No More Solo Offers

It can get demoralising pretty quickly when you’re the only person showing up for your open for inspections. In my Coaching Tip this week I’ll tell you why having no more solo offers is the one thing you need to concentrate on, however tempting it may be to take the first offer you get.

There are three people involved in every negotiation: the owner, the buyer, and the next buyer. It’s this second buyer who is most important because they make the current buyer look good.

I’ll explain how you can use this second buyer’s offer to show your seller why the first buyer’s offer is the one they should accept. The one key thing that drives markets is urgency. It’s the reason a buyer is willing to pay more.

The lesson here is to always present offers in context. There has to be a second, lower offer to compare so your seller can clearly see how much of a premium they’ve actually got. That’s why no more solo offers can be taken forward to your sellers, and it’s how you’ll ultimately bring more deals together.

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

Align or die – The reality of why so few companies ever last the test of time

Imagine you were fired. A new CEO was installed, what would they do next? It’s the hallmark question of great CEO’s, rethinking what’s possible, reimagining, realigning and rebuilding.

The number one thing leaders need to do in turbulent markets is to reinvest – into people, process and resources. You’ll never cost-cut your way to greatness. To build a great business, you need to be super clear on your operating system.

That operating system is built on three foundations:

  1. Purpose – why you’re here, what you do for the customer, the ultimate quest. Nintendo’s – make people smile. Compass – to help people find their place in the world, ours, to help estate agents achieve their potential and reach financial freedom.
  2. Mission – a set of specific numbers – think the number of sales, properties under management, customers served.
  3. Values – the set of rules of how we play the game. If people don’t know the rules they can’t play by them if the leaders don’t live out the values, neither will anyone else.

You can get by without them for a while, you can spend a lot of money creating an exceptional brand, but if it’s not underpinned by those essential its starts to break. You won’t know why people grate on you, why certain behaviours keep happening, and you can’t align your team to achieve the mission. Even worse you can’t hire, manage or fire to those set of values.

Values aid in fast decision making. You’re taking all the decision responsibility out of your arena and placing it into everyone else’s, so more people are making significant decisions more often.

The mission is critical, as you get clear on the intent of the organisation. What’s incredible is that we measure market share of listings and sales, but we don’t measure market share of properties under management?

Instead, we have people go on quests to gain a net 100 properties per annum, but is that an audacious goal? What if the market is 10,000 properties and we have 300 under management? What happens if we have 3,000 and the market size is 3,200? You have to know where to grow, is it about building saleable value? Cashflow? Or a mixture of both?

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When you get clear on the mission, you deploy the right resources in the right spaces, with the right people. You then use those values to ensure the right behaviours. You realise that essential business processes need to be in play and understood.

Simple things like:

  1. How we generate our revenue
  2. The markets we serve
  3. How we generate leads
  4. Our listing pitch
  5. How we sell properties in under 28 days
  6. How property management and sales work together
  7. How we recruit
  8. How we grow people
  9. The payment models for teams
  10. The growth drivers of the business
  11. The meeting rhythm, consistency and overall etc

So where do you start?

Get your executive team together. If that’s you all good, if it’s a team of 10 even better. Set aside 13 days a year for planning. A 2-day annual planning session, a quarterly and a monthly planning day. Aligning focus is incredible.

Keep the mission the mission. It’s that simple. Will this or won’t this help us to achieve the mission? That should be the guiding decision around what projects to pursuit to ensure the business achieves it.

Align your resources. There are amazing people in your business who are completely underutilised. What functions are performing well? What functions need work? We use ‘what worked well and even better if’ process to assist in guiding decisions.

Measure. Your dashboard is crucial. Decide on the key numbers, when you need to meet, and how frequently you need to meet so you can adjust and take corrective action. For salespeople, I look at listing sales and income, month to date every week, and buyer appointments, market appraisals and listing appointments week to date. I review them every Friday at 4 pm, so then I can adjust for next weeks activities and outcomes.

Never grow tired of speaking about the purpose, the mission and the values. Ray Kroc built McDonald’s on quality, service, value, cleanliness. He said those words a billion times. If it’s good enough for Ray, it’s good enough for you. Define your values and stick to them.

Intent leads to organisational clarity, which lets you train for technical competence. Hold yourself to high expectations and others will follow.

This article first appeared on Elite Agent: https://eliteagent.com/reimagine-realign-rebuild/

Ep 183 – How To Drive Sales Team Performance

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on how to drive sales team performance. Josh begins with the importance of doing the little things well, and Alex shares some basics of team performance that yield big results. They discuss how key measurements show where adjustments need to be made and why that’s important to set goals. Alex describes how milestones help motivate newer team members, and what he does to build momentum with those who are lagging in performance.

Alex tells how he gets himself back on track quickly and maintains balance in his life and work, and Josh adds insights around the motivation gained from recognition for doing well, which results in great energy and productive relationships.

Mastering Negotiation

You’ll never get the very best price the market will pay by presenting solo offers to your vendors. My Coaching Tip this week is about mastering negotiation, and I’ll start with demonstrating when an offer is clearly out in front.

