Past Clients – Out Of This World Customer Service

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You may be missing an entire market segment that is sitting in your database right now. It’s a source of uncontested business that no one else is working—but you are about to do just that. What are you missing? It’s your list of past clients.

You actually have two sets of past clients to work with: the people who have sold property with you, and those who have bought. In order to work with this market you need to do two things that you should already be doing:

1. Build and maintain client relationships
2. Stay actively relevant

Most agents probably do not follow up with past clients more than once or maybe twice after a sale is completed. Years will go by and no contact is made. There’s no relationship and no relevance in that. You can do better than this. Rather than being done as soon as the sale is completed, your next level of prospecting is just beginning.

The customer service you perform after a property changes hands is where your future business and customer loyalty will be set. It starts with the experience you provide as soon as the client picks up their keys from you. Instead of having them come to your office to get the keys, why not meet them at the property and escort them in? How about a small housewarming gift waiting in the kitchen as well?

After the new homeowners have had a day or two to settle in, you can give them a call and ask if they have any questions or concerns, or anything you might need to ask the previous owners about for them. In about a week, call them again to make sure everything is still going well. Then in about a month, check in with them one more time.

From this point onward make sure they get quarterly newsletters and alert them to related sales in the area. Then make a yearly appointment to see them and the home so you can keep them apprised of its value in the marketplace. Keep yourself current with them and maintain that relationship.

Most agents only check back with fewer than 5% of their past clients after a property is sold. That represents 95% of a market segment that is essentially untapped and uncontested. That can be your market segment, with better fees and more recommendations through the relationships you build and stay active with. You can base your entire agency on this philosophy and train all your incoming agents to follow up this way. You can be the best at what you do and stay ahead of your competition by simply delivering a higher level of service than anyone else.

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

The List – Ultimate Productivity

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There are some surprisingly simple systems you can use to get yourself back on track and working at your ultimate level of productivity.

First, increasing your daily bookings is as basic as starting each call session with a list of your top 5 potential sellers. It’s those face-to-face appointments with clients that get listings and, ultimately, sales. Just think about what happens if you start every business day calling five potential clients first thing, before you even check your email. You can’t take them to market if they don’t know you, so make those calls and see those people.

Out of the hundreds–or thousands–of prospects in your database, you need a reliable method for choosing which ones are potential sellers. One of the simplest ways to do this is to create a special Seller Hit List category in your database for potential sellers. These are people who own property in a marketplace where they are likely to sell in a given number of years. For some markets that may be five years, for others it could be twenty years.

Your goal in locating and contacting potential sellers is to progress them into a market appraisal. This is where you can talk with them directly about what it will take for them to make a decision to sell. Pricing context is a key component to this discussion as you must find out if there is a price range they would not consider at all for their property, a price range that might interest them, or a price range they would definitely sell for if they could get it.

Once you are clear on a client’s pricing expectations you can then advise them on whether selling in the current market is a good move, or if they might want to wait for market conditions to improve for their property. Delivering a sound professional recommendation to a client is the best way to become their trusted advisor and gaining their loyalty for future real estate transactions.

The people who come through the market appraisal looking like potential sellers are the ones you categorize in your Seller Hit List. These are the people you will call regularly in order to bring them to market as soon as they are ready.

Keeping your systems simple is key to remaining flexible, responsive and current. Unfortunately many agents suffer from “task load” which means they encumber their databases with too many tasks and activities and eventually burn out trying to keep up. Consequently the few truly important tasks get buried and lost. You can avoid this pitfall by being clear about your process, and selective in your tasking and scheduling. One way to do this is to simply wrap up your phone calls by asking when you can next speak with that client, and scheduling that next contact point before ending the phone call.

Ultimate productivity is based on working a category, not individual clients. Each client fits inside a category, so if you address communications to the category—emails, market news, videos, etc.–then each individual will get the specific message that is relevant to their situation.

