The Four Systems For Scaling Your Business

If you’re one of those people who hate systems, my Growth, Leadership, and Management Tip this month will turn you into a systems junkie. I’m going to step you through the four basic systems for scaling your business and explain why you need them.

A system is a way of doing something that produces the same result over and over again and reducing variance in the end result. The four basic systems I recommend are forms, checklists, visuals and dialogues.

Using forms helps you ask the right questions to collect all the information you need in the right order during a buyer inquiry call, market appraisal booking, filling out an agency agreement and setting the marketing schedule on a property.

After forms, you need checklists to prevent critical incidents from occurring, like turning up at an open home without the key. Having a checklist for every procedure, indexed and available on your mobile phone, assures that nothing important is forgotten.

Next, you need key visuals, especially for listing presentations. Visuals like case studies, brochures, and sample marketing campaigns clearly articulate 1,000 words in one picture, and immediately communicate that you are successful around what you do.

Finally, you need great dialogues, especially for prospecting. A dialogue is the most efficient way to produce a particular result. Simple dialogues let you find out where your customer is in their process and help you progress the customer to make timely decisions.

These four basic systems for scaling your business will help you to onboard new employees quickly and ensure that all your people can consistently do everything they need to accomplish for you. The more you lead the systems, the more you can scale 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 week.

Ep 125 – Dealing With Absentee Owners

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss dealing with absentee owners. Alex tells how he maintains communications with owners he may only rarely meet face to face if at all. He stresses that people who are not in the area need more frequent and detailed information from you than those you can meet with directly. He also advises using the phone, not email. Josh notes using speakerphone for multiple parties whilst doing a listing presentation by phone, and Alex says he uses the same strategies and procedures, and asks the same questions as usual.

Alex advises around making the owner feel comfortable with your process. He also relies on referrals from other absentee owners. They then discuss handling auctions remotely, working with different time zones, and never letting the client wonder what’s happening.

Daily Activities for Success

For a lot of agents, every day of their real estate week is a surprise because they don’t have a plan for what they’re going to do that day. In my Coaching Tip this week I’ll help you get really clear about your daily activities for success, and build a structure for each day of the week.

Every day of the week, you’ll do a 10-step just listed, just sold process. You’ll search for new listings on the major real estate websites, and then call all the people you know who live near those properties to alert them to those listings. But there are certain days and activities that will lead you to specific results. So let’s look at the things that you need to be doing each day of the week.

Monday is a great day for open for inspections callbacks to the people you met over the weekend. On Tuesday you’ll do second-round callbacks to people you called Monday but didn’t get to speak to. You’ll have a pipeline review meeting with your team and then call through your pipeline of potential sellers. Wednesday you’ll do more second-round callbacks, plus a 10-day open for inspection callback to follow up with potential buyers you spoke with on the Monday 10 days ago.

Thursday you’ll work with existing clients. These people who have bought and sold with you in the past are your key referrers, so it’s important to stay in touch with them. Friday you’ll encourage buyers to attend open for inspections, invite them to auctions, and schedule private appointments for the weekend.

You should see by now that there’s a rhythm to this structure of daily activities for success. This will keep you and your team working consistently through the week, every week. With this system, everyone is clear about their individual roles and expectations, and every job gets done for the customer.

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

Ep 124 – Environments for Success

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talking about expired listings and how those can put your business at risk. Josh outlines some reasons properties don’t get sold especially around end of year holidays, and Alex offers some things agents should be aware of, including lead source opportunities and client expectations. He notes the disappointment an owner of an unsold property experiences and your role in reinvigorating their motivation, starting with great dialogue.

Selling Quickly

In real estate, we all know selling is the name of the game. The more we sell the more income we earn. Or do we?

Vendors’ motivation to sell quickly can often push agents to list a property before they are ready to show it to the market. Yes, they may sell faster but you won’t necessarily achieve the best price for them. It’s possible a great property will be seen as overpriced if it is not presented in the best light, especially if it is on at the owner’s expected price.

