The Ninja Path

Shifting your focus and eliminating distractions can lead you to a new kind of success.

by Walt Frey   REALTORS® are an interesting breed. We willingly (or not so willingly) spend lots of time and money chasing down strangers, expired listings, and FSBOs, and yet 70% or more of our business comes from people we already know.

When asked if we systematically contact our friends and past buyers and sellers, most of us sheepishly admit that we don’t. We don’t want to abuse the friendship, we say.

So instead, we attend seminars where we study the latest scripts and techniques to try with strangers. We see megaproducers showcased, and we learn how they do it. We are taught how to create teams, marketing campaigns, telemarketing, and e-mail campaigns. We get skilled in how to create and design newsletters, postcards, and personal brochures.

It’s all great stuff, by the way. It works. And most of us will never follow through on any of it. Those who do often spend 50 to 60 hours a week trying to get noticed by strangers, and that creates serious strains on relationships and family life.

Getting past "because that’s how it’s done"

In my 30-plus years as a California real estate broker and manager, and more specifically, in my last 17 years as a senior instructor for the Council of Residential Specialists, I’ve asked myself why most of us don’t follow through on these ideas and, maybe more importantly, why I am teaching something that most people will never do. I think it’s because I thought it was the only path to eventual success. I’ve found out that it isn’t.

In 1999 at the CRS Instructor Development Workshop in Vail, I was introduced to the concept of "ninja selling," a way of working developed and perfected by The Group Inc., in northern Colorado. With four offices and 150 "partners," they are among the most productive real estate companies in the country, if not the most productive. Different people have differing definitions of productive. Here’s what it means to me: The people at The Group average 43-plus transactions per year per agent and more than $200,000 in gross commissions. Their philosophy and culture guide them to work almost exclusively with people they already know. And they work an average of 25 to 30 hours a week. They have chosen to go down a different path: the ninja path.

The name came from observations of the administrative staff of The Group. They asked how certain sales agents in the company could be doing so much business and yet hardly seemed to be working many hours. "We never see them. It’s like they come in late at night and drop off contracts. They are like ninjas."

It turns out these individuals approached real estate–and life–by narrowing their focus to a handful of goals while maintaining maximum control of their environment.

Compare the differences between a ninja’s approach and the typical attitude in our industry (in the box below), and ask yourself which path you’re on.

Creating a simplified purpose

The greatest challenge for ninjas is to stay focused. They identify their three most important values and priorities and their three favorite hobbies; then they remove everything from their office that doesn’t support these six things.

For example, ninjas feel that money worries will cause loss of focus, so the company has created systems to assist agents in creating personal wealth. The Group automatically withholds an agreed-on amount of income for taxes, provides profit sharing, establishes an environment that fosters successful investing, and so on. They also encourage their partners to live below their means and invest the rest.

Compared to complex mission statements, The Group’s statement of their purpose is easy to understand and to focus on: Have fun, making money, helping people.

Start with big rocks

To borrow an analogy from Steven Covey, ninjas load their "big rocks" first. If you had a two-gallon bucket and filled it with rocks the size of your fist, would the bucket be full when you couldn’t fit any more big rocks in? The answer is no. You could still put in some pea gravel, then some sand, and then some water. If you call the big rocks your highest priorities and most important things in your life, and call working the real estate business sand, I find that most sales agents fill the bucket to the top with sand first. When the bucket is full of sand, you can’t get the big rocks in. The big rocks then get tagged with the label someday. I’ll have a life and someday I’ll spend more time with my family. It will never happen. Not unless you change your thinking.

Whatever we focus on expands. Ninjas know that to increase personal productivity, you have to make your personal life and your relationships your highest priority. They use the leverage of having plenty of truly important and satisfying things–like meaningful relationships and rewarding hobbies–so they will be as efficient as possible in the limited time they are willing to allocate to the business.

Fixing the disconnect

How do customers feel about the quality of REALTORS’® service? Seventy-six percent said that they were satisfied, while 74% said they would use that same REALTOR® again. Unfortunately, only 9% actually did. My analysis of those statistics tells me the customer is not the problem–we are. As soon as we close a transaction, we start scrambling for the next one without a clue of where it might come from. Consequently, we fall out of touch with people who know us, like us, and trust us–people who would be willing to use us again if only we kept in touch.

Pick up the phone and get in the flow

A 1998 NAR study shows where real estate customers come from:

31% through acquaintances

20% from referrals

19% from past clients

12% from agent contact

8% from newspapers

7% from signs

2% from magazines

1% from radio

Interestingly, 85% of marketing dollars for most companies and agents is spent on the bottom four. The top four are people you already know. Remember, the ninja wants to be rich.

Ninjas know that it is critical to stay in touch with your "sphere of influence" at least once per month. They know that you can bury someone with a direct mail campaign, but if you’re not talking to them in person or on the phone, you are not "in the flow," and you will lose them to another agent.

With a business based almost entirely on referrals, the ninjas have developed a system that allows them to contact everyone they know every 30 days. Believe it or not, they don’t talk real estate during these contacts. Real estate may enter the conversation, but it’s not what the call is about. Ninjas base their questions on the FORD process: Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Dreams.

Ninjas have a handful of rules for making calls. They set a time to make calls each day or each week, don’t call anyone they do not know, don’t call anyone unless they will be ecstatic to receive the call, and never call anyone at home in the evening.

A typical call consists of five steps:

1. Salutation: "Hi, _______, this is _______." (You don’t have to add: "your REALTOR® with the _____ company." These people know you and what you do for a living.)

2. Look for common ground. Use the FORD process: "How’s the new ski boat?"

3. State the purpose of your call: "I wanted to make sure you heard about the proposed tax change that could affect you."

4. End on common ground: "What are you guys doing for fun this summer?"

5. Limit your call to no more than two or three minutes.

Knowing that most of their business is referrals, I asked Larry Kendall, chairman of the board of The Group, when during the call does the agent ask for a referral. His answer was that they come out of steps two and four. If you leave out steps two and four, you have happy customers who appreciate your phone call, but you don’t get referrals. The ninjas want all the referrals, raving fans, and customers for life they can manage.

How do referrals come from those two steps? The answers given to questions posed in those two steps may uncover a situation that leads to a referral. For example, someone mentions that her brother is retiring and thinking of moving to New Mexico. That might mean the brother has a local home to sell–a potential for a referral. You’d be surprised what these conversational questions uncover.

Get rich

I mentioned that ninjas don’t need to be famous–they want to be rich–but I didn’t tell you the ninja definition of rich. Rich is the ability to wake up in the morning with the time, health, knowledge, friends, financial freedom, and passion to do what you want to do that day. I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t find that enticing.

There is much more to say about this innovative business style. The more that I become familiar with the ninja concept, the more I see it as a breath of fresh air for the real estate industry. Whenever I have taught "ninja selling," participants feel empowered about a way of working that feels natural and isn’t the latest way to manipulate the consumer. Perhaps more importantly, participants see this as a way of working that the majority of practitioners can do with excitement and enthusiasm. I thank Larry Kendall for his support and for being willing to share the ninja concepts with me without reservation.

I hope that our paths cross sometime in the future. You know what path I’ll be on.

Walt Frey, CRS, a broker in Alamo, California, is a senior instructor for the Council of Residential Specialists and the 2001 CRS president elect. He is also the president of Walt Frey Seminars, a Real Estate Mentoring Organization, and is an active member of the Contra Costa Association of REALTORS®. You can reach him at walt@waltfrey.com.

Photo © Corbis Images.

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... to increase personal productivity, you have to make your personal life and your relationships your highest priority.