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2011Expired ListingPower PackageTap Into “Now” Clients Today!By Jim RemleyExpired Listing Guru.com
Special Bonus: Using Social Media to Target Expired Listing(Already Included in this Package)Free Upgrade: Three Books!(Click on Link to Download Your FREE Copy) Sell Your Home in Any Marketo pdf Make Millions Selling Real Estateo F.pdf Real Estate Presentations that Make Millionso ationsPDF.doc.pdfExpired Listing Guru.comPage 2
Expired Listings – Creating a New CareerCongratulations on investing in the Expired Listing Power Package! You are one of avery special group of agents who are committed to building their business. Did youknow that just by investing in your career you are already moving towards your longterm goals? It’s true! By focusing your business on NOW clients you are repositioningyour career by modeling the most successful agents and brokers in the country.The Expired Listing Power Package is the culmination of thousands of hours of workfrom top producers from across the country. It is the ultimate model for building abusiness that will deliver amazing, consistent, bankable results – over and over again.So what exactly is our plan of attack? There are four areas we will cover in thispackage:1) Preparation: As any athlete will tell you success takes preparation. By beingmentally prepared for entering the expired listing arena you will position yourselfas someone who won’t just “try” expired listings but as a superstar who will ownthis market over the months and years to come.2) Contact: Don’t just wing it anymore! Use the scripts provided by superstars toopen the door to a flood of listings. By focusing on making contact using the rightphraseology you can let go of the fear and indecision that has been holding backyour business. In addition we will provide you with multiple strategies includingusing phone calls, door knocking, farming, social media, and the internet to makeyour approach persuasive and effective.3) Follow Up: Making only one contact isn’t enough you need to have a plan ofconsistent powerful touch points that will motivate sellers to allow you to markettheir home. Use the follow up systems used by superstars including - emails,letters, and scripts designed to keep seller engaged and interested.4) Systems: Consistent systems produce consistent results. By embracingcommunication tools and strategies that produce maximum results you can helpall of your sellers to position their homes in the marketplace in a way that willdramatically increase their odds of selling successfully.Expired Listing Guru.comPage 3
Step 1 Preparation:Moving From Mediocre to ExcellenceHow many times in your life have you felt that you were operating at full throttle? Yourlife engine was red lining, you were on top of the world, and nothing and no one couldstop you. For most of us we can count those few precious moments of our lives on onehand. The day you graduated college, or the day your first child was born, or perhapsthe day you got out of prison (just kidding).These moments when we feel at our best are a precious commodity. Why? Becauselet’s face it most of our lives are just pretty darn boring. But when you think about it ourlives didn’t start out that way. How many times do you look down at a newborn babyand say, oh, that kid’s going to be a loser?Instead the reality is that over time our dreams, goals, and greatest ambitions getbeaten out of us. We start out fired up, ready to excel and in fact hard wired by a higherpower to be ambitious, inquisitive, and positive. But for many life takes it’s gruesome toll- broken marriages, financial problems, health issues, and one tragedy or another cancreate so much mental baggage that we shut down and mentally thrown in the towel.We accept that a mediocre career and life are all that we should expect. We becomelike ghosts, shadows of our former selves.Over time it’s easy to begin to think, and expect that truly meaningful success onlyhappens to the other guy or gal, that it’s ok, even somehow noble to live the life of theaverage Joe or Jane. But deep down beneath the surface we all want to excel andsucceed.So how do you move from mediocre to excellence? The first step is to take off themental knapsack that you’re carrying around. We all have one; it’s where you put all ofyour excuses for your lack of success.To demonstrate let’s look at this from a real estate career perspective. Take a minuteand write down on a separate piece of paper your best excuse for not doing thefollowing:1.2.3.4.5.Why aren’t you prospecting every day for new business?Why aren’t you taking more listings?Why aren’t you selling more of your listings?Why aren’t you working with more buyers?Why haven’t you built a strong sphere of influence?Now when I do this in a seminar format I will have the audience actually tell me theirbest excuses. I hear it all. From I don’t feel confident enough to prospect, to I don’t likebuyers, to there are no good listings left in the market . On and on it goes. At the veryExpired Listing Guru.comPage 4
