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The Sell: The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone
The nation’s #1 real estate broker and star of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York shares his secrets for superstar success and getting what you want out of life—no matter who you are or what you do.
Ten years ago, Fredrik Eklund moved to New York City from his native Sweden with nothing but a pair of worn-out sneakers and a dream: to make it big in the city that never sleeps. Since then, he’s become the top seller in the most competitive real estate market on the planet, brokering multimillion-dollar deals for celebrities, selling out properties all over the city, and charming audiences around the world as one of the stars of the hit Bravo series Million Dollar Listing New York.
Now, for the first time, Fredrik shares his secrets so that anyone can find success doing what they love. According to Fredrik, even if you don’t consider yourself a salesperson, you’ve been in sales your whole life because every day you are selling your most important asset: yourself. Whenever you influence, persuade or convince someone to give you something in exchange for what you’ve got—whether it’s a luxury home, a great idea at work, or your profile on Match.com—you are selling. And if you know how to sell the right way, you can live your dream. That is what The Sell is all about.
Blending personal stories, hilarious anecdotes, and the expertise he’s gained from his meteoric rise, Fredrik has written the modern guide on becoming successful, a book that tells you how to recognize and cultivate your true talents and make the ultimate sell. From the importance of being your most authentic self to looking like a million bucks even if you don’t have a million bucks (yet!), he shows how intangible factors like personality and charm can get you noticed and make you shine. He also shares his tips and tricks for preparing, persuading, and negotiating so that in any of life’s dealings, you’ll come out a winner. Whether you work on Wall Street or at Wal-Mart, aim to become the top seller at your company or want to impress a first date, The Sell will help you have more personal and professional success, lead a rich and fulfilling life, and have fun along the way.
Ten years ago, Fredrik Eklund moved to New York City from his native Sweden with nothing but a pair of worn-out sneakers and a dream: to make it big in the city that never sleeps. Since then, he’s become the top seller in the most competitive real estate market on the planet, brokering multimillion-dollar deals for celebrities, selling out properties all over the city, and charming audiences around the world as one of the stars of the hit Bravo series Million Dollar Listing New York.
Now, for the first time, Fredrik shares his secrets so that anyone can find success doing what they love. According to Fredrik, even if you don’t consider yourself a salesperson, you’ve been in sales your whole life because every day you are selling your most important asset: yourself. Whenever you influence, persuade or convince someone to give you something in exchange for what you’ve got—whether it’s a luxury home, a great idea at work, or your profile on Match.com—you are selling. And if you know how to sell the right way, you can live your dream. That is what The Sell is all about.
Blending personal stories, hilarious anecdotes, and the expertise he’s gained from his meteoric rise, Fredrik has written the modern guide on becoming successful, a book that tells you how to recognize and cultivate your true talents and make the ultimate sell. From the importance of being your most authentic self to looking like a million bucks even if you don’t have a million bucks (yet!), he shows how intangible factors like personality and charm can get you noticed and make you shine. He also shares his tips and tricks for preparing, persuading, and negotiating so that in any of life’s dealings, you’ll come out a winner. Whether you work on Wall Street or at Wal-Mart, aim to become the top seller at your company or want to impress a first date, The Sell will help you have more personal and professional success, lead a rich and fulfilling life, and have fun along the way.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 24, 2015
345 people are currently reading
2286 people want to read
About the author
Fredrik Eklund
13 books58 followersFredrik Eklund, the energetic, high-kicking, top broker at Douglas Elliman has secured over two billion dollars in closed residential sales. Constantly rated as New York City's "Top Luxury Broker," he set record sales in 28 buildings in Manhattan last year alone and is often spotted showing apartments to top name celebrities.
Originally from Stockholm, Sweden, Eklund is the star of the hit BRAVO show, Million Dollar Listing New York. He is known for being part "shark" in business and part "softie" at home with his puppies and family.
Fredrik's new book, The Sell: The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone, is published by Gotham Books and is available now.
Originally from Stockholm, Sweden, Eklund is the star of the hit BRAVO show, Million Dollar Listing New York. He is known for being part "shark" in business and part "softie" at home with his puppies and family.
Fredrik's new book, The Sell: The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone, is published by Gotham Books and is available now.
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January 7, 2020
مهارت های فروش : رازهای فروش هر چیزی به هرکس
استارت خوندن کتاب رو وقتی زدم که نت ها قطع بود و ی روز بعد از وصل شدن نت تموش کردم
رابرت کیوساکی در کتاب پدر پولدار ، پدر فقیر میگه بهترین روش برای فروختن کتاب ، انتخاب اسم مناسب است . این کتاب هم اسم قشنگی داره ولی متحوای مناسب و کاربردی ، نه!
بخش زیادی از کتاب رو فردریک از خودش گفته و خودش رو تحسین کرده!
بقیه کتاب هم خیلی راحت میشه به صورت زیر خلاصه کرد :
اول از همه کتاب اصلا راز فروش هر چیزی نیست بلکه در زمینه فروش املاک است
لباس خوب بپوشید
مشکی نپوشید
کفش خوب بپوشید و آن را واکس بزنید
ساعت مچی خوب به دست کنید
به سراغ آرایشگر حرفه ای برید
ورزش کنید
همیشه لبخند بزنید
به تعطیلات برید و تفریح کنید
به شبکه های اجتماعی بها دهید
محکم دست بدهید ولی نه خیلی زیاد
اگر قبل از مصاحبه های کاری استرس دارید با دوستتان بروید
از خودتون تعریف کنید ولی از دیگران بد نگید
فقط خوبی های ملک رو نگید ، بدی ها رو هم اشاره کنید
از منفی باف ها دوری کنید
مثبت اندیش باشید و امیدوار
حسادت نکنید
!!!
استارت خوندن کتاب رو وقتی زدم که نت ها قطع بود و ی روز بعد از وصل شدن نت تموش کردم
رابرت کیوساکی در کتاب پدر پولدار ، پدر فقیر میگه بهترین روش برای فروختن کتاب ، انتخاب اسم مناسب است . این کتاب هم اسم قشنگی داره ولی متحوای مناسب و کاربردی ، نه!
بخش زیادی از کتاب رو فردریک از خودش گفته و خودش رو تحسین کرده!
بقیه کتاب هم خیلی راحت میشه به صورت زیر خلاصه کرد :
اول از همه کتاب اصلا راز فروش هر چیزی نیست بلکه در زمینه فروش املاک است
لباس خوب بپوشید
مشکی نپوشید
کفش خوب بپوشید و آن را واکس بزنید
ساعت مچی خوب به دست کنید
به سراغ آرایشگر حرفه ای برید
ورزش کنید
همیشه لبخند بزنید
به تعطیلات برید و تفریح کنید
به شبکه های اجتماعی بها دهید
محکم دست بدهید ولی نه خیلی زیاد
اگر قبل از مصاحبه های کاری استرس دارید با دوستتان بروید
از خودتون تعریف کنید ولی از دیگران بد نگید
فقط خوبی های ملک رو نگید ، بدی ها رو هم اشاره کنید
از منفی باف ها دوری کنید
مثبت اندیش باشید و امیدوار
حسادت نکنید
!!!
April 15, 2015
A really inspiring book! Fredrik is such a rolemodel, not just for people in the selling buisness, but for people in general. Read it!
Full review in Swedish at http://bellasbok.blogg.se/2015/april/...
Full review in Swedish at http://bellasbok.blogg.se/2015/april/...
