Most successful agents have many buyers and sellers. The key to great success involves 3 very important steps:
- Choosing the right people to work with so the time spent is highly productive
- Creating a Strategy for each hot buyer, existing listing and hot listing prospect
- Having the motivation and energy to provide the highest level of services to the right clients
No single approach will help you complete all three of the above steps more than the creation of Strategic Briefs. Simply defined, a Strategic Brief is nothing more than the review of critical information about your buyer or seller that will help you develop a winning strategy to get the sale and close the deal. A Strategic Brief is a living document. In other words, it evolves by constantly identifying next steps that will lead to success with each client. It should include all of the following:
- The income potential associated with a client or project
- All key facts relating to the client
- An ongoing list of the best “Next Steps” towards realizing the client’s goal
- A recap of progress that has been made after each next step
Because of the planning time required, it’s important to develop Strategic Briefs only for the most important clients. Here is where it gets a little tricky. You can’t really determine who is going to be a great prospect until you have gathered key information about them. It’s all too common for an agent to want to, as Nike puts it: “Just Do It”, but doing it without a plan can be a big waste of time because without all of the important information, your strategy can be seriously flawed. Listed below, is a step-by-step process for developing powerful strategies for your clients.
- Make a list of who you believe are the Top 10 Prospects.
- Place each buyer or seller’s name at the top of separate sheets of paper.
- Calculate the commission you would earn or your best guess for the same, if you were to successfully close a transaction with this prospect, and place the dollar amount next to their name.
- Use the attached Buyer and Seller Strategic Briefs to gather information about each buyer or seller and record the information under the name of each.
- For all existing prospects, be sure you’re not missing any important information about them. If you are, the next most important step will be to get together with your client to gather the remaining information.
- Carefully review the information and ask yourself what is the next best step you can take towards putting an agreement together.
- Complete the next step and track your results.
- Ask yourself the same question as in step #6: “What’s the next best step I can take to put a deal together?”
- Continue to complete steps 6 and 7 over and over again until you have an agreement.
*Always remember the golden rule: “If it isn’t in writing, it doesn’t exist.” If you’re not documenting your next steps, and tracking the results of each in writing, your strategy doesn’t exist.