Tracking The Progress Of Your Database

Today’s Coaching Tip is all about how to maintain your database so you can use it to its full potential. If you’re not entering every new person you meet every day you’re throwing away potential opportunities and reducing the size of your pipeline. You can’t afford to do that if you want to be a great agent.

You then need to track on those clients so you can progress them into all the categories they belong in. Their status changes constantly and you must keep up with those changes in order to be relevant to them, and be there for them when they are ready to buy or sell properties.

Let’s say you speak with a buyer from an open for inspection and they tell you they just bought a property. If they bought inside of your marketplace, they then move into your potential seller category. Then you ask what they are doing with their current property so you can set up a market appraisal, and enter them into that category. Or if you speak with a buyer who bid at auction and failed to win the property then you know they are actively looking, so enter them into your buyer hit list because you definitely want to keep up with them. Remember, every client can move into multiple categories.

Know your numbers and track on them every week. How many people are in your database? How many are in each category? These are all opportunities and they change rapidly. And your opportunities increase if you progress people upward through the categories. Make the phone calls and know what you need to do next with each client by keeping your database current.

Becoming a great agent is a decision, and you have to commit to doing the necessary work to make that happen. Only 10% of market appraisals progress into listings, so you must do as many as you can to realise the 20 to 30 listings per year that you need. If you’re not getting enough listings then get to work on leveraging the power of your database. That means daily database maintenance – entering every single person you meet, categorising them, and then tracking on them so you can progress them through the categories.

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

Ep 8 – Working An Area

Today’s High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discussing how to choose and work a market area. Alexander tells how he got started in his current market, and began building long-term clients through buyer work. Josh then describes the necessity of understanding the process of progression. Alexander talks about the advantages of adaptability to other markets as well as being responsive to changes inside of your primary area.

Next they discuss ways to gain pricing and market knowledge across multiple areas. Josh ends the dialogue with the importance of being able to relate to each customer according to their needs and desires, their station in life and their personal situation.

Why Strategic Meetings Are Important

As a real estate principal you can’t just think about tactics – you need to be thinking strategically. In this Growth, Leadership, and Management tip I will explain the importance of stepping back and meeting with your team on a regular basis to discuss your growth strategy and evaluate how well your business is achieving those goals.

Scheduling a monthly meeting with your executive team will help everyone maintain a cohesive foundation for growth. Everyone will know exactly where you want to go and what needs to be done to get there.

Topics to cover in each meeting include:
• Achievements
• Lessons learned
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threat analysis

Review your business achievements for the past month. Then evaluate anything that has gone wrong and what needs to be done to avoid repeating that failure. Discuss how to stay on track for growth and capitalise on opportunities to improve systems and infrastructure. Acknowledge the things that are working as well as any obstacles you have encountered. All of these elements are vital to realizing growth.

Listings, sales, prospecting and income are all crucial, but they are short-term concerns. Growth is achieved through long-term planning and execution, and that requires consistent momentum, market traction and market share.

List the things that need to be done and arrange for getting them accomplished. Make better decisions about who to hire and how you need to coach them. Discuss ways to engage with more customers and to better serve those past and current clients. Look at the numbers to see what is actually happening and determine where improvements need to be made. Focus on what you really want to build so you can make your vision a reality.

The main thing is to schedule those meetings and make them count. You may think you can’t afford to take that time each month, but I’m telling you that you can’t afford not to. It’s really a small investment of time that will result in a tighter team employing defined tactics based on a strategic foundation to drive significant long-term growth for your business.

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

Becoming A Great Marketer

To be a great real estate agent you also have to be a great marketer. In this Coaching Tip I’m giving you some basic techniques and concepts you can use to achieve real marketing savvy. The key to great marketing is to know your client’s objections from the start, address their fears and counter them with a solution.

One of the keys to turning things around in your business is the ability to change adversity into opportunity. In a challenging marketplace where you have an abundance of buyers, but a shortage of stock to sell to them, potential sellers aren’t seeing anything they want to buy, so they are hesitant to sell – which perpetuates the shortage. It may look like a lost cause, but you can make it work for you by working with it rather than against it.