July 11, 2015
Okay. Saw this at the library and figuring my anaemic sales skills could use a boost I got it.
It' really not a bad book. Eklund comes across as a nice guy. The book, despite its subtitle to the contrary, is pretty much exclusively about real estate sales. Of course, Eklund says, his sales techniques apply to all other areas but (having been a real estate salesman myself, as well as selling many other products) they do not.
One good thing I took from the book is the idea of being genuine (ie. selling yourself). That people will see through any attempts at pretence. Now Eklund is quite the character himself. Six-foot-four, wearing goofy socks and goofy neckties, doing a "high kick" with an accompanying Swedish squeal of some sort.
He reminded me of a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Robbins. You know the type: boundless enthusiasm and drive (male Katie Courics).
His real estate sales advice is not breakthrough stuff.
—Be confident enough to tell your prospect to check out other salespeople before using you. (This doesn't work. No real estate sales person—in their right mind anyway—is going to send a ready, willing and able prospect to another salesperson.)
—Tell the prospect the property won't last because it's in the hottest neighbourhood.
—Tell the prospect the seller is still so in love with the property he might take it off the market at any minute.
The latter of course is unethical and not a few of Eklund's sales tips are disingenuous at best.
So how did he succeed?
—Drive. The guy works very hard and has a brutal daily routine.
—Knowing the market.
—Endless promotion and marketing. (He got his own TV series on Bravo.) (He's also huge on social media, loves Instagram.)
—Flamboyance. He name drops a lot. J. LO., Justine Timeberlake, Leonardo DiCaprio (he didn't buy) were all clients. And Eklund lets you into his flamboyant personal life, as well. Eg. He spent $500,000 to rent an island when he married his husband and "it was worth every penny."
Now one of Eklund's goals is to have a number one selling book. I guess I'm helping him achieve his goal by writing this review. That's okay though. I don't begrudge him his success. As I said before, he works very hard. The Sell is a reminder that the opportunity is out there for all of us.
It' really not a bad book. Eklund comes across as a nice guy. The book, despite its subtitle to the contrary, is pretty much exclusively about real estate sales. Of course, Eklund says, his sales techniques apply to all other areas but (having been a real estate salesman myself, as well as selling many other products) they do not.
One good thing I took from the book is the idea of being genuine (ie. selling yourself). That people will see through any attempts at pretence. Now Eklund is quite the character himself. Six-foot-four, wearing goofy socks and goofy neckties, doing a "high kick" with an accompanying Swedish squeal of some sort.
He reminded me of a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Robbins. You know the type: boundless enthusiasm and drive (male Katie Courics).
His real estate sales advice is not breakthrough stuff.
—Be confident enough to tell your prospect to check out other salespeople before using you. (This doesn't work. No real estate sales person—in their right mind anyway—is going to send a ready, willing and able prospect to another salesperson.)
—Tell the prospect the property won't last because it's in the hottest neighbourhood.
—Tell the prospect the seller is still so in love with the property he might take it off the market at any minute.
The latter of course is unethical and not a few of Eklund's sales tips are disingenuous at best.
So how did he succeed?
—Drive. The guy works very hard and has a brutal daily routine.
—Knowing the market.
—Endless promotion and marketing. (He got his own TV series on Bravo.) (He's also huge on social media, loves Instagram.)
—Flamboyance. He name drops a lot. J. LO., Justine Timeberlake, Leonardo DiCaprio (he didn't buy) were all clients. And Eklund lets you into his flamboyant personal life, as well. Eg. He spent $500,000 to rent an island when he married his husband and "it was worth every penny."
Now one of Eklund's goals is to have a number one selling book. I guess I'm helping him achieve his goal by writing this review. That's okay though. I don't begrudge him his success. As I said before, he works very hard. The Sell is a reminder that the opportunity is out there for all of us.
April 8, 2015
Rating 4* out of 5. "Millon Dollar Listing New York" is one of my favorite shows, so when one of its stars - who, as an additional bonus, is Swedish - releases a book then of course I'm going to read it! The books is not a step-by-step guideline in how to sell something. It is however an excellent guide to selling yourself, in the best of meanings. Fredrik has an exuberance about him and the book is written with so much enthusiam that it inevitably rubs off. I started reading the book the day before I was returning to work from Easter holiday. I was anxious about the coming week. This book worked wonders, all my worries evaporated and I came back to work on a mental high. It's a fun, easy read on how to brand yourself. Recommended as such!
April 14, 2015
I’ve read quite a few sales and business books over the years, and The Sell is among the best. Being successful in sales requires more than just technique and tenacity: it requires seeing the world as being full of opportunity and yourself as the best facilitator of opportunity for your buyers. Authors Fredrik Eklund and Bruce Littlefield have captured the both the technical and personal qualities of an effective salesperson, and they’ve done it in a way that anyone can adapt to their own lives, whether they engage in sales professionally or personally.
I would definitely recommend The Sell to anyone looking to improve their sales skills or just become more comfortable with situations involving selling.
I would definitely recommend The Sell to anyone looking to improve their sales skills or just become more comfortable with situations involving selling.
Read
May 17, 2015The writing is meh. Prose is awkward, at best. But this book is charged with passion and emotion, and Eklund's energy is infectious. Though he may seem like an arrogant condescending asshole who's addicted to money-making at times.
February 1, 2016
Good but I found much of the advice given to be generic and things I already knew. It's still a good reminder but nothing ground breaking.
November 3, 2018
SUMMARY: get a $275 haircut every 2 weeks, buy a $2100 Christian Dior suit, $2000 shoes, $10,000 watch and shower daily, workout = #1 real estate agent
April 10, 2015
THE SELL is a fascinating book, which covers a wide range of issues for people in the sales industry--but actually, for just about anyone who wants to present their ideas better. Fredrik Eklund is a witty writer, and this makes the book a fun, easy read. It's part inspirational, part marketing, part dress for success, and part social networking.
The content of THE SELL is so broad, that it's tough to focus on just one part; however, there is a particular chapter in this book that is well worth the price of admission. That is chapter 6, entitled, "Make 'em smile." The purpose of this chapter is to convince the reader to "cultivate your charm and sense of humor." This chapter homes in on a particular area for weakness for many people--charm, and a good sense of humor. The author points out that you only have a very brief time to make a good impression--likely a lifelong impression. He explains that "You have 30 seconds to capture someone's attention."
And so the author suggests cultivating humor and the art of being charming. Sometimes this means just flat out being silly. When Fredrik first met his future husband--an extremely tall man, in line ahead of him, the author touched him on the shoulder and asked him why he was so tall. Fredrik explained to the man, " I grew up on Swedish meatballs, which made me tall. What did you eat?"
In order to cultivate a sense of charm, it helps to be a little self-deprecating. The author tells an outrageous story involving the author peeing on himself before an important meeting. As a result, he had to run out to his car with his suit coat draped around his waist, only to be ridiculed by his driver. The author confides that he is including this story because, "Well for one thing, I want you to know the importance of sitting down to pee if you're answering emails. But I also want you to smile, even at my expense."
When using social media, the author gives some really practical ideas. For example, "Know what attracts eyeballs. Animals, babies, and nature grab attention, as do sunsets, Sun rises, skyscrapers, ocean waves, and half naked photos." He also provides other very practical ideas on using Instagram, Twitter, or other social media.
So, you get the picture. THE SELL is really a fun read with tons of useful ideas. Plus, I enjoyed reading the stories and anecdotes. The author has lots of proven ideas, based upon his experience as leader of the top-selling real estate team in the United States. This one great book, and I recommend it.
