A Players, B Players and C Players

Your business is only as good as the people who work inside of it. You need to be clear that your sales team is made up of dedicated, productive people. No doubt your team members are some of the best agents in the business, but is there anyone on your team that you feel less certain about?

Think about how much time you need to spend with each of your agents to keep them on track and meeting goals. Now go through your organisational chart and apply a grading system to all of those agents based on the time you spend directing them:

• A Graders: These agents require as little as 5 minutes of direction a week
• B Graders: These agents require a few hours a week of your guidance
• C Graders: These agents require significant time with you daily

Consider the time you spend with each team member as time you cannot spend with your family. How many B Graders do you have in your sales team? How many C Graders? The more A Grade agents you have inside your business, the less time you will spend providing direction and checking up on your sales team’s productivity.

Go through your organisational chart again and this time simply rate each agent with a plus or minus sign depending on whether you have a positive or negative feeling about their performance. This will help you to target coaching sessions with team members on areas that need to improve while evaluating their capabilities for achieving those goals.

Some of your existing people simply cannot perform at the level you need them to. This is why it is important for you to always be recruiting new talent. Recruitment is an ongoing task, not only to replace low performers, but also to expand your sales team and grow your business. New people keep your brand fresh and progressive.

Think about the last person you hired who became a real asset. What was your system to get them oriented and on track for success? What worked brilliantly and what could stand improvement? And what did this individual bring to the table that helped them become productive quickly?

As a principal it is your responsibility to make certain that prospecting is being done consistently. Momentum drives your business’s growth and is maintained by constantly generating leads. Open for inspections generate a large portion of your leads, so each of your agents needs to be doing 5 to 10 open for inspections each Saturday. If you have an agent who consistently produces on the lower end of those numbers then that person is essentially setting an organisational standard for low performance. That affects your entire business.

In order to prevent low standards from being established inside your business you must actively set and enforce higher standards. Visualize what success means to you, and then set benchmarks for performance expectations that each team member must meet in order to keep a position within your agency.

You will also need to have some required performance standards in mind when you are recruiting, but not necessarily industry-specific standards. A mistake many agencies make is to only hire from within the real estate industry, but there is much significant potential talent outside the industry. Consider that work ethic, corporate disciplines, and the ability to generate leads and sell properties are not limited to the real estate business. If you have a recruit who is doing very well in another industry that person will likely also shine in your organisation with the right training and good coaching. Of course you will also recruit from within the industry as you meet other agents in the course of conducting your daily business, particularly during open for inspections. Whatever their experience, you will need to orient new hires to work within your business environment.

It is best to start new hires in positions that align with their current level of expertise. If they have not worked in real estate and/or were under-performing in their previous position, then place them for the first year as an assistant to the lead agent. Not only does this help with the lead agent’s workload, it also trains that agent to be an effective coach for new hires. Of course, the new assistant will learn how the basic tasks they do are essential to the business, and they will learn from the ground up how your brand works and what drives its success.

Always make sure your new people have or receive this foundation of real estate experience and training before you move them into higher positions. It is important that they are able to work to capacity where they are before you move them upward. New hires are expensive if they do not produce. They are also expensive if they leave and take their average percentage of your income with them. Of course, when they do work out they add significantly to your profits. A good standard for consistency is to make sure that no one agent is producing more than 15% of your total revenue so that if that person does leave your organisation they don’t leave you with a staggering income deficit. Naturally this does not imply that you should hire mediocre agents. Just maintain a balance between the number of agents you hire and how much they can reasonably produce within their marketplace. This is where territories and relationships become a factor. Assign sales territories to agents best suited to them. Some agents will do better if you keep them focused on client relationships.

You will grow your best possible business by recruiting fresh talent all the time, maintaining a team of A Grade agents who personally want to succeed and grow with your brand, and making sure your time growing and directing your sales team is minimal and is spent as efficiently as possible.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s Leadership Training Tip. If you would like more information about coaching opportunities by the Josh Phegan Company for your organisation, simply reply to this email. I look forward to seeing you here again next month.

