WARNING: What I’m am going to suggest in this article is not easy, but it offers three very profitable opportunities for your business. In fact, you’ll have to launch one very challenging business to tap into the three profitable opportunities I will share.

I coach agents from all over North America. Some operate in small cities. Small cities come with small populations, which limit your ability to build a large, thriving business. The main reason is because it’s hard to generate a significant number of leads. Leads drive sales.

One of the ways to side-step this small-market challenge is to take your business to the national level. You would do this by marketing in national publications. For example, you could run your best lead-generation advertisement in USA Today, which is a national newspaper with a subscription base of more than 2 million readers. Think about the number of leads you could generate from just one ad!

Maybe this doesn’t make much sense to you on the surface; the majority of national readers probably aren’t looking to move to your area. But what if you shifted your marketing toward real estate investors? You might be surprised to find a large group of people who might be willing to invest in attractive income properties in your area.

To capture these national investor sales, you will need to offer property management services. This is where my earlier warning comes into play. Property management is a tough business to launch. There are numerous challenges and several hurdles to overcome.

However, property management services allow you to sell homes to investors outside of your market area. This ability to take your business national could be extremely profitable for you. Think about advertising in the Wall Street Journal or Investors Business Daily. What type of prospect would you attract to your business?

Many agents who consider property management services only the monthly income received for the management of properties. This income is attractive, and it can be structured to cover all of your overhead associated with the service. If you have 50 homes under management and charge $100 a month per home, your business collects $5,000 a month without having to sell a home. You’d take it, right?

Another extremely profitable opportunity available to you through property management is the ability to sell the homes under management. An agent I coach adds a clause in his management agreements that gives him the ability to sell homes under management and earn full commissions on each sale. Obviously, the terms of the sale would have to be acceptable to the investor. If you had 50 homes under management with clauses that allowed you to sell them, you would have 50 pocket listings at your disposal. This would be a very attractive asset for your business.

But let me tell you, property management is a tough business. You should consider all the challenges before getting involved. Also consider the option of finding a great property management company and referring clients to that company. This could give you the ability to take your business nationwide but without having to provide property management yourself. Of course in this model, you would lose two of the profit opportunities available through property management: monthly income and the listing of homes under management. You’d still have the ability to generate leads in national publications.

After writing an article recentlyabout ranking lead quality, I received many questions about joint venture relationships. In the article, I ranked joint venture leads as being the second-best lead you could generate. A joint venture relationship is defined by Wikipedia as:

A relationship formed between two or more parties to undertake economic activity together. The venture can be for one specific project only, or a continuing business relationship such as the Fuji Xerox joint venture.

A great example of a joint venture is the one between AT&T and Apple for the sale of the latter’s iPhone. AT&T derives benefit by gaining a ton of new subsribers without doing any marketing, which Apple handles. Apple, in turn, receives a commission on each new subscriber AT&T signs up. This additional revenue helps offset the marketing costs Apple incurs to sell the iPhone.

Both businesses benefite from the relationship. The main benefit of a joint venture is a lower cost of sale.

We real estate agents have the opportunity to use joint venture relationships for our businesses to reduce our cost per sale and our cost per lead. This lead generation strategy is especially important in today’s market because of the lower volume of home sales. Agents are struggling with cash flow and need to generate leads inexpensively. Joint ventures should be an integral element in your marketing.

Let me give you an example. I put together a joint venture relationship with my attorney. I drew up a letter that he could mail to his database offering them a free gift, which was a copy of my book. Any of his clients who wanted their free copy had to call my message center and leave their name, address and phone number. I handled the mailing on my end and sent the letter to about 200 clients of his. The mailing generated about 40 leads for a cost-per-lead of about 40 centers. And because this letter was an indirect endorsement of me by the attorney, these clients were “pre-sold” and the leads were consequently high-quality leads.

The attorney benefited from the joint venture in three different ways. The first was that we referred our clients to him for asset protection and estate planning. I recommended his practice in our client newsletters and featured one a couple of his articles. The second benefit for him was he was able to offer a special gift to his database without having to spend any money or take time to do any work. The letter was from him, but we took care of everything for him. The third benefit was that many of the people who requested my book called him to ask about us. This gave him an opportunity to talk to clients he hadn’t talked to for a while. This was a win/win relationship. It helped both of our businesses. We each generated leads and clients inexpensively through our relationship.

