Leadership Purpose

As a real estate agent, a leader, and a business owner, you need to understand not only what drives you, but also what drives your people. In my Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip this month I want to help you get really clear about your leadership purpose and why it’s so critically important.

We are all leaders inside of our own lives, but we don’t always recognize what actually drives us. Some people will say they’re driven by money, but it’s more about a desire for significance. We want to feel that what we do makes a difference. Your income may be most important to the quality of life you can provide for your family, or the security that buying assets and growing your net wealth will bring.

The key is to get to know what’s important to your people so you can help them achieve what they want to along their own leadership journey. Have that conversation with your staff individually about whether they’ve bought their first property or their next investment property, and what they’re doing to ensure that their career as a real estate agent will lead them to financial success.

The purpose is critically important to designing your business because it’s the foundation your business is built upon. In my own firm our purpose is to inspire estate agents to achieve their potential. For great real estate agents, it’s all about helping people make better decisions for a bigger future through owning property. Whatever you do, and however you do it, everything you do maps off of your purpose.

Knowing what drives your people as individuals is also part of your leadership purpose as it helps you spot when they’re doing things that aren’t conducive to becoming the type of person that they want to become. You can then give them a reminder when it’s needed. Find out what their drivers are, and they will drive your business.

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

Buyers & Buyer Hitlist

If you want to really turn your business around, it’s important to identify buyers who have the highest level of urgency. In this week’s Coaching Tip I’m going to give you crucial information about buyers and the buyer hit list.

In the course of your real estate career you’re going to meet a lot of buyers. They’ll contact you by phone, by SMS, by social media, or through the major real estate websites. Some will walk through your agency door. If you run three to five open for inspections on a Saturday, you could meet 20 to 100 or more people in a weekend.

Some of those potential buyers are more important than others. How can you identify them? They’re the ones making the next steps in the purchasing cycle. They’re making an offer, or meeting a second appointment, or the last to leave the open. They’re the ones who return your calls.

Out of all the people you meet in each campaign, there are 3 to 5 who are actively looking for the right home to purchase and are ready to develop a trust relationship with you. These are the people you put on your buyer hit list. I recommend that you hold a buyer pipeline review meeting every week to pinpoint the customers who need to buy right now.

The buyer who pays the highest price is the person with the greatest urgency. These are people who just sold a property, are relocating for a job, or want to buy the property next door to develop their existing property. Once you identify these people, then you do your very best work with them.

So the key to doing great buyer work is understanding buyers and the buyer hit list, focusing on the customers who are in an urgent situation that will motivate them to take action, and helping them find the right property for their needs.

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

Ep 135 — Delegating In Teams That Work

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talking about delegating in teams that work. They begin with how roles change as you go from one assistant to an entire team. Alex advises starting with the right people for your organisation and paying them what they’re worth. He also notes knowing what you want and making sure they know as well. Josh lists tasks you would allocate to your team, and Alex tells how roles are assigned, how they evolve, and who makes those decisions in your absence. They also discuss dealing with ego conflicts between team members.

They discuss pulse meetings and frequency of meetings, the importance of responsiveness and how your team makes that possible, and how intensity actually reduces stress and allows you to do more business every day.

Step-by-Step Growing A Team

At 30 transactions per annum you’re going to need to put on your first assistant. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll show you step-by-step what growing into a team looks like, and help you plan for putting on new hires smoothly.

Building a great team is a necessary step for scaling your business because there’s a limit to what you can accomplish alone. First, you’ll need an assistant to take over the administrative work. Some agents try to scale by giving that person a lot of buyer work and cold prospecting. But this assistant really should be taking on all of the admin level tasks so that you can stay dollar focused.

The easiest way to scale is to start with your own productivity. Your time needs to be spent on the phone and out at appointments each and every day. Your assistant helps you scale by handling all the marketing, property preparation, property styling, contracts and other legalities, and getting vendor approvals.

Once you get to six or seven listings per month you’ll be ready to grow into putting on a second person. This will be someone capable of doing your buyer and prospecting overflow work. These are special tasks that you just can’t get to, but are critical to producing results, like doing more open for inspections. As you build your team, be careful of titles. Clients won’t like seeing an “Assistant” handling their campaign. Title that position as a “Co-Agent” who is working with you directly.

