MIKE COSTIGAN

“…bro…Feels like your reaching.”

Can you even fathom speaking like this to a client who pays you thousands of dollars?

Social Media “guru” I hired sent this in a reply to my request for a refund.

Apparently, he didn’t quite agree with my little “time to bail” calculator that use…

Formula goes like this:

Value + Promised Service Provided = Stay and Pay.

Value or Promised Services Missed = Grab Your Cookies back and run.

When I hired this guy, I interrupted the canned sales pitch and insisted that our “deal” hinge on “personal” service. He agreed. I happily handed the guy $3K for the 1st month.

Immediately I’m passed to “staff”. I’m ok with this, temporarily. Good people. Needed to get some initial mechanics on our work completed.

That’s where the Candy Man stopped sending sugar my way.

Poof! He was gone like a tootsie pop chomped by the owl on the 3rd lick.

“A one….A two….crunch!”

Never could I speak to this guy again when I needed him. Responses to my inquiries for personal high-level strategy consults were laughable. Sweet little multiple choice “customer no-service” example below:

1. Use your “Golden Ticket” that clients get during their 1st 90 days.
2. Post in the FaceBook Group for feedback
3. Talk to my staff and we will review on our weekly meeting.

“Golden Ticket”?! Willy Wonka has got his delusions of grandeur amped up…way too much sucking down sugar high inducing sweets in the chocolate factory.

Put this into context as a real estate agent now…

How many times have you taken over an expired listing and they tell you they haven’t heard from their agent since the day they signed on the dotted line?

Happens a LOT.

An agent gives a great sales pitch,…all warm and fuzzy, with promises of magical goodies…really tickles their sellers’ sweet tooth.

Then poof! Gone like a self-absorbed Social Media guru-except no FB group to post to for “feedback”.

What you should know about client retention is this: Sellers will always stay for the long haul with you, as long as you over-deliver on their expectations. And they expect to be kept informed…not treated like a number

It’s a reward to get them. Don’t let them go sour.

My “Blaze” subscribers ALWAYS get to have their cake and eat it too.

To learn how to make every day sugary-delicious in real estate, go here:

www.aoflistings.com

-Mike Costigan

32.8 Degrees.

Gosh Darn Perfect!

That’s precisely the degree that I shifted the position of my desk last night.

And did it fire me up…you’re darn tootin’ it did partner!

The whole dang room that corrals me for hours each day seems to have gone from a confining pit to a wide open glorious new cavern, full of sunlight and promise.

I jumped right in this morning and began mining away, turning the crude ideas into highly refined lessons for my subscribers and clients.

Jed Clampet’s got nothing on Magic Mike today baby!

Funny how the slightest shifts create momentum:

Shifts in your attitude

Shifts in your language

Shifts in your processes

Shifts in your FOCUS

Last week, I was speaking to an Agent On Fire Blaze newsletter reader about how she was “sick and freaking tired” of “these cheapo sellers in my (her) market.”

Advice from the foreman of this honey-hole of prosperity: “STOP IT!”

It stunned her. Two little words stopped her dead like a bulldozer that bust it’s track….STOP IT.

I explained.

“Stop chasing after sh*t you don’t want.”

She got it.

And she immediately went after a higher-dollar listing.

Got it too.

Small shift. GIANT reward…Monetarily and mentally. She’s juiced.

A slight angle change of my desk…a total (and very quick) resetting of my psyche.

I saw fertile ground again. And it became the fossil fuel that I needed to jump-start my brain and get it siphoning the wisdom out of me, spewing out like a gusher!

Think about your “view”.

Is it time for some small shift in your blueprint maybe? Dig deep. What you find may surprise you.

Ready to get yourself aligned with the right habits that will extract the valuable rewards from your vastly untapped well of opportunity? If so, go here:

www.aoflistings.com

-Mike Costigan

Do you know how often potential clients are thinking that?

All of the “Me, Me, Me” bullsh*t plastered all over some page like a self-appreciating shrine.

This is going to be a hard nut for you to swallow, so open wide…

Nobody gives a sh*t about you and your kids, your love of puppies, your weekends running marathons or doing charity work at the nursing home.

Sure, Mother Theresa, it’s kind and sweet and everything mushy…

But it’s meaningless.

And it attracts ZERO business.

So DON”T PUT IT ON YOUR WEBSITE.

I don’t blame you. If you’re like most agents, you’re not really a marketer. You’re a salesperson…

…MASSIVE difference.

Marketers specialize in “attraction”.

Salespeople “sell”…once a prospect is already lured in.

So, what’s the fix?

You have to look at your website like a mousetrap.

There needs to be good bait (content and “WIFM” benefits) to attract the little “sniffers” who like to creep around unnoticed, nibbling away at the crumbs of info.

And the delicious morsels need to be set up in a way that keeps them following the trail…right into something they can’t resist biting their teeth into…then, WHAM…you got ‘em!

In marketing terms, we call the bait a “lead magnet”.

And we call the trail and trap a “funnel”.

You need to figure out how to start incorporating these into your website to catch prospects…now. It’s costing you a ton of money every day that your trap is without cheese.

If you can’t do it, then get someone to help you.

