Do You Have What It Takes to Sell a Billion Dollars Worth of Real Estate?

by Bernice Ross, Ph.D. MCC
Owner, Teleclass4U.com, LLC and RealEstateCoach.com

Copyright © 2007
RealEstateCoach.com and Teleclass4U.com
All rights reserved in all media.

Move over “Millionaire Real Estate Agents”—the new standard for success in our industry is the “Billion Dollar Agent.”

What does it take to sell a billion dollars worth of real estate? Steve Kantor’s new book, Billion Dollar Agent – Lessons Learned (www.billiondollaragent.com), provides a revealing series of interviews with the elite agents who have sold a billion dollars worth of real estate or are en route to do so. What’s particularly intriguing is how forthcoming the agents were in terms of how they built their businesses, what their ratios were of referrals to new business, and most importantly, what they actually did to achieve this level of success.

Perhaps the most important theme in the book is the importance of building your business on your passion and delegating everything else. You cannot succeed at this level without a strong team supporting your business. Another key point the billion dollar agents make is that they all wished they had hired their first assistant sooner. Virtually all of them saw a substantial increase in business when they hired their first assistant. Kantor hopes to capitalize on this trend by providing a virtual assistant service similar to IVAA.org (International Virtual Assistants Association) and REVANetwork.com (Real Estate Virtual Assistants Association.)

Another shared trait is written goals. As Brad Korb of RE/MAX in Action from Burbank puts it, “Ninety-seven percent of those who have written goals achieve them. Only three percent of those without written goals achieve their goals. Write down your major definite purpose in life every day and write 10 ways to get to it…I have business goals, workout goals, spiritual time goals, family time goals, and financial goals.”

Billion dollar agents also take time to “work on” their business rather than just “working in” their business. Michael Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited argues that a major reason that businesses fail is that the owners are so busy in their business (“working in their business”), that they don’t take time to plan (“working on their business.”) This process is especially important in achieving high levels of production. Taking time to plan allows you to create systems. Systems save time, create order in your business, and improve efficiency.

Kantor also draws an interesting distinction between what he calls “hunters” vs. “farmers.” Hunters actively prospect for new business by calling on expired listings, for-sale-by-owners, door knocking, and calling web leads until they make contact. In contrast, “farmers” rely more on regular personal contact with their sphere of influence and their referral database. Based upon the interviews, a huge percentage of the billion dollar agents were hunters. As Kantor puts it, “Almost every Billion Dollar Agent is a hunter—an extreme hunter. You would not go hungry on an island stranded with a Billion Dollar Agent. If there is meat running around the island, they will hunt it down, close the deal, and bring home the bacon.”

Another shared characteristic is that these people are voracious learners. You can count of them to be in the first row of events taking copious notes on how to improve their business. Also, many of them have both personal and business coaches. A high percentage attributed their success to the coaching they received.

A substantial percentage of billion dollar agents are actively involved in charity or in other events that allow them to share their abundance with those who are less fortunate than they are. 

Billion dollar agents are also creative in terms of leveraging their systems. The methods for building this level of business are as diverse as the agents who are included in the book. For example, Stephen O’Hara, of RE/MAX Monarch Beach, created the Parent Relocation Council. His website, www.schoolfolks.com is the nation’s first website that caters to relocating parents. Noah Herrara from RE/MAX Las Vegas prefers to market to multiple clients at the same time. “People try to market one-on-one. If you associate with an organization or a charity, you can do a presentation for 50 people for the same effort as for two people.” When Herrara is showing new construction to first time buyers, he actually loads them on a bus to see the new subdivisions. His record is 30 deals from a single bus.

What holds ordinary agents back? According to the Billion Dollar Agent, the most commonly cited reasons were:

1.  They fail to follow-up
2.  They lack negotiation skills
3.  They don’t put the clients’ interests first.
4.  They lack listening and communication skills
5.  They don’t stay in regular contact

How long does it take to become a billion dollar agent? If you and your team sell $50 million per year for 20 years, you would be at a billion dollars. There’s a tremendous amount of wisdom in this book from the people who have not only had stellar production, but who also have many years of experience playing at the highest possible levels in the business.