Couldn’t you repeat this same strategy with multiple joint venture partners? Contact lenders, insurance agents, financial planners, accountants, home inspectors, home stagers, interior designers, contractors and other local businesses, and offer to send a letter to your client list, promoting them. In turn, ask them to send a leter to their databases promoting you. It’s a win/win relationship for all involved.

I know what you’re thinking …

Sounds great, but I don’t have my own book! You don’t need a book to implement this strategy. You do need something of value. How about a special report or a free CD? Or you could set up a conference call with your joint venture partner and interview each other. You could market the conference call to your database and to your joint venture partner’s database and share the leads generated. An example of a great joint venture conference call right now might be:

“3 Costly Legal Mistakes Buyers Make When Buying a Foreclosed Home”

On the call, both you and your attorney can detail some of the mistakes buyers make. At the end of the call, have a special offer for the listeners. You could repeat this sort of formula over and over again with as many joint venture partners as you can find.

“Three Costly Mortgage Mistakes Buyers Make When Buying a Foreclosed Home” – Lender JV

“What You Must Know About Insurance When Purchasing a Foreclosed Home” – Insurance JV

Hopefully you see how powerful joint ventures can be in your business. They do require work, but they are very valuable lead-generation tools. You’ll generate high-quality leads inexpensively, and you’ll be able to attract more “pre-sold” clients to your business. Set a goal to launch one joint venture promotion per month for the rest of the year. Once the first promotion is set up, it will be simple going forward because you’ll just reuse marketing pieces with each new joint venture!

Remember learning about the power of compound interest in your high school economics class? I do. I can still see my teacher displaying charts of money’s growth over time when interest was compounded from period-to-period. Here are two definitions for “compound”:

intensify: make more intense, stronger, or more marked

put or add together; “combine resources”

Compound interest is a powerful saving strategy because your savings intensify over time. This happens because you earn interest on the money you originally saved and then you earn interest on the interest previously earned. With each passing compounding period, your savings earn more and more interest.

The very same thing can happen over time with your marketing. There are three basic ways this can be accomplished in your business:

1. As you sell homes and earn commissions, you increase the amount of money invested into marketing. This compounding increases each year as does your sales.

To engineer this in your business, you must set a specific percentage of your commissions to save and allocate to marketing. In addition, you must have the discipline to increase this set percentage each year. From my observation, this compounding doesn’t actually occur for most agents. This is because most agents have a tendency to spend every penny they make. They don’t develop the discipline to save or re-invest a fixed percentage of their commissions.

2. Consistently testing new lead generation advertisements and lead conversion systems in your business.

In No. 1 above your goal should be to increase the amount of money you commit to marketing. The goal is to put te additional marketing dollars you spend toward testing new ads and campaigns. Good marketing is really about testing. You must test consistently and constantly. A single new ad that ends up being a winner can be the difference in selling many more homes. I saw it happen in my business, and it was because I tested weekly.

3. By creating marketing pieces that have the ability to go viral.

A viral marketing piece is one that is spread from person to person. Over time, this marketing grows exponentially, spreading from prospect to prospect without any additional investment on your part. Examples of viral marketing might be a book you wrote, a video you produced, a free report you put together or an audio recording. The key here is to make your piece very compelling. The content should be so good that people want others to get the same information.

I used this kind of viral marketing strategy by offering a book I wrote as an eBook and giving each person who requested it the right to give the book away. Slowly but surely, we started hearing from people interested in our services who hadn’t responded to any of our advertisements. When we met with them, they would explain that a friend had passed on the book to them. This is compound marketing at its finest.

Take a second and think about how big compound marketing like that could be for your business over time. It ratchets up your marketing on its own, over days, weeks, months. It brings you more leads, more sales and higher profits as it grows.

Trouble is, many real estate agents don’t take the time to think about compound marketing. They are inconsistent with their marketing, which to them is the burden they reluctantly get around to when they get a break from being busy with everything else.

Here are a few steps you might take to compound your marketing:

1. Make your thinking about marketing long-term, not short-term

2.Make marketing THE priority for your business

3. Devote a set part of each commission check to future marketing

4. Increase the amount of commission you re-invest in marketing as your income grows

5. Constantly test new ads for lead generation

6. Always be testing new lead conversion approaches

7. Create a marketing piece that could go viral and encourage everyone to give it away

Take these steps to compounding your marketing, and you will see it pay off!

I recently saw an “advertorial” ad in a newspaper with the headline “7 smart places to stash your cash.” The ad was for a manufacturer of safes. Why is this such a good headline? Really think about it.