Advance copy provided by publisher for impartial review.
The content of THE SELL is so broad, that it's tough to focus on just one part; however, there is a particular chapter in this book that is well worth the price of admission. That is chapter 6, entitled, "Make 'em smile." The purpose of this chapter is to convince the reader to "cultivate your charm and sense of humor." This chapter homes in on a particular area for weakness for many people--charm, and a good sense of humor. The author points out that you only have a very brief time to make a good impression--likely a lifelong impression. He explains that "You have 30 seconds to capture someone's attention."
And so the author suggests cultivating humor and the art of being charming. Sometimes this means just flat out being silly. When Fredrik first met his future husband--an extremely tall man, in line ahead of him, the author touched him on the shoulder and asked him why he was so tall. Fredrik explained to the man, " I grew up on Swedish meatballs, which made me tall. What did you eat?"
In order to cultivate a sense of charm, it helps to be a little self-deprecating. The author tells an outrageous story involving the author peeing on himself before an important meeting. As a result, he had to run out to his car with his suit coat draped around his waist, only to be ridiculed by his driver. The author confides that he is including this story because, "Well for one thing, I want you to know the importance of sitting down to pee if you're answering emails. But I also want you to smile, even at my expense."
When using social media, the author gives some really practical ideas. For example, "Know what attracts eyeballs. Animals, babies, and nature grab attention, as do sunsets, Sun rises, skyscrapers, ocean waves, and half naked photos." He also provides other very practical ideas on using Instagram, Twitter, or other social media.
So, you get the picture. THE SELL is really a fun read with tons of useful ideas. Plus, I enjoyed reading the stories and anecdotes. The author has lots of proven ideas, based upon his experience as leader of the top-selling real estate team in the United States. This one great book, and I recommend it.
Advance copy provided by publisher for impartial review.
February 18, 2016
Another book that's so hard to rate!
Well here's the deal: If you are new to the business world and looking for a great all around book that's told in a not so stuck up voice and very relatable, pick this one! Fredrik puts a lot of information in it and discusses a big variety of topics, lots of behind the scenes looks into his work.
If you are interested in specific topics I'd say rather pick a more specialized book.
For me, I really like him, but I can't identify with his way of working. (As in from morning to night without breaks and/or time for hobbies). I'm just not interested in hustling like he does, even if it would bring me more success. I would say in this way it's a typical american way of working yourself to the top. Which is great, but nothing I would want for my life. So, choose wisely. And also: he's promoting himself at least as much as he's wanting to help YOU, so take everything with a grain of salt ;-) The sales manipulation he talks about he definitely uses to make you love him & his book as well. (How many times can he talk about his High-Kick?!)
But, yes....still recommended :)
Well here's the deal: If you are new to the business world and looking for a great all around book that's told in a not so stuck up voice and very relatable, pick this one! Fredrik puts a lot of information in it and discusses a big variety of topics, lots of behind the scenes looks into his work.
If you are interested in specific topics I'd say rather pick a more specialized book.
For me, I really like him, but I can't identify with his way of working. (As in from morning to night without breaks and/or time for hobbies). I'm just not interested in hustling like he does, even if it would bring me more success. I would say in this way it's a typical american way of working yourself to the top. Which is great, but nothing I would want for my life. So, choose wisely. And also: he's promoting himself at least as much as he's wanting to help YOU, so take everything with a grain of salt ;-) The sales manipulation he talks about he definitely uses to make you love him & his book as well. (How many times can he talk about his High-Kick?!)
But, yes....still recommended :)
October 30, 2019
It was OKAY...
Full reviews can be seen: https://pleasedontgawk.wordpress.com/
Full reviews can be seen: https://pleasedontgawk.wordpress.com/
March 3, 2019
Very powerful real estate focused sales book written by the top agent in New York, reality TV star, and self made immigrant Fredrik Eklund. It's clear that this book was written by someone at the top of their game and very relevant and well suited to the modern times.
While he does touch on them and share his perspective, this book won't teach you much new about old fashion sales, i.e. negotiations, setting appointments, and general sales "soft skills". Where it excels is in using modern technology and culture to become the number one guy or gal in your field. For example, the chapter on social media usage and engagement is brilliant, clearly a strength for this reality TV star. He does very well at attracting attention and redefining the best agents as not property driven salespeople but personality driven. Meaning people don't work with him because he has the best condos (though they are some of the top) but because he is the funnest and best to work with, also for the glamour and experience of working with him. Definitely a lot to be learned about this new model from him.
He also shares his business and lifestyle strategies, some of which definitely have left a strong impression on me. One of the biggest that is helping me take my game to the next level is responding to emails in real time, meaning as soon as I receive them, even if it's just a quick couple of lines because that will leave a great impression and avert many potential fires. Also it's a great feeling knowing I don't have 20 emails I need to get back to to and every second leaves a worse impression. Also some great tips on maintaining a top performing lifestyle in sales, one of the best of which is to prioritize health and wellness (good diet, exercise, & sleep) over all else. As a result of that, you'll be able to perform better everywhere else. Also about treating yourself and spending money to reward yourself and provide positive outward indicators of your new success to boost your own morale and to encourage others to respond to you differently. I'm definitely more willing to ball out on my appearance after reading this, though not at the 10% of income level suggested by Fredrick.
Last note to touch upon is his philosophy of focusing on the positives, treating everyone well, avoiding discussing negatives, and investing time and energy into the people you surround yourself with. Would definitely recommend this book for anyone in sales, especially in real estate sales.
While he does touch on them and share his perspective, this book won't teach you much new about old fashion sales, i.e. negotiations, setting appointments, and general sales "soft skills". Where it excels is in using modern technology and culture to become the number one guy or gal in your field. For example, the chapter on social media usage and engagement is brilliant, clearly a strength for this reality TV star. He does very well at attracting attention and redefining the best agents as not property driven salespeople but personality driven. Meaning people don't work with him because he has the best condos (though they are some of the top) but because he is the funnest and best to work with, also for the glamour and experience of working with him. Definitely a lot to be learned about this new model from him.
He also shares his business and lifestyle strategies, some of which definitely have left a strong impression on me. One of the biggest that is helping me take my game to the next level is responding to emails in real time, meaning as soon as I receive them, even if it's just a quick couple of lines because that will leave a great impression and avert many potential fires. Also it's a great feeling knowing I don't have 20 emails I need to get back to to and every second leaves a worse impression. Also some great tips on maintaining a top performing lifestyle in sales, one of the best of which is to prioritize health and wellness (good diet, exercise, & sleep) over all else. As a result of that, you'll be able to perform better everywhere else. Also about treating yourself and spending money to reward yourself and provide positive outward indicators of your new success to boost your own morale and to encourage others to respond to you differently. I'm definitely more willing to ball out on my appearance after reading this, though not at the 10% of income level suggested by Fredrick.
Last note to touch upon is his philosophy of focusing on the positives, treating everyone well, avoiding discussing negatives, and investing time and energy into the people you surround yourself with. Would definitely recommend this book for anyone in sales, especially in real estate sales.
July 9, 2015
Orinally published on http://www.lifeasaninvestment.com/min...
The Sell by Fredrik Eklund is an inspiring account of an isolated Swedish guy who takes a dream-chasing journey toward success in a big American city.
Packing your bags, saying goodbye to loved ones and moving {alone} to “the city that never sleeps” (NYC) is a huge endeavor that not only requires careful planning but also a passion for the journey. This is the story of a blue-eyed Stockholmer who firsthand shares with you the pain of being a homesick, lonely stranger in a huge city where nobody cares about you. He also shares with the reader the positive side of successfully following a dream.
