About Milton's Cliff Norway

Maria Jannatpour’s audio book Must See Inside is a great listen. In late August I reviewed the first of the three cd set describing The Shark Principle of Mario’s. What I like best about this series is that Mario is a guy who has been there and is doing it. More importantly he is a professional who wants to continue to do it and he is not interested in selling you a consulting package, or have you buy into some series of future coaching materials. He wants you to benefit from his years of successful sales training in real estate and his background as a sale manager. It is a no-nonsense straight ahead listen to what has worked for Mario over the years.

Having now consumed many books by many of the gurus I find Mario’s approach very personal and human. He isn’t afraid to go against the grain with his opinion based on his own experience. For instance he thinks spending a great deal of time going to town meetings and being involved in the Chamber of Commerce is time better spent on other marketing activities. In his opinion the time spent hobnobbing with these crowds is not as productive as his individual efforts to reach his constituents directly.

Chapter 7, Live in the world of reality and not hope is the first lesson of CD 2. What he is talking about is measurement of your actions. Don’t just go out there and say that throwing a lot of “you know what” on a wall and hope some of it sticks will be successful, you are to measure your results and do what actually works. He suggests you develop questions to ask your prospects to detemine their true interests and motivations. This is always good advice. The more questions you ask the better your knowledege is about what this person wants to do.

Mario sprinkles his book with a lot of his pet peeves. For instance, he thinks saying please in any of your marketing pieces or discussions is begging and not selling. “People need to see your value without you saying please,” he states. Chapter 8 is about call reluctance. We all, at times, have this feeling, but when you have the skills to overcome this reluctance you can be far more productive. Be confident in what you are offering, in the real value of your knowledge, not just your real estate information. You get paid for what you know, not how you can search for information.

This series seems to be packed with good and useful information. It is delivered in a style like some friend sitting down with you and sharing their experience would do. There is no bombast, no overarching promise, Mario just delivers his set of techniques and skills to help you get your career going in the right direction.

For your information, I am not an affiliate of Mario. I met him on Active Rain through this blog and he asked me to take a listen to his book and let him know what I think. I think this is a good alternative series to anyone who is tired of the bombast of the “guru’s” out their hawking their systems. I don’t agree with all the systems, but then I haven’t had his level of success yet and so I listen and learn.

Quite often I look to sports for a metaphor for my activities. Now that football season is upon us and I watched both my favorite teams go down in defeat yesterday, I have lots of content to draw from this morning. Yes, the economy is difficult right now and even more so getting someone through the loan process. The banking industry in it’s kneejerk reaction to giving away loans to anyone who asked and getting burned, is now making it so difficult to get an approval that they are standing in the way of progress, again. So what is a Realtor® to do?

Defeat in a game is different than a defeat in your career. Everyone looses games, but it is only those who refuse to learn from their game losses that are defeated in their career. Learning what you are doing wrong is important. Studying what others are doing right is even more instructive. What worked yesterday does not work today and so adjustments have to be made. Are you doing your homework? Are you reading and studying what is working in your area and maybe beyond? What can you do this week to make a tweek to your presentations, or your listings that will attract more people? Do you actually call people and ask them what they want in depth.

Asking questions is probably your strongest antidote to lack of knowledge, but it isn’t just in the asking of a question that is important, it is the hearing the response. You have to listen to grow. You have to apply what you have heard and make adjustments. People today want to have control of their home buying/selling process. Don’t be afraid of this, the control they really want is the outcome and they need a qualified and proactive agent to accomplish that.

Communication is the key. Ask questions, listen to the answers, adapt your approach and pay attention to your results. It is never enough to do what used to be enough before. Don’t just have an open house, promote your open house in new ways, make calls to clients and constituents who may be interested, never rest in your preparation and your results will begin to improve. Sure my teams lost their games, but they haven’t lost their seasons. You loose when you give up and stop trying to get better. Isn’t today the day you can get better. I am sure that is what is going on in the minds of the coaches and sore players this morning. They will make adjustments this week and come out again next week. The good news for us is that our defeats are not physical and so we don’t have to wait a week for the next opportunity. It is right now. Make that call, go to that meeting, schedule that presentation and just do it better. Good luck.

A very good friend of mine and noted MA appraiser, Gerry Hailer, shared this with me this morning and I think it is worth a post here because what Ted Turner has said about failure is so important to each and everyone involved in Real Estate every day.

I am currently re-reading Jim Mullen's The Simple Art of Greatness. I just read something reminicent of your blog from last week that I thought I'd share:

"Unfortunately, there is another, less lovely quality that seems to be required of every true entrepreneur: the ability to endure adversity. While I cannot speak for entrepreneurs as a class, I am obliged to report to you that my own career is more memorable for its times of pain, fear, disappointment, and heartbreak than for its fleeting moments of glory. Not only must the entrepreneur never expect to fail, he must be the kind of person who has the ability to fail consistently without seeing failure as a pattern. For the entrepreneur to succeed over time, he must be able to absorb an endless series of knockdowns, and, somehow, get back up with enough hope to take the next step forward.

