1. THE REAL ESTATE TRIPOD
Consider your real estate career to be supported by a tripod as if it were an expensive camera or telescope.
The tripod has three legs and they are each important to supporting your career. If one leg is significantly
shorter than the other two than there is a good chance that your realestate career might topple over and
crash.
The three legs of the triangle are Paperwork,Prospecting and Persuasion. The 3P’s of realestate.
The first leg is paperwork. An agent needs to understand all of the realestate transaction forms that might
be used. This takes some time and is a barrier to proceeding to the next leg of the tripod. The best place
to see and study the paperwork is through Zip forms. These are available over the internet or can be
downloaded to your laptop. When you join your local association of realtors and the California
Association of Realtors (CAR) you will be able to sign up for Zip forms. Once signed up you will have
access to all of the CAR forms. You will be able to fill them in and print them for your client’s signature.
There is a feature which allows you to put in the type of transaction (residential, land, probate etc.) and
the program will prompt you so that you will know which forms to use. The program also contains
tutorials which explain the forms and how to fill them out. Your office and your local association will
probably have some unique forms that will be required also. Your office manager and/or broker will let
you which are required. I said at the beginning that not knowing the forms is a barrier to proceeding to
the prospecting leg of the tripod. If you do not know how to fill out the paperwork you might be afraid to
talk to prospective clients because if they say “yes” you will have to fill out the paperwork.
Prospecting is the second leg of the tripod. This is when you actually go out and talk to people. Sounds
simple doesn’t it? Many agents make this too complex. Actively talking to people is how you find
clients. First, let everybody know that you are in realestate. Don’t be a secret agent. Where do you
start? Friends, neighbors and relatives, these are people who already know you and like you. Therefore,
they will do business with you and/or recommend their acquaintances to you. This needs to be done
“actively” that is in person, over the telephone, or by email. Use all three as appropriate. Passive
prospecting is everything else, newspaper advertising, bus benches, flyers anything where you are paying
to put a message out and it is necessary for the client to make the next move. There is nothing more
frustrating than paying for advertising and sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. You must be
active and see people, ask them for business and keep in touch. Hand out one thousand business cards a
quarter and within six months you will be busy, guaranteed.
The next and last leg to the tripod is persuasion. If you do not do the first two legs you will not get to this
one. You must learn how to persuade people. You have qualified your clients, you have shown them
properties and you know how to fill out the paperwork, now you have to help them decide. You have to
learn how to handle client objections. You need to learn dialogues so that when your clients have
objections you know what to say to them. These are also called “closing techniques”. The operative
word is learn, as in memorize. This is not something that you can fake. You need to know what to say
and just as important when to say it. You do not want to be driving away from a meeting with your client
and suddenly remember something that if you had said it you would have had a better outcome. There are
