Scripts and Dialogues

I don’t like scripts and dialogues, but in today’s Coaching Tip I’m going to tell you how and why you should be using them. The bad thing about reading from a scripted dialogue in your prospecting calls is that you will sound like you’re reading from a script. However, if you use these tools properly your calls will be bright, informative and winning.

The first thing I want you to do is forget about following scripts and dialogues by rote, because at their best they define a logical system. Having a script to structure your dialogue with each client will keep your calls brief, effective and productive.

A good script is a series of questions that logically lead to a result. Having a script for each type of prospecting call will keep you on track, and you will know from the start exactly what you need to communicate and what kind of information you need to gather. It will also keep you from falling into sales mode during the call.

Basically you don’t want your calls to last more than 2 or 3 minutes. Beyond that, any further discussion you have needs to be face-to-face with the customer. Rather than telling the customer why they should sell or buy with you, ask them about what you need to know to progress them. Keep your dialogue down to 3 to 5 targeted questions, and allow just 15 seconds for each. Then, book an appointment.

Once you become proficient with your prospecting calls you will feel less hesitant and more confident about making those vital calls every day. You will also sound real in your delivery, as your dialogue will be yours and not some static text you’re reading from. You will also make fewer calls with greater results – more bookings, more listings and more sales.

Your clients will pay for your services only when they are ready and willing to do business with you. The point of your phone work is to progress them, not harass them. Build your confidence through following a scripted system of logical, natural dialogue and your clients will gain confidence in you.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Recruitment Process

Recruitment and progression of the people you hire is vitally important to the growth of your business. In this week’s Growth, Leadership and Management Tip I will outline systems you should follow and improvements you can make for cultivating exceptional team members for your agency.

It all begins with your application process. Your application form is not a formality. The first questions you ask will determine the quality of your new hires and set expectations for the performance you will require of them. Your application form should help you determine their rate of progress in previous positions, wage potential, performance consistency and overall value. In addition, follow up with their referees to validate the information they give you.

In the interview you need to discuss their career goals and aspirations, and be able to align their expectations with career streams you have in place for administration, sales, and property management. From the start, look at this new hire in terms of their potential to move upwards into roles in office management, sales partnership, property management, or even business director. Know what you can offer them as well as what they will bring to you.

There must be benchmarks for career progression based on skills they must acquire and transactions they must complete, as well as maximum wages they can earn before progressing to a higher position. You want to hire people who are motivated to progress in their career so your investment in helping them achieve those goals pays off for both of you.

In the Josh Phegan Company we help businesses set up five levels of career progression that we visualise as “bands.” These bands may start at a wage of around $40,000 a year at Level 5, and progress to $120,000 a year at Level 1. Realistically, you can’t have a long-term office assistant earning $100,000 a year, so that person needs to be able to assume higher roles within reasonable time frames in order to increase their pay.

This career stream and wage system implies that you are building a dynamic enough company to support requisite position and wage increases. The quality of your hires will determine the growth and success of your business. Make sure you understand your own business goals, and know the aptitude and attitude you need your people to provide in order to make that growth and success happen for you and for them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s Growth, Leadership and Management Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next month.

Ep 20 — Bringing Urgency to the Table

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss the state of urgency. Alexander describes how his sense of urgency and responsiveness keeps him on top of his market. Josh notes the advantage of an early start to your day, and Alexander continues with instilling a sense of urgency and quick response to change in your team. Discussion continues around setting clear guidelines for yourself and your team on what your agency does and doesn’t do.

They continue with when to step back a bit on the urgency, and how to progress a hesitant vendor or buyer. Next they discuss how best to communicate priorities to your team so they always know what to do, as well as helping clients to understand current market value and the necessity for timely action. Josh ends with facilitating the urgency of the client, setting clear expectations and following up.

Back to Basics Prospecting

Prospecting is the lifeline to your business success. How well is your current approach to it working? In today’s Coaching Tip I’m going to step you through some back to basics prospecting and help you begin to see some real results from your efforts.

