Purpose drives bigger futures

The brands and people that move any market are customer-obsessed. They put the customer at the centre of everything they do. The future of our industry is to realign our purpose rapidly.
The sales pitch has driven our business models. Our purpose has been to maximise the saleable value of the asset at the point of sale. But what would happen if we set a bold new purpose – to maintain asset value and maximise it at the point of sale? It seems simple, but it shifts the mindset from a one-off transaction to recurring revenue built on property services.
Firms of the future are embracing the jobs to be done concept, building new recurring revenue from property services. We’re seeing property maintenance, finance, insurance, property management and sales as service lines that fulfil customer needs.
You don’t have to be big to be good. Strike relationships with external providers, until you hit the scale point where it makes sense to bring it in house. How much would that change how we work with past and future clients? How much closer would we get to the customer during their life of ownership?
Here are the game changes for 2020:
Amplify what works.
Review every listing and every management you’ve won in the last 12 months, and ask the question, how did we meet the seller or the landlord? Think the following categories:
Sales:
Personal network
Buyer enquiry
Past clients
Social proof
Landlords
Community
Property management:
Personal network
Sales team referral
Existing landlords
Landlords who enquired on fee
Tenants
Acquisition
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The database is not a lead source; it’s where you put the leads. When you know what works, you can cut the wastage. There is too much time and money lost in industry dogma. The smart money is defining where your customers hang out before they need you, then building a platform for customer success. One customer served well leads you to your next customer.
To drive performance get clear on a simple set of numbers, so you can set a strategy, measure it and adjust to keep on course. For sales, it’s month to date, listings, sales and income, actual versus target. Then every week measuring your appointment numbers – buyer appointments, market appraisals and listing appointments. Momentum happens at ten appointments per week and market share domination happens at 15 per week. The more customers you meet with, the faster your business moves.
Learn the power of routine. A meeting rhythm ensuring consistency over time and reduces risk. Here are 5 basic meetings to deploy:
The daily directions meeting – 5 minutes at the start of each day to review the diary, align activity and set the priority.
The 3 pm loop back meeting. A quick check-in at 3 pm, to see what’s ahead, what’s been done and if there’s anything critical prior to the close of business.
The Seller pipeline review meeting. Focusing on problem, timeline and destination, so you nail the next steps for client progress.
The buyer pipeline review meeting. This aligns the best buyers in the market with existing and forthcoming stock.
And finally, the stock review meeting, where you review each piece of stock based on the indicators of interest, enquiries, inspection, second appointments, contract requests and offers.
Intention combined with organisation clarity, and technical competence is the secret sauce to serving more customers more often. No one came here to play it small. The secret is not to compete with your competitors, but to compete for the attention and praise of your customers. The biggest opportunity that exists is realising we have far more existing customers than we do new. Too many focus on attracting new rather than serving those existing customers in new and better ways.
Here’s a great example in Property Management.
How many landlords do you have?
How many live locally?
How many of those landlords have met the property manager who manages that property face to face?
How many of those landlords have had an equity check on their existing home?
How many have an appetite to purchase?
Then we move on to past clients.
How many past clients do you have?
How many receive an annual checkup call?
How many book in for an annual checkup?
And how many of those progress to the market?
Have you ever thought, how many of the listings you go for are someone else’s past clients that are just completely underserved?
The opportunity is so great; it’s worth the pain of change. Shift to a recurring revenue approach, the recurring customer, and it will change the way you do real estate forever. 
This article first appeared on Elite Agent: https://bit.ly/2U3xxNr

Ep 218 – Pricing For Volatile, Speculative and Unpredictable Markets

Today’s High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on pricing for volatile, speculative and unpredictable markets. Josh notes that markets have rallied quite suddenly and he outlines some of the challenges that occur in this situation. Alex explains how to place yourself in a realistic yet optimistic position under these conditions. They discuss how buyer urgency can influence final sale results, and Alex shows how to tell if a buyer is really ready to buy and, if so, leverage their sense of urgency to progress them.

They discuss price reductions and the need to introduce the property to a whole new buyer pool, the challenges of pricing in a dynamic market, best ways to increase your market knowledge, and the power of simply being interested in your market and your customers.

What’s the Real Lead Source?

What’s the real lead source in your business? As an agent, you have to understand this, and in my Coaching Tip this week I’ll help you use your real estate portal to identify what actually generates your best leads – and it may not be at all what you think.

We’re going to talk about the 6 major lead sources and how to use them to figure out which is really working for you. Then you can amplify that lead source to generate more leads, or maybe open a new one to further grow your business.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen an explosion of buyers coming through opens. I’ll tell you how to handle that volume of people, and also how to take a good lead source and do something even better with it.

It’s what you do after the open that can convert it into a genuine lead source. I’ll step you through the actions to take and how to measure results, and I’ll show you how to evaluate those customers so that you can better serve them.

You have some incredible lead opportunities, but what’s the real lead source? I’ll tell you what you’re missing that’s sitting inside of your business already and how to decide what to do next to achieve your potential.

