i wish taht the only thing i had to do to make money was prospect, but there are more steps from contact to close that i have to run.

^^^
Um... besides prospecting what else do you do? There's the presentation which is really important... almost everything else can be delegated. So in truth, prospecting and presentation is what you have to do to make money. That's pretty much it.

I love making 100 Contact per day because......

1)It makes my day feel productive,
2)It eliiminates the fear of "where is the next commission cheque coming from,
3)It is a Pure- HIGHLY Profitable activity
4)It keeps my expenses to a minimum
5)It is Predictable and Duplicateable
6)I earn approx $1,200 per hour prospecting
7)It is fun talking to and meeting new people
9)I can steer my business where I want it
10)It is very time effective
11)It challenges me to be effective daily
12)It is measureable
13)I know, regardless of the economy, I will always earn a high income

I am sure I could add more!
When I started prospecting in 1995, I started with 20 minutes per day.
I would cut out a photo of the listings I had SOLD and wallpapered one wall of my office with them and I wrote the $$$$$ amount over the photo as a reminder for whenever I would get discouraged.
I remind myself I earn $30 per contact or $10 for each number I dial!

Knowing the above....how can someone not love it!
Actually....it's CRAZY not to do it but truthfully....like everything else in business...I truly am glad that everyone hates it and very few are doing it because if everyone did, it would ineffective and useless!
"To be successfull in business...use the 180 degree theory...do the opposite of everyone else.". EARL NIGHTENGALE

Which Top MFO agents do you work with Niche?

SUMMARY FOR MARCH;

1)2400 contacts
2)26 leads
3)12 listing appointments
4)3 listings taken
5)2 buyer deals
6)$20,000 earned
7)188,000 closed and pending

Observations; March is sort of a transition Month in my market. Many sellers interviewing b4 actually being ready to list. Some of the other 9 appointments will list with me in April and May.

Lucky...that is awesome!

That's great lucky, did the 3 listings come from cold calls? Doorknock? What kind of contact?

Also, Lucky's discipline in the daily tracking of the numbers is impressive and smart.

Lucky, do you track manually every day? (i.e. a sheet of paper checking off # of contacts, leads, appointments,etc..)... or do you use some other method?

2 listings from Cold Calling, one past client who I sold the house to several years ago.

This is a great question RAH. This is something I take for granted because I have been tracking my numbers and ratios for so long.

I have a weekly tracking sheet with Monday-Friday across the top.
Four columns of the numbers 1 thru 200. At bottom of each column I have a blank for Hours prospected_______
Leads generated________
Follow up calls___________
Far right (last column is blank for notes)

I have been using a Month at a glance Erasable poster for years.
I write in the dates each new month. I transcribe my daily numbers from my tracking sheet every day onto the month at a glance along the top of each day like this:
100/3/3...(100 contacts, 3 leads. 3 hours)

On the month at a glance I write in Listing Appointments in Red, Showing Appointments in blue. Everything else is in Black.

At the end of the month I use a separate tabulating sheet which has numbers such as Contacts, Leads, Hours Prospected, Listing Appointments, Listings Taken, Buyer showings, Listings sold, buyer sales, Hours worked, Days worked, Days prospected, Price reductions, Income earned, Dollars Closed, etc.

My Assistant enters the totals into a custom made Excel spreadsheet with January thru December across the top, the tracking particulars down the left side.

Excel tracks the totals, calculates the ratios at the bottom.
Ratios such as Average commission, contacts per listing sold, contacts per listing taken, buyer appointments per buyer sale, Income per hours worked, Listing appointments per listing taken, etc and much more.

I keep each sheet for several years plus the numbers are on computer.

Sounds complicated but it is really just a result of refinement a little at a time, year after year. I started tracking just a few numbers at first.

I have interviewed several Top Agents in the past and they all have their own system for tracking their business in one way or another and they all had their past several years production numbers somewhere to look back at.

All successful businesses know their numbers. The only reason agents do not, is because there is little proper training.
Most brokers in Toronto area simply want to recruit as many agents as they can handle because they know the bulk of the agents get their business from their SOI only and the more agents they have....the more deals they suck up.

I asked a Knowledgeable Broker of mine on time, why he did not provide more aggressive training. I felt there was much room for improvement in the industry. He shared with me he had tried teaching agents in the past with little success. He summed it up by saying that some agents were Eagles but most were Turkeys and that he could not make a turkey Fly.

