The sell, p.21
The Sell, page 21
Put out a finder’s fee to your current people. Let’s say I have ten people on my team but I need another person, a top producer, and my time is scarce. Finding that person, trusting that new person and her skills, and then on top of that coaching her and integrating her into the team is time consuming. So, instead, I open my Monday morning team meeting and tell the current people on my team that we need one more person. “I want you to find me that person.” As an incentive, offer 10 percent of your share of the new hire’s first year of commission to the person who finds the right newbie. What’s genius about this is that you now have ten headhunters working for you, and you can almost be guaranteed that their recommendations will be great, because their bonus depends on how much business the new hire can produce. Furthermore, once hired, the current team member brings the new team member on pitches, getting them up to speed and taking them under their wing—automatic training.
Let someone else be your reference. My second secret to hiring the right people, and actually getting them to want to work with us when I do like them, is to do the exact opposite of what you might expect. Meeting me is important if they want to be on my team. It is the same with any boss or leader, but there is always distrust when I am selling myself to a potential new team member. It’s important to meet me the first time so I can spread my gold dust. Then I have that person go into the conference room without me. Instead, my five top team members are there, ready to be truthful and friendly. The prospective new team member can sit down without me in the room and interview my current team members about how our organization works. They can ask anything: “What has been your experience?” “Is he nice to work with?” “What’s he like on a bad day?” Trust me, nothing is as strong as having the potential new team member hear from your top people that you’re great to work with. You will win the new person over.
The reason for this extra step is that the new team member assumes that I (the leader or boss) will paint a perfect vision of what it’s like working with me. Any workplace is not just champagne and roses; it has its ups and downs. This is especially true at a younger company, a start-up perhaps, which can be messy and chaotic. It is also hard for me to sit there and talk about those negative sides. Let your prospective teammate hear it from the other people, your top people who are already successful. There’s nothing more convincing to a prospect than hearing a current employee say, “Despite X, Y, or Z, we would never want to work anywhere else.”
And the best part? This doesn’t cost me anything.
HOW TO LEAD (AND BE A PART OF) A HAPPY WORKPLACE
I became a boss at an early age. At twenty-three, I was leading a tech start-up with forty-five employees, and I wasn’t the real me. I was acting how I thought the boss should act: strict, boring, old. Because I was responsible for a bunch of people’s output, I thought that was the only thing I could worry about. I assumed that if I was too fun or too friendly, my employees wouldn’t take me seriously. I had my priorities askew. I hadn’t yet realized a very essential concept for success in the twenty-first century: the importance of a happy workplace. When people are working happy, they are giving you their best, their all. Today I use the carrot, not the stick. I see myself as a team mascot.
I always say to my team members that we need to have fun and that we need to create something memorable in all that we do, which will attract more business. I see my team as a family, and a happy family is one based on love. A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected. The business world is so demanding and can at times be incredibly stressful. So I treat my team well. We celebrate our success together and we treat people like people—with hopes, dreams, interests, and personal lives—not just cogs in a wheel.
I realize you might not be the boss yet. You might be a part of a team. That’s great. Help inspire your boss and you’re moving up. I love when my team brings me great ideas. Those who do are happily rewarded. Here are some of the things we have put in place that seem to work to keep people happy and help motivate them to succeed:
After-work drinks and parties. My team tries to go out for drinks or dinner every other week and have a big blowout party twice a year at Christmas and during the summer. These outings provide an opportunity to get out of the conservative office mentality and let our hair down a bit. In the United Kingdom, people head out to a pub every day after work. It’s a chance to be social, to see the person behind the job title, and to find out about everyone’s lives. Most important, it provides an opportunity to have some laughs together, which always lifts the lid off the pressure cooker.
Prizes, competitions, and trips. The unexpected surprise or luxury is a huge credit in building loyalty. I recently surprised my team by taking all of them to Mexico for my birthday, but your gift doesn’t have to be that expensive. From flowers to dinner gift certificates, people just want to be noticed and feel appreciated. For my brokers in Sweden and Norway, we have quarterly competitions based on a point system. If you get in the press, you earn points. If you make a sell, you earn points. At the end of the quarter, the highest point getters receive prizes, from spa treatments to a luxury trip to New York. These treats create top producers and long-term job satisfaction and make people happy to work harder.
Office treats. No one wants to feel like a corporate drone. Offer them little luxuries that make them feel appreciated. Google really has this down, offering its employees a lot of perks aimed at keeping them happy and healthy, from delicious food to being able to bring their dogs to work! I try to provide my team with as many office sweeteners as possible. Dinners with tequila and dancing on the table in a Mexican joint (the alcohol and warm, red cheeks are an important part of the team building), everyone bringing their dogs, or their neighbor’s dog, to a picnic in Central Park, and weekly team meetings where we remember to just thank one another for one another’s existence.
