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| February 10, 2012 |
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How To Choose The Right Broker
by David Fletcher
This column is dedicated to the thousands of people across America now taking required courses to get their real estate license and those who have passed the state license exam but have not yet placed their license. Here is what I know about you. About 93 percent of you are coming to real estate from another field, according to the National Association of Realtors 2001 Member Survey, and 86 percent of you come from professions other than full-time sales. Your decision to get your license was your first important decision. Your next most important decision is which real estate office to join. Most new agents join an office for three fundamentally wrong reasons:
These reasons are not good or bad in themselves. They just are not the right reasons for joining a real estate office. Ok, maybe I am being a little too tough here. After all, you have no idea what to ask or what the broker’s answers mean. Here is the good news. The broker needs you more than you need that particular broker. Don’t forget that! There are more offices looking for agents than agents looking for offices, so stand a little taller when you walk in for the interview. You may be offered to join the company on your first interview. Don’t let that flatter you. In fact, I would be a little guarded, because this could be a company that has aggressively recruited, because they lose so many agents for whatever reasons. You might be asked what your first year goal is. The truth is you probably have no idea, but you will say to earn $30,000-$75,000. The broker knows that the national average for a first-year agent is about $20,000 or less. That’s not bad, by the way. It means that although you did not earn income the first three months, you are probably in the $4,000 to $5,000 per month category by your tenth month or so. Your second year should be a great one. Before you try to impress the broker or your spouse with a high sounding number, let me recommend some goals to you. Your first-year goal: To survive the first year without going into more debt than you have incurred right now. Very few people make more money their first year in any business than they did before they went into that business. Real estate is no different. Only you know what that number is. This means you get your finances in order so you know what your needs will be. If you don’t know what you financial needs are, you have no foundation for your goals. Your second goal: To learn to sell. In today’s market you will not survive if you depend on giving off-the-cuff responses to serious questions, getting by on your personality alone, outsmarting the customer, or whatever else you talk about when you don’t know what you are talking about. You need a lot of training If you do not learn how to lower sales resistance and build sales acceptance, your commission split won’t matter. What does the broker do for you in this area? Ask to meet the person who trains. Ask to see the training curriculum and when the next training class starts. Learning to write contracts and do paper work is important, but you need sales and prospect training. Do not under any circumstances go with the first office you visit on some impulse. Prospects who are fast to buy, are fast to cancel. In your case, agents who are fast to jump in are fast to jump out. If, after you join an office, you start thinking “Maybe I should have interviewed other offices before I joined this one, your attitude will greatly impact the discipline you need early in your career to do what it takes to become productive. After the recruiter (if it is a franchise) shows you the recruiting video, two training manuals, a rack of marketing materials, and sells you on one-stop mortgage and title service, you will be asked, “Do you have any questions?” Until you read this article you would probably say, “No, you covered it (because you can’t remember 1/10 of what you just saw. And you don’t understand the 90 percent you did see.) If you are interviewing an independent broker/owner, chances are you will not see sophisticated training materials, but you will be reporting directly to the broker for your training. Make sure you know what “training” means to the independent broker, too. Here’s the problem. How can you ask an intelligent question when you can’t speak “real estate” yet. Here are questions brokers don’t hear from new agents, but they should, so you be the one to ask the following questions:
Published: August 21, 2003 Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws. Related Articles:
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