Finally, growing into a team means investing in each individual you hire. You’ll need a clear personal development plan to train them for the skills that will be useful to you. Build a high-quality team that’s fully capable of doing the work so you can actually go on holidays or take a Saturday off if you need to. Back your people in so they can do their best possible work for you.

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

Ep 134 — Waking Up Productive

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss methods for waking up productive. Alex credits good preparation for his productivity and describes his routine. Josh notes that if you love what you do you don’t have to be motivated to do it, and Alex reminds that meeting appointments is more important than doing admin. Josh agrees agents must on the phone booking appointments, and Alex reviews numbers and types of appointments he does, and tracks on hours spent daily on each task. They examine how your mental state and your lifestyle affect your drive and productivity.

Josh and Alex tell how they know if a new agent is going to make it, and discuss training people for consistency and discipline to succeed. Josh advises holding yourself to the standards you expect from your team, and they detail a weekly calendar of priorities.

Great Business Turnarounds

What is the one thing that will turn your business on its head in under 30 days? In my Coaching Tip today I’m talking about great business turnarounds, and I’m going to tell you how to make that recovery happen inside of your business.

You know how it happens. Things are going really well, then all of a sudden you’re not getting sales, it’s hard to get listings, negativity starts to get in the way and you’re in a real funk. You need a turnaround.

First thing, you’ve got to know what’s important. And that one thing that will really turn your business around is booking appointments. Getting in front of customers is where you are most influential. A minimum of three appointments a day is 600 appointments a year. That will get you to writing over $1 million in fees, in any market.

Now, there are three kinds of appointments. There’s the buyer appointment where you build those critical relationships. Second is the market appraisal appointment that’s not just about pricing, but it’s getting to know and understand the customer’s situation, their dissatisfactions, and their vision for the future. The third and best appointment is the listing appointment. This is where you get to tell your ultimate story of what you can do for the customer. This is where you win the business.

Buyer, market appraisal and listing appointments give you the numbers you need to ultimately shift your business performance. You probably won’t actually see the shift happen within 30 days, but that’s the point where great business turnarounds begin in terms of growing listing stock each and every month. And that’s where you’ll start to really build the consistency you truly desire.

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

Ep 133 — What to Do When the Marketing Stops Working

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about what to do when the marketing stops working. Alex notes the current slow market in Sydney and describes some things he’s doing to generate leads. Josh describes the difference between transactional agents and those who focus on building relationships, and Alex explains buyer motivation and how to work through those relationships. They discuss the importance of contacting past clients and offering them information on current opportunities.

They share thoughts on altering timelines for auctions, campaign strategies, staying close to your buyers and understanding their motivations. Josh ends with an emphasis on doing great buyer work through consistency in communication and relationship-building.

Limiting Beliefs

Your business needs to scale, but if you’re going to start to write bigger numbers you’ve got to know how to do it. Today in my Coaching Tip I’m going to talk about how limiting beliefs hold you back from seeing the reality of the growth you can achieve.

It all starts when you’re an individual agent working your first open for inspections. At some point you’ll have auctions, too. Soon there will be more work than you can do alone, so you’ll put on an assistant. As your business grows you’ll have competing demands that you’ll feel you have to meet personally. But trying to do that will keep you from being able to grow successfully.

This is where you must learn how to scale. You do this by building a team of capable people who can do those open for inspections as individual agents underneath your banner. You’ll then be able to counter customer concerns and objections with complete confidence, even before they bring them up. I’ll give you some specific examples around how to make sure you have the right people working with the right clients in every capacity of your business.

Making your customers feel completely comfortable with your people is critically important. That’s why you have to hire a great team to represent your brand. I’m also going to give you some phone dialog for your people to use that will keep the focus on your brand without setting your agents up as individual sub-brands within your organisation.

Some of the best agents in the country are doing 100 transactions a year. You can scale your own business that way by building a quality team that steps you up to at least fifteen opens a week. Get past your limiting beliefs and think in terms of reaching those bigger numbers. Your sales process can then produce a much better result for your clients by giving you access to more buyers in more price ranges than any other agent.

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

How to Charge More

You can focus on the competition, or you can focus on the customer. One of them will pay your invoice, and it isn’t the competitor.

Our industry is obsessed with what the competition is doing. We still follow what others do, and if someone breaks the mould, we wait and watch, if it looks successful we replicate it fast.

