida Insurance School (License # 370501) and NMLS Approved Course Provider.
To learn more about LarsonEd’s Florida real estate and Florida insurance courses, visit LarsonEd.com or give us a call at 239-344-7510.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 40 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online. We are an approved Florida Real Estate School (License #ZH1002299), Florida CAM School (License #PRE31), Florida Insurance School (License # 370501) and NMLS Approved Course Provider.
When too many of your clients are cancelling their health insurance policies, you start to feel the impact at all levels of your business—lost clients could increase administrative costs and you could also see issues with debt management if you’ve already budgeted certain commissions that are no longer coming in.
And acquiring new clients is not cheap.
Here is part 2 for our tips on how to choose clients who will stick around:
People respond to stories. You can demonstrate the value of a certain policy or package by telling a story about how the policy has worked for an unnamed client in the past and the benefits it provided them.
Insurance consultant Keith Leech likes to use a 4-question process to further drive the point home in a prospects mind. You can use these questions yourself:
“Who do you know who has suffered a heart attack, cancer, or stroke?”
“Were they expecting it to happen?”
“Did they suffer financially or emotionally?”
“Would cash have helped?”
Everyone has been affected by heart attack, cancer, or stroke in one way or another. By relating your products to a personal experience of your client’s, they will better understand the immediacy of their health insurance needs.
4. Maintain Communication
To keep your clients on board with you, it’s important that they not only hear from you at renewal time or when a premium is late, but other times as well.
Show your clients appreciation and they will stick around.
Remember: you and your client are business partners.
The best way to maintain contact is to create a repeatable communication schedule that you replicate for every client.
No, you don’t want to send any “Dear, client” emails. But when your client signs on with you, you may want to send yourself some Google alerts to remind you to ask them questions to head off common conversations you may have in the first 30 days of partnership.
“Did you receive your insurance cards?”
“Do you have any questions or concerns with your coverage so far?”
Make sure some of these are phone calls as well.
Don’t inundate them with phone calls and emails. However, you can use special insurance events as a good reason to contact them. For example, May is national disability insurance awareness month, September is national life insurance awareness month, and June 28 is national insurance awareness day.
Also, around the new year they may need to renew their policy. Your best practice is to see if they’ve had any life-changing events in the past year such as a wedding or a child. Find this out from your client and suggest some options to better suit their new needs.
5. Assume You’ll Be Their Agent for Life
Building a long-lasting relationship with your clients isn’t about selling products, per se; it’s about selling your services. It’s about being there when they need you.
A truly great health insurance agent will get referrals from parent to child.
As your relationship extends over the years, consider offering life insurance. Many people are under the misapprehension that life insurance is expensive. Like most people, they may simple have whatever plan they were offered through their job and have left it at that.
If you are always looking out for your clients needs in their interest, you’re sure to continue these long-lasting relationships.
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Naples real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
Owners want to know what’s happening with their listing. Therefore, sellers want their agent to creatively market the property, pay attention to detail, and provide excellent customer support as part of their services.
The reason most often cited by owners who were unhappy with the listing agent is not the failure of the agent to secure a buyer; it’s failure of the agent tocommunicate with them after the listing is signed.
Sellers want you to add value by providing much more than the sellers could do on their own.
If they could have found that extra value on their own then what do they need you for?
Sellers want you to look at the entire situation and give good advice.
It’s difficult for sellers to be objective about their own property. Emotional attachment, nostalgia, and good memories cloud their ability to accurately assess their home’s value. That’s why you need to be the voice of reason and wisdom for the seller.
Sellers want you to remember who the customer is and respond to their needs.
Always remember that your relationship with the seller is a mutually beneficial one, and you should remember your role as well as your client’s. This relationship will sometimes require you to swallow your pride.
Okay, you gotta have a cut-off point though.
Sellers want to be treated like partners—keep in touch and update them at least once a week.
There’s nothing more frustrating for a seller than to be left in the dark. Keep them in the loop even if there’s nothing to report. This lets your client know that you care about them and their needs.
Sellers want to see a nice brochure—accurate, detailed, and professional.
A nice brochure shows that you’ve done your homework on the property and that you’re prepared to present their listing to potential buyers in the most professional way possible.
Keep in mind this list of seller desires so you don’t make the same mistake as many agents before you. Check back next time for part 2.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
Whether you’re a new real estate professional or a broker, you can learn from the brokerage employment process. As a new agent, it helps to know what you can expect from the recruitment and hiring process to better prepare yourself. As a broker, you can improve your recruiting and hiring process to find the best new agents.
In our last post, we started to outline some of the common elements of a good job interview. Let’s continue with that list.
Professional Assets
Take time to explain the job in detail and give the candidate the opportunity to sell himself or herself. Questions might include:
“What do you think are your major assets as an employee?”