So instead of the early bird catching the worm, I prompt my agents to be the tortoise and not the hare. When presenting a property there are a few simple things that can make a big difference but are often forgotten. Your asking price needs to match the market and can be pushed up with some easy cosmetic improvements to the property. A little paint and tidying up the yard can make hundreds to thousands of dollars difference in what a buyer is willing to pay.

You need to make sure that the property appears ready to move in to and there is little to no work the buyer needs to do. Also, make sure everything is clean and the rooms feel spacious and liveable. It might take a week or two longer to have the property ready but the difference in the sale price will make up for it.

[optin-form title=”Looking to subscribe?” description=”Sign up to get all Josh’s articles and more sent straight to your inbox”]

Next, you should delay listing the property long enough to show it to selected, motivated buyers before taking it to the market. Buyers who have pursued other properties without success are likely to feel hesitant to repeat that and will be willing to pay a bit more for a property they can secure. Once they are emotionally invested in achieving satisfaction, not disappointment, they will pay a higher price to finalise the deal.

Showing the home off-market also allows you to get a sense of what buyers are willing to pay. Highlight all of the valuable points of the home and ask them where they see the value and what they would offer for the property. Many buyers will have already viewed a number of properties and can give you a price range for realistic market value.

Another option is to set up database only clubs, where potential buyers sign up to receive access to online property postings before they go live to the market. This allows you to grow your database of motivated buyers and give them the exclusive option of buying a property before anyone else sees it. For those homes that go to market, you can achieve the best price through emphasising buyer competition and fear of losing the property.

People are driven by fear and the more buyers that are emotionally involved and feel that fear of competition and loss they will be more likely to pay more and more quickly.

So the next time you’re thinking about racing a property to market sit back, take a breath and remember faster doesn’t necessarily mean better.

Systems & Checklists

Imagine if you turned up to your first open for inspection at a newly listed property and you’d forgotten the key. Picture a would-be vendor requesting recent area sales at a listing presentation and you discover you’ve forgotten to prepare them. Or what if your nerves prevent you from being able to remember your key points when negotiating with a likely buyer on a sale.

All of these things and many more can and do go wrong throughout real estate agents’ careers.

The good news is that they don’t have to and a few simple systems and checklists can help ensure you’re not wasting valuable time and money and squandering your reputation. Systems are a way of doing a task in a particular way to ensure the same result is achieved over and over again.

The downfall of operating with systems alone is that you’re likely to have so many of them that it’s hard to keep up and know what needs to be done when and how. The solution is to use checklists to make sure all the many details of your daily business operations are remembered.

[optin-form title=”Looking to subscribe?” description=”Sign up to get all Josh’s articles and more sent straight to your inbox”]

Systems combined with checklists ensure you maintain your performance at a consistently high level. A sales checklist allows you to manage every element of a sale from start to finish without forgetting a vital factor. It covers elements like organising photography and copywriting, having the vendor approve marketing, ordering brochures, running successful opens, negotiating offers and settlement. All of these processes are vital and if you get them wrong it can damage your relationship with the buyer or vendor and throw a spanner in the works of a successful sale.

Having a checklist ensures you don’t miss a beat, your systems flow smoothly and you don’t expose the agency to potential risk. However, no one is perfect and hurdles will arise from time to time.

A business also rarely remains without change and when these happen it’s important to include any deviations or mistakes in a revised checklist. I have two categories for checklist updates: “what works well” and “even better if”.

Every time something is missed or goes wrong in my business it gets added to one of those categories and the appropriate checklist to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Another benefit of using checklists is that they are ideal training aids when you employ someone new. They offer a standardised map of all the systems a new employee needs to learn and follow, and puts them immediately in sync with your business.

A rule of thumb I recommend is implementing a system for any activity where two or more steps are involved. This will ensure you work successfully and consistently. Maintaining checklists is the easiest way to manage all of your systems and workflow. Applications such as Asana are an ideal way to organise your checklists so they are easily accessible via your smartphone or computer.