What it takes to run a great team

It takes a great team to effectively grow your business. Whether you have already built your team or are still working alone, growth is necessary to your success. And putting on an assistant is your first step to growing your team.

An assistant allows you to focus your energy and expertise on the most important aspects of your business, mainly prospecting. Your assistant can handle all the office housekeeping tasks, data entry, making reports, looking up contact information, etc. while you make phone calls, field appointments and build relationships with customers.

As you prepare to build a solid team for your business, ask yourself these simple questions so that you know what you want to accomplish:

• What does success look like for us?
• How will we know when we’ve achieved it?
• How am I measured?

Make sure you are clear on these core business points, because you have to communicate them to your team members. One proven way to do this is for you to follow the Big Three concept.

Your Big Three states that every day:

1. You are responsible for listings, sales, and income production
2. You are always prospecting to generate listing leads
3. You are providing direction to your team

You will also have a Big Three for your assistant to focus on daily:

1. Campaign management: Organizing photography, copywriting, advertising, proofing brochures and text ads—all of those details beginning at the point the property is listed.
2. Database management: Entering and categorizing new contacts with all their details into the database.
3. Marketing automation: Setting up marketing campaigns for the proper categories and contacts inside your database.

Now, there is no reason a good assistant can’t do some prospecting along the lines of overflow open for inspection call-backs, 10-day call-backs, just sold call-backs, and following up on past inquiries from your major real estate online portal. However, remember that prospecting is the single most important task you do inside your business, and it is primarily your job because it requires your expertise, experience and connections. Prospecting is all about building relationships and those vital relationships need to be personal between you and your clients. Remember your assistant is there to allow you to do your job—not to do your job for you.

Once you have an assistant in place and handling all those maintenance tasks you can start building and growing your sales team. To do this you must be actively checking in with them daily.

A morning huddle with your team will keep everybody focused, on track and informed. They need to know what your expectations and focus is for each day. One of the most important things you will teach your team is how to use their time–and yours. Give them a structure, and tell them what you will be doing and what they are expected to accomplish. Other ways to check pulse with your team include quick surveys and recognition awards.

You teach your assistant to do the tasks you need done by having clear simple guidelines and streamlining the way your organization works. You build your team on your core business values and reinforce these values consistently to your team so that they always know what to do and why. It all begins with you knowing what you want to accomplish and communicating your expectations clearly so your team can help you achieve success.

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

End of Financial Year Planning

The end of your financial year is a good time to re-evaluate your budget, think about your numbers and decide how to pursue growth in the next year.

There are three areas where increasing your performance will make a tremendous difference in your profits. Those key initiatives are:

Increasing your fees
Increasing your average sale price
Increasing your volume

Competition has a way of influencing you to lower your fees in order to secure clients, but this may also cause you to charge less than you are worth. An interesting effect is that newer agents often command higher fees simply because they don’t “know” they can’t. They are not familiar with their marketplace yet and don’t know they are asking more than the average percentage. They are also eager, optimistic and enthusiastic. The result is that their positive drive and energy gets them the fees they ask. That same approach can work for you as well. Also, if your agency offers a performance based fee incentive you can negotiate to receive bonus payments when your sales rise above a certain percentage. Especially in a growing market even a 10% bonus can add significant profits to your bottom line.

Increasing your average sale price is another way to achieve growth. First you must determine whether that is possible in your area of the marketplace. Study properties currently on the market, asking prices and completed sales, to get an idea of profits that are possible in the areas you work. You do need to be in an average to high-end marketplace to realize this advantage because that is where you will meet the clients who have properties with the values you need.

Increasing your volume will also drive your profit margin upward. This level of work requires a team, or at the least an assistant, to help you with your expanded levels of prospecting and buyer work. Start by reviewing your numbers, then determine how many properties are active in your market and what percentage of those properties you need to book in order to realize your target growth. Study your market for average sale prices and volume of available properties. You then have to make sure your market generates enough active properties to provide the volume you require for growth.