end when everyone has exhausted all of their best excuses, I instruct the entireaudience to wad up that piece of paper and throw it away.Why? Because excuses are really just your justification to fail, it’s your way of saying itsOK to be mediocre because I have this really great excuse. The fact is none of us havean excuse to fail.All of us can move from a mediocre life to an exceptional life with the snap of a finger.It’s true! The decision only takes an instant. If you look at all great leaders you find thatat some point in their lives they made a pivotal, life altering decision. What can take alifetime is gathering enough steam to make that decision. For many that decisionrequires an external force, a push over the cliff, before they can find the inner resolve tobecome committed to excellence.You have two choices, you can wait for that external force, a new baby, a financialemergency, a medical emergency . or you can create an internal force strong enoughfor you to make the commitment to excellence now! An internal force is self created; it’sthe process of finding enough leverage, enough positive or negative reasons to make acommitment to a new course of massive action. External Forces – Outside Force Pushes You Towards Achievement Internal Forces – Inside Force Pushes You Towards AchievementHow can you create an internal force large enough to motivate you to excellence? UseHorizon thinking. All of us have a horizon, a future, which if we ask ourselves the rightquestions can become clear. Let’s take a look, use a separate piece of paper to answerthese five career questions.Horizon Worksheet:1)2)3)4)5)Based on my daily prospecting what will be my income in the next year?Based on my listings inventory what will by my income in the next year?Based on follow up plan how many referrals will I receive in the next year?Based on my buyer inventory what will be my income in the next year?If I stay on the same career course where will I be five years from now?When you honestly answer these questions you will begin to no doubt discover whereyour career is headed financially. You could also ask yourself questions related to othermore personal areas of your life - relationships with your spouse, your kids, and yourfamily.Horizon questions can reveal murky, troubled waters ahead for your career voyage, andmore importantly they can help you identify ways to turn your ship away from a futurethat you may want to avoid. But it all starts with decision making. You have to decide toExpired Listing Guru.comPage 5
turn the wheel to avoid the future that awaits you, nothing and no one else can make ithappen.Once you have made the big commitment to excellence in your career, use thispowerful tool to stay the course. It’s a simple sentence, told to me by one of my earlymentors that can help you dramatically shorten your earning curve.To have a better life, make better decisions.Simplicity is often very powerful. Do you know when you are making a bad decision? Ido. In the back of my pea brain I know when I have made a dumb move. It gnaws atme, and kicks me in the gut. I fret, toss and turn, and generally feel horrible.Try this from this day forward begin to measure your decisions against your horizon,and your commitment to excellence. Ask yourself when you are faced with even minordecisions - Does this take me closer to my goals? By using this simple sentence dailyyou can begin to dramatically see a difference in your short term results, and your longterm horizon!The New Agent PhenomenonAny new agent or veteran agent can instantly move to the top of their earning curve bysimply applying high quality information. Working smarter not harder!Here is an excellent example of this kind of thinking. I call it the new agentphenomenon. For many years it has been a passion of mine to find, coach, and mentornew real estate agents. My real estate company often holds career seminars where weinvite people who are considering a real estate career to a two hour program about thereal estate business.Inevitably we are able to recruit folks who, after attending our real estate school, end upbecoming real estate professionals. To help ensure that these new agents will be ableto compete in the hyper-competitive real estate market our company provides a thirtyday, fast start training program.This training is designed to help new agents get their business up and running quickly,and this is where it gets interesting. Almost without exception those agents that committo the program begin to instantly make appointments, take listings, and create newsales. Surprisingly in many cases these fresh new recruits, green as grass, can outproduce twenty year veterans within just weeks of entering the real estate business.How is this possible? Because they don’t know what’s impossible. These new agentsbelieve and trust that what their trainer tells them as an absolute fact of life. Theybelieve that they can take ten new listings in a month if they work hard; they believe ifthey are organized that they can work with three buyers in one day; they believe theycan close every listing they interview for if they come prepared.Expired Listing Guru.comPage 6