It’s good because people are concerned about our banking system and losing money they keep in their bank accounts. Our news media has constantly made comparisons of this recession to the Great Depression, which featured many bank failurs. Because of many banks’ financial weakness today, people might again be fearful of losing money they have in banks. The news is shaping how people think about banks.

This brilliant marketer has used this fear of bank failures to promote armored safes. Robert Collier, a marketing legend, was famous for teaching that we should “enter the conversation our prospect is having in their mind.” This means we should market to what our target prospects are thinking about.

What is our prospect fearful of?

What is it that our prospects want?

What challenges are our prospects having?

This marketer of safes realized that people are scared about losing their money. They have capitalized on the news media and the fear created. I’ll bet the majority of safe manufacturers have missed this massive opportunity.

The media has set up the same situation for us in real estate. Start watching the news with marketing in mind. You should ask yourself:

How Can I Use This News In My Business?

For quite some time, I didn’t watch the news or read a newspaper. That’s because the news is filled with depressing, negative stories. Who needs to see all that on a daily basis?

But recently I’ve changed my ways. I have come to realize that I can put the news to work for me. I am a subscriber of USA Today because reading it lets me into my target prospects’ minds. I see what they’re seeing, so I can better understand what they are feeling and thinking. I look for something I can use to my advantage every time I open a paper. I used the “7 safe places” ad to help my consulting clients better market their real estate businesses.

In the “7 safe places” advertorial, one of safe investments highlighted was “real estate.” Couldn’t you model this strategy and use real estate as a safe investment in your marketing?

Aren’t people worried about inflation? Real estate is an excellent way to protect yourself against skyrocketing inflation which we will probably face in the future.

Recently, there have been news stories suggesting we are nearing the bottom of this real estate downturn in the United States. I have seen stories about bidding wars and multiple offers, and some foreclosures are selling above asking price.

Positive stories like this about real estate will get people thinking that prices will soon get set to rise. We agents can use this in our marketing. An impending upswing in the market can be used to get potential buyers “off the fence,” so to speak.

If you remember what Collier said and put yourself into the conversation prospects are having in their minds, you will be able to use the news to make your real estate marketing better.

Recently, I hosted a conference call for agents who are my coaching clients. They were able to ask me any questions they had about their businesses. One of the agents on the call asked me how to overcome limiting beliefs.

It was not a question I can say I was expecting on the call. Honestly, most people don’t seem to ever grasp that not everything they hold true is necessarily true. Folks don’t realize that their belief system often holds them back from making great strides in business and in life. We are trained to cling to certain ideas about what is true, and to never question these steadfast beliefs.

I certainly didn’t realize my belief system was holding me back when I first started my real estate brokerage. Then I began attending mastermind meetings with entrepreneurs who had amazing businesses. These meetings helped me to see many things differently.

Take this example: I went to one mastermind meeting where a guy talked about the launch of a new product that brought in nearly $2 million in sales in just one montth. Before talking to these entrepreneurs, and watching what they were doing, I wouldn’t have thought this was possible.

But guess what?

This was, for me, a limiting belief. Because I didn’t think it could be done, I would have never seen it as an option.

Seeing other people make things happen that I didn’t think possible is probably one of the most important benefits of participating in various mastermind meetings. You walk out of the meeting thinking…

“If that guy can make $2,000,000 in one month, I should be able to (blank)”

This change in thinking allows you to up your game. It allows you to see opportunities that you didn’t believe existed before. It also allows you to try more than you would have previously tried.

The agent who asked the limiting beliefs question then asked if it was possible to sit down and write about in a weekend. It was obvious that he had a limiting belief that told him the answer was no.

Rather than telling him that it was possible, I suggested he take a little time to go somewhere quiet, shut off his phone, and make a list of all the things he believed were true about his business. I’ve done this many times over the years, and it’s something you might want to consider doing, too.

To make this process easier, you could actually make a category of beliefs on each page. The first category might be lead generation. So the question to ask yourself is: What do I believe about lead generation? Now write everything down that comes to mind.

Here are some limiting beliefs on lead generation you could have:

I have to spend money to generate leads.

It’s impossible to automatically convert leads into clients.

I couldn’t possibly generate 400 leads a month.

Even if I could generate that many, there’s no way I could handle all of them.

My buyers agents won’t call my leads.

The leads I attract aren’t qualified.

Sign an exclusive representation agreement? Not MY leads.

Now on the next page, ask yourself the following question: “What do I believe about commissions and my income?” Here are some sample limiting beliefs that you might have:

Sellers will only pay _______% (5%, 6%, etc.)