Everyone should have a voice. People want to be heard. All members of your team need to feel as if they can speak their minds. With my teams in Europe, we have a weekly call in which everyone is represented, from the receptionist to the brokers.
A shared dream. As in a marriage, your entire team should know where the company is headed. Where are we going, and what do we want to accomplish? The management better know not just the financial goals, but also which ten key words represent the company’s values. You want people to be emotionally invested. It’s much more interesting and gratifying to work in a place where everyone is working toward a common goal. In my team, it’s simple: Double our sales every year.
Bonuses and commissions. There should be a dangling carrot for people to want to do better, achieve more. You should have a structure in place that rewards and encourages success. Just as sales is about motivating clients to buy, so, too, does the boss have to motivate the team so each is inspired to go big.
MY PEOPLE PHILOSOPHY
Every human being is beautiful. And good at something. Whether we’re talking about your coworker, your team member, or your spouse, everyone wants to feel appreciated. Your goal as a successful human being is to be interested and encouraging and to let each person close to you know that he or she is important. Call attention to triumphs; be forgiving of mistakes. Offer apologies as generously as you accept them. Praise wholeheartedly; criticize sparingly. Listen, learn, and love. Happiness never decreases by being shared. Spread joy to the people you encounter each day, and it will be returned in your life tenfold. You will win friends and influence people to want to work with you.
CHAPTER 11
F*CK! STOP THE PRESS
Learn How to Use the Media to Get Attention
The first time I showed Leonardo DiCaprio an apartment, the Swedish media—yes, the paparazzien—happened to be there. How did they know?! At first I was annoyed; then I felt intruded upon. But, in the end, I was happy—because I realized the attention was a gift, an opportunity. Fortunately, I had on my best suit. I waited on the curb for Leo’s black SUV to roll up in front of the SoHo apartment building I was about to show him. I pretended the flock of long lenses pointed in my direction from across the street weren’t there. What happened? He rolled up, got out of his car, and I immediately grabbed his hand to shake it. Click. Click. Click click click click click click click. It was front-page news in Sweden. What did millions of eyeballs see? “Fredrik Eklund: broker to the stars.”
The truth is I never sold anything to Leonardo, but at that point it didn’t really matter. People connected my name with his and either assumed I did, or didn’t care as long as I was seen with him.
I love getting attention, as should every great seller and anyone in the business world. Why? A third-party endorsement says you’re tops at what you do. Yep, I know what some of you might be thinking. Why would anyone want to do a story on me? What would anyone have to say about my life, my business? I’m not important enough. Stop! That is not how a successful person thinks. You are important, destined for great things and big money, but you have to help bring it on.
As I told you in the social media chapter, I’ve sold many apartments for more than the asking price by creating a word-of-mouth frenzy among my followers. That is certainly the least expensive tool to sell yourself and what you have to offer, but there is also another inexpensive tool in your toolbox. It’s called the press, and you can use it to help you get your name out there. It’s yours for the taking; all you have to do is ask.
Publicity is worth its weight in gold. It creates visibility that translates into clients knowing who you are and what you have to offer. These mentions (and people talking about you) attract what everyone needs: people to know about the service you provide. Your name bragged about by a friend, in the paper, or in your thirty-second interview on TV, says to a potential customer, This high-kicker is the expert. Getting something like The New York Times to say you’re the expert at doing what you do is a better endorsement than you could ever buy. In fact, a Harvard study showed that PR is up to twenty times more efficient than good old advertising. That means ten dollars spent on a regular ad compared to the same money spent on public relations can get you $200 more of a return on your investment. You could put a PR wiz on retainer or work out an arrangement to pay one on a per-placement basis. But you must do something every day to get yourself noticed. It is the key to big business. A rave by someone about your goods or services on Yelp can be worth thousands of dollars. A profile in a prominent newspaper can directly lead to millions of dollars in increased sales. (Trust me, I know.)
THE BILLION-DOLLAR BROKER
I gulped as I stood in a Miami Starbucks and stared at the front page of The New York Times Sunday Styles section. There, below an article on Oprah, was the eye-popping headline about me. I was on the cover!
How that happened is really the story of how I became a number one success story and really the story of how you have this book in your hand.
In 2006, the year I aimed to do $1 billion in sales, I decided that instead of spending money on advertising, I’d spend $10,000 to hire a video crew and create a video pilot called Billion Dollar Broker. Clever, right? Remember my first listing on Twentieth Street? After my record-breaking deal there, that building continued to feed me clients, and a producer was one of them. He was around my age, right out of college, and was forming his own little production company, and we became friends.
