Ep 144 – Winning Against the Overpricing Agent

This High-PerformancePodcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talking about winning against the overpricing agent. Invariably they’ll end up selling for the price you would have quoted, but they win the listing by inflating the value of a home to the vendor. Alex begins with knowing who you’re up against so you can tailor your presentation and show case studies supporting your process. Josh explains price history, pricing transparency, and how to use a tactical spreadsheet at open for inspections and listing presentations to show listing price vs. sale price of properties.

Alex lists some of the tools he uses to win and progress clients, and Josh gives an example of his listing dialogue. He advises getting clear on what you’re doing for your customer and showing them exactly why they should decide to use you as their agent.

Service Success

In business, if you’re not prepared to admit where you’ve failed the customer, then you’re never going to recover from that failure. In my Coaching Tip this week I’ll show you how service success happens when we identify and deal with areas of service failure, and then work to achieve service recovery.

Here’s a really basic service philosophy. If a child orders an ice cream at Disneyland, and the ice cream falls to the ground as the child licks it, from Disneyland’s perspective that’s a service failure. What they do is recover by remaking the ice cream, giving it to the child, and teaching them how to lick the ice cream so it doesn’t fall to the ground.

What does selling ice cream at Disneyland have to do with selling houses? Well, it’s about areas in your business where you’ve failed at a service level, and what you can do to recover by fixing the issue and really backing the customer in.

Say you’ve made promises to a client and, for whatever reasons, you’ve not made good on those promises. Would you still charge for services you did not deliver? Would you admit failure and try to seek recovery? I’m telling you to have that conversation with the client. Admit to that service failure. Don’t make excuses. The idea is to go super hard in backing the customer in so they will bounce back and be reasonable.

You see, a customer you’ve failed is going to be talking to other people about why they shouldn’t use you. It’s the worst marketing you could ever do. But service recovery is about you doing what’s right and fixing the issue so that the customer can say you backed them in, and they’ll tell other people to use you because you’re great at what you do.

Look at the service success in your business today. Identify areas where you have service failure, and decide what you can do to achieve service recovery. Make sure you’ve got great checklists, great forms, great dialogues and great visuals. Learn from your mistakes and prevent those critical errors from ever happening again.

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

The Main Purpose

When you get clear about the purpose of your business, that clarity changes the entire way that you work. In my Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip this week I want to help you focus on the main purpose beyond profits, because everything that you do stems from that.

On the inside of our business, our main purpose is to inspire estate agents to achieve their potential and to reach financial freedom. Everything we do is about that. I want you to think about the underlying thing that you believe in that drives your business. Why did you start your company? What is the problem you’re solving? What is the challenge that your business resolves better than anyone else?

Purpose is ultimately about understanding what you’re going to do to help people along their journey. If you just want to make money, that doesn’t do anything for your client. If you get clear on your purpose, then you start thinking about how to make it easier for people.

That might mean holding seminars for tenants about how to buy their first property, or do sessions for landlords about what to do to grow their portfolio. Start to think differently about problems you’ve never really thought about before. Where are the areas where things are clunky and not really working? Maybe you’re moving from one thing to the next, but you’re not getting the result that you want to get for your client.

Here’s a great example of making it easy. One of the greatest challenges in property management is the to-ing and fro-ing between the property manager and the tenant about the cleanliness of the home when the tenant moves out. What would happen if, for a small fee to the tenant, we simply send a cleaner through the property after they leave. Call it “Tenant Easy.” Fix the issue for the tenant and for the property manager.

That’s what a great business does. It alleviates the pain points. We want to make property easy for people. Make that the main purpose and you completely change the game.

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 143 – Dealing With Setbacks

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss methods for dealing with setbacks and getting back on track. Alex agrees with Josh that setbacks are a way of life and offers two basic things you can do to get over them. Josh advises that, when there’s been a service failure, just jump on the front foot and admit it, then take action to prevent it happening again. Alex notes that a mental state of moving on will prevent the downward spiral of thinking about it too much and losing listings as a result.

Josh reinforces that the one who recovers fastest wins the most, and lists some actions to get a quick reset and get back into the business. He advises understanding the setback is not your entire reality. Drop the tension, fix the situation, and get back to business.