Plan your active year based on a 10-month calendar. You want to make sure you have 2 months off each year to rest and recharge for the level of energy and consistency you need in order to maintain a successful level of work the rest of the year. Make sure that you download a copy of our financial spreadsheet and use it to structure a clear plan for your upcoming financial year of business. Then you can decide where to focus your efforts for your most successful approach to growth within your market through increasing your fees, your average sale price, or your volume.

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

Becoming a great Lister

A lot of agents like to have a structured listing presentation that they can step through without having to think about it. However, the point of the listing presentation is to communicate with your clients about what you will do for their unique needs that your competition won’t. They need to know how marketing, pricing, sale method, timing and fee delivery will apply to them, so your delivery needs to change to fit each individual client’s situation.

After evaluating hundreds of listing presentations we have identified some fundamental yet powerful techniques you can employ to ensure your process will be effective every time:

Have an agenda
Use a writing pad
Employ trial closures
End with a summary close

These simple tools make a game-changing difference in your delivery and outcome, starting with your agenda.

An agenda is a working structure that also allows you to be flexible with each individual situation. Its purpose is to make sure you stay on track and cover everything in an appropriate order. Of course, a good opener addresses the needs of the customer on their terms and from their point of view. You want to deal with their unique situation, considerations in selecting an agent, preferred method of sale, options for marketing, how pricing is determined, and next steps they will want to take.

The writing pad is a versatile tool that gives you immediate control of the flow of the conversation. It allows you to ask better questions by listening intently to your customer, taking quick notes, and responding to their input and queries with focused relevance. For example, if you discover this is their first property then you know they will need more time, more information, and more emotional support than someone who has been through the process before. If you have clients who have bought or sold before then they may already have specific preferences around how they want their property to be handled.

Another important question is whether they might let you bring buyers through for inspection, possibly selling before placing the property on the market, or if they might consider auctioning the property. Knowing these details allows you to tailor your pitch.

Also keep in mind that you do not have to finish your entire listing presentation in one sitting. Rushing clients into the marketplace will often work against you. Yes, you need to establish your fee and land an exclusive agreement, but often the best way to do this is to take the pressure off your clients and let them do the process in stages. They will be more likely to sign with you now if they feel comfortable with your methods and your intent.

A property is ready to list when its presentation, pricing and sale method are right. Getting those elements right is best accomplished using trial closures. Trial closures get clients to make necessary decisions about open times, auction times, photography times, supplying a key for access, choosing a conveyancer for legal paperwork, and of course, pricing.

The summary close then brings everything together you have discussed for final confirmation. This is where you finalize pricing, marketing, sales method, timing, and if not already done, choosing your agency and delivering your fee. If your summary close is incomplete then you are not in a position to sign for this business. This is why you need to have an agenda from the start. Your writing pad is the best tool for closure, too, so you have a list of items you can physically check off, making sure nothing has been forgotten.

You will never have one listing presentation that is finished. Each listing presentation is an interactive exchange with a new client and/or a new property. This is your only opportunity to outperform your competition. This is not the time to think about what you need out of the deal. Focus on learning your client’s needs, desires, doubts and fears, be responsive to them, and you will be a successful lister.

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

Prospecting to Prosper

If you want to prosper in real estate, you have to prospect consistently and successfully. That means you are on the phone calling prospects every day. Of course, some days will be better than others, but there are ways for you to improve your results even on off days.

First, make sure you have a list ready every day of prospects to call. Don’t question the process, just start calling with your primary goal in mind. And that goal is not just to make those calls, but to book appointments. If you aren’t going to work to actually get appointments there’s no point in calling. And the way you get bookings is to be yourself when you talk to people.

Some people have a different way of talking to customers on the phone than the way they talk to people face to face. If you do this, stop. It comes off as fake if you sound too polished, and you will lose rapport quickly with the client. Be yourself, be genuine, be real and people will trust you more readily.

Next, make sure you are asking the right questions. Use the “Know, Feel and Do” concept. Ask yourself:

What does my customer want their customer to know?
What does my customer want their customer to feel?
What, then, does my customer want their customer to do?