If you are thinking about taking the plunge into the unknown world of moving abroad, or maybe you’re already there, than read this book. It will most definitely cheer you up.
Eklund understands because he has walked in these shoes before.
Ironically, the shoes he wore on his first day at JC De Niro Real Estate were shabby, old sneakers. Today his feet stand in the best shoes money can buy.
No matter what stage of life you are in, Fredrik will talk you through it.
He generously admits to his failures, and cleverly uses his success to inspire. You will believe him and understand that hard work pays off—And staying true to yourself, striving to be better every day and giving love to the people around you is a clear-cut road to success—something today’s world can’t afford to be without.
Read more http://www.lifeasaninvestment.com/min...
The Sell by Fredrik Eklund is an inspiring account of an isolated Swedish guy who takes a dream-chasing journey toward success in a big American city.
Packing your bags, saying goodbye to loved ones and moving {alone} to “the city that never sleeps” (NYC) is a huge endeavor that not only requires careful planning but also a passion for the journey. This is the story of a blue-eyed Stockholmer who firsthand shares with you the pain of being a homesick, lonely stranger in a huge city where nobody cares about you. He also shares with the reader the positive side of successfully following a dream.
If you are thinking about taking the plunge into the unknown world of moving abroad, or maybe you’re already there, than read this book. It will most definitely cheer you up.
Eklund understands because he has walked in these shoes before.
Ironically, the shoes he wore on his first day at JC De Niro Real Estate were shabby, old sneakers. Today his feet stand in the best shoes money can buy.
No matter what stage of life you are in, Fredrik will talk you through it.
He generously admits to his failures, and cleverly uses his success to inspire. You will believe him and understand that hard work pays off—And staying true to yourself, striving to be better every day and giving love to the people around you is a clear-cut road to success—something today’s world can’t afford to be without.
Read more http://www.lifeasaninvestment.com/min...
July 24, 2015
I'm not sure what to say about this book, which is probably not a good sign. The book first came to my attention by way of the fact that I am a huge MDLNY fan and I think all fans of the show and of Fredrik will love that every page is packed with his strong personality, fredrik-isms, and high-kicks galore. It is evident that he was the one truly writing the book, which I appreciate. As for the primary objective regarding how to "sell anything to anyone"...that's where I find the book falls flat. It seems the advice is nothing more than lists regarding dressing better, increasing your instagram followers, and how to convince people you are charming. If you're looking for a book that urges you to send out emails while you're on the toilet or hear exactly how much spent on his watch for the cover of the book, then this is the book for you. If you want some practical business advice, look elsewhere.
June 28, 2015
I don't think I've ever come across a book that hollers the author's ego as much as The Sell does, but what was initially an annoying narration of Fredrik's life and hubris, became a personal insight into what constitutes his success in the real estate industry. Less about actually making "The Sell" and more on having the right mindset in life: knowing what you want, making sacrifices and commitments, and celebrating your success in little ways. He also makes it a point to emphasize the importance of distinguishing yourself from everyone else, discovering that high-kicker in you and letting it triumph over the toughest times.
January 13, 2019
I love this book!! This is one of the best holistic books on success. And Frederik reveals way more than I would have expected. He includes his attitudes, his standards, his scripts (!!), his negotiating techniques (brilliant!), his social media advice plus how to look after yourself when the stress kicks in. This is one book I will be reading every year just to remind myself. That is of course when I put it on my bookshelf after having gone through the social media info again. This is great business advice, great advice on how to live a fulfilled life and how to set up your life to stay focused and motivated. We love you in Australia Frederik Eklund!!
January 4, 2016
A truly inspiring book. I can just applaud and be impressed. So many things right when it comes to leadership, productivity, and making a difference. Many leaders have a lot to learn here. And I totally agree on the importance of passion, and having the courage to stand out, be different to brand yourself.
A fun, entertaining, thoughtful, and easy-to-read book - highly recommended...
A fun, entertaining, thoughtful, and easy-to-read book - highly recommended...
April 14, 2015
I really enjoyed every page of The Sell. If you implemented 25% of the tips Fredrik outlines in his first book, you would already be making your way towards success. Fredrik shares his secrets to his real estate, social media, and personal success along with a great story. Whether you are in college or looking to change careers, I highly recommend this motivational and inspiring book.
March 16, 2016
When my review copy of The Sell by Fredrik Eklund arrived, I admit I shelved it. The publisher marketed the book as if it was old-school sleazy salesmanship. Their marketing didn’t help me realize that this book is a manual for success in the new economy.
You can read my full review here:
https://www.booksreadforyou.com/the-sell-by-fredrik-eklund/
You can read my full review here:
https://www.booksreadforyou.com/the-sell-by-fredrik-eklund/
April 14, 2015
What a powerful read—full of valuable and insightful advice, anecdotes and lessons direct from one of the most successful brokers in the world! Equally as entertaining, Fredrik's personality shines throughout. A must read for anyone who is serious about being successful!
July 5, 2015
Full of energy, life, love and everything else that makes Fredrik not only the most successful real estate agent in the world's toughest market, but also among the standout stars of Bravo's entire network of television shows. His wisdom is unmatched. Terrific read.
May 6, 2015
I love this book!
I love Freddie, his wonderful healthy outlook on life,his great sense of humor and his genuinely sound advice. He makes me feel like I can do it ! High kick !
I love Freddie, his wonderful healthy outlook on life,his great sense of humor and his genuinely sound advice. He makes me feel like I can do it ! High kick !
December 18, 2015
Awesome
June 4, 2016
I landed 19 pages of golden nuggets out of these pages. Who couldn't benefit from that?
Jessi Payne
Life Coach. Author. Adventurer. Friend.
www.RockStarJessi.com
Jessi Payne
Life Coach. Author. Adventurer. Friend.
www.RockStarJessi.com
September 19, 2018
En bra bok men hade högre förväntningar. Läs recensionen på min blogg!
https://bokrelaterat.blogspot.com/?m=1
https://bokrelaterat.blogspot.com/?m=1
December 20, 2019
This is my second time reading this book and it was even better. It’s sales, startup and life advice all wrapped up with Fredrik’s personal touch. As a fellow Swede it’s even more inspiring.
May 30, 2023
After watching Million Dollar Listing, I felt drawn to Fredrik. So when I found out he wrote a book, I couldn’t wait to read it. I honestly didn’t want this book to end. It’s written in an authentic Fredrik Eklund way, and it’s full of positive energy. Loved every second of it.
December 5, 2021
Gillar Fredrik och han ger några konkreta tips.
Read
February 26, 20251. People want to do business with someone they like.
2. Selling is nothing more than playing up the good and playing down the bad.
3. Every successful person knows how to fail well.
4. Everybody wants what everybody wants.
5. The most successful people believe their success is only temporary.
I took an accelerated realestate-salesperson course at New York University and got my license in two weeks.
unaware of your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes
provide financial backing for a start-up, a.k.a. “angel investors.”
flew to Paris to meet with potential venture capitalist types. We slept on the sofa of Maria’s high school friend and came home with $1 million, successfully selling 50 percent of the company before it really existed. And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going back to school.
The e-mail simply said to show up at this address, at this time; we have an interesting Internet start-up, and we know you’ll want to be a part of it. Maria and I set up a PowerPoint in a boardroom we’d rented for the day, complete with graphs of how much the company was going to be worth.
trust, after all, begins with one thing and one thing only: the truth.
