“Son, you can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want”.
Dad’s words of wisdom still ring in my ears to this day and are a founding philosophy of Restate. It wasn’t until years later I discovered they were in fact the words of the famous trainer Zig Ziglar, with whom Dad was privileged to rub shoulders with in his younger days. This is how I happened to be born in Canada. But thats a different story, so lets get back to the point.
The purpose of this article, and everything we do at Restate, is to help you get what you want when selling your property.
So what do you want?
It’s a simple enough question yet one many of us struggle to clearly define. When we are not clear about what we want to achieve, where we want to go, we tend to drift along rudderless, we are at the mercy of the currents. Often those currents lead us in the totally wrong direction. Instead of working towards achieving our own goals, we can become a pawn in other peoples.
The thing is, it’s impossible to end up where you want, if you don’t know where that is in the first place. Would you jump in a boat, head for the middle of the ocean, turn off the engines and just allow the storms and currents to take you where ever?
Some of you may love the sound of that. The thought has certainly appealed to me at times, to escape the rat race, take no responsibility for my path, be a feather on the wind and all that. There is even the school of thought that the universe will put us exactly where we need to be. That ‘going with the flow’ is the true path to happiness. And on many levels I agree, we cause ourselves so much stress in life by, to quote Byron Katie, “resisting what is”.
But the reality is we are not Zen masters. For most of us, even the simple things, like an overnight trip to visit a friend, require a goal and a plan. First you decide where you want to go, then you figure out the steps and actions you need to take to get there…. Pack your overnight bag, find the car keys, drive to the petrol station … you get the idea. First comes the clearly defined goal, then the plan, followed by action – step 1, step 2 and so on. Even if your goal was to ‘drift around the ocean’, you still need to – Get off the couch, pack some food, find a boat…
This is of course a very simple way of looking at things. The reality is a lot deeper. We need plans, within plans, within plans. ‘Packing some food’ is part of the over-riding goal to ‘drift the ocean’, yet it requires it’s own defined goals and action plans. What food do I need? Where am I going to get it from? How am I going to pay for it? What will I pack it in? and so on.
So the first step to achieving anything is to define exactly what “it” is we want to achieve.
The next challenge is figuring out the “how” to achieve it. I know for myself this has often been a stumbling block. I’ve had plenty of ideas, things I wanted to do, that have come to nothing. Why? Because I didn’t know how to do it. The inability to put a plan in place stopped the idea in it’s tracks. There’s been other times I followed the wrong plan (because I didn’t define the goal clearly enough) and therefore ended up in the wrong place.
A life hack, I wish I’d learned earlier, is leverage of others knowledge, formula’s, and proven action plans. Often the best way to do something has already been discovered and documented by others. If you want to make a carrot cake, you would be wise to start with a recipe, somebody else’s formula to follow that will consistently creates a good cake. Or of course you could try and figure it all out yourself through a process of failed experiments.
The best recipe’s are not thought up over night, they are discovered slowly, perfected over time with trial and error, learning from successes and failures. You can either go and develop your own formula, or you can hack other peoples.
When you think about it, this is where the ‘value’ in services and professions comes from. You are choosing to pay for other peoples specialist knowledge, experience and formulas to help you achieve what you want, rather than figuring it all out yourself.
Selling your property is no different. It’s never the dominant goal – the reason why you are selling in the first place. It’s a step in the overall plan. But if you don’t clearly define what you want from the sale, then it’s highly likely you will be lead around by the currents. Unfortunately in the traditional real estate industry there is an underlying current of self-interest. So you could find yourself following the wrong plan, one set by others with their own agenda. You will be at the mercy of their desired outcomes instead of being in control of your own.
So I ask again, when it comes to selling your property – what do you want? What is most important to you about the sale?
“I just want it SOLD so I can (insert overall reason for selling)”… is a common answer. Ok that’s a start. But we need to dig deeper. You can get a ‘Sale’ any time you like. Any traditional real estate agent will get you a ‘Sale’, because that’s what they focus on. To them the ‘Sale’ and therefore a ‘Commission’ is the goal. But listen carefully, this is important… Do you just want a sale at any cost? Or do you want to bank as much as possible from the sale?
“Oh right … yes… of course we want to bank as much as possible”.
Now you are getting crystal clear about what you really want… to maximise your PROFIT from the sale.
That is the goal to keep in mind at all times. And that is what we do at Restate. We are here to maximise your profit. That is the recipe, the proven formula, the series of steps and actions we have developed, for you to follow and benefit from.
If you simply don’t care about maximising your profit (I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t, but if you don’t) then we are of no value to you. In fact, if you really don’t care about maximising your profit, then the last person you need is a real estate agent. Just sign it away to some random on the street for $1 and be done with it.
If however you do want to maximise your profit, the first formula you need to etch into your mind is:
Profit = Sale Price – Expenses.
In other words, in order to maximise your profit you must first get your sale price as high as possible and secondly minimise your selling costs.
In future articles, we share the steps required to help you achieve exactly that – the most profit from your sale.