The secret to their success is that these agents have not yet been poisoned by veteranstelling them that it takes six months to close their first commission check, or expiredlistings are all overpriced dogs. Instead they are armed with high quality information,and the motivation to put that information to use.The new agent phenomenon should demonstrate something incredible simple, yetincredibly powerful. If we can find good high quality information, believe in thatinformation completely, and then most importantly take action we can achieve incredibleresults very quickly.The New Agent PhenomenonInformationBeliefActionThe Income Pipeline and Expired ListingsGreat agents understand that selling real estate is a business not an art form. There areno magic bullets, mystical potions, or secret elixirs that will suddenly allow an agent tomove to the top of their earning curve.The old saying that “Figures never lie, but liars sometimes figure.” is a perfect tag line toevery successful business plan. Have you ever seen an agent who desperately wants tosucceed but takes no actions to achieve that success? Their real problem is that theyrefuse to believe that real estate is a true business, and like all businesses if you don’tunderstand your numbers you are doomed to failure.The income pipeline is the process by which every successful real estate agent getspaid. Successful agents either know this process on a conscious level or perhapsExpired Listing Guru.comPage 7
through years of effort they have developed an intuitive knowledge of the chain ofevents needed to create a profitable real estate business.The income Pipeline looks like this:The Income PipelineSuperstars Start HereContactsProspectsWeak Agents Start HereAppointments ListingsThe real estate income pipeline is connected in sections just like an oil pipeline. Thepremise of the pipeline is that all sales flow from the result of a listing, and those agentswho wish to become successful must develop high quality listings to create an ongoingflow of consistent income.SalesThe first section of the pipeline is the contact phase. Great real estate agentsrealize that in order to generate listings they must contact a large number of people.Notice this is where superstars start! They do this consistently and with a systematiccontact plan in our case we will be focusing on expired listings. Ask yourself what isthe one essential ingredient needed for any business to thrive? The answer is a steadyflow of new customers!The second section of the pipeline is identifying prospects. When you prospectdaily you will eventually identify some people who may have a need for your services.Expired Listing Guru.comPage 8
These people are called prospects. When you are contacting people, everyone is reallyjust a suspect. We are like a bloodhound sniffing out a unique animal. Our uniqueanimal is the prospect who is considering making a real estate change. You may talk tothousands and thousands of suspects along the way in your career. That’s OK,because many of these suspects will actually develop into future prospects.The third step is presenting your solutions to your prospects. We do this duringthe appointment stage of the income pipeline. Strong expired listing agents have strong,dynamic listing presentations. They are dynamic because they change to fit theindividual needs of the prospect. Superstars always use a planned visual presentationto present their services to help their clients make informed decisions.The fourth step is to place the client into a listing agreement. When you havepresented enough solutions to enough prospects some of the prospects will employ youas their real estate professional. Strong agents understand they have the power to usethe most powerful word in sales – The word No! By taking only high quality expiredlistings agents will be able to enhance their earning potential by saving time, energy,and effort.The fifth stage in the pipeline is the sales agreement. A sales agreement is whenyou have found some middle ground that is mutually beneficial to all parties in atransaction, the purchasers, the sellers, and you the agent. If you do your job effectivelyeveryone should come out a winner. The purchaser should receive a home at a fairmarket value, the seller should be able to realize their goals, and you should be able toearn a real estate fee. This stage is where weak agents always want to enter thepipeline; they want to skip past all of the hard work and go straight to the commissioncheck. Superstars understand that this lazy man’s approach will only lead to ruin.The sixth and final step is the actual closing of the sale. It’s one thing to have asigned contract and another thing entirely to bring that sale to a