How to Develop a Six-Figure Income in Real Estate [Hardcover]

Mike Ferry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1992

Now everyone can learn Mike Ferry's uniquely effective method of "Superstar selling." Ferry believes agents and brokers profit most when they sell directly and advocates heavy prospecting. Each chapter describes Ferry's proven techniques and ends with a section revealing how a practicing agent has successfully applied the techniques. It's packed with tips on managing time, approaching new prospects and handling objections. Also includes Ferry's inspirational 30-day, 60-day, and 6-month Superstar Plan tailored to every salesperson.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 198 pages
• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing (November 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0793104904
• ISBN-13: 978-0793104901
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #731,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Practices Detailed for Real Estate Brokers, October 4, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: How to Develop a Six-Figure Income in Real Estate (Hardcover)

While there are many good books about being a successful real estate broker, this one stands above the rest for helping you create a real estate brokerage business. Mr. Ferry has a business process in mind that allows you to be more effective with your time and money, and to reinvest some of that time and money to create even greater results. Mr. Ferry has been a successful broker, and has been a top trainer in the field (based on those experiences) for many years.

Only the top 3-4 percent or so of brokers made six figure incomes when this book was written, and this book is squarely focused on how to get you into that narrow area. I think this book will be of most value to those who want to make a high income, and are excited about trying new techniques to make themselves more effective.

Although I do not practice as a real estate broker (although I am licensed), this book fits my understanding of how that business works. The most productive parts are when you get a listing or make a sale. Mr. Ferry shows you how to get more listings in time and cost efficient ways, and to have the way you get those listings help you make sales more easily.

Here's what he has to say about this process: "It's not uncommon to see a salesperson's production double within months after starting to use the tools given here." " . . . [T]reat your real estate career as a busines. You can then use proven techniques for increasing your productivity."

The introduction gets the book off to a fast start with excellent ideas for setting goals for your psychological, spiritual, family, physical, and financial success. He then encourages you to create action plans for each goal area, and to start taking action in the first five minutes after writing the plans. People with written goals and plans like these outperform the rest of the world routinely. He also encourages you to break your old habits, to ask for help where it is needed, to be sure you understand what you should be doing, and to keep going whenever you get something to work. In this way, he wants you to create excitement that will overcome whatever procrastination you may have.

Willie Sutton said that he robbed banks because that was where the money was. Real estate brokers have to ask real estate owners about their plans to sell and buy all of the time -- that's where the real estate transactions are. He describes how to do this if you have a natural community to draw on (like your church or club). He also encourages you to try cold-call door knocking, and compare the results. For many new brokers, the cold-call door knocking will work faster and be less expensive. After you are more successful, you can hire someone to help you with this through mailings and telemarketing. He encourages you to do this prospecting all of the time. A recommended target is For Sale By Owner properties (most will eventually hire a broker). Expired listings are also a good source of new listings. You will find many scripts to help you with these contacts.

Once you have a lot of listings, you will make a lot of sales. Good processes for working with buyers are described here as well.

Once you have a lot of sales, it's easier to get listings because you can promote how many sales you make. Sellers are looking for top sellers!

Many brokers will be uncomfortable with his advice. But you can probably rewrite the scripts so that they feel authentic coming from you. That will also help you with procrastination, if you are like me.

He offers several plans for getting started. I suggest that you try one that is for an activity level you can stick with.

Chapter 12 has a number of examples of people who are getting great results. I found those examples particularly helpful, because it made it clear to me that you don't have to be a Mike Ferry clone to have more time for yourself, more self-esteem, more control in your life, and more income.

Good luck with improving your real estate business!

After you have been using his process for 90 days, I suggest that you take a look at where you have been most successful in getting listings and do more of that. Also, analyze the places where you have been less successful by asking those who turned you down how you could have improved in approaching them. If you do this every 90 days, you should get even better results!

96 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars How to lose 6 figures trying to be a real estate salesperson, February 14, 2005

By 

Einzige "Just a dude" (Phoenix Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Develop a Six-Figure Income in Real Estate (Hardcover)

I need to set the record straight, because I recommended this book in another of my reviews, and have since changed my mind about it. Chalk my previous thoughts up to newbie ignorance, I guess. Also, in the interest of full disclosure: I am no longer in real estate, after spending two years trying in earnest, but ultimately giving up (having burned through all of my savings and maximized my personal debt). Do I blame this book for my failure? Of course not! It's not that simple (Note that the reviewer who said this didn't attack my arguments, but merely impugned my character).

All that having been said, this book is worthless, for a number of reasons.

First off, he repeats the tired maxim that it takes 99 "No's" to get to one "Yes." So, the key to success, then, is that you've got to resign yourself to simply slogging through those 99 No's in some fashion. Ferry's primary recommendation is "cold doors," meaning walking a neighborhood, knocking on people's doors and asking them if they are planning on selling their home any time soon. He's serious about this! I took him up on his recommendation... in August... in Phoenix... it was not fun. All I got for my 100 "No's" was a lot of sweaty clothing.

