Ep 132 – Service Standards and Why They Matter

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talking about service standards and why they matter. Alex advises setting high standards and delivering on your promises and client expectations. Josh breaks down and illustrates the service standard concept, and how that service generates listings. Alex explains the importance of getting clear on what your service standards are, and believing in those standards. They discuss scaling your team, and the requirement that your people also understand and uphold your business standards.

Josh notes how work ethic determines position and how your support positions allow you to do more of the work you need to do. Then Alex tells how he trains his new sales agents by exposing them firsthand to how the business works, and clarifies expectations by example.

Don’t Copy What They’re Doing

Rather than worrying about competitors, a great real estate agent is focused on ensuring a winning customer experience. Today my Coaching Tip will reinforce that you don’t copy what they’re doing at that other agency. Instead, decide exactly what it is you need to do for your customer.

If you really want to win in your marketplace, remember it’s your customers who pay your invoices, not your competition. Still, agents tend to work harder to compete with each other than to deliver what their customers will appreciate. Everybody copies what everyone else has done, and the industry becomes less smart in its approach to dealing with the customer’s needs.

In the book The Power of Moments authors, Dan and Heath Chip speak about specific things we can do to engineer the moments we experience. An example would be a trip to Disneyland where your children will experience moments of excitement as well as moments of low enthusiasm, especially as they reach exhaustion. The interesting effect is, at the end of the day they’ll likely be tired and at a low point. Three weeks later when someone asks them about Disneyland all they’ll remember are the high points and how much fun they had.

The same thing happens to your customers. If you send a feedback survey immediately after any customer transaction, you’ll tend to hear about the low points in their experience with you. The further you move away from that transaction, the more they’ll remember the high points of working with you. The key is to find ways to marry a high point of success closer to where the low point exists.

These are the important things that a great real estate agent considers, and the reason you don’t want to worry about your competitors and you don’t copy what they’re doing. Map out specifically what the high points and low points of your customer experience are, then decide exactly what it is you need to do to set an expectation where they’ll say, “That’s why I use you as my real estate agent.”

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

Ep 131 – Distraction, Disruption, and Competitors

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss distraction, disruption, and competitors, and how to keep yourself above those bad influences. Alex tells how his fees have remained high as other agents’s have dropped because he focuses on nurturing relationships. Josh notes that successful disruptors in all areas of business are promoting what they do for the customer rather than their own success rates. He also compares digital vs. relationship-driven models. Alex details how service sets his agency apart and wins the business for him.

Josh notes that market knowledge and quality relationships can’t be faked, and the agent who wins is the one who gets those 3rd-party referrals. Alex explains the importance of case studies for social proof, and being highly available and in touch with your vendors.

What’s the Job You Get Done?

As your business scales you’re in danger of treating your customer experience like a transaction. In my Coaching Tip today I want you to ask yourself, what’s the job you get done? I’ll show you the warning signs that you might not be effectively dealing with your clients’ human issues during the course of selling their property.

You need to understand what your customers find valuable in what you do for them. They want you to help them get to Sold, they want you to help them get moved, and they want you to help them get everything done as quickly as possible. To ensure your success in meeting their needs you need a great set of rules.

Some of my own rules include not taking a listing without vendor-paid marketing, setting the right sales process for the style of property and current market conditions, and making sure pricing is right and understood by the client. I also insist that my clients are genuinely nice people with the right style of property in the right market area for my brand to be representing. And my client has to want to sell even more than I want to make the sale for them.

If you meet these rules and conditions you’ll be set for success. But you must also ensure that you’re responding to your client as a human being. Some warning signs that you’re not paying attention include a sudden resistance to more open homes, reductions in price, or payments for more marketing.

A great agent knows that if a property isn’t sold it’s because they need to take control of the situation. Get clear around what’s the job you get done for the customer. Ask great questions around what they would like to see happen, how they would like to proceed, and what they would like for you to do. Their answers will help you identify and drive for actions that will produce results.

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

Ep 130 – Rebuilding Momentum

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about rebuilding momentum going into 2018. Alex claims that too many agents are shortsighted and desperate, and that shows badly in front of the vendor. He says if you keep doing all your day-to-day activities whilst looking ahead 3 to 6 months, then listings and momentum will happen. Josh notes the necessity for customer acquisition, and Alex elaborates on lead generation plus ways momentum is built between agents and agencies. Josh tells how appointments lead to listings and sales, as face-to-face is most influential.

Alex notes that consistency prevents peaks and troughs, Josh advises managing focus rather than time, and listing ahead of the curve as cycles occur in life as well as the market. Alex then predicts where most agents will lose momentum with upcoming market trends.

Keep It Simple

Instead of getting distracted over what you think you’re supposed to do, let’s get clear about what you actually should do deliver the results your client needs. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll show you how to keep it simple to get more results for more customers.

Too many agents today are looking too hard at what everyone else is doing instead of concentrating on what they’re doing themselves. A great business starts with great systems. That can mean checklists, or forms, or dialogues, or visuals. The point of the system is to help you do the work, and teach other people how to do that with you.

