During my many years in real estate I have had the opportunity to interact with literally thousands of REALTORS all across the country.   I am consistently struck by the number of high quality, highly successful individuals that are in the real estate business.  I spend considerable time investigating the common patterns in these highly productive people and have determined that we can easily predict any agent’s success with three simple questions.

Question #1:  How big is your database of customers?  There are two reasons I ask this question.  First is to find out if they have one!  Surprisingly, a recent study showed that 60% of agents do not!  The database is the central nervous system of the agents business and productivity cannot occur without one.  There are all kinds of database programs to pick from and I believe the best one is the one that gets used!  The second reason to ask this question is because of a simple rule of thumb states that each name in an agent’s database is worth $1,000 per year.  This is based on the average price, average commission and transaction rates that I observe across the country.  This rule of thumb tends to hold true across all markets.  So, a strategy for an agent who has 200 people in their database and who wants to increase their income to $300,000 is to increase the number of people in their database to 300.

Question #2:  Can you tell me about your daily routine?  Like the question above, the first reason to ask is to find out if they have one!  Successful agents have a pattern of getting to the office early, working on their business in the morning and working in their business in the afternoon.  “On the business” activities are the things that build the business like planning, strategizing, and customer service calls.  “In the business” activities are things like showing property, and presenting contracts.  The other pattern I notice with highly productive people is that their routine includes activities that build the agent’s mindset.  This could be reading, meditation, prayer or exercise.  It looks different for every person and the key lesson is that the activity is intentionally built into their schedule.  One successful agent I know calls it his “daily massaging of the brain.”

Question #3:  Can you tell me about the systems you have in place to keep in contact with your customers?  Again, let’s first find out if they have one!  Based on research, highly productive agents contact their customers at least three times a month with valuable information.  This could include phone calls, newsletters (print or electronic), postcards, hand-written notes, and face-to-face interactions.  These contacts are the way agents position themselves as the trusted source of information and the way they keep top of mind awareness with their customer.  An agent without a system to consistently keep in touch with their customers does not have a business.

So, create and predict your own success by having great answers to these three questions!

“It’s no wonder she’s so successful, look at everything she does!”  Jim Rohn