Know, feel and do moves people from emotion to action. That’s exactly what you want to make happen when you are on the phone with your prospects.

You also want to maintain relationships with your clients by keeping in touch with them. Calling them often and talking with them on friendly terms keeps you relevant to them. Being good at talking with the people you know is even more important than talking with new prospects, because you will have more conversions with clients you are already established with. Cultivate new prospects every day, but communicate with them regularly so that they soon become people you know.

For example, if you see that a new property is listed in a price range close to the going rate in another market where you know a prospect, call that person and tell them about it. Put that information on their radar. When the property sells, call them again and tell them what it sold for. Then you can ask for an appointment with them to see their house and give them an idea what it is worth today.

Being clear about your goals for prospecting and what steps to take to get results is necessary for success. Remember the Pareto Principle – the 80/20 Rule that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your actions. Make that 20% of your work every day count. Maintain effectiveness – even on off days – by having your call list ready, being genuine in the way you talk with people, focusing on getting appointments, and working in 45 minute sessions so you stay fresh and energetic.

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

What it takes – from hiring to working with an assistant

If you have not done so already, there will come a time in your career when you need to hire an assistant. This is an important step and you want to do it right.

Hiring an assistant allows you to concentrate on your primary areas of expertise that move your business forward such as prospecting, building relationships, and listing and selling property.

A difficult aspect of deciding to hire an assistant is knowing that you are personally adept at certain aspects of your business, such as writing emails or sending invoices. One thing to consider is whether you should actually be doing any aspect of your work that involves sitting at a computer. Your focus should center on the tasks you alone have the expertise to do – primarily face to face interactions with clients. This is what employing an assistant allows you to do.

Make sure you have sensible, understandable systems and processes in place. Checklists make a tremendous difference in the efficiency of your operations. For example, creating a checklist of 20 tasks to prepare for open for inspections can drastically improve your success rate for these events.

Don’t necessarily hire the first assistant who accepts your offer. Make certain you are hiring reliable people, and be willing to pay a little more for a candidate with demonstrated skills and reliability. Look for people who are actually better than you are at core tasks. Talented, accountable people make it possible for you to do the work you need to handle yourself.

Make sure you set the new assistant up well enough to perform the tasks you require them to do. They need a computer, an email address, and some specified training.

Some recommended reading suggested by professionals in the field includes:

– Cut to the Chase by Stuart R. Levine
– The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz
– Mastering The Rockefeller Habits by Vern Hannish

Consider requiring job applicants to read one or two of these books before you hire them. Then test them, not only on what they have read, but also on how well they fare in actual working conditions such as an open for inspection. Hire them for a day and see how you work together. Remember, you may well spend more time with your assistant than with your family. Make sure the relationship is a good one before you commit to it.

Also be prepared to lose assistants from time to time. It is a high-turnover position; most assistants do not intend to be with you for many years. Accept this reality and make sure you have built in scalability, and documentation that helps new assistants get up to speed quickly.

The fact is, you cannot build your business without hiring at least one assistant. Once you are making $30,000 per month in fees you have to think seriously about hiring someone to help you or you cannot grow. Don’t let fears or misgivings stand in your way – do your due diligence and hire the right person to help you.

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

Great Business Turnarounds – Why Energy Matters

No matter how good you are at what you do, there will be times that your performance is off and things simply don’t work out as well as usual. The most important indicators of your business success are how well you handle these off times, and how quickly you can get back on track and moving forward again. The more momentum you maintain, the better your chances of regaining it fully after you hit a bump.

Momentum is created and driven through activity in your business. It’s about working multiple open for inspections each weekend, meeting as many buyers and sellers as you can, and then keeping in touch with those contacts. Momentum is vitally important to your career, and the best way to maintain it is through planning. Without a plan you will miss far too many opportunities and your business will decline.