You may not realise it, but your best prospects are the people you already know. Everyone in your life should be in your database, because everybody will need a real estate agent someday. You want to be their agent when that time arrives. Otherwise they will be working with your competitors.

Becoming a trusted advisor is not a status you can demand. It’s a subtle process you achieve through building relationships with your clients over time. It’s about your social proof and the value you deliver. Think in terms of what you can offer to the people you know rather than the business you can get from them. That’s how you become a friend in the business – by being a valuable friend.

Start your approach to prospecting by making a complete list of all the people you know including shopkeepers, service providers, teachers, and everyone you interact with through social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of it. Next, find out where they all live through geographic mapping so you can target your data for just listed/just sold-based prospecting.

All those people you know live somewhere, and someone near them is going to be selling a property at some point. You want to know which clients to call when those listings happen. This is your opportunity to offer information of interest about that property, what it sells for, and how that relates to the current value of their own properties. Building and maintaining that value-added relationship year after year with each person you know will bring you more leads than you can imagine.

Back to basics prospecting really is all about the quality and currency of your relationships with all of the people you meet, or have ever met, and maintaining efficient database, geographic mapping and prospecting systems that allow you to stay relevant and frequent with all of your clients for the long term. Relationships come first; all of your best opportunities will follow from there.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Ep 19 – Setting Up a Great Year

Today’s High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents featuring Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips focuses on when to auction a property vs. when to take it to market. Alexander tells how he starts off his year and sets a rhythm for moving forward. He continues with important conversations to have with client and vendors. Josh adds the necessity of thinking about client progression and time needed to launch.

They continue with ways to maintain momentum at mid-year and work ahead of the curve. Josh describes how open for inspections generate leads for months after, leading into a discussion of how to make better decisions and form a mindset to create a great month. Next, Alexander talks about why he uses direct mail in his marketing campaigns. Josh sums it all up with a reminder to work with people you know, upgrade your marketing, and always stay face-to-face with the customer.

Trigger Points

Cleaning up your database is a lot more work than simply building and maintaining it properly in the first place. You have to make sure clients go into the proper categories, and then continually progress them into new ones. In my Coaching Tip today I will show you the trigger points that alert you to these transitions and what you need to do with them.

You must have your 10 basic database categories in place or you’re lost from the start. With that structure in place you can simply enter new clients into their proper categories. But their situations are going to change and those changes are opportunities you don’t want to miss. You need to be on top of the trigger points that place them into new categories.

This may seem overwhelming with the numbers of new clients you meet every month. You can’t call every single one of those people every week, but you do need to call the top potential clients at the right moment in their process. The key is watching for lead scoring actions that tell you it’s time to change a client’s category from buyer to buyer hit list, or market appraisal to seller.

Watch for those clients who request a second appointment, ask to review a contract, make an offer, or bid at auction. Those are hit list clients and you need to follow up with them while they’re active. Market appraisals also allow you to identify red light/orange light/green light clients and act on the green lights quickly to get them on track as sellers. Any client activity is a potential trigger point.

Also remember that most clients are not one-dimensional and should often be placed into more than one category. A buyer is probably also going to be a market appraisal, and might be a past client as well. They may also be a landlord or tenant. Keeping your categories current and customers sorted is crucial for targeting the right contacts at the best times to move them forward.

Learning to catch trigger points and respond to them quickly will help you build better call lists and complete more transactions. It’s all about searching effectively, prospecting productively, and leveraging the power of your database to get results.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Ep 18 – Differentiation

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents presents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on how to differentiate yourself from your competition. Alexander begins with reasons why competition is secondary to keeping current with past clients, and Josh adds the importance of prospecting daily. They continue with keeping focused on what the client wants and how to be the agent they want to work with.

Next they discuss how targeting one or two aspects of differentiation is most effective, and how to achieve this as a new agent as Alexander tells how he promoted himself early in his career. Josh notes that your points of differentiation will attract a certain customer base, then they discuss how to leverage that appeal to create a brand identity and direct your business growth. They list some vital elements of brand identity and Josh closes with the importance of having a story around your brand.