Buyers won’t cough up a higher commission than what’s offered in the co-broke

My clients wouldn’t pay a processing fee on top of the commission

There’s no way I could sell “X” amount of homes in a year.

I’ll never make a million dollars a year.

Nobody is ever going to want to buy my business

You can probably see how this process works. The next step is to go through each and every one of the beliefs you listed and ask yourself one simple question:

“What if this is just not true?”

It’s a powerful question because it challenges that belief system of yours.

Take the example above and the limiting belief about your buyers not paying a higher commission than what is offered to you in the co-broke. What if that weren’t true? Would you change what you were doing? I would hope so! You would probably set your rates more in line with the services you provide. In many cases, you would get a higher commission than what was being offered to you. Might you be able to charge your buyers a flat fee of $2,000 plus whatever the co-broke commission is? Maybe!

Limiting beliefs can be very costly. I have them. You have them. We all have them. The trick is to realize that you have them and constantly challenge yourself to see things differently. If you can, take some time this weekend to do this limiting belief exercise. I think you’ll find that it has the possibility to change your business and your life.

To wrap up this article, let me share one of my own biggest limiting beliefs:

“I don’t have time.”

Whenever someone presented a new idea or exciting opportunity to me, my immediate reaction was “There’s no time.”

Then I asked myself: What would happen if I did have time? My life changed instantly. I found time to write two books. I found time to hire, train and recruit agents. I found time to launch several other businesses. I found a lot of time I didn’t think I previously had. Maybe you have a similar limiting belief. What would happen if you did have time to pursue your new idea? What would happen if you did have time to write a book? What would happen if you did have time to start another business?

It’s definitely worth thinking about.

In a Twitter update, I recently wrote:

“Great time/life management question to ask yourself: ‘Will what I’m doing right now matter in 5 years?’”

This is a challenging way to take a look at what we do from day-to-day because it forces us to focus on our most important activities. You’ll also quickly identify our low value activities. The beauty of this one question is that it doesn’t require a special calendar or fancy time-management system to track time spent. It simply helps you make more calculated choices about what you do and what you don’t do. For example, compare the following two activities:

1. Watching a sporting event or game on TV.

2. Reading a book with your child.

Which of these two activities will matter in five years? At first you might think, “neither.” But as you think about it more, I think you’ll see that reading a book with your child will matter a great deal more than watching a sporting event. You never quite know the impact of the time you spend with others.

Let’s walk through a different comparison together. This time we will focus on work. Which of these two activities will matter more in five years?

1. Attending a home inspection for a home you have under contract.

2. Reading a book about marketing your business.

The marketing book seems as though it would be the better option because the lessons you learn would still be adding value to your career 5 years down the road. The funny thing is that I’ve had to actually stop and think about such choices differently. At first, you might argue with me on this example, saying that the home inspection might prevent a buyer from buying the wrong home. This is definitely true. However, let’s also consider the impact of a great book on marketing. Would the book allow you to help many more buyers rather than just the one?

Since my “tweet” on this matter, I’ve been using this basic question almost every day in order to analyze what I’m doing. I can honestly say that this one question can certainly transform your life. The reason: This question gets you to instantly zero in on what is significant and cuts away the insignificant.

Will writing this article matter in five years?

It will matter if it helps a single person make better choices about how they spend their time. (Maybe you will spend more time with your kids…). What if my answer is “No?” This article won’t matter in 5 years. What then? Well, I shouldn’t have spent the time writing it. I shouldn’t spend my time on things that don’t matter. Neither should you.

This question gets you to apply the 80/20 rule to all areas of life. It helps you focus on the most important 20% of your activities. I’m definitely not perfect with this, not by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve made some downright poor choices with my time in the past. This really doesn’t matter now. What matters is what I do with my time now. What matters is what I do with it tomorrow and next week.

Since adopting this simple time/life management question, I’ve discovered two similarities in my choices…

1. Doing something for someone else or with someone else always seems to trump any other choice of how to use my time. This is simply because we don’t know what the future holds for us, or for the other person or people involved. We tend to worry about our own future, but what about the futures of other people in your life?

Recently, my daughter wanted to volunteer at the Humane Society. She isn’t old enough to do volunteer work on her own, which meant I had to volunteer so that she could come along. We had to attend training classes. I was a little irritated at first because volunteering wasn’t my idea. I wasn’t sure that walking dogs and playing with them were the best uses of my time. Well, after asking myself this little life management question, I quickly realized that the time with my daughter mattered more than just about anything else.