Now, there’s “gurus” who profess to build magical, complex funnels that are supposed to catch hungry prospects in litters…but don’t buy into that. The ONLY people who make money on multi-step funnels, are the people who build the funnels-NOT YOU.

You know which funnels work? Simple ones. 1-2 steps maximum. Confuse the mouse and he’ll go running back to his hole in the wall. And you ain’t catching him…ever.

In an upcoming issue of The Agent On Fire Blaze newsletter, I’ll be outlining a very easy to copy funnel that you can just pop right on to your homepage, to can start bringing you tasty commissions.

Once you start using your site like a mousetrap instead of a yellow pages ad, you’ll probably want to send me a cheesecake for sharing the sweet ingredients that makes the prize-winning recipe work. (For the record, I like Turtle Cheeesecake. Mmmmm…that could get you a free consult maybe…hint hint.)

Apparently, I’ve ventured into some sort of “rodent” theme in a couple recent articles. Weird. I don’t particularly like the smell of cat food. But I digress.

If you’d like to make the transformation from average salesperson to expert marketer, and never again have to worry about rounding up prospects who crave your help, go here:

www.aoflistings.com

-Mike Costigan

Get to the puck and shoot the dang thing!

I can hear myself yelling this to my 12 year old.

He’s a heck of a hockey player. He’s been at it for nearly 9 years now.

The kid can skate circles around most players and he’d score a ton of freaking goals if he’d just shoot the puck.

It’s an interesting analogy for the real estate game.

You aren’t wearing skates but it still moves pretty fast.

Tons of things are thrown at you every minute. You gotta really learn to stick and move in order to win.

Problem is that most agents just don’t shoot enough. They don’t get listings because they lay back and watch the game be dominated by more aggressive players.

Look, you need to be willing to get out there and cross-check every competitor in your path.

Slash ‘em.

Hook ‘em.

Do whatever you have to do to beat them to the scoring chance.

Your success in real estate is directly equivalent to the amount of listings you get. And your success in getting listings is directly equivalent to the number of shots you take.

So if you cant play the position of the attacker then you might as well take off the old skates and head to the bench now.

There’s no room for the weak.

But if you want to score a few signs in yards, then just line up your shots and take them.

Practice hard and watch your game elevate.

* Set aside time to call expireds…every day.

* Hit up a handful of FSBOS…every day.

* Write a FaceBook ad that targets your farm n’hoods…every day.

The highest scorers take the most shots.

I can’t imagine me getting on the ice with my kid these days. I used to be the tough guy. But after 9 years on the ice and countless hours of practice, he’d literally skate circles around me and taunt me. This is HIS game.

And it’s no secret why….HARD WORK.

The kid who could never catch me now sees me as an easy target and he’ll knock me over and laugh about it.

If you want to stop being a sitting duck and actually get some points on the listing board, go here:

www.aoflistings.com

-Mike Costigan

I’ll admit, watching Shaq ooooohhh and aaaaaahhhh while he smears that stuff all over himself sort of gives me a weird chill but….

Ha! That guy cracks me up. Talk about an endorsement-this MONSTER showing you how well a pain reliever can soothe even the most giant pains.

Although he’s been known to throw up some “bricks” at the free throw line, he’s hitting 3-pointers all day long for these Icy Hot guys.

So how did this company grow so big, and climb the celebrity endorsement beanstalk so fast?

You may not know the story, but my Agent On Fire Blaze newsletter readers do…and it’s a GARGANTUAN lesson to be taken.

These guys GAVE AWAY their stuff.

Yup. They got on the biggest syndicated news outlets and asked them to give it away to their audience. Then they included certain irresistible “hooks” in their package that turned “freebies” into profits, and they got customers coming back begging for more.

It was pure marketing genius.

No barriers to entry.

Huge reception of their product.

Massive Shaquille-Super-Sized returns.

It’s a UMS (unique marketing strategy) that I’ve used to list so many different types of sellers…literally “at will”.

I simply choose the potential “all-star” listings from different seller lead sources (FSBO, EXP, farm, ad responders, etc.) and I employ the “goodwill sneak attack”. An oxymoron perhaps…but it “gives” so much and then captures them all in stealthy fashion…so, in my book of tricks, it’s appropriately named.

And it works EVERY time…without fail…with next to ZERO effort.

I give, give, give…and they give right back.

Dr. Robert Cialdini talks about this natural “Influencer” in his famous book “Influence…The Psychology of Persuasion” (HIGHLY recommended read). The built-in-to-our-brains Influencer is called “reciprocation”, and it’s irresistible to any human being (psychopaths excluded).

People (sellers) truly cannot stop themselves from returning your favors. Not doing so goes against all social norms and the subconsciously mind won’t allow the conscious mind to NOT follow “acceptable” behaviors. It’s science…and I’ll leave the deep explanation to Cialdini. Trust me as your listing guru-it works.

So figure out exactly what you are willing to give in order to receive. Then DO it.

You don’t have to be a star player in your market either. You just need to have a way of standing tall above the others. And being the good guy can grow your stature in your marketplace overnight.

If you want to go from Icy Cold to Super Hot in your marketplace, go here:

www.aoflistings.com

-Mike Costigan