Using checklists and systems in your business will ensure you never miss a beat, because even the smallest details matter.

Getting Started

Real estate can be a minefield, particularly when you’re new in the business. With the dawn of a new year and many fresh-faced agents joining the fold, it’s important to start off on the right foot. That’s where the problem lies – knowing where to start, how to build momentum and how to achieve success isn’t always clear and potential pitfalls are easy to stumble into.

But following a few simple, yet highly effective, techniques can help new agents navigate those early treacherous waters. There are three things new agents should focus on to really hit the ground running.

Write a list of every person you know.
Once you’ve made the list, use mapping software, such as batchgeo.com, to gain a tangible understanding of where your contacts live and where your key markets lie. Now it’s time to work those relationships. I’m not talking about a one-off phone call that you leave languishing in the ‘never to be phoned again’ pile, but a true client that you phone every time someone lists or sells a property of a similar type that might affect the value of their home.

Learn your listing presentation. If you can list you will last in real estate.
Listing techniques are relatively easy to learn and really have the ability to turbocharge your prospecting results. One option is to shadow a high-flying agent, preferably from your own brand, and learn what to do and what not to do with them. Learn basic prospecting questions. Everything you do in your business revolves around prospecting and communicating with potential clients. In all of your interactions, your goal is to move your client forward, whether that be to book an appointment or list their property.

[optin-form title=”Looking to subscribe?” description=”Sign up to get all Josh’s articles and more sent straight to your inbox”]

When it comes time to grow your client numbers it’s important to keep this question front of mind: Where do your potential clients hang out before they need you?
Open homes offer a vast resource for finding and establishing new client relationships and I urge the agents I coach to attend at least five inspections each Saturday. Buyers are often also sellers, whether that is the case immediately or in the future. Call people who have been through your open homes during the year and ask them if they are still looking for a property. You can also build your client numbers by calling past clients that were originally serviced by agents who have since left the brand.

These are some of your best prospects and are the perfect place to start your call lists. Mining your personal networks is another great way to find potential sellers. Think the school council, parents of the children in your daughter’s netball team and the owner of your local milk bar. If you know them, put them in your database.

A third client-generating avenue to focus on is success-based marketing of properties you have just listed or sold in the local area. Whether it’s a hard copy, email or video, make sure as many people as possible know your results and your name. While your goal is to fill your database, it’s also vital that you keep it organised. You need to know which buyers are now sellers, which residents are now landlords and who might be on the verge of selling.

Having thousands of contacts is of no use to you if they aren’t organised and therefore useful. Categories I instruct my agent clients to use include: buyers, buyer hit list, potential sellers, market appraisals, seller hit list, current clients, past clients bought, past clients sold, key referrers and landlords. If you do decide to shadow another agent within your company there are three key factors when choosing who to make your mentor.

Look for the person who has the highest number of listings, sales and income production. Focus on an agent who is the person you envisage yourself becoming. Look for someone who has successful systems that can be replicated and taught. One of the many areas your mentor can help you with is the art of prospecting and making successful phone calls.

As an agent, you need to learn to ask the right questions in order to jump the hurdles reluctant customers throw at you. Navigating customer-blocking techniques is a vital skill that will see you booking appointments and be starting new relationships. Finally, smile and invest in your own personal development, you’ll see an incredible return.

This article first appeared on Elite Agent:https://eliteagent.com/starting-out-right-the-road-to-success/

Turning Leads into Listings

Get the lead, then don’t be beaten!

Real estate leads don’t turn into listings and property sales with the wave of a magic wand. Let me off you some tips to ensure agents don’t bury the lead. Solid leads are both the lifeblood and the bane of real estate agents’ existence. When you’re converting leads to listings and sales you feel invincible and suddenly all is right in your property world. Without leads or without converting leads, you have no listings and without listings, you can’t make sales.