To Be One Of Your Customers

You know how to think like an agent, but do you know how to think like a customer? Being a great agent requires knowing and doing what your customer expects from you. In this Coaching Tip I will show you how to deliver a great customer experience by visualising what it’s like to be your customer.

Agency-based marketing is all about the customer. Think about some of your past clients and how you conducted business with them. What did they receive from you before, during and after the transaction – especially after?

We recommend the anniversary experience, directly contacting clients one day, one week, one month and one year after a sale, and then on the anniversary of the sale each year. Also sending them relevant news they can use, including reports on their local marketplace as well as news from outside their area.

Delivering outstanding customer experience during your transaction, then following up with frequency and relevancy, establishes you as a trusted advisor. You want their referrals and their return business. Failure to nurture the client relationship long-term is a big mistake.

Always be thinking about how you can stay frequent and relevant to each client, then apply that thinking to their entire category. As you grow beyond your start-up phase, you will quickly accumulate more past clients than you can personally keep up with. This is why you must automate your marketing and target the specific needs of each category.

Automation also allows you to manage your expanding task load. Instead of trying to do hundreds of tasks each day, set one day per month to create a list of past client transactions for that month and call a few of them each day. Also set a day each week for ongoing tasks, such as Mondays for open for inspection follow-ups, and Thursdays to call on past clients.

To be effective with agency-based marketing you have to understand the categories inside of your database and market to each of those categories. A great way to track what your customers are receiving from you – and what they’re not getting, but should — is to add your own email address to each category so you receive the same messages they do. You will quickly identify gaps in communication and get those clients into your feed.

Make sure you look into our Josh Phegan Company Membership and our incredible List Sell Negotiate event coming up soon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Ep 17 – Running Great Open For Inspections

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips focus on running exceptional open for inspections. Alexander begins by outlining ways his agency uses open homes to make a memorable impression for his brand. Josh notes the necessity for a Saturday assistant specifically for opens, and Alexander lists traits he looks for in that assistant. He continues with tips on customer evaluation, important questions to ask, and driving momentum towards a sale.

Next they discuss how to handle opens with low attendance, following with details on methods of gathering contact information from attendees and best times to schedule opens as well as private buyer appointments. The discussion continues around how to best communicate with the vendor after showing the home. Josh closes with a reminder to observe energy management in order to present the home, your brand and yourself well.

The Vision for Your Business

If you don’t know where you’re going, how do you expect to get there? Having a compelling vision for your business and following through on it is crucial for real growth. This Coaching Tip is all about planning your future and I’m going to guide you through to achieve that today.

If you are doing business day to day simply accepting a few windfalls here and there then you are flailing. To get ahead you have to pay attention:
• How many listings and sales do you want?
• What level income would you like to realise?
• What kinds of vacations do you dream of taking?

When you operate without clarity or purpose you might see some minor growth each year purely by chance. But if you act with purpose you will experience power and momentum you never thought possible. You have to know what you want and believe you can achieve it. Like climbing Mount Everest, nobody gets there without a solid plan, a great team, and a desire that drives them to the top.

You need to hire capable, motivated people to keep your business progressing even when you aren’t there so you can take time off and avoid burnout. Focus on one or two things you can change to get more work done. Decide the level of income you require to support the lifestyle you want. Think ahead 20 years, and don’t limit yourself.

We’re going to begin your plan right now. Take paper and pen, and write a header for 2021. List these elements for the next 5 years to drive real progress in your business:
1. How many listings and sales will you get?
2. What income will those listings and sales bring in?
3. How many annual leave days will you take?
4. What size team must you have to secure market momentum?
5. How do these numbers relate to your specific market trends?
6. What market share must you have to achieve these numbers?

Set realistic numbers here so you have true clarity on what is possible and decide what you need to do to increase those numbers. Start that momentum right now by creating a plan of action based on your vision for your future. You’ll never get there if you don’t set the destination, map the journey and then take that first step forward.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week.