Other people can smell nervousness and insecurities like a shark smells blood. These things can be cute on a first date but never when you’re asking people to trust you in business
Break the ice, make some jokes, kick in the air, give your customer tickets to a Yankees or Dodgers or Cardinals game, compliment your client on her sparkly shoes, give your buyer a high five. Tell the client a very personal story.
Find your points of difference.
Psychologists say the three biggest motivators are the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power.
Celebrities have fame and money and don’t care about titles, business cards, data, or reports. They have passed that stage or handed it over to their business manager.
After passing the school test and then the Department of State test, I searched Craigslist.org for anyone who would hire me. I found a small boutique firm in Chelsea called JC DeNiro, which was founded by Robert De Niro’s uncle Jack.
I memorized neighborhoods, streets, buildings, prices, and square footages.
Location multiplied by square footage equals price, and in New York we factor in building amenities and views.
car dealerships, there’s a system called “having the floor,” which is a rotation for first dibs on walk-in clients.
a good seller knows that people want to be told what to do, as long as you are smiling when you give them the orders.
My goal was for him to see me as a friend, not a real estate sales guy.
I made him laugh and got him to share with me his life story, too.
By the end of the open house, we had multiple offers, and I sold the apartment for $560,000, $25,000 above ask. I will never forget that first commission check of $16,000.
show sheet of my first sold apartment to a Chelsea frame shop
the wind behind my sails (and sales)
my first year in real estate, I had sold $50 million worth of property
Which action can you take today that will move you toward your dream?
The night I finished my first class of real estate school, I went back to my tiny one-bedroom apartment on West Thirty-Seventh Street
Get Ahead by Being a Protégé
Albert, my driver
I am booked two weeks in advance. A half-empty calendar is death to me, because it means two things: I don’t have enough business to take care of, and I haven’t been proactive enough to create new business.
At any one time, I have a hundred active listings. I’m not just showing apartments; I’m also pitching to get new apartment listings.
I put an hour cap on all meeting. I always apologize as the meeting starts that I’ll have to be out the door at X time. I’ve found that if you apologize in advance about something, people will excuse you for almost anything.
Sometimes there are a dozen or more people on an e-mail, and if you don’t respond to it quickly, it can turn into a giant tumor that explodes and can cause you a giant headache or, worse, kill the deal!
I don’t want to be one of those players in a poker game passing out business cards at the end of a meeting. I want to be the dealer. When someone asks for my card, I say, “I’ll e-mail you,” or “You’ll find me,” depending on who it is.
When I want people’s business, I e-mail them the minute I leave the meeting. Often I grab their business card, shake their hand, say good-bye, and then turn the corner where they can no longer see me, stop, and write them an e-mail. The key is that there is an e-mail from me before they have had a chance to look at their phone or computer. Wow, they think. This guy is good.
Don’t be late. It’s disrespectful, but in the event you are, the moment you realize you will be late e-mail everyone and say exactly that. Then, when you arrive, simply say, “I’m so sorry I’m late. It was unavoidable.” Don’t go into your long, dramatic saga. No one wants to hear it, and it only makes it worse.
took a photo sitting on a chair in the middle of Fifth Avenue to promote my book on Facebook.
When I began my career, I did what many neophytes do: I sat alone and tried to figure it out by myself, greedily thinking that if I did it alone I wouldn’t have to share the money or the glory with anyone else. That was shortsighted and silly. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it differently. If you really want to succeed quickly in your career, snoop out the people who do what you want to do and consider working for them for free for a little while.
How do you find this professor-mentor person who is at the top of his game, working in your dream job? Easy. Research! Google it. Every single industry has its top-producing lists, and those top producers can help you a lot. A single day shadowing a winner is like absorbing the information from an entire semester in college.
As an added bonus, if you prove yourself worthy to hang around long enough, for the rest of your life you’ll get to name-drop and say you worked with so-and-so on that big so-and-so project. Talk about a kick start for your career. My assistants will, for example, always get to say they were part of the team hired to sell Trump SoHo, a 391-unit condo-hotel tower. That will certainly spice up their resumes and contact lists and open a lot of doors.
I get at least three e-mails a day from people who want a job or for me to mentor them. But it isn’t so much the e-mail itself that’s the problem. It’s the fact that everyone sends that e-mail. Here’s a secret: Not once has anyone ever come to my office. Can you believe that? In twelve years in New York, no one has ever knocked on my door.
Suppose you stood outside my office door, shook my hand, and said, “No, I didn’t e-mail you or try to make an appointment like the others, because I knew you needed to meet me in person.” Then let’s say you hand me a Starbucks green tea latte with eight scoops of matcha powder, skim milk only, and no sweetener and tell me, “I know this is your favorite, especially around this time of the day, three hours after lunch, when you need a kick.” That’s not talking about what you can contribute—that’s proving it. That’s showing you’ve done your homework.
I once interviewed a young man named Nathan who came in for an interview with me with a long list of every high-end building in Manhattan (about twenty-five pages) and of every developer in town (another forty pages). He had memorized this information. Nathan now works on my team and closed $60 million worth of real estate in his first eighteen months. Elvis Presley, sang, “A little less conversation, a little more action please!”
Superstar doesn’t handle his or her own calendar. The gatekeeper does. Let me be frank: This person’s job is to keep you away from the superstar. Let me be franker: If you are mean, rude, or arrogant with this person, you’re never getting anywhere. Let me be frankest: Kindness gets noticed.
How might you know that he is a he? Or that he just got married, or what his favorite restaurant is? Most assistants or secretaries are active on social media and are probably easier to reach directly because they have fewer followers and might therefore be more communicative.
How do you really score with the gatekeepers? Understand that they want to be cocreators in their superstars’ success and that they want their jobs made easier, not more difficult.
For reference, in New York real estate a job seeker better be aware of the following: There are generally four types of residential properties to sell:
• condo, co-op, cond-op, and townhouse.
• At the time of this writing, the average price of an apartment in Manhattan is $1.7 million.
• The most expensive neighborhood is SoHo.
• There’s no such thing as a “standard” commission, but mine is 6 percent.
• The four websites you have already studied and visit daily are: Curbed.com, TheRealDeal.com, StreetEasy.com (owned by Zillow), and NYTimes.com.
• If you really want to impress me, you could name the ten most expensive buildings in the city and the ten largest developers.
I buy pants at their raw length and have them hemmed up to my perfect length. Every professional man should do that with his shirts and pants. Every professional woman should do that with her blouses and skirts. It usually costs me forty dollars a shirt, a hundred dollars per suit.
I had LASIK surgery
perfume. I’ve always used Chanel Egoiste Platinum
David Barton Gym in Chelsea
The less time you have to eat well, exercise, and sleep, the more important it is to block out the time in your calendar for it.
If I lose a $5 million deal because I’m not fast on my feet, that’s an awfully expensive bottle of wine ($5 million at a 6 percent commission = $300,000). Yikes! So, put a dollar value on each glass of wine, burger, or hour of late-night TV watching.
In her book 168 Hours, Laura Vanderkam shows that most people who complain about not having enough time don’t actually realize how much time they’re wasting on idle activities. In a chapter entitled “Don’t Do Your Own Laundry” she suggests time is money. outsource some of them so that you have time for some life-enriching activities instead.
I remember the year I hit $1 million in income for the first time. My problem was I couldn’t enjoy the success because I had some friends who weren’t celebrating this new path with me.