Pay for leads, or leads that pay?

Pay for leads, or leads that pay?

The number one thing that determines the success of any business is how it acquires its customers. Our industry is hooked on the now, wanting an instant lead payoff. We have a short-term view, wanting to get a listing for this Tuesday’s sales meeting. On the flip side, we have agents who are still building relationships yet fail to convert any of those relationships to real live listings. So where’s the balance?

You need to get clear about what you do and what you don’t do. Lead generation websites aren’t new, but they do cut into your margins and breed lazy agents. Even worse, a number of the leads are already in your existing database. The better question is where does the customer hang out before they need you? They hang out at open homes and enquiring online. They also hang out with existing customers of the firm, better known as Landlords, Tenants and past clients of the firm.

What are the best lead sources?

Open homes – you meet more people more often who are already out looking for a solution. From neighbours to genuine purchasers that have to buy today. The buyer who buys’s is tomorrows seller. They choose the property not you, so it’s the beginning of the relationships.

Buyer enquiry – Buyers are establishing price points and value when they enquire, how you handle those enquiries determines whether they see you as valuable, or just another agent sending another automated reply which didn’t answer the buyers questions. It’s always my preference to call the client over emailing them; it gives you a real chance to find out exactly where they’re at in the purchasing cycle so you can provide the very best advice.

Market appraisals – The owner just want’s a price, after all, it’s probably the bait and hook that you used to get the customer to call, find out what your place is worth. The big banks are using the same tagline, so it’s time to change. The role of the agent at the market appraisal is to find out the clients dissatisfaction (the problem they are trying to solve), their vision (solution and what it looks like) and preparedness to make the first steps (attend opens, private appointments, make offers or bid at auction).

Landlords – They have a principal place of residence, but is your agency a full-service firm? If you are you’d get on the phone to arrange a time to see their principal place of residence, to provide and equity update, then either sell and upgrade, or use that equity to buy another investment property.

Personal network – You’ve got 1000’s of friends on social networks, but where do they live? If they live in an area you service, then you must cross the bridge of awkwardness and be their agent. The easiest way to introduce work-related conversations in a non-work environment is just to say it, ‘you wouldn’t believe what happened at work yesterday’, particularly around just listed/sold activity.

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The secrets of word of mouth marketing matter more than ever. Therefore customer experience is everything. You need to be able to define it to deliver it. Map out where the customer’s highs and lows are, then place a high next to the low. If you get a price reduction it’s a low for the client, so make sure you get a buyer inspection within 24 hours, a high, so they put the connection together between price reduction equals buyer activity.

The best in the business focus on appointments only. Get me to 3 appointments a day, buyer, market appraisal or listings appointments and watch your business fly. I’m not trapped in industry dogma around door knocking, cold calling, or vanity marketing. The best form of marketing is always an auction or for sale board up, and a sold sticker applied.

You must know what makes your business work, so you can amplify your efforts and steer clear of the activities that suck resources. For all the effort, energy and talk around social, I just wish people would spend more on serving the existing customers they’ve already got. Hunting for new, when the reality is a great business has repeat and return customers.

How much does your business spend on marketing? And how much of that budget is spent on retention and renewal of existing customers? Why pay for a lead that you’ve already got?

This article first appeared on Elite Agent: https://eliteagent.com/josh-phegan-pay-for-leads-or-leads-that-pay/

Dealing With Stress

Stress happens all the time, but you don’t want your business to slow down. My Coaching Tip this week is all about dealing with stress because your ability to cope when things go wrong makes a massive difference to your overall success.

Stress occurs when you’re here, but you want to be over there and you don’t know what to do to make that happen. If you’ve got the right systems then the people inside of your business can be working them. But if you don’t, there’s no way to ensure you’ll have the outcomes you need to achieve.

As people, we need to understand that stress needs recovery, and recovery needs rest. In fact, rest and renewal are critical components for being a great real estate agent. I’m saying you need to take plenty of holidays every year. This will give you the clarity and perspective you require to build a sustainable business. Working weekends is not sustainable in the long term.

Over time you’ll learn to think about the strategy around what to do to achieve the outcomes you need. You have to take control – start to understand the simple activities and renewal cycles you can do every day to reduce your stress. Tension isn’t going to solve any situation. Changing the way you feel will.