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

Ep 217 – Routine and Momentum

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss routine and momentum. Josh shows how appointments drive confidence, and Alex outlines how he builds momentum with his personal routine whilst consistently doing 10% better each year. They discuss why the holidays are actually the best time to call people and progress them toward making decisions. Josh illustrates how FONGI (the Fear Of Not Getting In) drives market growth and tells why you should get an early, active start on the year.

Josh shares the secret of building quality routine and momentum by getting yourself back on track and gives examples of ways to do that. They discuss ways to rest and renew throughout the year, and how to know when to take that time for yourself.

What are you going big on?

You’re probably only one or two moves away from seeing incredible results inside of your business. In this week’s Coaching Tip I’m asking, What are you going big on? And what’s going to move the needle the most in terms of your performance?

There are some controllables that have to do with your energy and what you bring to the table. I’ll tell you what those are, and how to renew your energy and stay consistent during the upcoming busy summer market.

Your great opportunity here is to edit what you do so those things add value and you can allow yourself to grow and succeed in your business. I’ll tell you exactly what I’d be doing and who I’d be calling to get energy for the business through doing things that matter.

We’ll do a quick written exercise to help you sort out everything that needs to get done right now, and which of those things you should do yourself or delegate to someone else. What will make you a gun agent is the ability to concentrate on what you do best, and focus on what you’re going big on.

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

Ep 216 – “Welcome to 2020” Forecast

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips with a “Welcome to 2020” Forecast. Alex has a look at the past 3 months and tells why he believes there will be an oversupply of stock from March forward. He also indicates where his focus will be as we begin the new year. Josh advises learning to do what you can in any market, and continues with an overview of current factors and how market conditions are shaping up. He advises planning ahead for a 10-month year allowing for time off to regroup.

Josh states that this is a great time to re-assess where you’ve been and they discuss what to do now for high performance in 2020. Alex adds the importance of finding out where you can help your team members set and achieve their personal and professional goals.

Growth Traps – Why I lose sleep over growing slow

You have to have exponential growth. Growing in layers isn’t enough – you’ve really got to scale. In my Coaching Tip this week I’ll show you how to avoid growth traps and tell you why I lose sleep over growing slow.

Getting to 30 transactions a year is tough, but you can’t maximise sale prices or otherwise scale your business if you don’t have those numbers. I’ll tell you what that benchmark allows you to do and what you need to do to reach that level.

I want to help you get into a position to play a much better game. We’ll talk about growth marks that show you when to put each new person on your team, which numbers will help you reach exponential growth, and which of three controllables you can control today.

We’ll look at expanding your market share, taking control of your business sustainability, knowing what it is that you do for the customer, building your team, having a vision for the size of business you want and the mission of what you’ve set yourself to achieve. Remove your growth traps and every decision you need to make becomes clear.

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

Setting Intentions

Welcome to 2020 – It’s time for you to get your people back out there booking appointments and meeting with customers. This year’s first Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip is about setting intentions for business growth and success from the start.

As a principal, owner, or sales manager, you are the custodian of the environment for success. It’s your job to get people back into the momentum of seeing customers. I’ll introduce you to what I call “amplify sessions” to improve specific team skills.

You have to be clear on what success looks like. There are only 39 auction Saturdays in the upcoming calendar, so you have to plan your cash flow and revenue streams, and target your strongest months to maintain consistent cash flow.

I’ll list some high-quality calls to start making, give you some ideas to help you create an environment where people want success, and get into taking measurements so your people can work up to booking 10 appointments per week to really shift the dial-up on confidence.

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

Building your Narrative

The listing presentation is the ultimate story of what you do for your customer, but too many agents falter in the face of their competition. In this Coaching Tip, I’m telling you that building your narrative is the way to leverage the one part of the process that is unique: You.

You bring things to the table that make you irreplaceable as a phenomenal agent. If you want to be successful in your business today you have to be better than ever before at knowing what those things are and explaining them with confidence.

I’ll tell you the key numbers you need to look at for yourself and your agency. I’ll also demonstrate dialogue you can use for your listing presentations to give the customer a top-floor perspective and valid reasons to use you.

Building your narrative can be based on a number of elements and I’ll list those off for you. It’s critically important for you to have that narrative and be clear about what it is that you do better than anyone else. Do that and you’ll win more business at the fee you deserve.

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

Closing Out The Year – The Biggest Lessons

Some of the greatest lessons we learn in business centre around new skills we need to bring to the table. In this month’s Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip I’m talking about changes in market cycles – in particular, the one we’ve just been through in 2019.

In the first 6 months of the past year, we saw a lot of sellers trying to sell in a down market. I’ll review some of the strategies and tactics we were all using in order to sell properties under these conditions. And we’ll examine how the market changed.

We’ll look at how the market came roaring back, changes in the ways properties were selling, and how that influenced the way agents were working. I’ll also tell you how to achieve and maintain recurring profit.

To be a great principal you’ll want to gear your people up for what success is going to look like in 2020. I’ll outline what you need to be doing now to be ready for the upcoming changes in market cycles and get really intentional around what it is you do.

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