“What strengths do others see in you?”
“What are your areas that need development?”
Closing
Conclude the interview with a summary and ask, “Do you have any further questions about the job, our company, or anything else we’ve discussed?” A good candidate will have questions prepared for the interviewer, which will allow the candidate to listen to the interviewer sell themselves to him or her.
Selecting a Candidate
Once the interview process is finished, the next step is choosing who to hire. The right person is the one whose knowledge, skills, abilities, goals, values, and expectations fit the job. The right fit for the organization is the one who is motivated, creative, flexible, and will work well in the company’s culture.
Converting all of this to an employment decision requires a quantifiable assessment according to certain established selection criteria. Criteria related to the job and the organization must be established and become the platform for evaluating and selecting a candidate.
Hiring
The person who hires is also the person who fires. The hiring person should be completely committed to the person who is finally selected. The hiring process generally consists of two steps:
The offer and acceptance
The formal employment paperwork.
Once you have followed through on these job interview guidelines, the company and candidate will have both found the right fit for the job. Follow these hiring guidelines to better prepare for your upcoming real estate job interview, no matter which side of the table you’ll be sitting on.
To sign up for classes, give us a call at 239-344-7510 or visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
Whether you’re a new real estate professional or a broker, you can learn from the brokerage employment process. As a new agent, it helps to know what you can expect from the recruitment and hiring process to better prepare yourself. As a broker, you can improve your recruiting and hiring process to find the best new agents.
Generally, the real estate employment process will consist of:
Recruiting
Prescreening
Interviewing
Selecting
Hiring
Recruiting
Any brokerage needs to be able to recruit from a position of strength, which is why company image is so important. Recruiting is the process of assembling a pool of candidates for consideration.
That means the company’s business reputation and its workplace environment play a vital role in attracting the best people in the pool, which gives management good candidates to consider. Recruiting, therefore, can begin internally or externally.
Prescreening
The prescreening process is meant to gather basic information in order to decide whether an applicant meets the position requirements. Prescreening is often done with an application, a resume, a brief face-to-face, and a phone call or videoconference conversation.
Sometimes a candidate will be required to answer a few questions that require written answers. This exercise is useful not only for analyzing the content of the answer, but also for evaluating the candidate’s communication skills.
Interviewing
Candidates who make it through the prescreening process will move forward to a formal interview, the most important information-gathering part of the process. If the brokerage hasn’t found any suitable candidates to interview, then it’s better to go back to the recruiting process rather than waste everybody’s time with an interview with a candidate who doesn’t meet the qualifications.
Best practices for interviews
A good interview will include some common elements that the interviewer will use to find the best candidate.
Introduction
The opening question can be used to put the candidate at ease with an icebreaker. For example, get the conversation going with an easy question such as, “How did you become interested in our company?”
Work Experience
Questions about previous work experience can reveal the candidate’s skills, motivations, initiative, and problem-solving ability. Questions might include:
“What have you done best in previous jobs?”
“How have you handled job-related problems in the past?”
“What are your major work accomplishments?”
Education
Questions about education can reveal the candidate’s level of accomplishment, professional interests, and potential for growth and development. Questions might include:
“What have you learned related to your desired career in real estate?”
“What made you choose to work in real estate?”
“How do you feel about getting additional education?”
“What do you want to learn next?”
Check back next time for part 2!
To sign up for classes, give us a call at 239-344-7510 or visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
You may think that leadership is fixed and finite–a boss tells people below them what to do, and those people do it. However, as your personal skills change so too will your leadership needs. Likewise, as your team grows and improves, your leadership skills will become more valuable.
A one-size-fits-all approach to leadership may be hurting your real estate business. Here are 4 leadership styles you need to know as a real estate professional and when to use them.
Directive
Use this leadership style when people are highly committed but not necessarily competent with the given task.
When the task is difficult, and the people performing it are inexperienced or have low commitment, then it’s necessary to give instructions as to how the job should be done. This style of leadership puts a strong emphasis on the task, as well as a low emphasis on the people performing it.
Coaching
When people have some competence relative to the task, but are low on commitment.
When the task is difficult, but the people have some skill they need direction and supervision because of their relative inexperience. They also need support and recognition to build their confidence and involvement in decision-making to restore their commitment (which may have declined because of frustration on the team).
Supporting
Use this leadership style when people are highly committed but have varied competence.
When you have a situation that requires a supporting leadership style the individual’s skill-set has improved, but they still require support to sustain motivation to bolster their confidence. As a leader, you can start to take a backseat, giving acknowledgement and praise when necessary.
Delegating
Use this leadership style when people are both competent and committed.
People who are competent and committed will be able and willing to work on a given project by themselves with little supervision or support. Occasional monitoring allows you, as a leader, to stay informed and ensure that team members have the necessary resources. But, for the most part, this team will be better when left alone.