Still, it is your daily 45-minute phone sessions that drive your business. If you’re not making calls then you will have no appointments, no listings and no sales. Therefore the best time to make phone calls is the minute your day begins. Very simply, if you want more business more often, then you’ve got to be on the phones more often. So your most important task every day is to have your list of people to call, and get on the phones first thing. This is what it takes to be a great agent. It’s up to you to get serious about your business and make it happen.

I hope you have enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. If you have a topic you would like to see discussed here, simply reply to this email. We’d love to assist you at the Josh Phegan Company, and we look forward to seeing you here again next week.

Targets and Managing Anxiety

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As real estate agents it’s simply in the nature of our business that we will experience anxiety. You will sometimes feel discouraged and overwhelmed. This is normal. The key to dealing with anxiety is learning how to manage it, and the best way to do that is to know what you need to do and focus on accomplishing your goals.

Once you decide how many listings and sales you need to complete to be successful, then you can begin to make that happen. For example, let’s say you know you need to write $500,000 in gross fees. Just looking at that number may make you feel anxious, but we’re going to break it down into manageable bits.

First, you are working with a ten-month year because you will need a vacation, and the market will have an off month or two. So divide your $500,000 target by 10. You now have $50,000 to focus on writing per month. Next, assume your average fee is $10,000. In order to make $50,000 in sales per month you only need to sell five homes, so you will want to list seven homes just to be sure. Therefore, seven listings per month is your base goal.

Now set a weekly goal by dividing the month into 4 weeks, and working to get 2 listings per week. Now, you need to put in the work necessary to get those 2 listings per week, because if you don’t you will find yourself 3 weeks into the month with no listings and high anxiety. However, since you have set a weekly goal for yourself, you have a clear target to work toward instead of making random efforts here and there.

Knowing where you want to go and creating steps to get you there also allows you to measure and quantify your success. And that helps you to grow and expand, because once you can reach your target goals then you need to raise that bar and aim for the next level up. Always aim to step up from your current target. You will also discover that when you stay focused and you are aggressively pursuing a goal, you will not feel anxious; you will feel confident. Action gives you confidence; inaction takes your confidence away. And feeling confident significantly reduces your anxiety. With every week you fail to list any properties your confidence will decrease, but every week you achieve even a single listing will increase your confidence and decrease anxiety.

Here’s a simple tracking tip: Write the numbers 1 through 7 in a column on a sheet of paper. Each time you list a property, write it in next to a number. Do the same thing for sales and income. Post that paper where you will see it every morning as you start your day, and commit yourself to do the work necessary to add the next listing/sale to that list. Use this simple list to focus your intensity every day so you can do the work that counts now, and then you will be able to relax and truly enjoy a well-earned vacation.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and I look forward to seeing you here again next week. In the meantime, if you have questions or need our assistance simply reply to this email to contact us here at the Josh Phegan Company.

Productivity Over the Phone

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Connecting with prospects by phone is probably the most important thing you do every day, so you want to be as productive as possible when you make those calls. Most agents simply leave it all up to chance whether they will make an appointment or progress a customer. But this is not a game—this is your business.

First, get focused. What is your goal in making these calls?

• To establish and maintain a business relationship
• To progress a customer
• To make an appointment with a prospect

If you are on the phone for more than 2 minutes you are probably getting off track with the purpose of the call. Either book an appointment so you can discuss things in detail with the client face to face, or progress the client quickly to the next step they need to get to.

There is some simple psychology behind the way you conduct your calls. For example, you may be surprised to learn that you will complete more phone calls using your mobile phone than your landline. People tend not to pick up for calls from marketers and organizations. A call from your mobile phone will show up as a personal call and as such is more likely to be answered.

Also be aware that you will often be answered by voicemail. You need to be ready for that and leave a message that will get people to call you back. Leaving just your surname and your brand will likely not get you a reply. Also, stating the reason for your call will prompt the client to question whether you are relevant to their situation at the moment.