An entire sea of water cannot sink a ship unless the water gets inside the ship. Just as the negativity of the world cannot pull you down unless you allow that negativity to enter your being.
my real estate course, the classroom was near Bryant Park.
• find people who want your services;
• craft the perfect message;
• negotiate the parameters of any deal;
• and make The Sell and claim your payoff.
I befriended Andy Cohen on Facebook before I was cast for Million Dollar Listing New York, Ivanka Trump before I sold Trump SoHo, and Bruce Littlefield before we met to discuss doing this book together.
25 percent of my business comes from social media.
you always want to be giving something to your followers—a laugh, a piece of good information, or an intimate peek at your life.
How about some Pinot Noir at ABC Kitchen (my favorite restaurant in New York) at eight P.M. tomorrow? That’s so much more effective, proactive, and certain than the deadly back-and-forth dancing of “When are you available?”
Similarly, if I were asking my boss for a raise, I’d suggest to her, “Could you meet with me Tuesday at two P.M. for ten minutes? I have an idea to improve our profitability.” That gets her attention and gets you the ten minutes.
A buyer e-mails me to see one of my listings: “Can I see your apartment on Sullivan Street tomorrow morning?” I immediately e-mail back, “Calling you shortly.” Just like that. I don’t say yes or no.
My e-mail signature provides a link to look at all my listings and social media pages and to see my latest press mentions. Before I call, the buyer hopefully has picked up from my e-mail signature that I am “The number one agent in New York by The Real Deal magazine.” The future close has therefore already started
I have one goal: to get the buyer not only comfortable, but also obsessed with the neighborhood, the apartment, and me.
Even if the person you’re with has asked you about yourself, it’s a trap. He doesn’t really want to know your bio. That will all come later, not now. What matters is how you can positively affect his life (or simply the time you’re together).
During my first ten minutes with anyone, I never speak in the negative. If we were on our first date, I also wouldn’t use big words or corny comeon lines or mention marriage. Doing so would immediately cause you to put up walls. Instead, I might tell you a story about my favorite meatball recipe that I made last week for the million-dollar commission earners on my team. That kind of story accomplishes many things at once: It says I can cook. It says I’m a good boss.
I was seventeen and was vying for a summer internship at the Salomon Brothers office in London—my dream job.
Have you ever been on a date, pitched something, or tried to sell something, and it didn’t go so well? You look back and wonder, Why in the world was I so boring? I’m never boring when I am with my best friend; that’s when I am fun, relaxed, and myself. Well, that’s the point: You want to be exactly like you are with your best friend. So one of my secrets is to bring my best friend and business partner, John Gomes, to any pitches I do. If your friend can’t tag along, speak to him or her on the way there.
If you’re meeting with your boss and see the photo of her kids on her desk, it never hurts to ask about her kids. It’s a bond, a genuine conversation not involving work or the issues at hand, and I’ve never met a mom who doesn’t like to brag about her kids. I love to find common, personal ground.
I slip in that I’m number one and that it only helps me if you will meet more brokers. “There are thirty thousand agents on the island of Manhattan, and you should definitely meet more people,” I say with a huge smile.
Car shoppers or TV buyers are going to say, “We’re going to testdrive a few others” or “We’re going to look at what the guy at the mall has in high definition.” Right? So, the trick is to suggest the competition before anyone else does.
I point out the positive 80 percent of the time and the negative 20 percent of the time on my own product or service. If all you do is go on and on about how incredible this product or service is or how wonderful you are, the buyer will eventually think you are covering something up. “The only real negative with this apartment is that the cabinets in the kitchen need to be changed, but that is a fun project and not a lot of money.”
Before getting into any conversation about something serious where time, money, talent, or your self-respect is involved, always identify where your floor is. The floor is your bottom line, the absolute worst deal you’d be willing to make. That way, if the deal falls through the floor, you know exactly when to walk away.
when I was selling this book to a publisher, I considered the size of the advance, but I considered other aspects to the deal, like the market power of the house and the editor and publicist I’d be working with.
the next time you’re looking at cars, get to the lowest price you can, and then walk away from the car dealership. I promise you’ll get a call with a lower price, even if you have to wait until the end of the month.
When I’m on a listing pitch, I never give my clients the price right there and then. They ask, and I smile, pause, and wait a brief second. I then tell them I’ll send it in a few hours. “Look out for it. It’s coming tonight.” Your job is to make people want something before they know they can have it.
If I’ve been communicating with someone through e-mail, and my price isn’t being accepted, or the contract isn’t getting signed, or negotiations are turning sour and that celebratory high-kick is slipping away, I immediately ask to meet face-to-face. I’ll write “CALL ME!” in the subject line and nothing else. That’s how I get the other party’s attention. Then, when I get the call, I say, “We need to meet. I’m coming over. I’ll be there in ten.”
I followed up with every single person who attended and made many of them my friends, customers, and referral base. I also marketed myself heavily to the other owners of apartments in the buildings in which I was selling, and the number of other apartments I got to sell expanded exponentially.
Don’t worry about the people talking behind your back. They are behind your back for a reason.
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.
After-work drinks and parties.
Prizes, competitions, and trips.
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.
Early in my career, I regularly hosted parties, which always landed me clients, referrals, and cash in my pocket.
HelpAReporter.com to have direct access to journalists
Respond to breaking news.
set a Google Alert for your name.
Paranoia is when you think the world is against you in some shape or form. Pronoia is the happy opposite: having the sense that there is a conspiracy that exists to help you.
After I invested $10,000 to film my pilot, Billion Dollar Broker, it took four years to land Million Dollar Listing New York.
The problem with a lot of relationships is our own high expectations.
I’ve said to every employee I’ve ever hired, “I know one day you’re going to leave me, and on that day, I’ll congratulate you. Hopefully, you’ll love me so much you’ll let me be a part of that.”
2. Selling is nothing more than playing up the good and playing down the bad.
3. Every successful person knows how to fail well.
4. Everybody wants what everybody wants.
5. The most successful people believe their success is only temporary.
I took an accelerated realestate-salesperson course at New York University and got my license in two weeks.
unaware of your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes
provide financial backing for a start-up, a.k.a. “angel investors.”
flew to Paris to meet with potential venture capitalist types. We slept on the sofa of Maria’s high school friend and came home with $1 million, successfully selling 50 percent of the company before it really existed. And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going back to school.
The e-mail simply said to show up at this address, at this time; we have an interesting Internet start-up, and we know you’ll want to be a part of it. Maria and I set up a PowerPoint in a boardroom we’d rented for the day, complete with graphs of how much the company was going to be worth.
trust, after all, begins with one thing and one thing only: the truth.
Other people can smell nervousness and insecurities like a shark smells blood. These things can be cute on a first date but never when you’re asking people to trust you in business
Break the ice, make some jokes, kick in the air, give your customer tickets to a Yankees or Dodgers or Cardinals game, compliment your client on her sparkly shoes, give your buyer a high five. Tell the client a very personal story.
Find your points of difference.
Psychologists say the three biggest motivators are the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power.
Celebrities have fame and money and don’t care about titles, business cards, data, or reports. They have passed that stage or handed it over to their business manager.
After passing the school test and then the Department of State test, I searched Craigslist.org for anyone who would hire me. I found a small boutique firm in Chelsea called JC DeNiro, which was founded by Robert De Niro’s uncle Jack.
I memorized neighborhoods, streets, buildings, prices, and square footages.