Everything in life is about getting real clarity about your goals so you know what systems you’ll need to reach them. How many sales do you need, and how many properties? How will you generate leads and do appraisals? It’s your systems that will get you the results. And if you’re not getting there, then redesign the systems and put the right people in play to go get the result that you want.

Consider the type of business you want and design your system to produce it. Determine if you’re at a capacity issue right now, figure how many transactions a month you need to get to next, and decide what systems you need to get right in order to get that growth. You can also use time and motion studies to work ahead of the curve. How long does it take to produce, how simple is it, and is it getting the result you need? Time your processes and create systems to reduce time and work more efficiently.

You’ll actually get greater results if you simplify the process for the customer. A lot of agents produce large dossiers of information to impress their clients. Most clients want to hire an agent who can keep it simple, though. Boil down all of the key things you need to discuss with the client onto one page, keep it relevant and be direct, and they’ll trust and respect your opinion.

Like Zig Ziglar once said, if you help enough people get what they want then they’ll help you get what you want.

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

Ep 129 – The Three Areas for Growth

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talking about the three areas for growth, which are how you get customers, maintaining operational effectiveness, and delivering great customer experience. Alex begins with what makes an attraction business and the importance of building relationships and having a process you understand and follow. Josh follows with a customer acquisition strategy that moves away from the word “prospecting” and to the word “service.” Alex then explains how economies of scale affect your growth and accountability.

Alex next tells how making every minute count becomes a skillset you develop over time. He advocates changing and evolving constantly to stay ahead of the competition and describes his own business growth. Josh ends with you setting the pace that others will follow.

Disruption

Technology is rapidly changing the way we live and work by creating disruption. As a great real estate agent your task is to put the human in the technology whilst providing that progressively higher level of service. In this week’s Coaching Tip I’ll tell you how to put the nail in the coffin on would-be disruptors by ignoring what they’re doing and focusing on your customer.

First let’s understand that a disruptive technology is one that substantially improves the customer experience by changing the way systems work. The advent of the mobile phone is a great example. As more people adopted mobile technology it fundamentally changed the way we live. In the real estate industry, when someone rebrands they may claim to be a disruptor, but most of these “disruptors” are focused on earning a higher percentage of the fee even though their level of service remains the same.

You set your fee at a certain level in order to have profitability. Substantial profit allows you to provide the best service, deliver the best customer experience, and ensure a smoother and easier sales process. A big part of that success is the ability to give your internal customers – being your sales and property management teams – the resources they need to provide those quality customer services.

A current example of a disruptive technology is the new BP petrol stations. The entire transaction of paying and fueling happens right at the pump. There’s no need to ever enter the convenience store, which means you won’t be buying any other products. That process has been disrupted, creating a new technological opportunity – such as huge convenience machines vending whatever else you might buy at a service station.

If you want to create some real, positive disruption, then be that agent who works from a center of care, empathy, skills and knowledge. It’s ultimately what you do for the customer and how you change what happens in your community that drives industry-wide progress.

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

Social Media and Your Brand

What social media does really well is amplify word-of-mouth marketing. If you do it right it can help you grow your business. In my Growth, Leadership, and Management tip this month I’ll show you how to build your brand through social media and avoid the mistakes others are making.

Your brand is more than just a logo. It’s an ethos you’ve worked hard to create for many years. It’s about what you understand, how you communicate, and your way of doing business. It’s the quality you bring to the actual transactional experience. It’s an exceptional thing and you need to protect it. One of the greatest challenges you face is how to best use social media.

No one has cracked the formula for making social really work. It’s been more of an explosion with no real strategy. The problem is that agents are coming from an individual place and competing for small audiences. Each salesperson has their own account on Facebook, Instagram, and so on. From a customer’s point of view, why would they choose to follow that individual real estate agent’s “dear diary”?

I’ve got a radical approach to social media. I have a single account as a person that’s also concentrated on my brand. We use unique, beautifully created content that’s specifically about the brand. It includes a shout out personally to my salespeople throughout the course of the week so they don’t need all those individual agent accounts. And rather than a following of a few hundred agents, we have several thousand followers from the entire community.

The thing that will make your business and your brand really move is having deep relationships with your existing customers. Post content that relates to the consumer, their situations and challenges – things that are more meaningful to them so they’ll want to follow you. Be a real person, and stay focused on the personal connection and your personal relationships through your brand. That will make social really work for you.

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 128 – What To Do With Wild Success

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss what to do with wild success. Josh illustrates why it’s important to plan for success before it takes you by surprise, and Alex lists some warning signs, and notes the need to stay humble and avoid becoming a rock star agent. Josh observes how social media has amplified image vs. reality, and advises around better ways to plan for and use your money than to spend it all.

Alex talks about maintaining consistency through rising and falling market cycles, having the hard conversations your clients need to hear, learn from other agents who are more successful. Josh advises to always be eager to learn, as the learning process never ends.