The Price is not the only part of the deal? That’s right the Terms and conditions are often the most critical.

In fact the most effective and productive real estate sales people are the ones that can create an offer on ‘creative’ terms and conditions where the average agent can’t even see that there is a deal right in front of them?

One of the biggest mistakes a real estate sales person can make is to just focus on getting the seller the ‘seller’s price’. They become so focused on this that they (without evening realising it) are pushing the buyers right away.

As a general rule, sellers are 15% over priced and the buyers 10% under priced, so unless you have a strategy to bridge this gap then you are destined to have a listing expire before it gets sold, and as a result, no commission in your pocket, and no testimonial to gain the next piece of business.

At the time of the listing it is essential to interview the seller to understand not just their reason for selling, and their motivation, but most importantly their flexibility to negotiate a deal. What concessions can they make, when the times come to negotiate a contract?

The average agent will ask if the dishwasher is staying, or the spa pool remains in the deal, but the super agent asks the really good questions.

The more information you gain here is all very important later when you will want to shape an initial deal on terms the purchaser is willing to commit to and have you present.

I remember having a coffee with a developer I was doing a lot of business with and in the conversation he mentioned to me he was thinking of buying a new boat. We talked about this for a while, boat and fishing talk, at the time I thought nothing more about it, it was a chat over coffee. I returned to the office and about three hours later, I was on the phone talking to a client, when I overheard a customer speaking to the duty agent. He had walked in and asked if the agent knew anyone who would swap a boat for two houses. The agent answered No, he thought that was a real long shot. That was to be the end of the conversation, and the buyer was turning to walk out. I could not get off the phone quick enough, after a quick deal with the duty agent to take over the buyer; I raced up the street after him. Within an hour we were at the harbour on the jetty viewing a boat, and by the end of the day, I had sold two houses and a boat! And made three commissions.

How good is that? It was not about the price; it was all about the terms and conditions. It was about satisfying both parties end goals, price was just a small part of the deal. Well what type of questions should you ask?

Things like can they offer a long settlement? Can they leave money in the deal for a period of time? With or without interest being paid? Can they trade a property to create a sale (and you make two commissions). Will they offer to rent the property to the purchaser prior to settlement, or allow the purchasers to make improvements to the property before they settle? There are so many more examples, and all I can say here is that before you write any deal off, take a slow walk around the block and ask yourself, how can this deal be put together? What is each party trying to achieve and what can you construct to make that happen for both of them? I have had deals where the pet sheep in the paddock have been listed as part of the deal.

I even remember a 6 house deal where I had multiple properties stacked up all conditional on the other selling, the lowest property was worth (at the time) about $150k and the highest one worth about 1.5 million. We needed the bottom property to sell so everyone else could move on up the chain. In the end I negotiated with the seller of the highest value property to buy the lowest one as an investment property to trigger the whole chain. So simple really!

So while the price is what all parties focus on from the beginning, the most important factor for the seller is that they get a result, get sold and move on. After all, the one thing that is going to fund their dream is the one thing that is also stopping that dream from happening, so they need to get the house sold to move into the next stage of their life.

And for the purchasers, I have never seen a deal fall over for $10k, if you can get within selling zone, then often some creative terms and conditions is just what is needed to bridge the gap.

Just like for your sellers, real estate is there to supply you – your dreams – too. Is the one thing that you can have fund your personal dreams -also the one thing that is currently getting in the way of you creating a wonderful life for yourself.

Here are my secrets on the discipline of farming a geographical area and how to get an instant result, rather than the long way or working too hard and then having to wait months for people to know and trust you enough to do business with you. The first mistake sales people make is taking on a farming patch with too many houses in it. The ideal number is 480 homes. And there is a clever reason for this?

I’ll tell you in a minute, but before that you need to know some very important facts: It is statistically proven that if you increase the number of times you make contact with someone from 6 to 8 times per year you will have a 200% more chance of doing business with them. Most focus marketing or farming area strategies takes 9 months to give the real estate sales person a pay back, most agents give up after 6 months. The reason for this is their areas are too big, they don’t get the coverage they need to be effective and then they either get to busy or too lazy to continue the discipline. So you want to contact each home 8 times a year, which is every 6 weeks to maximise the chances of doing business. So you need to contact 480 homes divided by 6 or 6 sub areas each with 80 homes One sub area gets covered off each week; it will take you a 6 week cycle to get right around your patch.

Now the famous 80/20 rule applies here. Some streets will have more sales than others over the year. So search the statistics to see where the action is. Focus first on the streets that sell, the ones with the highest turnover first. Now here is the secret! The secret to your mindset here. Rather than going out there to build ‘trust’, make friends and wait for the vendors to call you, You need to see yourself as an Urban Detective? Its up to you to uncover the next listing and some Sherlock Holmes attitude here is essential? It is up to you to set the pace, not the passive response from your farming area.

Just like CSI or the FBI you need to start to uncover the scene of the crime! As you make contact with the people in your patch, you will need to have some key questions that will lead you on the DNA trail to the next listing opportunity? Scripts like “Of all the people you know, who do you think will be the next person to sell or buy a home” “who do you think would like to live in this street” AND “if I was to find them a house in this street or area which house do you think is likely to come on the market next? AS these questions feed you the answers follow them up promptly! How often do you hear of a sales person getting a tip off and then delaying the follow-up, only to drive past a few days later to see a competitor sign in front of the house? It is the quick and the dead?

The next secret is that there are only two really effective ways to prospect a farming area, that is either belly button to belly button (face to face) or equally as effective and far more efficient is over the phone. Hiding behind letter box flyer drops, random emails or brochures will not cut it. In reality they give you less than a 2% result.

the better option is to maximise the opportunity with your ‘Sphere of Influence’ database by taking a strategy of working through the contact you are speaking with, to who they know, not coming across strongly to make them do business with you, but getting them to tell you what is happening in the market place and guiding you off in the right direction to the people they know are about to do some real estate business. You train them to find business for you!

Another secret here is to work quickly to form some Power leads, these are the people in your farming area that are real networkers, have a large sphere of influence and can really put you in front of the right people. They ideally have children at more than one school are active sports or hobbyists and are members of a number of local clubs and organisations. Equally important is that they are doing business themselves within the community. Great referrers or what I call Power leads should be well rewarded for their referrals, after all they could give you 5 this week, while another person at best might give you one house to sell this year! Rewarding them might be in the form of a gift, or a return referral might have even more value. Power leads will continue to support you along as you treat them very well.

So start today by getting organised in your farming area, focus on a manageable number of homes that is efficient and effective! Also go where the money is, start working the streets where you know the houses have a greater turnover and more commissions can be earned. If you can create a disciplined process to this secret strategy it will generate a huge month of seemingly effortless income within a very short time. Just don’t give up before it starts to kick in. It’s all about working smarter not harder. This action plan will put you in the perfect position to implement a very successful year of selling Real Estate.