Use customers’ discomfort as a marketing device by addressing their fears head on. Show them that you are aware the situation exists, but you can fix it if they are willing to work with you. It’s a bold move to state in your advertising that there is a problem. But you will demonstrate your confidence and expertise by putting it out there, validating their concerns, and then showing them how you can take them where they want to go. You place yourself as a trusted advisor by confronting the issue and turning it around for them.

Learn how to anticipate the needs of the customer and of the market, and you will be on top of the game. You can’t connect with people through your needs as an agent; they don’t care. If you want their business then you have to be all about their desires, their concerns, and their expectations.

Think about creating targeted one-off marketing campaigns that are direct, personal, and specific to current conditions in the marketplace. A big factor in marketing is staying ahead of the curve and on top of trends, and using that insight in your approach. Marketing is not something you work out once and use over and over; you have to keep it fresh, relevant and compelling. People will quickly begin to ignore you if your content is the same all the time.

Marketing is essential to your business, and you will never be a great agent if you can’t generate interest, rapport and trust in your communications with them. Commit to becoming an effective marketer as well as a top-tier agent and you will grow your business.

Make sure you look into our Josh Phegan Company membership, Master Class Program, Prospecting School, and our incredible Blueprint Event, all coming up soon.

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

Ep 7 – Diary Management

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents presents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on the necessity of keeping a diary of your daily business, what goes in it, and how it aids daily scheduling. They recommend using integrated diaries so everyone on your team stays coordinated and on track. Alexander outlines his daily schedule, and stresses the importance of time and energy management.

Setting time limits for tasks, building in buffers for predictable delays, and knowing how to stay productive if you end up with extra time are all key. Hard-line appointments that must be met help structure your schedule. The diary also helps you track numbers and market activity each month so you see where to improve and when to plan for time off. The most important function of your daily diary is to keep you in control of your time, your business and your life.

Building Momentum By Tracking Behaviour

If you really want to get going on your business growth, a great way to do that is to commit yourself to a 30 day challenge. In this Coaching Tip I’m going to talk about tracking your behaviour for a month. It’s all about learning what you actually do to get results.

There are specific activities you must be consistent with to progress your career. These are the basics:
• Build your database
• Get face to face with clients

The primary behaviours necessary to perform those activities are calls, connects, and appointments. You have to make a lot of calls in order to speak directly with a few people because over 50% of your calls will connect you with voicemail. You have to connect with people before you can get appointments with them. Only a few of those direct connects will result in an appointment, and appointments are vital in getting your listings and sales. Keep a record of all your calls, how many connected you to a person, and how many result in an appointment.

You can see how important it is for you to be on the phone every morning before other daily tasks distract you. It really is the most important thing you do each day because you don’t get those appointments unless you make enough calls to book appointments, and you want to try to secure 3 each day.

There are 3 kinds of appointments you can make, and you want to track on how many of each you book:
• Bar appointments
• Market appraisal appointments
• Listing appointments

The bar appointment is good for finding out what a client might want to buy or have to sell, and for maintaining that relationship so they will come to you when they are ready to move.

Market appraisal appointments put you on the client’s property where you can evaluate its worth. It also allows you to decide how to progress them by determining where they are on the traffic light –
• Red — they’re not going to sell
• Orange – they might be willing to consider selling
• Green — they’re ready to get to it

The listing appointment is the most crucial of the three as this is where you sell yourself. It’s a delicate balance between making a solid case for them to hire you, or driving them off by pushing too hard. The secret is in making your proposal all about their needs and desires.

At the end of your 30 day challenge you can look at your numbers and categories, see how many listings you made, and learn where you achieved progress or met with resistance. Make sure your focus in tracking is for effort, not reward. Looking at sales and income is gratifying, but it won’t teach you anything about your effectiveness. Look at the numbers of appointments and new listings you won. It’s putting forth the effort that brings those rewards.

Now do this again the next month and you will be on your way to seeing some real growth happen in your business.