Location multiplied by square footage equals price, and in New York we factor in building amenities and views.
car dealerships, there’s a system called “having the floor,” which is a rotation for first dibs on walk-in clients.
a good seller knows that people want to be told what to do, as long as you are smiling when you give them the orders.
My goal was for him to see me as a friend, not a real estate sales guy.
I made him laugh and got him to share with me his life story, too.
By the end of the open house, we had multiple offers, and I sold the apartment for $560,000, $25,000 above ask. I will never forget that first commission check of $16,000.
show sheet of my first sold apartment to a Chelsea frame shop
the wind behind my sails (and sales)
my first year in real estate, I had sold $50 million worth of property
Which action can you take today that will move you toward your dream?
The night I finished my first class of real estate school, I went back to my tiny one-bedroom apartment on West Thirty-Seventh Street
Get Ahead by Being a Protégé
Albert, my driver
I am booked two weeks in advance. A half-empty calendar is death to me, because it means two things: I don’t have enough business to take care of, and I haven’t been proactive enough to create new business.
At any one time, I have a hundred active listings. I’m not just showing apartments; I’m also pitching to get new apartment listings.
I put an hour cap on all meeting. I always apologize as the meeting starts that I’ll have to be out the door at X time. I’ve found that if you apologize in advance about something, people will excuse you for almost anything.
Sometimes there are a dozen or more people on an e-mail, and if you don’t respond to it quickly, it can turn into a giant tumor that explodes and can cause you a giant headache or, worse, kill the deal!
I don’t want to be one of those players in a poker game passing out business cards at the end of a meeting. I want to be the dealer. When someone asks for my card, I say, “I’ll e-mail you,” or “You’ll find me,” depending on who it is.
When I want people’s business, I e-mail them the minute I leave the meeting. Often I grab their business card, shake their hand, say good-bye, and then turn the corner where they can no longer see me, stop, and write them an e-mail. The key is that there is an e-mail from me before they have had a chance to look at their phone or computer. Wow, they think. This guy is good.
Don’t be late. It’s disrespectful, but in the event you are, the moment you realize you will be late e-mail everyone and say exactly that. Then, when you arrive, simply say, “I’m so sorry I’m late. It was unavoidable.” Don’t go into your long, dramatic saga. No one wants to hear it, and it only makes it worse.
took a photo sitting on a chair in the middle of Fifth Avenue to promote my book on Facebook.
When I began my career, I did what many neophytes do: I sat alone and tried to figure it out by myself, greedily thinking that if I did it alone I wouldn’t have to share the money or the glory with anyone else. That was shortsighted and silly. If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it differently. If you really want to succeed quickly in your career, snoop out the people who do what you want to do and consider working for them for free for a little while.
How do you find this professor-mentor person who is at the top of his game, working in your dream job? Easy. Research! Google it. Every single industry has its top-producing lists, and those top producers can help you a lot. A single day shadowing a winner is like absorbing the information from an entire semester in college.
As an added bonus, if you prove yourself worthy to hang around long enough, for the rest of your life you’ll get to name-drop and say you worked with so-and-so on that big so-and-so project. Talk about a kick start for your career. My assistants will, for example, always get to say they were part of the team hired to sell Trump SoHo, a 391-unit condo-hotel tower. That will certainly spice up their resumes and contact lists and open a lot of doors.
I get at least three e-mails a day from people who want a job or for me to mentor them. But it isn’t so much the e-mail itself that’s the problem. It’s the fact that everyone sends that e-mail. Here’s a secret: Not once has anyone ever come to my office. Can you believe that? In twelve years in New York, no one has ever knocked on my door.
Suppose you stood outside my office door, shook my hand, and said, “No, I didn’t e-mail you or try to make an appointment like the others, because I knew you needed to meet me in person.” Then let’s say you hand me a Starbucks green tea latte with eight scoops of matcha powder, skim milk only, and no sweetener and tell me, “I know this is your favorite, especially around this time of the day, three hours after lunch, when you need a kick.” That’s not talking about what you can contribute—that’s proving it. That’s showing you’ve done your homework.
I once interviewed a young man named Nathan who came in for an interview with me with a long list of every high-end building in Manhattan (about twenty-five pages) and of every developer in town (another forty pages). He had memorized this information. Nathan now works on my team and closed $60 million worth of real estate in his first eighteen months. Elvis Presley, sang, “A little less conversation, a little more action please!”
Superstar doesn’t handle his or her own calendar. The gatekeeper does. Let me be frank: This person’s job is to keep you away from the superstar. Let me be franker: If you are mean, rude, or arrogant with this person, you’re never getting anywhere. Let me be frankest: Kindness gets noticed.
How might you know that he is a he? Or that he just got married, or what his favorite restaurant is? Most assistants or secretaries are active on social media and are probably easier to reach directly because they have fewer followers and might therefore be more communicative.
How do you really score with the gatekeepers? Understand that they want to be cocreators in their superstars’ success and that they want their jobs made easier, not more difficult.
For reference, in New York real estate a job seeker better be aware of the following: There are generally four types of residential properties to sell:
• condo, co-op, cond-op, and townhouse.
• At the time of this writing, the average price of an apartment in Manhattan is $1.7 million.
• The most expensive neighborhood is SoHo.
• There’s no such thing as a “standard” commission, but mine is 6 percent.
• The four websites you have already studied and visit daily are: Curbed.com, TheRealDeal.com, StreetEasy.com (owned by Zillow), and NYTimes.com.
• If you really want to impress me, you could name the ten most expensive buildings in the city and the ten largest developers.
I buy pants at their raw length and have them hemmed up to my perfect length. Every professional man should do that with his shirts and pants. Every professional woman should do that with her blouses and skirts. It usually costs me forty dollars a shirt, a hundred dollars per suit.
I had LASIK surgery
perfume. I’ve always used Chanel Egoiste Platinum
David Barton Gym in Chelsea
The less time you have to eat well, exercise, and sleep, the more important it is to block out the time in your calendar for it.
If I lose a $5 million deal because I’m not fast on my feet, that’s an awfully expensive bottle of wine ($5 million at a 6 percent commission = $300,000). Yikes! So, put a dollar value on each glass of wine, burger, or hour of late-night TV watching.
In her book 168 Hours, Laura Vanderkam shows that most people who complain about not having enough time don’t actually realize how much time they’re wasting on idle activities. In a chapter entitled “Don’t Do Your Own Laundry” she suggests time is money. outsource some of them so that you have time for some life-enriching activities instead.
I remember the year I hit $1 million in income for the first time. My problem was I couldn’t enjoy the success because I had some friends who weren’t celebrating this new path with me.
An entire sea of water cannot sink a ship unless the water gets inside the ship. Just as the negativity of the world cannot pull you down unless you allow that negativity to enter your being.
my real estate course, the classroom was near Bryant Park.
• find people who want your services;
• craft the perfect message;
• negotiate the parameters of any deal;
• and make The Sell and claim your payoff.
I befriended Andy Cohen on Facebook before I was cast for Million Dollar Listing New York, Ivanka Trump before I sold Trump SoHo, and Bruce Littlefield before we met to discuss doing this book together.
25 percent of my business comes from social media.
you always want to be giving something to your followers—a laugh, a piece of good information, or an intimate peek at your life.
How about some Pinot Noir at ABC Kitchen (my favorite restaurant in New York) at eight P.M. tomorrow? That’s so much more effective, proactive, and certain than the deadly back-and-forth dancing of “When are you available?”