Planning involves filling your calendar year with campaigns for holidays and other events happening in your marketplace, as well as actions you need to take in response to market conditions as they rise and fall. Planning also entails structuring your days for efficiency and productivity, from the time you wake up to when you will have meals and get to the gym – from when you make your phone calls to when you will meet people face to face. Schedule your greatest activity for when your energy is highest so you can get the most done.

Agents who are most successful have a plan and follow it every day. In general, morning is likely your highest energy time of the day and the best time for you to make your phone calls to vendors. Next up is prospecting for potential sellers and market appraisals, followed by checking in with past clients to ensure their future business. Part of your plan is to have a hit list of people to contact every day. Never limit yourself to going after just one potential client – always be contacting multiple prospects every day. The more prospects you have, the greater chance you have of working with at least a few of them.

On those days you are not at your best, having a structure to follow ensures that you will still be productive. For example, you can start your day by doing 45 minute call sessions. Make your calls in the morning while you are fresh. Have your hit list ready of people to call that day. Measure your calls, connects and appointments. Estimate how many calls you can complete out of the number of calls you make in order to make 1 to 3 appointments per 45 minute session.

Having an off day or week takes a toll on you in anxiety and stress. You can offset that negative effect and keep your momentum rolling by having a plan in place and protocols to follow.

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

Coaching your own people is core business

Today I want to emphasise how really important it is to your business that you demonstrate leadership by coaching and mentoring your own team – how well you empower and train your people matters enormously to your bottom line and is directly linked to your core business.

Think of it this way; when a salesperson has the opportunity to come and work inside your organization they are effectively paying you for that opportunity to work underneath your guidance. They have chosen you as their career coach.

Let’s say, for example, you work on a 50/50 split with a salesperson and perhaps they’re producing $500,000 in fees. That means that effectively they are a customer who is paying you $250,000 for the opportunity to sit within your business. Remember, they are paying you to not only provide the resources, tools and the brand to manage their own business, but most importantly, the mentoring and the “tormentoring” that they need to achieve their potential.

This is a great way to stand back and look at your own business and its opportunities, essentially from the perspective of a managing partner.

One of the great challenges that we all face as business leaders is really connecting with our people and ensuring that we’re growing them in terms of their skill set.

Throughout the course of the year I recommend that you conduct some structured team reviews, maybe an annual review or a quarterly catch up, as well as having weekly one-on-ones with individuals for 10 or 15 minutes.

The challenge is that we all very rarely really connect with our own people when we’re trying to fit these kinds of meetings into a busy work day and a busy work life. I think it is critically important to every aspect of your business to fully understand your role as a leader and the opportunity that you have, at every meeting, to truly connect with a person and be a great mentor and a great tormentor.

The late Steve Jobs would actually take his people on a walk around the block to talk with them. His reasoning was that it’s an informal environment and can reduce friction and challenges to really talking issues through. It’s a great opportunity to get some sunlight and a refreshing way to connect.

If you want higher engagement with people then you you’ve got to get to know them. Most importantly, you’ve got to be challenging them specifically around the skill sets that you know are going to take them to the top of their game. We know, for example, that there are three core skill sets that substantially boost performance.

The first of those is the listing presentation. If you can train your people to be phenomenal at listing, that can change their entire view on prospecting, because they learn how to ask better questions, build their self-confidence and their own drive to do more prospecting.

Prospecting is obviously the second major element because it is about hitting the phones, understanding how to be more relevant to customers and also how to build a system for consistent lead generation.

The third component, which is a critical one for you as a mentor, is to ensure energy and self-management. I know that a lot of real estate agents burn out in our industry because they’re not managing their energy well, whether it’s their diet, physical exercise, values and goals or even simple things like making task lists and managing their calendar.

As your own business leader you must realise that you’re the boss first, not a friend of the people that are working with you. This means you must challenge and torment them to really achieving their growth. The best way is to do a SWOT analysis by sitting down with each person, from reception to sales, to pinpoint their own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

They key here is not for you to be the persecutor, but to help them to think about where their personal opportunities are for growth. Encourage them to talk with you in an open way around where they’re doing well, their weaknesses and how to pursue their opportunities and also the threats. Your clear role is to coach and mentor them so that they build greater momentum, more often.