I learned a lesson in this form from watching Ted Turner during the late sixties when we were both deeply immersed in boat racing, and long before Ted was a media mogul. Wherever Ted's life took him, he'd look for a sailboat race. No matter how provincial the regatta, Ted was willing to jump aboard any boat in the fleet--regardless of his lack of local knowledge, his experience with that kind of craft, or length of the odds against him. When I askked Ted why a big-time international sailboat racer would risk the embarrassment of having some local kid clean his clock, he revealed something quite elemental in his character. "Oh, actually, Jim," he said, "I lose most of the time. For me, losing is just learning how to win."

Loosing should never be an issue, but so often the emotions of not getting what you want for a long time does affect your mental attitude if you allow it to. Keeping your eye on your prize is the only thing that can beat back the bad emotions. How does it feel to already have what you are working for is one of the techniques that successful people use. The time and effort we put in to each activity does not mean that each activity will be a success. Learning from your own efforts and applying that learning will drive you further. Pay attention to what you are getting, make adjustments and play your game every day. Good luck my friends.

Today I moved my Active Rain blog from Dallas TX over to Milton MA where I live. Turns out that no one in Milton blogs so I went to the head of the line on that platform in that area. While these rankings measure only blogging and not real estate success you can’t get too excited about being featured. My goal here in Milton is the exact same goal I established in Dallas when I landed there on Jan 6, 2010. I will share with my readers timely and pertinent information about real estate and the real estate industry. Using stories from experiences I have or have been shared with me I will help the home buyer/seller with their process.

Make no mistake, home selling and buying is a process that has an incredible amount of crucial details to get right. That is why the real estate industry created the Realtor® distinction. This is a person who has been tested on the process and procedures from a legal and financial point of view. A Realtor® is bound by a code of ethics and behavior. It is true that anyone can buy or sell a house if they can jump through simple hoops, but that doesn’t make you good at it, or a professional. There is no doubt in my mind that there are some people not named Tom Brady who could hit Wes Walker in the flats for a gain, but that doesn’t mean you want to have that person control your game for you. A professional will spend time daily improving their knowledge and their skills. These are the kinds of stories I will share. The goal is the same, to get your house sold for the most money in the quickest time, no matter what the market. Period.

I have some personal hoops I need to jump through as I set up my computers and reconnect with my clients and prospects. Just setting up all the computers and printers and routers and other various machines that we use daily is a daunting task. I am close to getting most of it rigged to work. I will work on getting it rigged for efficiency as I go along. A Realtor® is a disciplined professional that follows a set of time blocked activities that produce results, so this week I need it to work. Next week I will tweak it to work better.

I love the end of summer in New England it is possibly the most beautiful place in the world at this time. One thing I like about it is the local foods. Milton has a Farmer’s Market throughout the summer. Yesterday I went to Milton Village and bought some fresh, organic vegetables that I bought from the person who planted and grew the food. I don’t think it gets any better than that.

I am still working out my schedule over the next couple of weeks as I settle in. I look forward to sharing another story tomorrow. Make it a great day.

I arrived back in my home town last night after 8 months building a web presence for a company in Dallas Texas. I learned so much from the good people of Texas, both the good and the bad. I learned that real estate is hard work these days, when it wasn’t always this hard. I learned what worked before, does not come close to working now. I learned that circling yourself with talented, smart, hard working real estate people is the way to grow. I also learned it’s opposite, having people who aren’t working hard and aren’t staying up to date around you is debilitating and you need to make a change. I did.

Milton Massachusetts is the boyhood home of George Bush, not the Dallas W, but his father who grew up here. It is the town right south of Boston, west of Quincy, north of Canton and East of Dedham and Roslindale. It is an incredibly big area for a town in the Northeast and encompasses a great deal of small pockets of differing neighbors. Milton, at one point, had more Irish Catholic people living in it’s homes than many places in Ireland. As this aging population begins to change the new people moving in are attracted to the tight community, the closeness to Boston, the ease of the commute into the city compared to coming in from the west or north. The schools are good and getting back to the days when it was truly a great school system. There is a lot to say about my home town here.

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to introduce you to the people and places of Milton and the areas around Boston. As I did in Dallas, I will search out some of the best minds working in real estate and interview them. I want to share here all the great things that make a community work. As you know, I won’t shy away from the things that, in my opinion, can use some work. I will be tireless in bringing you need and useful information.

I live in humble appreciation for all the help and assistance I got from the professional community in Dallas. I will take their unique and focused spirit to my work here far from Texas physically, but close to my heart spiritually. Dallas and the people in Texas are people of strongly held beliefs and willing to open up and share their knowledge with yo. I am grateful for my time with these people and know that we will stay in touch and continue to grow as the years go on. I will continue with my license in Texas because it remains one of the few bright spots in our national real estate landscape. I still have properties on the market in the area and have daily interaction with so many wonderful people. Thank you.