2. Reading, studying and learning activities always seem to outweigh many of the other things we do from day-to-day. For example, I could spend 2 hours tonight watching TV, or I could use the two hours to read Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s book, “On the Shortness of Life.” When you start asking yourself this little questions, you’ll be amazed at how clearly you will see the time we tend to waste on a daily basis.

Speaking of Seneca’s book, I thought I would wrap up this article with a quote from the book, which had a profound impact on me. Here it is…

“…it is the sign of a great man, and one who is above human error, not to allow his time to frittered away: he has the longest possible life simply because whatever time was available he devoted entirely to himself. None of it lay fallow and neglected, none of it under another’s control; for being an extremely thrifty guardian of his time he never found anything for which it was exchanging.”

Time truly is the most important asset we own. This asset depreciates every single day. The problem is we aren’t always paying attention. We freak out when the value of our portfolios drop, but we don’t even bat an eye when our most valuable asset is wasted.

We trade time for the most trivial things. The time/life management question included above will force you to analyze your time as an important asset. It helps you start to see what is important and what isn’t.

The market for foreclosed homes represents a tremendous opportunity for agents right now. To capture market share durin the foreclosure crisis, most agents have pursued bank-owned listings. This has been one of the best opportunities for an agent to produce income over the past 12 or so months.

However, it sure seems as though there is a ton of competition among agents for these bank-owned listings.

To avoid this competition, real estate agents might consider working with home buyers and investors find and buy foreclosed homes. In other words, turn their focus to the buyer side of the foreclosure market, instead of working the listing side.

Today, most agents only see the foreclosure listing opportunity. They have completely missed the buyer or investor who wants to get a great deal on a foreclosed home.

The media attention has made a big impact on the way buyers think today. They are obviously nervous and don’t want to buy a home that will go down in value. They realize that they can avoid this problem by buying a foreclosed home below value.

Home buyers and investors alike are interested in foreclosures, but they aren’t sure where to get information. They also want help with their purrchases, but can’t always find someone to help them.

To show you what I mean, consider this excerpt from a June Fletcher column in the Wall Street Journal:

“… searching for a foreclosure can be maddeningly frustrating. Newspaper notices of foreclosure sales are disorganized; foreclosure listing Web sites charge hefty monthly fees; lenders post only minimal information on the properties they’ve taken back. And many real estate agents have little experience with these sorts of transactions, and don’t want to be bothered with them.

“That means foreclosure buyers must be willing to do more sleuthing on their own to find the best deals.”

This indicates there is a major gap in the marketplace. If you can help buyers overcome these problems, you’ll be able to dominate the foreclosure market as a buyer’s agent.

The key to having success with this opportunity is having lead-generation and conversion systems that attract foreclosure buyers and compels them to work with you. If you can capture these buyers at let everyone else keep pursuing elusive listings, you can prosper in this market.

Over the last few months, many real estate agents have been forced to reinvent their businesses. Many real estate agents understand the need to change, but don’t know where to start or how to do it. In this article, I’ll show you how to quickly reinvent your business around the best home sale opportunities in your marketplace.

To make money in today’s market, you must study demand. You must invest some time researching your market. Many small businesses make a critical mistake when looking to make a change. They spend time and money pursuing a new opportunity without knowing if the new opportunity will generate income. This is actually backwards. Find out what is selling today in your market. Then build your business around this opportunity.

Right now there are a few agents in your market who are experiencing an increase in sales. This means some homes are selling and some agents are doing very well. You must find these pockets of activity in your market.

This agent would spend a lot of money trying to get clients in this higher price range. They would probably list a few homes and spend time advertising these homes. They would host open houses to appease the sellers. All of this effort for nothing, because the homes won’t sell. This agent ultimately become very disgruntled throughout this entire process. To sell homes in this market, you should analyze the following:

1. For homes that are selling today, what styles are they?

1. Which homes are selling TODAY?

2. What price points are the majority of sales?

3. What specific areas are these homes being sold in?

5. Who is buying these homes?

6. Which agents are doing well in this market?

6. What agents are listing or selling these homes?

7. What marketing strategies are agents using to get new clients today?

Use your MLS to study recent sales. Don’t waste time looking at active listings. Focus on home sales that have closed recently. Study these homes to find demand in your market. Use the MLS information to direct where you focus your marketing and sales efforts. Prepare new advertisements targeting the prospects who are actually buying and selling homes today. Use the recent home sale activity from your MLS to pinpoint where the demand is for your business.