Here was my train of thought: The sales business is a numbers game. You have to get noticed, and every appointment is like an actor going to an audition. I needed to flip that on its head and have people lining up to use my services. I knew from experience that if I sent out a thousand mailers, I might (if lucky) land one new client out of the effort. I realized there’s not enough paper in the rainforest to get a hundred new clients out of a mailing. If I wanted to, indeed, become the number one broker in New York City, I couldn’t rely on a piece of paper touting my credentials that most likely was going from mailbox to trash can. My goal was big, so I had to think big to get there. I needed to have hours and hours with each potential buyer and seller, to have my name seared into their heads, but I only had the same twenty-four hours in my day as all my competitors. The only way that seemed possible was if I somehow got myself in their homes . . . perhaps on their televisions.
At the time, I noticed that there were two shifts in culture. Reality TV was becoming the must-see TV and the real estate business was changing dramatically. The old-guard real estate agents put the property ahead of themselves, or they were hiding behind their properties, depending on how you looked at it. The property was the star and they were merely the way in. Meanwhile, the new stars were making themselves the stars, and the really vibrant ones with great PR skills were becoming brands. These individuals would be so fabulous—and talented, of course—that people wanted to work specifically with them, and the properties would follow suit.
People were calling me because they’d heard I was fun and the best, but I knew that if I wanted to be the biggest brand in New York City I needed to do something spectacular. Calling, faxing, knocking on people’s doors was just farting in the wind. Those days were over. The attention getters were the ones getting all the business and hitting all the sales records. I asked myself how I could get the most attention for my business. And the answer was reality TV. Not just any kind of reality TV show, which could be hurtful for business. I needed a show that showcased my record-breaking deals, my obsession with real estate, my tenacity, my anything-is-possible approach with clients, and my superior deal-making skills.
Shooting the pilot was hard for me. It was my first, and to this day last, pilot. We did it all on our own as a promo video to get the attention of the decision makers at Bravo. We had no producers or experts advise us on what to do or say. I wasn’t a big consumer of TV, but I knew the basic arc of good storytelling. We needed a journey. People like to hate you in the beginning and love you by the end. So we came up with some ideas we thought Bravo would like. After all, Bravo was—and is—the number one network in the world for this kind of television. It also has a more affluent viewership than other reality TV networks, with a wealthy bicoastal audience, the same people I wanted to reach. Furthermore, after doing some research, I learned that some of their more successful franchises were sold to more than 150 countries around the globe.
I flew in a helicopter over New York because reality TV loves glamour. I fought with my team because reality TV likes some conflict. I went to a gay club looking for love because reality TV needs love. And I showed property because that’s what a billion-dollar broker does. We showed I was really successful in real estate and that I was a bit crazy and really fun. The hook was simple: Can this guy sell $1 billion in real estate in one year? I still have that DVD in my drawer at home, and I watch it every now and then to get a good laugh.
My brother had an agent contact in Los Angeles who got a meeting with Bravo during their pitch season, in which the network meets with all these production companies about the ideas they have to offer. I was excited. Nervous, but excited. A few days before the appointment, the agent decided it was best if I wasn’t in the meeting, saying the executives could talk more freely about me if I wasn’t there. I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, but acquiesced. After all, I knew nothing about high-stakes TV pitching. I flew my brother in from Sweden and sent him as my representative.
They watched the tape and loved it. Then Andy Cohen asked the billion-dollar question: “So where is he? Bring Fredrik in! Is he outside waiting?” The agent stumbled a bit on his answer, “Well . . . We thought it was better if he wasn’t here.” The meeting ended with Bravo saying with certainty, “We’ll call Fredrik if we decide to do a New York real estate show. We love that guy.”
It was a fiasco and a huge disappointment.
Meanwhile, back at the brokerage I was working for at the time, the owners watched my pilot, laughed hysterically, and promptly told me I was smart but crazy. “What a fun idea,” they said. A few weeks later, I walked into the office and there was a meeting going on in the boardroom. Every top agent was in there, except me. I asked the receptionist what was going on and she said, “There’s a meeting with HGTV about a new show they want to do with us called Selling New York.”
My heart sank. I called a meeting with management. “What’s up?” I asked. “Why wasn’t I included in that meeting? You know I’m interested in doing a real estate show.”
He said, “HGTV didn’t pick you.” I was crushed, and even more crushed when they started filming and I had to go to work and hide from the cameras. I felt like it was an active unpicking, and I took it personally.
I kept contact with Bravo, who was moving toward a New York real estate show but at a snail’s pace.
I went to Greece to clear my head, and, the day before I met Derek, I got the contract to star in Million Dollar Listing New York. I had to run and borrow paper from other hotels in order to feed it into my hotel’s fax machine. On the very same day, The New York Times called and said they wanted to do a cover story on me for the Styles section.
Within those twenty-four hours, a lot of things happened: I met the man who would become my husband, I secured a front-page profile in The New York Times, and I signed a contract to star in a Bravo show. And because of all of it, I became the number one broker in New York City.
How is this relevant to you? You don’t have to have a Bravo show, but you do have to tell your story to someone. You have to get the message of you out into the world.
If you don’t have a big budget, there are plenty of ways to bring attention to yourself without breaking the bank. Let me give you some ideas.