Sometimes the best way to mentor someone is through the course of a transaction, to give them real, on the job training. As your business grows you can employ external coaches and mentors/ tormentors, as I do for many growing clients.

In short, it is critical for you to think about your own role in ensuring the delivery of the 50% of fees that those agents are paying you for the opportunity to work with you. At the end of the day, your role is to be a phenomenal tormenter, mentor and coach to take them to the top.

We’d love the opportunity to work with you at the Josh Phegan Company and help you make this happen within your own business and for your own benefit. Just hit reply to talk to us about where you’re capable of going. Have a great month!

Employing Effective Phone Skills

The telephone may be your most basic and essential tool, but make sure you are using it to your advantage or it will work against you.

It is very easy to find yourself selling over the phone, but selling is best done in person. Remember that the more time you spend with a client on the phone, the less focus and direction your phone conversation will have. A routine phone exchange can quickly deteriorate into a waste of time for you and for your client.

Each phone conversation must have a goal and an objective. Remember you are on the phone with a client specifically to bring that client and their property into the marketplace.

For example, if the client says they want to wait a couple of weeks before making a decision, ask them to use that time to have their legal documentation prepared. This does not signify a commitment on their part, but it does make the rest of the process go more smoothly should they decide to move forward. This is a great suggestion you can make by phone in less than 2 minutes.

And 2 minutes is the key here: Anything longer and you are in danger of trying to sell over the phone. This is counter-productive. If your conversation needs more than 2 minutes to complete, then make an appointment and spend face time with your client.

Think of it this way: Each phone call is a means to an end, and that end is to get face-to-face with your client. That’s because the best way to move your client forward through the sales cycle is to be present with them. You can’t do that on the phone; you need to be there in person.

It is helpful to have some call-enders ready for those clients who want to sit on the phone and chat with you. A few reliable exits include:
“I know you are busy so I’m going to let you go now.”
“Oh, look, my 2pm appointment has arrived so I need to let you go for now.”

Just make sure that 2nd call-ender is properly timed!

Every call is important, but efficiency is a core trait of every successful agent, and nowhere is that more applicable than time spent on the phone. Exiting a call gracefully may seem arbitrary, but it is a necessary skill. No less important is the skill of asking a few powerful questions that will render you the most pertinent information with the least time and effort. Plus, it never hurts to record your calls so that you can review any details you may have missed. You can also finesse your phone skills by reviewing your calls and improving your approach.

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

Scaling For High Capacity

The scalability of your business determines the capacity you can achieve. There are three basic ways you can increase capacity in your business: Fitness, Systems, and People.

Your business fitness is a lot like your personal fitness. It is defined by your strength, activity, and speed of recovery. Business systems define the structure within which you operate to achieve regular and consistent results. And frankly, nothing happens without people: You, your team, and your clients.

There are many opportunities available to you and your business – so many that they can become distractions. In order to capitalize on those opportunities and minimize the distraction factor, you need to build a great team that can help you achieve scalability by handling necessary maintenance tasks so that you can devote yourself to the work that requires your focus and expertise. And of course, prospecting is your number one priority because you have to have clients in order to offer properties and make sales.

One scenario is that you could have an assistant arrive to work a half hour before you do and begin the task of reviewing primary real estate websites for new listings for your target areas, and print those listings out. The assistant can then search your database to match potential sellers, market appraisals, past clients, key referrers, and landlords who lead the industry or own similar properties in those specific areas, and print out that list as well. When you arrive at the office you will have a full report on those prospects so you can immediately start making calls. What this allows you to do is have relevant conversations with active prospects in a timely manner, and to stay ahead of your competition. It also establishes you as a trusted advisor with your finger firmly on the pulse of the market.

This is only one example of systems you can put in place that will allow you to progressively expand the capacity of your business and maintain the relationships that are crucial to your continuing strength and success as a real estate agent.

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