By Kelly Quigley, REALTOR® Magazine
The Relationship Edge in Business: Connecting With Customers and Colleagues When it Counts By Jerry Acuff with Wally Wood (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2004)
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What do your clients like to do in their spare time? Do you know whether they have pets, or what kind of music they listen to? If can’t answer these questions, you may need to sharpen your relationship-building skills, which author Jerry Acuff says will determine your success in sales. In this book, the former pharmaceutical salesman shares his techniques for developing strong connections with key people in your business life. The process starts with asking the right questions—about family, special interests, and frustrations—to spur a meaningful dialogue. Then build mutual trust and respect, and work hard to maintain what you’ve created. Acuff uses examples from real salespeople, including himself, who have reaped the rewards of relationships they worked hard to forge and maintain. Your ultimate goal is to separate yourself from competitors, and keep customers for life. “What are you going to do that makes prospects, clients and colleagues know you are different from anybody else?,” Acuff asks. “Or are you simply going to be like everybody else?”
Tips from the Book:
- Do unexpected, unselfish actions. Prospects and customers with whom you do not have a good relationship expect you to do self-serving things. When you do unexpected, unselfish things, you gain respect, credibility, and trust because it demonstrates with actions that you care.
- Be alert to opportunities. Building a strong business relationship requires you to be alert, both to what people tell you and opportunities to show you’ve listened. Remember important dates like birthdays and wedding anniversaries, and show you care with a card, phone call, or something special. Know what schools they attended, major holidays they celebrate, and favorite foods. Ask about children and spouses, and learn their names. It matters when you can use the information you learned in a conversation.
- Be courteous to everyone. This should be obvious, but it’s not. Too often, we give all our attention to the prospect or customer, and ignore receptionists, secretaries, and assistants. Treat everybody as important because everyone is important. Not only is this the right thing to do for its own sake, but it could have practical benefits. It’s not unusual for janitors or secretaries to become general managers—and good customers—over the years.
By Barbara Ballinger, REALTOR® Magazine
The House to Ourselves: Reinventing Home Once the Kids Are Grown By Todd Lawson and Tom Connor (Taunton Press, 2004)
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Not all empty nesters are interested in folding their tents—or houses and condos—and scaling back because they’re now the only ones living in what was once a bustling family residence. Some owners actually want more square footage in their existing home, or want to trade up to a bigger home in a resort town. There are even some who want multiple empty-nest homes in different settings. This book focuses on the many variations of the empty-nest genre. Examples include compounds where multiple generations can gather, a simple new farmhouse-style home on 10 acres of Indiana farmland for a couple who used to live in Chicago, and a 1960s Southern California Colonial-style house, whose empty-nester owners decided to give it a major makeover after living in it for 25 years. The revamp included a soaring clock tower and two-story modern conservatory overlooking the owners’ beloved garden.
By Kelly Quigley, REALTOR® Magazine
Five Minutes to a Great Real Estate Sales Meeting: A Desk Reference for Managing Brokers By John D. Mayfield (Thomas South-Western, 2004)
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Any managing broker knows it’s not easy to orchestrate a truly motivating sales meeting. It takes time, creativity, and research to plot out invigorating agendas that keep sales staff from glancing at their watches every few minutes. Luckily, the author of this book has done much of the work for you. In Five Minutes to a Great Real Estate Sales Meeting, you’ll find detailed plans for 52 concise sales meetings—one for each week of the year. Agendas include a theme, objectives, a list of items needed, and activities to get salespeople involved. Designed to fit into your sales team’s busy schedule, each meeting is planned to last just 10 to 15 minutes. Topics cover five main categories: motivational, marketing, prospecting, legal, and professional development. A CD-ROM that’s included with the book has handouts, quizzes, and slideshows to add impact during the sales meetings. The meetings are scripted, but there’s room to personalize each agenda and the materials to fit your personality and audience.
Tips from the Book:
- Motivate practitioners to believe in themselves. Have practitioners take out checkbooks and write a check to themselves for the amount they dream of earning some year. Tell them to carry this check in their wallets and look at it often as a reminder of the need to believe that they can one day, indeed, cash this check.
- Help practitioners avoid burnout. Light a candle in front of the group, and explain that the candle looks large and can burn for hours, but eventually will burn out. Tell the salespeople their real estate careers are in danger of the same problem if they’re not careful. But they can keep their batteries charged by delegating tedious tasks and scheduling time off on a regular basis.
- Demonstrate the need to build clients for life, not just one transaction. Ask salespeople to write names of clients they dealt with six months ago or longer. Next to those names, have them write the number of personal phone calls or mailings made to those clients since the closing. Then have them place clients’ names with zeroes into a trash basket, showing that every time they fail to get back in touch with a client, that client could be lost for good.
By Barbara Ballinger, REALTOR® Magazine
Cottages: The New Style By James Grayson Trulove (Harper Design International, 2004)
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Unlike the grand “cottages” built by rich families at the turn-of-the-century in resorts such as the Adirondacks in upper New York State, cottages today can be any shape or style, from large and industrial looking, to very small and quaint. This book showcases 16 different resort cottages in a variety of locales, including mountains, desert, farmland, and ocean. And even though the architecture varies dramatically, the cottages all share in common a love of beautiful natural materials—particularly gleaming woods, big windows that look out on splendid land and views, and some type of outdoor living space that respects its site. One of the most desirable cottages also is among the smallest and simplest: It was designed as a retreat for a filmmaker outside Seattle and juxtaposes soaring glass walls with floor-to-ceiling walls lined with bookshelves, making it a great place to curl up on one of those rainy Seattle days.
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