successful conclusion.In any given transaction there are between 12-20 people involved. Your job as a realestate professional is to coordinate all of the details and keep the transaction movingforward. Often a file can get buried at someone’s desk and delay the transaction fordays or possibly weeks. You have the task of making sure the transaction remains “Topof Mind” for all involved.This all seems simple enough, the kind of neat discussion that can be wrapped up in abox and stored right next to “I’m going to clean out my garage someday.” But what ifyou could use this income pipeline to build a detailed business strategy? Would thisexcite you? It should and the good news is it can! What’s more is that you can use theincome pipeline to project your income forward and backward from any given point intime.A Model Expired Listing Income GoalExpired Listing Guru.comPage 9
So lets’ apply some numbers to a real world agent. Her name is Julie. Julie wants toapply the income pipeline to her expired listing business and build a solid strategy forsuccess.Expired Listing Income 100Sales50 100,000Six Steps to Success:Step 1: Determine the annual goalStep 2: Determine the # of sales needed to achieve income goalStep 3: Multiply sales # by 2 Number of Listings NeededStep 4: Multiple listings # by 3 Number of Appointments NeededStep 5: Decide how many prospects you need to generate appointment goalStep 6: Multiple Prospects X 5 Contacts NeededStep 4: Multiplylistingsby 3 poet and Numberof AppointmentsNeededAs BenedettoVarchi,the #Italianhistorianonce said “Hewho determines theend, provides the means.” This is also true of the income pipeline. To build a solidStep 5: The # appointments Number of Prospects Neededbusiness strategy you must work backwards by first establishing your destination, oryourStepend6:goal.Fromthis startingpointyou canbuild anNeededaction plan that will take youMultiplyprospects# by 20 Numberof Contacttowards your goal.Let’s look at Julie’s example.Annual Income Goal:Julie’s goal is to make earn 100,000 dollars during 2011 by focusing on expiredlistings. This number represents what net income she wants to achieve in the nexttwelve months. (If consistently accomplished this goal over ten years she would earn a 1,000,000 dollars!)Sales:Expired Listing Guru.comPage 10
The goal of the income pipeline is to create sales. Superstars build their action plansaround the goal of securing closed transactions. In Julie’s case she knows that onaverage she nets after expenses about 5000 per transaction, so to hit her income goalshe must close 20 sales.Listings:You have heard it for years: For every two listings you take you can expect one to sell.For most agents this is a sad fact of life. Of course what is not being said is that thismeans you have to expect to fail 50% of the time. Ouch! At Expired Listing Guru wehave tools to increase your success rate dramatically! But for now let’s use this numberto get us started. In Julie’s plan this would mean that if she wanted to close 20transactions she need to take 40 expired listings, two listings for every sale.Appointments:On average agents must go on three appointments for every listing that they end uptaking. So for Julie to take 40 expired listings in the next twelve months she would needto go on 120 listings appointments, which translates into about 2-3 appointment perweek. At first blush this doesn’t sound too bad, that is, until you compare this number totop producing expired listing guru’s who average a 90% or better closing ratio at theirlisting appointments. Julie is still honing her skills so we’ll use the national average.Prospects:In Julie’s example she just wants to make sure that is able to convert all of her qualifiedprospects into actual listing appointments. So to keep it simple she just needs to find120 qualified prospects to make her goal.Contacts:On average in the nation it takes twenty contacts to find one person that has an interestin making a real estate change. This could be best be described as a doomsdayscenario, because this approach assumes you are using the worst kind of prospectingknow to mankind, cold calling.But Julie isn’t going to cold call she is going to focus on one of the most effective leadgeneration activities known to REALTORS – the expired listing market. The ProspectingTable (see visual 2.9) describes a good rule of thumb using several different contactmethods:Prospecting TableExpired Listing Guru.comPage 11