I have averaged around 16,000 contacts for the last several years. Believe me....I feel like a Turkey. This year I want to exceed 20,000 contacts with over 200 days prospected in an effort in being more consistent in making 100 contacts daily and Growing my business rather than just maintaining.

I realized a long time ago, all successful businesses experienced and based operations on predictable numbers and Real Estate sales was the same.

I also realized a long time ago, High producing marketing agents received dozens and dozens even hundreds of incoming calls per month. Each one is a potential lead. I felt I needed to replicate the leads thru prospecting/lead generation as it was free and I had tried to use marketing unsuccessfully several times and continuously hearing the rumors many Top Agents were on the verge of bankruptcy and realizing working Past Clients and Shpere of influence was very unpredictable and limited especially if I did not want to spend time doing what I called smoozing them. I am basically a homebody and a family man. I work a disciplined 40-50 hour work week.

This is what I love about the Mike Ferry Seminars. They taught me to look at Selling Real Estate as a business and treating it as a business only.

Selling Real Estate is simply Earning a living!
Investing in Real Estate for the long term ,is designing a Life.

Good question RAH......good of you to notice...hope this helps someone.

If I had to follow a procedure like this I just might blow my brains out. This turns real estate from a beautiful and exciting endeavor into a miserable grind. However, I understand that for certain personalities, this is a valid approach.

Here are my numbers for 1-5:
1)0 contacts
2)0 leads
3)9 listing appointments
4)7 listings taken
5)0 buyer deals
6)Average listing price: $450,000

How is this possible? No prospecting at all? Well, light prospecting in the form of mailings. I spend about $400/month doing mailings. The business then comes to me. And what business comes to me? Exactly the business I target. Homes in my farms where the average price meets my criteria for sufficient profitability. Now I also do a fair amount of relocation work where relocation companies offer me listing appointments on employees who are being transferred. What is good about that is that you prospect the relocation company a few times, then it becomes a steady source of listing opportunities with ZERO future prospecting. (However you have to be good, there are usually 3 agents who are given the opportunity for the same home, and relocation agents are usually the cream of the crop as relocation companies are picky about who they work with). But it's the gift that keeps on giving.

However, the key to this is quality marketing and seller support. If you are not top notch, good looking, and very organized, you will be dumped in short order.

Buyers? I mostly don't work with them unless they are sellers in my farm who are moving up or down (double deal), or referrals. They also have to be in a certain price range ($400,000 and up in my area).

So there is more than one way to skin a cat. Prospecting deals one at a time through cold calling to me is a waste of valuable time. Not in the sense that it doesn't generate a profit, I'm sure it does. But to me the quality of the time is important. I want to spend my day designing, creating, and problem solving. If you do that extremely well, the business will come to you, and it will be business of a high quality, rather than a high quantity.

Also, you want to prospect business that offers a huge return with little additional time wasted. So for me, it's relocation companies. For others it might be REO companies. If you can prospect them successfully, you will have a steady stream of listings with sellers that have to sell and who price realistically. AND, the prices of homes are typically much higher than the average in your market. Employees who are worth transferring make good money and live in nice homes. Homes, by the way, that rarely have inspection problems after the contracts are signed.

The problem with calling thousands of people to get 3 listings is you are not spending your time in a pleasurable way. Business should be pleasure. Talking to hundreds of new people every month with my "sales pitch" and "Mike Ferry script" is just not an activity that I would consider pleasurable.

But to each his own, whatever works!

navarac, I much prefer your style to that of the cold caller with a script...may I ask what type of mailings you use ?

Congratulations on your success. I only wish I could spend just $400/ month to get 7 listings. I would actually splurge and triple it to $1200 if it would get me even 1 listing. Relo business is practically non existant where I am. I assume your income would be around the $1 million range if you did that consistetly and only $5,000 a year in flyers. This is astronomical!

Lucky, thanks a lot for sharing your tracking system in detail...lots of good points there.

It's easier to figure out where to aim and improve if you know in detail what you're capable of.

I like the froy thing. The man is a hoax made for empowerment at these seminars we were talking about him in class this week. About figures that are made up for people to believe in. its a heated discussion but its allot of smoke.