As you start into a negotiation you’ll often find your vendor is locked at a price point they want to sell at. You may have their best buyer at a slightly lower price, but you’ve got to have more than one offer to clearly demonstrate the best offer to the vendor.

I’ll illustrate these concepts with some actual case studies and show you how these agents were able to help their vendors make better decisions around selling their homes for the best price possible. And these are methods you can use with your own clients.

When an offer is only presented in isolation the owners can’t know if it’s actually the best offer, so when you take an offer forward you must also have other offers to clearly show that this is the standout money. Your vendors need to see that this buyer is prepared to pay substantially more than the next two.

When you move people into logistics is where you really begin mastering negotiation. Learn these new negotiation tactics and you’ll get your vendors excited because they can see how things are actually going to happen.

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

How to get more done each quarter

As a business leader getting your people engaged is one of the most important things you must do. In this Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip I’ll show you how to get more done each quarter by focusing on initiatives that will drive your business forward.

We’ll look at quarterly themes beginning with an example set of five key initiatives to pursue in one quarter. You’ll learn the importance of reinforcing those initiatives in every meeting and how to do that effectively.

I’ll explain why you’ll also have private meetings with each team member to clarify those initiatives and why they’re important to the business. You’ll then have each one score themselves on how well they’re going, and I’ll outline how that scoring system works.

The challenge is that too many confusing messages are circulated inside of your organisation and no one really knows what they’re supposed to do. Getting clear on your quarterly themes and five key initiatives is how you’ll get more done each quarter.

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

Ep 182 – Pre-Auction Offers With Only One Buyer

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss pre-auction offers with only one buyer. Alex advises on getting both buyer and vendor together on price and making sure the buyer is mentally and financially prepared. They discuss advising and progressing the buyer to the point of making the pre-offer. Alex also notes the advantages of knowing who the buyer’s solicitor is and tells how to work with them on negotiating the best price.

Josh notes post-auction strategies, and Alex emphasises keeping the vendor’s motivation high throughout the process. Josh then explains why it’s the opening hours post auction that offer the greatest opportunity to bring the deal together.

Scripts and Dialogues

People can tell if a conversation is fake, and my Coaching Tip this week is about using scripts and dialogues naturally. What really makes this work is confidence in using your own words to get where you need to be.

The real challenge is the critical path to shortcutting the conversation by asking the best quality questions. You also need to be able to anticipate the questions the client is going to ask you. Your delivery within the first 15 seconds can make a call successful – or not.

It’s easy to get caught up in unnecessary talk, so I’ll show you how to avoid those pitfalls and get really clear about the key outcomes you’re trying to achieve. You’ll also learn why the last 10% of the conversation is where you make your money by getting commitments.

Follow-through is also critical. Never leave a call without being clear about your next steps. Write that down in your diary as an item to go and do. Regardless of market conditions, the best agents aim to get three appointments every day. If you do that you will see results.

What’s important is not to rely too much on actual scripts and dialogues. Be precise with your language, but be yourself. Focus on what you’re doing for the customer, ask better questions, and book those appointments.

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

Ep 181 – How to Sell in a Slowing Market

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on how to sell in a slowing market. Alex begins with ways to get a buyer to make an offer and explains why mental preparation to buy is more important than financial. Josh offers examples of working through the logistics of a sale before getting to price, and Alex adds the advantage of having finance solicitors and other key suppliers that you can refer buyers to.

They discuss how you create a great buyer, Alex describes how he prepares a buyer for the sale, and Josh summarises the elements of making the deal including conversations with the client, logistics of the transaction, clarifying next steps, and having a clear timeline.

Lead Generation

A great agent needs to know what their top four lead sources are. Lead generation is everything in business, and in my Coaching Tip today I’ll show you the essential business processes you must get right to generate your leads.

The best agents understand their primary lead sources. First is your personal network, which includes all the people you already know who own property in your marketplace, including all your phone and social media contacts.

Buyer work is your next critical lead source as it relates to all of your interactions, from online inquiries to face to face conversions. Next is your relationships with past clients, and then we look at landlords, who own both rental and residential properties.

Also consider the agents who retire, retrench, or move on from their current role. They leave all their past clients behind and that’s a too-often missed opportunity to pick up those existing relationships and move forward with them.

Social proof is another lead source, as letting the neighbours know when a property is listed or sold breeds more listings. And last is your community involvement, which means knowing where your customers hang out and putting yourself into those places.

The key to lead generation is looking at all those potential lead sources and defining what your own top four are. Focus on doing just those four over and over, really invest in those relationships, and you’ll have an incredible business.

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

Ep 180 – New Trends for 2019

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips offering their observations of new trends for 2019. Alex outlines his best practices for marketing and sharing information in the industry, Josh weighs in on why some agents don’t disclose their pricing, and they agree that making more information available through promotions and marketing helps buyers make better decisions.

They discuss the necessity for agents to have quality market knowledge, how sharing great sales results and improving pricing knowledge benefits everyone in the database including customers, and they compare this year’s transition into historically high sales.