A moment's critical thought will expose one aspect of the sheer idiocy of this recommendation: Assuming the 99/1 ratio is absolute gospel, how long do you think it will take you to knock on enough doors to speak with 100 people (if no one answers it doesn't count toward the ratio)? Best case, I found, was 8 hours. In that same period of time you could use the phone and speak to several times more people. Shouldn't efficiency count for something when you're "running a business"? (I agree with the other reviewer who said that this book describes making a "job" for yourself.)

So, what about "cold calling," then? Ferry doesn't endorse cold calling 100%, because it's not "face to face", but he doesn't discount it, really, either. He grudgingly admits that his readers are going to prefer it over cold doors. Unfortunately, with the new telemarketing laws, any realtor making cold calls is playing with fire. But even if we were to take his advice at the time it was given, it's absurd. Do you really think it's reasonable to believe that 1 out of 100 strangers you call is going to say to you "Yes, I'm glad you called! I'm planning on selling my house in the next month or two. Come on over!" I don't, either! (Don't think I didn't try this, however, because I did! "Skeptical" is not the same thing as "close-minded") But that's what Mike Ferry wants you to believe. Mike Ferry seems to want you to forget that real estate is a business about _relationships_.

Let's assume for a moment that you're the world's greatest salesperson. People just can't say "no" to your flawless pitch and your irresistible charm. Okay, Ferry advises us that roughly 3 to 4 hours of our days as Realtors needs to be spent prospecting for new business--cold doors or cold calls. Think about that for a minute: You're making 6 figures a year (according to the title of this book), which means that, at minimum, your hourly wage is $48. Do you know _any_ telemarketers who make that kind of money? Obviously it would make a lot more sense for you to hire a high school kid part time and pay him or her $10/hour to do it for you (with a little training from you, the master salesperson, of course). Does Ferry recommend this? No. The fact that he doesn't point out something so obvious is cause for concern, in my view.

So, Ferry recommends, in effect, that you spend the equivalent of $960+ per week (the value of your time) making cold calls. Why is it that he doesn't simply recommend setting up an aggressive advertising campaign with that roughly $4000/month? Not only would that be one massive campaign, but it would free up your time for other things. AND, people will call YOU (or your assistant) instead of you calling them--people who are actually interested in buying or selling real estate! Imagine that!*

Did you get into real estate to make cold calls for 3 hours a day (in the evenings, no less, since that's when people are home. UGH!), to harass and manipulate hostile FSBOs and expired listings, or to have free time and low stress?

Ferry also recommends against a geographic "farm" area, suggesting instead that you create a "people farm". I suppose there's nothing inherently wrong with this, except that farming a particular area has a number of distinct advantages: 1) You can become an expert on the area's trends and values; 2) You won't have to resign yourself to driving all over town to chase down that next listing; 3) It's much easier to set up targeted advertising, to maximize the effectiveness of your advertising dollar. None of those things are discussed in his book.

Another item conspicuous by its absence is any discussion of how to best determine the necessary size of your farm based on your goal income. It's a simple formula; something that any new realtor would find extremely educational and useful... nowhere to be found in the book. (Hint: You need to determine average home values for the neighborhood, yearly average turnover rates, your likely market share...)

Yet another of this book's oversights is any discussion of the indispensable referral network that all realtors must cultivate--that "relationship" thing again. Without exception, every realtor I spoke with who had been around for 5+ years told me that the bulk of their business volume came from referrals and repeat customers. Mike Ferry barely touches on this subject--probably because he knows his target audience is newbie realtors who won't have a referral base, yet. Nonetheless, I don't think that excuses leaving the subject out--especially given the title of the book!

What you do get a lot of in this book--aside from the bogus platitudes--is sleazy, manipulative sales tactics that would make your neighborhood used car salesman blush. I am sorry that I ever recommended this book.

Oh, one last thing--I want to speak to Donald Mitchell's asinine review above. His statements "Once you have a lot of sales/listings... etc." remind me of an old Steve Martin joke: "You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! ... First, get a million dollars..." Hilarious, but certainly not helpful advice.

*Hint: a well-designed advertising campaign that focuses on your "positioning" [see the book by the same name] and doesn't turn you into a commodity--like those awful "Homes" magazine ads do--is probably the "best" way to grow a successful real estate business. I encourage you to do a Google search for "personal marketing".

28 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Basics in real estate sales covered in details., July 5, 2003

By 

Boris Kholodov (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Develop a Six-Figure Income in Real Estate (Hardcover)

This book covers basics in the real estate JOB from start to finish. Very straightforward in his approach, Mike Ferry explains how to do well in real estate and how to be committed to it and be organized and scheduled as if it were a regular 9-5 JOB.

Although there are many realtors that do very well in this JOB, (the Mike Ferry approach), this JOB is tiring, requires multitudes of commitment and is very, very, very repetitive and boring.

Most top producers do not treat real estate as their JOB, they treat it as their business. Gary Keller in "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent" explains how to make it a business, rather than just a JOB.