Type ofProspectingCold CallingFSBOExpired ListingSphereFarmingMailingsContacts PerLead2055320100Using five contacts per appointment Julie now knows she must contact 600 expiredsellers over the next year, or roughly 2-3 every working day. Sounds reasonable right?Of course – anyone can do this, including you!So by using the income pipeline Julie now knows exactly the numbers she needs to hitin order to reach her goals. There are no secrets. If she truly wants to earn a 100,000in the next twelve months she now has a clear picture of exactly what has to happen inorder to make this dream a reality. She must contact 2-3 expired sellers everyday.She must find 120 prospects and go on 120 appointmentsShe must secure 40 new listings.She must close 20 transactions.Of course she can also massively improve her odds of success in each of thesecategories by applying some superstar’s strategies, and techniques which we will coverthroughout this package.Can the expired income pipeline predict your future?Occasionally students will ask me if the income pipeline is really accurate. This is wherethis system can provide spooky, almost mind bending results. By taking real agents andasking them one simple question we can almost always predict what their income wasin the last twelve months, and what it will be in the next twelve months. What is thequestion?What are you doing everyday to find new business?By using a simple calculator any one, including you, can use the expired incomepipeline to provide an accurate forecast of your business performance over any periodof time! Forwards, backwards, and sideways your business performance is forever tiedto the daily actions that you take. Can you get lucky? Stumble across an extra listing;find a hot buyer by accident. Sure, but superstars don’t bet on luck, they bank on hardwork. Take a minute and build your own income pipeline:Expired Listing Guru.comPage 12
Expired Income Pipeline WorksheetContactsProspectAppoint.ListingsSales Six Steps to Success:Step 1: Determine the Annual GoalStep 2: Determine the # of sales needed to achieve income goalStep 3: Multiply sales # by 2 Number of Listings NeededStep 4: Multiple listings # by 3 Number of Appointments NeededStep 5: Decide how many prospects your need to generate appointment goalStep 6: Multiple prospects by X 5 Contacts Needed1) Determine Your Annual Sales Goal: 2) Determine how many closed sales you need to hit this goal:(Annual sales goal divided by net income per transaction)3) Determine the number of listings needed to hit this goal:Step 5: The # appointments Number of Prospects Needed(Multiply number of sales x 2*)Step 4: Multiply listings # by 3 Number of Appointments NeededStep 6: Multiply prospects # by 20 Number of Contact Needed4) Determine the number of appointments needed to hit goal:(Multiply number of listings X 3*)5) Determine the number of prospects needed to hit goal:(Same as line number 4)6) Determine the number of contacts needed to hit goal:(Multiply the number of prospects by 5**)* Always use your own personal averages when possible.** Expired Listing MethodUnderstanding the Psychology of an Expired Listing SellerSo who do you think most expired sellers blame for not getting their home sold?Expired Listing Guru.comPage 13
You guessed it they blame their real estate agent! You and I know that the number onereason why most homes don’t sell is that they are overpriced but sellers are likeostriches, they bury their heads in the sand and pretend it’s not true. Instead they pointtheir fingers back at the poor listing agent as the culprit and, hey, let’s face it we oftenmake an easy target.Because of this tendency many expired listing sellers will be ready to immediately re-listtheir homes with another agent, and now for something even stranger, many of themwill also reduce their price at the same time!Now why didn’t they reduce the price with their first agent?Generally for one of two reasons first the agent didn’t ask for a price reduction, orsecond the seller was so adamant about not reducing his price that he would have beenembarrassed to adjust the price with the original agent. In other words many sellersdon’t want to lose face.Have you ever been embarrassed by a bad decision or mad at yourself for making afinancial mistake? Because of these errors you probably experienced at least a few ofthese emotions: AngerFrustrationDisappointmentSadnessApathyBecause of this you need to accept that you will be taking on the role of counselor whenworking with expired sellers, and your patient, the expired seller will occasionally be (butmost of the time not) hostile. This hostility isn’t about you – the expired seller doesn’tknow you, it’s about them and their situation. The professional, who can guide themthrough this emotional roller coaster, without becoming emotional themselves, will bethe one who takes the listing.Now we need to park here for a moment. This is a gut check moment for you – mostagents build up such fear about calling expired sellers they are terrified of making theinitial contact. You can’t fall into that trap. Drill these deep into your soul – to helppeople you must engage people. To solve problems you have to understand thechallenge. Think of a doctor they can’t help someone in pain unless they study theinjury. As real estate professionals we have the privilege of helping people sell theirmost valuable financial asset – their home. Occasionally this will mean we will need tohelp them overcome negative emotions. Remember any negativity is only about theirsituation not about you.Expired Listing Guru.comPage 14
