Ralph Roberts manages to sell 600 houses a year! In 1995 Time Magazine named him ‘America’s top realtor.’ Ralph is so good that real estate agents from around country pay for opportunity to ‘shadow’ him so they can learn about methods he uses.

Born in 1956, he got a job as a teenager cutting a neighbor’s lawn for $10 a time, while all neighbor hood kids were charging $5-because he convinced neighbor he would do a better job. As a recent high school graduate in 1975, Warren, Michigan dynamo took $900 and invested it in a three-bedroom house. ‘I moved in and rented out all three bedrooms to different people,’ said Ralph, author of Walk Like A Giant, Sell Like A Madman. ‘I lived in hallway.’

Over next 15 years, Ralph lived in 23 houses, selling each one at a profit and moving on to next opportunity. Although Ralph seems to have been born with a knack for selling, he wasn’t born knowing how to succeed. He claims that he was class clown at school and could have been voted ‘most likely not to succeed.’ In fact, he failed at several business ventures before he discovered his gift for selling real estate. Despite heartache they caused, Ralph says he’s grateful for failures, which preceded his success because each one taught him valuable lessons that brought him closer to realize his dreams.

‘To be successful you must surround yourself with successful people’ says Ralph who runs his real estate sales business with help of a secretary, two listing agents, two buying agents and one closing coordinator.

Ralph believes that setting goals, writing them down with specifics about how you want to achieve them and visualizing them are absolutely essential for success. One of his goals is to pay $1 million a year in taxes. Another is to do $1million a month in business with a particular investor group he works with. To symbolize this goal he often passes out fake $1 million notes to those investors.

Twice a year, Ralph’s key staff comes to his house for a workday during which they storyboard area in which they work. They set goals, brain storm and put good ideas down in an ‘idea of week’ book. Employees are encouraged to write ideas in book whenever they occur, even if timing isn’t quite right yet for implementation. Ralph and his department heads look through book regularly. Often they find a good idea that they had forgotten about and realize that now is time to implement it.

Like everything else, selling by using telephone has changed over years. The hard sell approach doesn’t cut it today. With voice mail, answering machines, tele-zappers, and caller ID old fashion way doesn’t work any longer.

If you are selling a high end product, trying to do it all on first call doesn’t work. You need to go through a couple of stages to get your end result – sale. First you need to introduce yourself. Tell them about you, your business and your product. Next try to set up an appointment to go into further detail. Or maybe send some information before calling again. Moving one step at a time gives customer time to become familiar with you and your product. It also gives your customer time to realize how important your product is to them.

You need to be confident and positive. As we have told many of our students, if you don’t feel like getting on phones – don’t. That negativity and lack of enthusiasm is going to come through on telephone. Many years ago when I was working in corporate America as a receptionist my supervisor told me to always answer telephone with a smile on. That smile carried over into impression caller received when contacting a company.

So be sure that a positive attitude comes through . Remember, old adage, “you must first sell yourself, then sell your product”.

Also of utmost importance is to know what you want to say. If you use a script, have it handy, but don’t just read it. I can tell immediately when a call I get is being read from a script. Write down an opening statement (for example, Hi , my name is Susan from Home Business Solutions. I’m calling about home you have for sale. Are you person to speak with? What’s your name?). Make notes of points you need to cover. Practice saying what you want to say until it comes naturally. Be sure you make strong statements. Avoid words: maybe, could, but.