The better you understand your team, the more likely you’ll be able to use the most effective form of leadership. Utilize these 4 types of leadership to better lead your team in the future.
To sign up for classes, including brokers post-licensing courses, give us a call at 239-344-7510 or visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
You’ve got a listing presentation scheduled with a potential client. Fantastic. Now think of your upcoming presentation as a job interview: you are trying to convince your potential client that you can sell their home faster, for more money, and with more care than any other agent. Therefore, your first impression should let your potential clients know that you are trustworthy, knowledgable, and prepared. Because if you don’t they may be inclined to go with another agent.
Think you can go into this or any other presentation and wing it? Failing to plan is another way of planning to fail. The true difference between rookie agents and the superstars is a preparedness. Your listing presentation is won or lost, in large part, before you even meet with the potential client. Follow these tips to better serve your potential clients’ needs.
How often do you get a personal, hand-written note from people anymore? It’s rare, but it feels great when you receive one. It shows that somebody cares about you enough to take the time to write something specifically for you.
After every listing presentation, send your potential client a handwritten letter and perhaps a small, thoughtful gift to show them what kind of personal attention they’ll receive as your client.
Also, be sure to get their email to add them to your email newsletter list (if they are interested).
5. Be ready for common questions
No, you can’t know exactly how your presentation and conversation with your potential clients will go, but there are some questions that will come up time and time again as you do more and more listing presentations. It behooves you to come prepared with some answers to those questions.
For example, they might ask: “What do you think of our property?”
Be sure to project your enthusiasm for their home—remember, this is their castle. Highlight some of the key positive features while gently sliding into a few things that could stand to be fixed.
Or they might ask: “What are your credentials?”
This one should be easy for you. Let them know if you are an accredited Realtor. Give them a rundown of your recent sales history and some average sales prices for different property types. If you are a full-time agent, mention that—it will give you more credibility than a part-time agent. If you are a part-time agent, be honest about it, but be sure to spin it into a positive by pointing out how your sales record is all the more impressive because of your part-time capacity.
6. Get the seller, not just the listing
Dale Carnegie said: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
Now, you don’t have to be friends with your clients, but employing the same quality listening skills that would get you a friend can help you better serve them. What is their body language saying about how they feel? What kind of questions are they asking? Paying attention to these forms of communication can help you gauge your client’s interest in your presentation.
Follow these tips to better improve your listing presentations. To sign up for classes, including real estate post-licensing, visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com, or give us a call at 239-344-7510.
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Naples real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
You’ve got a listing presentation scheduled with a potential client. Fantastic. Now think of your upcoming presentation as a job interview: you are trying to convince your potential client that you can sell their home faster, for more money, and with more care than any other agent. Therefore, your first impression should let your potential clients know that you are trustworthy, knowledgable, and prepared. Because if you don’t they may be inclined to go with another agent.
Think you can go into this or any other presentation and wing it? Failing to plan is another way of planning to fail. The true difference between rookie agents and the superstars is a preparedness. Your listing presentation is won or lost, in large part, before you even meet with the potential client. Follow these tips to better serve your potential clients’ needs.
1. Research
Yes, of course you should look up tax records for details on the property and look at similar listings in the area. But don’t overlook the value of looking up your potential clients on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Get a sense of where they’ve been and where they’re going in their careers and lives by looking at job and personal information publicly available on their social media profiles.
If you think looking up your potential clients online is creepy, then consider this: What do you think people do every time they consider using your services? That’s right, they type your name into Google. This is interpersonal research in the 21st century.
2. Prepare materials
Your potential clients will want to hold hard copies of documents in their hands at a listing presentation—having tangible evidence of your work adds to your credibility as well as the credibility of the information you are presenting.
Prepare a CMA and have a full-color market analysis on hand, along with some of your personal marketing materials. Also, consider bringing along some of your photographer’s work as a sample, but remember: only do this if you get nice glossy photo paper. It’s better to present an electronic version of an image than a poorly printed hard copy.
3. Competition is your friend
What would you think of a doctor who discouraged you from getting a second opinion? They might come off as insecure and, perhaps worse, it’ll mean they’re more concerned with their own image rather than your well-being. This is how you make a potential client feel when you discourage them from interviewing multiple agents. Encourage your potential clients to talk to your competition—this displays confidence in every way.
And, if you have prepared like you should, you will stand out from your competition anyway.
Most importantly, do not speak ill of your competition or put undue pressure on your potential clients. Inform them, be honest, and speak with confidence and you will already be ahead of the game.
Follow these tips to better improve your listing presentations. To sign up for classes, including real estate post-licensing, visit our website, www.LarsonEd.com, or give us a call at 239-344-7510.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 30 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Naples real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online.
Naples Real Estate School 