The disruptors are eating at the edges of our business, stripping away the value proposition and it leaves us complaining that the competition is stiff, that it’s hard to compete. The advent of lead generation websites, new models that charge lower fees and provide higher splits, leave us dazed and confused.

The reality, all of that is a distraction, because all of that focuses on the current environment, on the right now customer. Even the banks are entering with full artillery to provide consumers with the ‘real market value’ of their homes. The age-old market report, market appraisal and free assessment are done.

So how do you win? You put the customer at the centre of everything you do. It’s called customer-centric design. You work hard to identify the sticky points, the friction, the things that don’t work then work out a way to deliver it so that the customer finds you valuable.

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The customer has never argued for a lower fee, they’ve argued for value, and in a good market, the agency looks easy. You’ll never know the strength of an agent until a market turns, or they have to negotiate. Any agent that’s started in the last five years on the East Coast of Australia has a limited memory of GFC conditions, and we’re certainly not headed there, but we are reshaping what it is that great estate agents do to earn the right to the customer.

It comes down to your customer acquisition strategy and if you think socials the answer, watch your business fry. What makes a business move and turn quickly on its head, the type of thing that adds accelerant to your growth is the relationship.

When everyone is equal on digital, which is happening fast, it goes back to the relationship. That’s why those that focus on making the calls, getting in the doors, getting face to face always win.

It take’s guts to avoid an industry fad, an apparent trend. You must become more valuable. For excellent buyer work, it means making a pest, building and strata report (if applicable) available from day one to reduce the buying friction. For the seller it’s having a buying service to help them find where they are moving to, assisting with property preparation, even sending someone to help have the property ready every Saturday morning for the open.

People are time poor; we live in a fast-paced society, a mobile society that expects to press a button and just make it happen. You could focus on the champagne you give to the customer but isn’t it of more value to send a cleaner to clean in the hours before settlement, for both the buyer and the seller? To send the locksmith to replace the locks and key alike for the buyer just after settlement and provide a spare key at our office service, to continue that consumer relationship with the future customer?

The most successful businesses in this industry focus on the customer never on the competitor, so be careful about who you’re trying to replicate, who you hold up as a role model, because you may be following a path into lower fees, lower profitability and possible extinction.

The easiest way to drive service innovation is to go through a real estate transaction yourself from beginning to end. Look at every point, what are the things you have to do and how can an agent make that easier, faster, better? We use a service called Getfeedback.com to survey our clients and the ideas they have for innovation on what we can do, is astounding. Pick up the phone and talk with 30 customers a day, find out what their real challenges are, the blockages as to why they can’t move, whey they can’t sell etc., find a solution, and you’ll nail it.

The last thing we need is another market report, another just listed or sold in the letterbox. What we need is a relationship that matters, one that’s built on trust. You do that through being relevant, that relevancy determines the frequency and consistency always win in business. Set your service delivery standard, train on the customer lifecycle and what you do to add the value. The true purpose of any great agent is to help people have a much bigger future through property.

The industry is bright for those that choose the alternative path. Do the work and watch your business thrive.

This article first appeared on Elite Agent: https://eliteagent.com/josh-phegan-charge/

Reducing the Politics Inside of Your Organisation

When internal politics override governing values, then you’re no longer doing what’s best for the customer. In this month’s Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip I’m going to talk to you about reducing the politics inside of your organization and putting the customer’s needs first.

It all falls down when you have competing demands. Let’s say one of your sales agents lists a property in a street where another of your salespeople already has a client and a third one is handling a marketing appraisal, and there are landlords living in that area as well. When that new property gets listed, who’s going to call the customers to let them know what’s going on? Who’s going to call the landlords?

While your people are worried about who is in whose database and whether the property manager will call the landlords, they’ve all forgotten about working as a team. Their confusion is costing the business money, and your customer is outside the loop, wondering what’s happening.

You’ve got to remove the politics and get your people working together again. That starts with customer obsession, which means the customer has to be at the centre of everything you do. Next, you have to get clarity on your Everest – where you’re growing your business. What are your expectations for listings, sales and revenue?

For your business to grow, you must have clarity of purpose. And that purpose is to help your customer grow through property transactions. Here, your guiding principles, policies and procedures, and general way of doing things, are critical to keep politics from taking precedence. Reducing the politics inside of your organization means you must make a clear statement that, “We don’t have politics inside of this organization. We do what’s best for the customer.” The sooner you set that rule, the sooner your business can do what it needs to 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.