CKG Mastery Summit is the only major event in the real estate industry that has strict income and sales volume qualification criteria. These annual events have become famous for their unforgettable locations, powerful content and unique networking opportunities with other top agents from all across North America.

This Year is no exception!

In fact, we feel this is going to be the best Mastery Summit we have ever done! We have listened to our Top Mastery and Team Coaching Clients and have put together a powerful 3 days of content. This includes a Bonus Full day workshop on everything you need to get your marketing up to speed on social media and your web presence.

Plus World Renowned speaker and best selling author Jason Dorsey with Y-Size Your Sales: How to Sell to Gen Y so We Love to Buy (and brag about their purchase on Facebook…)

Breakout Session REO and Shortsale … and so much more!

For all of the details on this exclusive event www.masterysummit.com

Congratulations to the Manchisi Team in Milton Ontario. 

They have just been award two top honors from Prudential for their outstanding efforts in 2009!

Below is the message received from Prudential  that outlines both awards .
It is our pleasure to congratulate your team on their award-winning performance in 2009.

Your team’s competitive spirit, knowledge, and dedication are what help to make Prudential Real Estate an acknowledged industry leader and we look forward to recognizing your outstanding achievements at Sales Convention.

Top of the Rock Team – Residential GCI

Top of the Rock Team – Residential Units

The Manchisi Team have been  members of CKG International since July 2009. For more information on the Manchisi Team please visit www.domenicmanchisi.com

Congratulations !

We have been coaching the top teams in real estate for almost a decade and no matter how big the team is, we almost always see the same problems in the team .

1. Most team owners work too hard and receive too little reward.

2. For most team owners, their businesses don’t serve their lives; their businesses consume their lives.

3. Most team owners don’t have a life plan that purposely guides their daily actions.

4. Most team owners don’t understand that they can and should create a business that works without them.

5. Most team owners “wear too many hats” and have no plan for freeing themselves from the technical work of the business.

6. Most team owners don’t have a system for recruiting, hiring and training effective people.

7. Nearly all teams are organized around the existing people rather than business process. This leads to inconsistent performance and creates chaos when someone leaves.

8. Most team owners blame poor results on their people.

9. Feeling they cannot depend on their employees, most team owners feel trapped in the business.

10. Most teams don’t produce consistent predictable results.

11. Most team owners don’t know who their most probable customer is.

12. They don’t examine the impact that their entire business process has on their clients.

13. They market and sell “by the seat of their pants” rather than by applying proven marketing and selling strategies.

14. Most team owners believe extraordinary people are the key to a successful business.

15. Most team owners don’t realize that in the best businesses, systems run the business and ordinary people run the system.

16. Most team owners don’t use quantification to measure effectiveness and documentation to ensure predictability.

Does this sound like your team? The real problem tends to be that once you make the transition from single agent to building a team, you have to transition from the role of the salesperson to the CEO of that team.

Building a Profitable Team

http://www.ckginternational.com/teamlive.php

If you currently have a team or are looking to start a team in 2010, you will want to join us next Thursday, December 17th for the 5 Keys to Building a Profitable Team for 2010 – Free live stream seminar.

“The Millionaire Maker” Coach Ken Goodfellow has been quietly coaching the top teams in real estate for the past ten years. He will cover in detail and take your questions on the following key topics:

- How to Recruit and Retain Great People
- Your Model – Team Structure
- Compensation Models – What to pay your Buyer Agents and Assistants
- When is the right time to add more people or scale back.
- Leadership – Are you a salesperson or a C.E.O.?

If you currently have a team or are considering starting a team in the future, you won’t want to miss this ground breaking Live streaming seminar from the comfort of your own computer.

Click here to Register Now.

P.S. – Due to the limitations in the live stream technology, we have limited number of links that we can distribute… so Register Early!

What is a live stream seminar?
When you register for the Free live stream seminar, you will receive a link to a page that will become live on the day of the seminar. All you need is a computer with speakers. You will be able to see the seminar live on the screen and be able to ask questions to Coach Ken and interact with other attendees via the live chat feature.

Here is a great video that I found that has some astounding proof.

Get on the bus or get out of the way!

To your success,

Ken

We are among the most elite real estate professionals in the world yet it seems like we are glorified babysitters for our staff.  I have to tell you, this is one of the biggest problems I see with the top producers I work with. You think to yourself  “if only my staff would show half the level of commitment and passion that I do…”.Real estate teams I would like to say that I sympathize with your situation, but I don’t.  The fact is that it’s your fault!  You are the boss and you are letting it happen.  Over my many years of coaching the best agents in the world, I have never seen one exception to this.  There are many reasons why and how this happens but I believe there are 3 major issues that come up every time I start coaching someone who is having problems with their team.