Similarly, if I were asking my boss for a raise, I’d suggest to her, “Could you meet with me Tuesday at two P.M. for ten minutes? I have an idea to improve our profitability.” That gets her attention and gets you the ten minutes.
A buyer e-mails me to see one of my listings: “Can I see your apartment on Sullivan Street tomorrow morning?” I immediately e-mail back, “Calling you shortly.” Just like that. I don’t say yes or no.
My e-mail signature provides a link to look at all my listings and social media pages and to see my latest press mentions. Before I call, the buyer hopefully has picked up from my e-mail signature that I am “The number one agent in New York by The Real Deal magazine.” The future close has therefore already started
I have one goal: to get the buyer not only comfortable, but also obsessed with the neighborhood, the apartment, and me.
Even if the person you’re with has asked you about yourself, it’s a trap. He doesn’t really want to know your bio. That will all come later, not now. What matters is how you can positively affect his life (or simply the time you’re together).
During my first ten minutes with anyone, I never speak in the negative. If we were on our first date, I also wouldn’t use big words or corny comeon lines or mention marriage. Doing so would immediately cause you to put up walls. Instead, I might tell you a story about my favorite meatball recipe that I made last week for the million-dollar commission earners on my team. That kind of story accomplishes many things at once: It says I can cook. It says I’m a good boss.
I was seventeen and was vying for a summer internship at the Salomon Brothers office in London—my dream job.
Have you ever been on a date, pitched something, or tried to sell something, and it didn’t go so well? You look back and wonder, Why in the world was I so boring? I’m never boring when I am with my best friend; that’s when I am fun, relaxed, and myself. Well, that’s the point: You want to be exactly like you are with your best friend. So one of my secrets is to bring my best friend and business partner, John Gomes, to any pitches I do. If your friend can’t tag along, speak to him or her on the way there.
If you’re meeting with your boss and see the photo of her kids on her desk, it never hurts to ask about her kids. It’s a bond, a genuine conversation not involving work or the issues at hand, and I’ve never met a mom who doesn’t like to brag about her kids. I love to find common, personal ground.
I slip in that I’m number one and that it only helps me if you will meet more brokers. “There are thirty thousand agents on the island of Manhattan, and you should definitely meet more people,” I say with a huge smile.
Car shoppers or TV buyers are going to say, “We’re going to testdrive a few others” or “We’re going to look at what the guy at the mall has in high definition.” Right? So, the trick is to suggest the competition before anyone else does.
I point out the positive 80 percent of the time and the negative 20 percent of the time on my own product or service. If all you do is go on and on about how incredible this product or service is or how wonderful you are, the buyer will eventually think you are covering something up. “The only real negative with this apartment is that the cabinets in the kitchen need to be changed, but that is a fun project and not a lot of money.”
Before getting into any conversation about something serious where time, money, talent, or your self-respect is involved, always identify where your floor is. The floor is your bottom line, the absolute worst deal you’d be willing to make. That way, if the deal falls through the floor, you know exactly when to walk away.
when I was selling this book to a publisher, I considered the size of the advance, but I considered other aspects to the deal, like the market power of the house and the editor and publicist I’d be working with.
the next time you’re looking at cars, get to the lowest price you can, and then walk away from the car dealership. I promise you’ll get a call with a lower price, even if you have to wait until the end of the month.
When I’m on a listing pitch, I never give my clients the price right there and then. They ask, and I smile, pause, and wait a brief second. I then tell them I’ll send it in a few hours. “Look out for it. It’s coming tonight.” Your job is to make people want something before they know they can have it.
If I’ve been communicating with someone through e-mail, and my price isn’t being accepted, or the contract isn’t getting signed, or negotiations are turning sour and that celebratory high-kick is slipping away, I immediately ask to meet face-to-face. I’ll write “CALL ME!” in the subject line and nothing else. That’s how I get the other party’s attention. Then, when I get the call, I say, “We need to meet. I’m coming over. I’ll be there in ten.”
I followed up with every single person who attended and made many of them my friends, customers, and referral base. I also marketed myself heavily to the other owners of apartments in the buildings in which I was selling, and the number of other apartments I got to sell expanded exponentially.
Don’t worry about the people talking behind your back. They are behind your back for a reason.
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.
After-work drinks and parties.
Prizes, competitions, and trips.
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.
Early in my career, I regularly hosted parties, which always landed me clients, referrals, and cash in my pocket.
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Paranoia is when you think the world is against you in some shape or form. Pronoia is the happy opposite: having the sense that there is a conspiracy that exists to help you.
After I invested $10,000 to film my pilot, Billion Dollar Broker, it took four years to land Million Dollar Listing New York.
The problem with a lot of relationships is our own high expectations.
I’ve said to every employee I’ve ever hired, “I know one day you’re going to leave me, and on that day, I’ll congratulate you. Hopefully, you’ll love me so much you’ll let me be a part of that.”
October 16, 2016
This is a cheap attempt to make money off people that watch Eklund on TV. It's a simplistic, almost worthless book that gives you no insights into how to make deals other than the surface platitudes like dress well, exercise daily, treat others with respect, don't work for the goal of money, etc. Eklund obviously didn't "write" this book (it doesn't even come close to sounding like him and the phrasing is obviously not that of a foreign-born English language speaker) and the co-author must have culled ideas from different books or online courses to put together the most generic "secrets of selling" that he could find without being sued by those he stole from.
You learn that Eklund has no real educational background (he quit college, came to the U.S. and took a two-week speed realtor course!), has very little talent other than bragging about himself, and needs a large team of people around him to make him look successful. Remember, Eklund isn't the #1 agent in New York City, it's the Eklund "team" that's #1.
The book does reveal one big secret--that he has for years had a 50/50 business partner who does the showings and makes many of the sales. Eklund's job is getting new business from developers. He claims his partner prefers to not appear on TV. So Million Dollar Listing is even more fake than we thought.
He also is faking it in the book by trying to act as if he is a high-brow, moral gentleman. He conveniently skips over the gay porn he did and fails to mention all of the lies he tells to make sales. It's right there on video--we can look up his past or see him lie pretty much every week on TV.
So while he tries to make himself look like an upstanding industry leader who believes in putting clients first and calming himself through exercise and meditation, in truth he's a selfish uneducated shallow money-hungry liar who is unable to admit who he truly is. He needs to sit down and watch his show before he writes his next book so he can discover who the real Fredrik Eklund is. Until then, I'm not buying what he's selling because this book is one big sales pitch for himself.
You learn that Eklund has no real educational background (he quit college, came to the U.S. and took a two-week speed realtor course!), has very little talent other than bragging about himself, and needs a large team of people around him to make him look successful. Remember, Eklund isn't the #1 agent in New York City, it's the Eklund "team" that's #1.
The book does reveal one big secret--that he has for years had a 50/50 business partner who does the showings and makes many of the sales. Eklund's job is getting new business from developers. He claims his partner prefers to not appear on TV. So Million Dollar Listing is even more fake than we thought.
He also is faking it in the book by trying to act as if he is a high-brow, moral gentleman. He conveniently skips over the gay porn he did and fails to mention all of the lies he tells to make sales. It's right there on video--we can look up his past or see him lie pretty much every week on TV.
So while he tries to make himself look like an upstanding industry leader who believes in putting clients first and calming himself through exercise and meditation, in truth he's a selfish uneducated shallow money-hungry liar who is unable to admit who he truly is. He needs to sit down and watch his show before he writes his next book so he can discover who the real Fredrik Eklund is. Until then, I'm not buying what he's selling because this book is one big sales pitch for himself.
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