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Success leaves clues, making an agent’s success fairly simple to predict.

At our company and through Ninja Selling, we have the opportunity to interact with literally thousands of real estate professionals from across the country. We are consistently struck by the large number of high quality, highly successful individuals who are in the real estate business. We spend considerable time investigating the common patterns in these highly productive people and have determined that we can easily predict an agent’s success with three simple questions.

Question No. 1: How big is your database of customers?

There are two reasons we ask this question. First, to find out if they have one. Surprisingly, a recent study showed that 60 percent of sales associates do not have a database. This is the central nervous system of an agent’s business and productivity cannot occur without one. There are all kinds of database programs from which to choose, and we 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 that we have developed which 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 we observe across the country. This rule tends to hold true across all markets. A strategy for a sales associate, with 200 people in his or her database, who wants to increase his or her income to $300,000 is to increase the number of people in his or her database to 300.

Question No. 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 those activities that build the business, such as planning, strategizing and making customer service calls. In-the-business activities are things, such as showing property and presenting contracts. The other pattern that we notice with highly productive people is that their routines include activities that build their mindset. This could be reading, meditation, prayer or exercise. It looks different for each person. The key lesson is that the activity is intentionally built into their schedule. One of our Group agents calls it his “daily massaging of the brain.”

Question No. 3: Can you tell me about your customer contact systems?

Again, let’s first find out if they have one. Based on our research, highly productive agents contact their customers at least three times a month. During this contact, they offer valuable information. This includes phone calls, newsletters (print or electronic), postcards, handwritten notes and face-to-face interactions. These touches are how agents position themselves as the trusted source of information and the way they keep top of mind awareness with their customers. An agent without a system to keep in touch with their customers consistently does not have a business.