The Secret to Expired ListingsSuperstars have learned that the secret to taking expired listings is to help sellersdump their emotional bucket. Consider if you were to have your home on the marketfor six months without success. Finally the listing expires and another agent expressesinterest in taking the listing. What would your reaction be? For most of us regular Joe’swe won’t berate the agent who has called or stopped by our home. No, the far morelikely scenario is that we will simply be very quiet, non-committal, and uncommunicative.In other words we will be guarded, protective, and very reluctant to get shot down again.It’s just human nature to avoid rejection – in the sellers case this means they will bethinking long and hard about allowing the entire real estate market to reject their hometwice.To help sellers open up you need to learn to ask great questions. Questions are thekey to unlocking expired listings. By asking the right questions at the right momentyou can help every expired seller to dump their emotional bucket, express their truefeelings, and open up about their thoughts and ideas.Ten Master Level Questions:1. Tell me what was your original reason for selling?2. Ideally when would you like to move?3. How long have you lived in your home?4. What attracted you to the home when you purchased the property?5. Tell me about what improvements you have made to the home?6. What about the neighborhood do you think would appeal most to a buyer?7. How did you feel about the marketing from your previous agent?8. Have you started shopping for your next home yet?9. How much activity did you have in terms of showings and offers?10. What would it mean to you if you could sell your property in the next 45 days?Of course the agents that have the privilege of asking those questions are the ones thatmake contact with expired sellers before their competitors. All of this adds up to onething, a horse race to see who gets to the sellers first. Take a look at your MLSdata. No doubt it will show a sales rate, or percentage of listings taken to listings sold ofExpired Listing Guru.comPage 15
about 50%. Why is this important?It is important because this means that roughly 50% of all the properties listed in yourarea are falling off the market without selling! What an incredible pool of potentialcontacts! Just think everyday a steady stream of new leads can be generated by justwatching the expired listings flow off the market!Getting to the sellers quickly is essential to a winning game plan. As an agent at the topof your earning curve you should make it a habit to set aside time immediately after theposting of these listings in your MLS system to call all of the new expired listings aftercross checking with the do-not-call registry.Ready to get started? Let’s do it!Step 2 – ContactExpired Listings and the Do-Not-Call ListExpired Listing Guru.comPage 16
Before making any prospecting calls, including expired listing calls you must strictlyadhere to the Do Not Call Rules to comply with FCC regulations. You or your broker willneed to register with the national do not call registry as a telemarketer (the definition is awide one), when you register you then be able to receive up to 5 area codes of Do NotCall registered phone numbers which you can then cross reference when you aremaking prospecting calls. Now some good news this service is free, unless you registermore than five area codes. If you register more than 5 area codes then you are chargedan additional 25 per area code - the fee is good for a year.To do this click on this link:www.telemarketing.donotcall.govHere is a question that I hear often:So should we all collectively put down ourphones and scramble to find other ways toprospect for new business?Many local title companiesprovide access to the DoNot-Call registry free ofcharge.No. Weak agents never picked up the phone tobegin with, and now they have a great excuse tocontinue justifying their own failures. Strongagents see this law as a huge opportunity. If you assume that half your competition hasnow put down their phones perhaps prematurely this can be a window of opportunity foryour business.Of course you have to measure the value of your time when deciding if you or yourassistant will be the one doing the cross referencing. For many agents it make sense tohire a virtual assistant or part time helper to tackle the detective work of tracking downand cross referencing phone numbers against the Do-Not-Call Registry.It’s important to remember something when considering the complexity of tackling anyprospecting method. The more challen
mentally prepared for entering the expired listing arena you will position yourself as someone who won't just "try" expired listings but as a superstar who will own this market over the months and years to come. 2) Contact: Don't just wing it anymore! Use the scripts provided by superstars to open the door to a flood of listings.