Relevancy is actually a key consideration that you can use to your advantage simply by asking the right questions.

First, call from your mobile phone so the call shows up as personal. Then leave a very brief message such as, “Hey John, it’s Josh. Can you just give me a quick call? 0448-406-303,” and hang up. Most people will call back just to find out who you are and why you called.

Have a basic script for your calls that ensures the first 15 seconds of the call will result in a productive conversation. Don’t leave the exchange open to fall apart before you get started—make a simple introduction with a bit of urgency behind it. Something like, “Hi Liam, it’s Josh Phegan calling. Just a really quick courtesy call,” will answer the client’s first questions—who you are, why you are calling and how you are relevant to them. Address those questions in the first 15 seconds of the call and you will be more likely to connect and engage for the balance of 2 minutes.

It will also serve you well to have a short, sequential list of questions that will most effectively progress the customer or book an appointment with them. However, it is important that you don’t sound like you are reading from a list, or you’re in a rush, or your delivery is too polished and rehearsed. Make sure you aren’t using a “phone voice” and are instead speaking naturally as if the client was standing in front of you. Be relaxed and natural and they will be, too.

All of that may seem like a lot to think about, but if you make a few calls with these suggestions in mind the delivery will quickly become natural to you. Most importantly your calls will become more successful and you will connect with more people more often.

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

Setting The Vision

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You can’t get anywhere you want to be if you don’t know where you are going. That is why having a clear vision for your real estate business is so important. Tactical thinking is fine if your tactics support a long-range strategic plan for growth. Tactics without a plan, however, are only a random unrelated set of short-term solutions.

When you look to the future of your business, what do you see? In fact, why are you in the real estate business?

Some agents end up owning a real estate business with no real thought or plan for it. They may have some ideas for short-term gains, but they have no structure to expand and grow to their potential, mainly because they don’t know what to do. They get stuck thinking about the one office they have instead of the possibilities of owning multiple offices, or even a boutique independent network.

We’re talking about your business here, and it needs to be built upon your vision of what you want it to become in the future. If you hire a managing director, a CEO, or a sales manager to make a plan and run your business then it really isn’t your business anymore. Those people do not have a better idea of how to shape your future than you have. You simply need to think for yourself about it and get clear in your mind about what you really want to achieve.

Your vision is built on a foundation of your own purpose, mission, and values. Think about what it is specifically that you want to achieve through your business. Then think around the numbers and measurements you need to meet in order to reach your goals, such as how many people you need to employ, how many sales you need within specific timeframes, and how many properties you want to have under your management.

Without a strategic plan you can easily fall into a routine of layering results based only on increasing your efforts a little beyond what you achieved last year. That may bring you small increases, but it will not actually grow your business. For real growth you have to have a clear vision to build toward so you know what kind of infrastructure and people you need to be adding into your business.

For reaching your true potential you must think 5 to 10 years ahead. How big do you want your business to become? How many locations? How many agents should be working for you? Having a clear picture of what your future business looks like informs decisions you make now about scalable databases, servers and internal networks, possible locations for new offices, and other decisions you will be making according to long-range goals instead of short-term needs. This kind of thinking will help you make better decisions today that you can build upon for tomorrow.

Your vision for your business depends upon clear ideas for projects, numbers, locations, employees, and cohesive tactics. Your strategic plan for growth must support your declared purpose, mission, and values. Get clear on exactly what you want your business to do and to be, and then create the structure that will make it happen.

If you’re ready to achieve rapid growth inside of your business, the Josh Phegan Company is ready to help you. Simply reply to this email and I’ll give you a call to see what we can do to help you get on track.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s Coaching, Leadership, and Management Tip. If there are other topics you’d like to see me discuss, just let me know in a reply to this email.

Ultimate Productivity – Reduce The Breadth Of What You Do

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Productivity is about more than just staying busy. You need to see tangible results from your efforts before you can say you are truly being productive. The best agents have established habits and procedures to make sure they are focused on doing the work that will net them the most listings and sales.