Hiring people is the biggest, most challenging decision a business owner has to make.

Agents and Brokers don’t put enough stock in the importance of building a real estate team; they focus on getting people on board with the right qualifications at the right price and that’s it. It’s an easy trap to fall into because it’s an easier way to hire. And when your business is growing fast and doing well, and you’ve got more work than you know what to do with, to heck with building a core team…you need warm bodies at desks!

The end result of building a team without really thinking about the team is usually not a good one. Higher turnover. Dissatisfaction at work. Lower productivity. A core team of passionate, true believers will always go the extra mile for each other and by extension the broker or agent they work for. People will stay at jobs they dislike if they love the team. The problem with hiring the right people is that it takes a lot longer. You have to be prepared to invest a good chunk of time in the process — finding candidates, interviewing them, testing them, trying them out … The payoff is enormous. This is especially true for agents just starting their team. Those first few hires are going to be key ones. Those people are practically partners. You need them to stick it out through thick and thin, and be as devoted as possible. You need them to create the culture for future hires. You need them evangelizing the business. You need them taking ownership. You need them to be the driving force of success.It’s a tall order, which is why you need to invest the time, thought and energy into hiring people properly. And you always need to focus on building a great team, not a bunch of people connected together by the fact that they work in the same office.

Management

Think back for a moment to when you first got into the Real Estate Business.  It was just you against the world, knocking on doors, making cold calls, asking your family and friends for referrals… working 24/7.  You worked like a dog but in some ways wasn’t it so much easier?  At some point, you suffered what Michael Gerber refers to as an “Entrepreneurial Seizure”. This means that you hit the point when you needed to hire staff to do more business and you thought that you could just hire more staff and you can just go on and do the same things that you were doing before you started your “Team”.

Management is the most overlooked skill among top producing agents. The way that I look at it is that as soon as you add your first team member, you go from being a  salesperson to becoming a CEO.  As CEO, your job is to train, motivate, and provide direction and vision for your “company” on a daily basis.  If your staff is properly managed, not only will your business have exponential growth far beyond what you thought possible, but you will be amazed at how independent your team will become.

Management is usually the last thing that salespeople want to become, but over the years, I have seen so many successful teams explode their business with a little more direction and attention.

Shuck the losers!

This may seem harsh, but it is holding back so many successful teams.  There is nothing worse for team moral and productivity than having one or two team members that just are not pulling there weight.  It becomes like a cancer within your organization that just grows with time.

“Shuck the losers” is a term that Lee Iacocca came up with when he was saving Chrysler.  His philosophy was always replacing the bottom 10% of your staff.  Jack Welsh had a similar 20-70-10 principle which means 20% of your staff are all stars, 70% of your staff in good and the bottom 10% are replaceable.  That is exactly what he did.  Can you imagine how focused that would keep your staff?

I don’t believe you can use these methods in small business but the principal is right.  One of the things that I tell my coaching clients is to hire slow and fire fast.  Once you realize that someone is not a fit for your team… get rid of them.  This may seem obvious but how many people on your team are underachieving but you don’t want to fire them because they well liked or they are a personal friend of yours. Remember, it not shows friends…its show business!

You may already know about these three points, but it always comes down to are you actually doing the things you know you should be doing.

To your success,

Ken Goodfellow

“Coach Ken”

Photo blogging can be a great way to quickly and easily build credibility with both site visitors and search engines. With this in mind, we wanted to give you a few options for photo blogging and show you step by step how to setup your own photo blog. Read the rest of this entry

I can’t stay quiet any longer…

I had a call today from a person that has a large team (their annual commissions are approx. $3.4 million) that is currently being coached by another coaching company.  Their coach did well in his real estate business, so now is an expert coach. This large team’s GCI has risen over five hundred thousand dollars (seems good, doesn’t it); however, the net money they put in their pocket after expenses is only $300,000.

Here is the bottom line…

This is pathetic! Millions in GCI and no money left!   In my opinion, this is a total and complete waste of time and energy to do all that work for such a low return.

That call is what caused this blog!

Over our ten years of coaching the top teams in the industry, something keeps becoming more evident all the time. There are more and more teams being formed everyday and more and more coaching companies forming because their team has done well.

Here is the issue…

Most teams are making little to no PROFIT!

Then someone coaches them and tells them to add all these people, or spend all this money to create leads and they do as instructed. The result is that the team makes no money!  Then all the people on the Team become disgruntled and so on.

Someone asked me the other day would I consider our company a team coaching company; I said we are a Real Estate Business Coaching Company that coaches teams on how to make a lot of money and PROFIT.