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

Ep 6 – All About Assistants

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips note that the hardest and best decision you make in your business is to put on that first assistant. The cost may seem prohibitive, but is offset by your ability to do more transactions while maintaining momentum and consistency. Alexander outlines tasks an assistant can relieve you from doing so you can focus on prospecting and seeing clients, and lists attributes to look for in a new hire.

They also discuss how to nurture, temper and grow a new hire to become more valuable, gain skills and experience, and achieve their own goals. Adding on more assistants is next, again realizing benefits versus cost, and how they motivate you to increase profits. Josh stresses the importance of meetings, team building, and instilling a sense of personal investment in the business.

Scaling Your Business

You want to grow your business, but there’s only so much work you can accomplish by yourself. My Coaching Tip today is about how to scale your business by hiring people to do those time-consuming basic tasks that keep you from focusing on the work that’s most important.

You have to let go in order to grow. That’s a basic fact of life and it’s the same for your business. You may feel the need to have your hands in every task, but do you want to be a real estate agent or an administrative assistant? Find the people who do admin support better than you and hire them. I promise you, it will take every minute of your time to become a great agent. Put a support team together and let them take care of the housekeeping.

How many open houses can you personally work on a Saturday? Realistically that number would be six. How are you going to increase your listings if you can’t show more than six homes in a day? If you want to show more homes, you have to have other people to prepare and show another six, or twelve, or twenty-four homes on a Saturday.

It’s all about capacity, and the only way you can increase that is to put on assistants and other agents to do more work than you can do alone. And frankly, they will do a better job than you, because if you are trying to work beyond your own capacity your performance – and your numbers — will suffer for it.

You need to hire a buyer assistant to show the homes, a second assistant to prep each home for inspection, and an administrative assistant to enter data, follow up on emails and online contacts, prepare lists and reports, and cover all the other agency housekeeping tasks. As your business expands, your team will grow.

Let go of the limiting belief that you have to do everything because you simply can’t scale your business trying to do it all yourself. Make the decision to hire great people to do the tasks that are holding you back. Then you can focus on prospecting, appointments, listings and sales.

Make sure you look into our Josh Phegan Company membership, Master Class Program, Prospecting School, and our incredible Blueprint Event, all coming up soon.

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

Ep 5 – Expectations for Pricing

In the current market client expectations for pricing are high, but there is more demand than stock. This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discussing how best to advise clients around pricing. With buyers wanting to pay less and vendors wanting to sell for more, you must provide realistic pricing guidance from the start. This begins with knowing where your client is in their process – are they hesitant, weighing their options, or ready to go?

Are they making emotional decisions, or do they need a certain price point to finance something other than another property? To help them make good decisions you must understand their situation and balance that with the realities of the market. Josh and Alexander outline information you must know and where to get it, what to present to clients, and how to effectively advise them.

Opportunity Within Your Business

Opportunity is as close as your database, but you have to go after it. My Coaching Tip today is about using what you already have, and improving on what you already do, to create more opportunities inside of your business.

Your database should contain everyone you know and have ever met, categorised and accessible. How many of those people have you contacted in the past month – or the past year? Every one of those names is a potential opportunity, especially your past buyers.

Anyone who has ever been through one of your open homes is a potential buyer. So are customers you’ve sold a home to, because they won’t be in that home forever. Are you keeping in touch with them? Always follow up with open for inspections. Always call new buyers within 2 weeks of their purchase from you, and also call the people who looked at the home and didn’t buy it. People who are looking at homes for sale are active in the market. That’s opportunity.

Market appraisals are also prime opportunities. All of them, including the ones you met with years ago. Call them up and see how things have progressed with them, and whether they might be considering selling. Past clients are some of the most overlooked opportunities for most agents, especially since people move more often now than ever before. Someone you met with last year could be ready to sell today. Will they call you? You should be keeping up with them to make certain they do.

Being consistent with the basics is what creates successful agents. Know who you are calling and why, and know what you need to say – and what you don’t. If you’re making those calls, but not booking appointments, you may need to change your approach. Try recording yourself to find out what you are really saying and how your delivery sounds. Make sure your dialog is not putting people off. Keep it brief and positive.

Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you. Use your database, stay in touch with your past clients, and keep your call sessions consistent and productive.

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