Of course, when you’re just starting out you are likely doing all the work inside of your business by yourself. Your first challenge is to grow your business enough to start hiring other people to do the basic tasks so that you can spend all of your time and expertise on actually being productive. That means that all you should be doing yourself is prospecting and listing.

Prospecting is where you build momentum through consistency in your client relationships. You need to stay current and relevant to everyone in your database, which means interacting with people every day. A bad pattern that most agents fall into is “surging”, which is frantically prospecting whenever you start needing listings, but failing to prospect when you have stock. This is inconsistent effort and does not help you establish an image of credibility and relevance for your business.

Every day you need to be on the phone for 45 minutes beginning at 8am—9am at the latest. Have a list of your top 5, 10, or 15 potential sellers ready to go, and call those people. Next day call another list of prospects. The more often you do this, the more structured you will become around it, and you will even begin to look forward to it because you will see the results it brings you over time. You will also discover that the distractions that have been derailing you all along are not really urgent or necessary after all.

Start thinking in terms of making connections with people by phone and face-to-face. Your most important job is to make that communication happen. In fact, you don’t need to be using a computer at all. Everything that is done digitally can and should be handled by your assistant. That includes replying to emails, maintaining the database, and managing marketing and campaigns. Your goal is to connect with prospects and book appointments toward listing and selling properties.

The key to growing your business is for you to stay focused on prospecting and listing, and not get diverted into spreading your time and efforts into other aspects of your business that your employees should be handling for you.

Booking appointments is just like making sales, and nothing is going to happen inside of your business unless you are making those sales. Reaching your goal by calling people for 45 minutes a day only begins with making the calls. Your ultimate goal is to book appointments and get face-to-face with as many people as you can. Call new prospects, touch base with past market appraisals, call people you met at open for inspections, call people who came to previous open for inspections, and call people who have inquired about a property they saw online currently or in the past.

Work your way up to meeting 5 open for inspections each Saturday and you will achieve the consistency and momentum of ultimate productivity. You will also establish yourself as relevant and successful, which will generate more prospects. Now you know what you’re doing. Now your business will grow.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip. If you’d like to see any specific topics covered, simply reply to this email and tell us. Remember, at the Josh Phegan Company we want to help you achieve your potential and feel financial freedom. Thanks for watching, and I hope to see you here again next week.

Overcoming fear, procrastination and distraction

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Some of the greatest enemies to your productivity are fear, procrastination, and distractions. There are more disruptions in your life than you realize, and they limit the amount of work you are able to get done. You can put yourself in control of all that, though, and the first step is to identify what those disruptions are.

Some agents—especially when they are just starting out—hold self-limiting beliefs that keep them from performing at their highest level of ability. It’s a kind of self-talk running in their heads, telling them they are not ready yet, or things will get better later, or maybe they should go easy until they gain a little more experience. Some rationalize procrastination by telling themselves that no one wants them to call too early in the morning, or that later in the day might be a better time to phone people. The truth is, procrastination for whatever the reasons is still procrastination, and it is usually driven by fear.

Some people are actually afraid of the telephone and how a call with a customer may place you in a situation you don’t know how to handle. The overriding fear, however, may well be a fear of success as a real estate agent. After all, your primary goal is to connect with clients and build relationships. Your business depends on it. You may also think that phone calls take too much time, but that is not the case if you’re conducting them properly.

Each phone call with a client should take no more than 2 minutes. Any more time than that and you are opening yourself to irrelevant chat. All you need to resolve is making an appointment to discuss matters in depth, in person. Don’t discuss anything in detail on the phone. Ask good, closed-end questions to connect and gather information, book the appointment, and go to the next call.