I do believe that the future of the Real Estate Industry is in the team concept.  However, I also think that people will be highly successful by actually operating their team as a business. They will become more entrepreneurial and will not try to change what they are doing too quickly; they will learn it takes time to make it all work.

I love the teams we coach as they are learning everyday that there is no quick fix but only slow and steady increases and they are making a lot of profit as they adjust with the times.

Is your team as profitable as it could be?

Ken

Okay, Real Estate Agents, it’s officially time to start taking Facebook seriously.

Facebook isn’t Killing SEO but…

Copyblogger wrote a great blog post that essentially said that Facebook would eliminate the need for Search Engine Optimization. While I don’t think that everyone is going to wake up tomorrow and decide to never use Google again, I do think Facebook will continue to be a source of more and more traffic. Even now, some sites are beginning to see more traffic from Facebook than Google (Evite and Tagged.com are two perfect examples). Even the Dakno real estate web design web site generates almost 1/2 of it’s traffic from Social Media

This Should Scare the Crap Out Of You

Don’t think Facebook is about business? Think about this just for a moment. Let’s compare Facebook and Google from a real estate marketing standpoint. In Google’s eyes, you’re just a number (an IP address), Sure, they may know your search habits and your favorite sites but that’s about it. From a marketing standpoint, they don’t have that much info about you. But now think about Facebook. What’s on your Facebook profile?

1. Your birthday
2. Your name (which is huge since everyone online want’s to operate under a veil of anonymity)
3. Who you’re friends with
4. Your location – freaked out yet? Let’s keep going…
5. Your cell phone number
6. Who your friends are friends with

Basically, Facebook has every single detail about their users. Now here is the kicker, almost all of this information is behind lock and key (your login information). In other words, none of the information is available to Google!

Facebook: The Second Internet

A 1/5 of the entire internet population has a Facebook account. That’s a staggering figure! Over 4 billion pieces of information is shared on Facebook each month. And Google is locked out from almost all of this information. Essentially, Facebook is a second version of the Internet.

The “Big Picture” of Facebook

Facebook’s goal is not simply to be a social network. They want to be the communication hub. And to be honest, they are doing a darn good job of it.

Search Via Facebook Versus Google

More and more, people are relying on their friends recommendations to search the Internet. Search on Google for a local restaurant and you’ll get ton of results based on Google’s math formula. But search in Facebook and you’ll see restaurants that your friend’s have visited along with their recommendation. Obviously the latter is a more trusted resource

You Better Be Sharing Links on Facebook

But Facebook isn’t just limiting search to inside it’s walls, the new Facebook search shows articles and external sites that your friend has recommended. Still think it’s pointless to share your links and articles on Facebook?

Every Move You Make, Every Breath You Take, Facebook Will Be Watching You!

Thanks to things like Facebook Connect and OpenStream, Facebook now can follow you outside of “their” Internet. That’s because more and more sites are incorporating Facebook Connect. Basically, Facebook Connect allows you to login to sites using your Facebook account. But as soon as you do, Facebook now has the right to track a visitors every move throughout the Internet.

Is Facebook The Internet Stalker?

Okay, so let’s bring it back around. This post is not designed to scare the heck out of you and call Facebook a stalker, It’s to show you there is tremendous potential in Facebook and aligning yourself with Facebook. From a business perspective, getting fully onboard with Facebook is probably one of the best (and smartest) moves you can make. Remember, you have to think like a marketer. This information shouldn’t freak you out but instead get you excited. Tired of the mickeymouse@yahoo.com leads? Connect with people on Facebook. You’ll know everything about your “friend”. Once you’re privy to the information, use it to deliver high value targeted to them.

Facebook Offers Incredible Information at Your fingertips!

Lastly, Facebook is amazing. It’s one of the few places that can deliver extremely targeted information to consumers. On Facebook, you don’t have to worry about everyone hiding behind a veil of anonymity. It’s absolutely incredible how much target information is at your fingertips. You not only know all your consumer’s contact information (which by the way, is always current unlike your out of date database), you know your consumer’s every move they make (status updates).

News Flash… Facebook Acquires FriendFeed!

One of the big features about Twitter is its ability for real-time search. In case you haven’t heard, Facebook just announced it purchased FriendFeed. With that purchase. real-time search is that much closer for Facebook users. In case you aren’t familiar with FriendFeed, it is a social media aggregator of various social media portals. This acquisition will no doubt change the “face” of searching (sorry for the bad pun!). And if you didn’t know, FriendFeed was started by some ex-Googlers. It seems the search gauntlet has been cast and those of us who use Facebook will be the likely beneficiaries. Now more than ever, real estate agents need to be on Facebook.

Brad