When your business starts to speed up, that’s a good thing. It’s when you put a business under stress that growth really happens. But the systems that got you to this point are not the systems that will take you forward. You need to find new ways to handle that higher level of demand.

Ultimately the best professionals are always in control, and they know exactly what to do. They have coping mechanisms for dealing with stress so that they can achieve the outcomes they require. Learn now how to get yourself back into a position of performing at your best.

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

Ep 142 – How to Win the Listing When You’re Not the Logical Choice

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about how to win the listing when you’re not the logical choice. Alex tells how to be mentally prepared to present with passion, ask the right questions, and win the listing. Josh proposes bringing up objections first and dealing with them, and Alex expands on ways to handle customer objections. He then lists things to do to follow up after the presentation, and Josh reinforces the need to have a plan set with the owner.

Alex talks about influencing your referrers to help you get business, and Josh suggests some great questions to help you win the business. Alex notes that he loses 1 in 3 listings, but being gracious in defeat will get you future business.

Understanding Property Pricing

As an agent, it’s your job to understand pricing and deliver on that promise of expert advice for your clients. My Coaching Tip today is all about understanding property and pricing from the viewpoint of buyers and sellers, valuers and investors, and the rapidly changing balance of each individual marketplace.

Here’s a simple example: A property may be listed as beach access, beachside, beach view, or beach frontage. Each of those terms defines a different proximity of the property to the beach. In each case the location of the property in relation to the beach impacts the way that property’s pricing will be analyzed.

If you’re a valuer, the key things you’ll look at will be the replacement cost of a property based on current standards, the rate of return if an investor rents the property, and rates in sales based on surrounding properties. If you know how a valuer determines pricing you can begin to understand how a buyer works it out.

Buyers base their pricing methodology on recent sales in the area, often through curbside valuations. More importantly, they’re doing open for inspections and if you haven’t seen the properties your customers are looking at, you won’t know how to sell against them.

It’s also a challenge when the agent’s price guide doesn’t match what clients are seeing in the marketplace. People determine price points on their perception of value, and they can get very emotive over pricing. It’s critically important to maintain relationships with your buyers by helping them understand how the market’s really working.

Understanding property and pricing is crucial because you have to get the pricing right. You are facilitating a marketplace that’s constantly changing, so when you present a current offer today, you must also advise on what the next offer might be. The sooner a decision can be made, the sooner there can be a decision, and the earlier that happens, the better.

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

Ep 141 – Building Your Database With Intent

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talking about building your database with intent. It’s about more than size, as Josh reminds us the point of the database is to progress and look after all those people inside of it. Alex begins with what a database really is and how to look at it long-term. Josh brings up bulk communication and they discuss how it fails to build relationships. Josh then stresses the importance of frequency, relevancy and consistency.

They talk about the importance of calling everyone in your database at least once a year. Remember the reasons why those people are in your database in the first place so you’ll have a better sense of intent and know what to talk about when you call them.

Self-Imposed Limiting Barriers

When you allow your people to become specialists in the way they work, the result is consistent delivery of great service for your brand. In this Coaching Tip I’ll show you how self-imposed limiting barriers prevent growth on the inside of your business and keep you from reaching your full potential as a real estate agent.

Your first challenge as a great agent is to understand what your limiting beliefs are. One of the greatest examples is the belief that you should be at every single open for inspection. Once you get to six, seven or eight open homes on a Saturday you discover that’s a real limiting barrier to further growth.

Think about what you’re providing to the customer and you’ll see that building a team around you will allow you to do more. You need to be able to scale your services through delivering a great customer experience. Having the right systems makes it easier to train your people. You also want the demographics within your team to reflect those of the audience you’re serving.

One way past that self-inflicted barrier around the open for inspection pace is being able to say with certainty that either you or your co-agent will be at every open for inspection. Be careful of titles because it prevents success for people inside of your team when they go to work with external clients. No one can be a “junior” in your team.

You can improve the quality of your life and business by employing a better team around you. But if you have self-imposed limiting barriers then you won’t have the vision to scale. A much bigger way of thinking is to build a team of capable people who can deal directly with every one of your clients and handle every aspect of your business. The brand itself will then carry the product.

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