Most of your distractions will be from the same technology you use as part of your business, which seems to present a dilemma. You need your smartphone, your SMS and MMS, email, calendar alerts, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. However, you can—and should—turn off the endless flow of information when it’s time to focus on getting a specific task done. Just unplug for 45 minutes and get your prospecting calls made. Have your call list, know your dialog and stick to it. There is no way to procrastinate if you allow no distractions and know who you are calling. Plus, having the dialog to follow removes the fear of rejection and stumbling over your words.

During a concentrated call session, you can expect to increase your call success to around 53% connections, with 33% of those booking appointments. But you cannot achieve those results if you are allowing interruptions every few minutes to sidetrack you. Take your time for prospecting calls seriously. Do it first thing in the morning. Set a timer for 45 minutes, turn off all the alerts, and focus on doing absolutely nothing else besides making those calls. Do this every day. This represents the core of your business, and you will not have a business if you don’t have those appointments with prospects every single day.

It all comes down to you making the decision to build the business you want.

A powerful quote to remember is, “When the goal is clear, there are no distractions.” If you allow yourself to give in to fear, to be distracted, or to procrastinate, then perhaps you need to set a clear vision around what you really want to accomplish. If you don’t have a vision to drive you forward and keep you on track, then you won’t do the work that must get done.

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

How to progress the customer

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Prospecting is all about lead generation. You generate leads through activities like meeting people at open for inspections and sending market reports to homes in your market area. Most agents are clear on this and are successful in gathering plenty of leads, but often they fail to think about specific next steps to move the sales process forward.

The process between lead generation and lead conversion is called lead nurturing. This is how you prepare your client to enter the marketplace. Whilst we tend to focus on “how” the client would prefer to go to market and “when” they might wish to do so, the most important element is the “why”–the client’s reason for entering the marketplace–because it occurs on an emotional level and therefore drives the client to decide and act. Once you know why your client might wish to sell their property then you can create a sense of need and urgency for them to move forward.

There are two ways to approach lead generation:

• Geography
• Relationships

The geographical approach involves contacting people living near a property that sells to provide them with a market appraisal for their home. The point is to add more people to your database and send them your market reports. That’s fine, but what is the ultimate goal?

The fundamental goal of lead generation is to get face to face appointments with prospects. This is where you gauge whether a client is hesitant to list, is interested in learning more, or is ready to jump into the market and sell. From there you will help the client decide on a satisfactory price. Many agents stop here, but you want to follow up with the client to see how they are feeling about everything you have discussed. If you don’t do the follow-ups you won’t move those market appraisals into active listings.

Generating leads through developing relationships starts from the moment you meet a new prospect at an open for inspection or other event, and continues with a series of follow-ups. These are prospects who are already searching online real estate portals, coming through open homes, and possibly making appointments and meeting with agents.

Having a follow-up procedure in place and operating lets you begin pursuing new prospects as soon as you make first contact with them. A basic follow-up procedure can include an open for inspection callback, a second round callback, a 10-day callback and ultimately the just sold call. This approach is very effective in not only converting prospects into buyers, but it also establishes your relationship with that client as their trusted advisor for future real estate activity.

One mistake a lot of agents make is to try to push a client into buying the first home they show even when the client is obviously not interested in that home. You need to listen to your clients and pay attention to their needs and preferences so that you can find them more suitable properties rather than pushing them to buy the one home they have seen. This level of customer service and attentiveness is most likely to make your clients lifetime customers.

Always remember that today’s buyer is tomorrow’s seller. Stop thinking in terms of prospecting for business right now, and start prospecting for business in the future. This way of thinking will assure you a long and successful real estate career.

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

How to prospect for Now

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It’s so tempting to approach potential clients as though they are ready and eager to launch their property into the marketplace, because that’s where your mind is working. But your clients may not be anywhere near that stage in their own minds. Slowing down and starting with where your client is right now may feel like a strategy that will put you way behind the curve, but it actually puts you in a position of working ahead.

Start thinking in terms of providing value first and invoice second. The dialogue you use with clients is critical to preparing them to go to market eventually—not right away, but when the client and the property are truly ready. This means that for all of your calls—open for inspection call-backs, just sold call-backs, just listed and just sold calls to past market appraisals, past market appraisal follow-up calls, and past client calls—you need to know exactly what your goal is for that contact.

For any contact with a client your goal is to first progress the client toward setting an appointment with you, and then to finally set the appointment. Most agents go straight for the appointment without finding out what the customer actually needs or wants from the sale of their property. You will have much greater success in the long run if you start by asking the kinds of questions that will encourage your clients to reveal themselves and their situations. With that information you will know exactly which next steps to guide them through.

Some of the best questions you can use include:

How have things progressed?
This allows the customer to tell you about themselves and their exact situation.
What are the next steps for you?
This will tell you how realistic their expectations are, and is a good place to refer them to any other professionals they may need to work with.
How can I help?
Your client’s response to this will tell you their comfort level with the process so far.

This is also the point at which the client may suggest a delay in the process. They may be unsure or not feel ready to move forward. What you say next in this pivotal moment will move the process forward or set it back. A subtle and effective answer would be to simply say, “That’s fine,” then add, “But—Quick question: If I had a buyer right now, could I mention your place or should I sell them something else?”

This is an extremely powerful statement to shake your client out of their fear mode, generate excitement, and nudge them into thinking of possibilities.

If the client says, “Sure, you can mention our place,” this is your opening to make that appointment and initiate momentum. You may not sign a listing agency agreement on the first appointment, but you are beginning a progressive dialogue with the client. From here you can learn how to properly bring them to market.

Putting pressure on yourself and your clients to hurry up and list their properties right away will result in more losses than conversions. This is where you need to slow down and begin to think in terms of listing ahead of the curve and getting listings for the future. This is how your business will achieve real growth.

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

Helping Sellers to Sell

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Selling property is what we do, and the more we sell within a given timeframe, the more income we generate. Because of this sense of urgency our vendor motivation can drive us to list properties before they are actually ready to show. They may sell more quickly, but we won’t get the best price for them. In fact, a perfectly good property may be perceived as being overpriced if it is not presented well, especially if it is listed at the owner’s expected price.

There are some important aspects of presenting a property that are often overlooked in the rush to list. First, your asking price needs to be in alignment with the market, but pricing can go higher with a few cosmetic improvements. Before your first open for inspections or private appointments you want to make sure the property appears to be ready to move into with minimal work by the buyer. A little paint and yard work can make hundreds to thousands of dollars difference in what a buyer is willing to pay. It’s a good idea to make sure that everything is clean, and the interior looks and feels spacious and liveable. This kind of detailing might take a week or two extra, but the difference in your final sale price will be worth it.

Once the property is ready for viewing you can delay listing it long enough to present it to select motivated buyers before posting it to the market. If you have buyers who have pursued another property through a full campaign and then lost it, they are likely feeling hesitant to repeat that experience of loss and would be willing to pay a little more for a property they can secure. Once they are emotionally invested in achieving satisfaction rather than disappointment, they will pay more to make sure they can finalize the deal this time.

Another advantage to showing the home off market to prospective buyers is that you have an opportunity to get a feel for what buyers are willing to pay by asking them what they would offer for it. Show them all the value points, and then ask them where they see value. Most buyers have already seen several other homes and have an idea of what the market is like. They have decided what they are willing to pay and can give you a price range for realistic market value that you can take into the market.

Some brands have established “database only clubs” where potential buyers can sign up to receive access to online postings of properties before they go to market. This is a great way to expand your database with motivated buyers by offering them the added value of exclusive privilege to purchase properties before anyone else sees them.

For properties that do get listed and go to market you can get the best price possible by emphasising to buyers that they have competition and must act or risk losing the property. People are driven by fear, so if buyers are emotionally involved and feel that fear of competition and loss they will be more likely to pay more and buy more quickly.

Know these options and have a strategy for presenting well, motivating buyers, driving competition, getting the best price possible for your properties and meeting your vendor expectations.

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