The trouble many agents face is avoiding the ebb that follows a flow of listings. Just like a sapling needs water and sunshine to grow into a tree, agents need to nurture leads if they want more potential vendors signing on the dotted line. A recent survey I conducted with my clients revealed 28 percent felt turning leads into listings and listings into sales was the biggest issue in their business. One agent said listings were down 35 percent across the market, another said “no-one is ready to sell yet,” and a third deplored “listings are more difficult than they have ever been and there is very little stock”.

The challenge agents face is overcoming last-minute resistance from potential sellers. Objections are a natural part of the sales process and potential vendors could bemoan putting their property on the market for a range of reasons. I urge my agents to delve deep and discover why their client is selling, where they are going and in what timeframe they are moving.

Clients’ problems could include a birth or a death in the family, a marriage or a divorce, relocation, financial gain or loss and lifestyle issues. Perhaps a seller has lived in the property for 50 years and is struggling emotionally with the thought of selling, maybe they need to find a new home first or they may have blinkers on when it comes to selling their property at any time other than spring. Whatever the objection, savvy agents need to know how to jump the resistance hurdle.

[optin-form title=”Looking to subscribe?” description=”Sign up to get all Josh’s articles and more sent straight to your inbox”]

These are my top 5 tips to beat last-minute resistance and turn a lead into a listing.

1. Tailor marketing to your client
The first step in the process is to identify your client’s needs and then sell the features and benefits that specifically relate to their situation. Remember if the customer can’t see the difference they won’t pay the difference. If a client is shopping around based on agent fees and has been quoted 1 percent by rivals then you need to adapt your pitch to suit. The first thing you need to do is book the appointment, as it gives you a chance to sell why you are different and should be their preferred agent. You can always value-add later.

2. Prospect ahead of the curve
If you want to sell properties now, don’t wait until the last minute to find them. If you know that potential vendors become hesitant when they feel uncertain, allow yourself time to reassure them so they feel confident with the sales procedures. I suggest prospecting two months in advance, so if you want to have a good August, start listing properties in June. If your client wants to sell and reach the settlement before Christmas then the next five weeks is the time to list their home.

3. Spend your first hour every day on marketing
Prospecting is not a sometimes activity, it’s an all the time activity. Every day make sure you are doing at least one and preferably two or even three phone call sessions. You need to measure your calls, how many times you speak with a potential vendor and how many appointments you set up. You should try to book at least one, or preferably three, appointments per day with potential sellers.

4. Progress the customer at every point of contact
Take the client to the next stage of the sales process each time you contact them. Many clients tell me they only follow up a lead with one phone call and if the client says they’re not ready to sell, they’ve hit a dead end. The trick is not to give up. Instead, ask the client what they would like to happen. This lets you know what you need to do to move along in the sales process.

5. Show your customers what needs to happen
There can be a big difference in what customers believe is an important step in the sales process and what actually needs to happen. You need to show them what the next step is as clients have often not sold their home before or it has been a long time since they have done so. One of my clients had a vendor who didn’t realise they needed the contract of sale prepared prior to taking their property to the market.

This article first appeared on Elite Agent:https://eliteagent.com/get-the-lead-then-dont-be-beaten/

Managing More Vendors more Often

Every great relationship is built on trust.

If you want to be a top real estate agent, one that’s ahead of the pack, you need to treat your vendors with the respect and dedication they deserve. They need to trust you and you them, in order to build a great relationship where the end goal is a strong sale. As the property market gears up for its end of year crescendo it’s critically important to focus on managing your owners’ expectations and generating the referrals that come from satisfied clients.

Here are some tips on great vendor management.

List it well, then it sells
The listing presentation is where you set your vendor’s expectations on everything from the sale method to price and marketing. Too often agents rush the property on to the market before it is ready. Buyers purchase with their heart and their gut as much as their head so you need to make sure your vendor’s property stands out. The presentation is critical as people buy the perceived lifestyle on offer rather than the property itself. Consumers will pay more for a property where all the hard work has been done for them and they can just move in and relax. In terms of your pricing strategy, it pays to be accurate. Consider asking some buyers from your hit list to view the property before it goes on the market. These are buyers that have missed out on other homes and are able to offer the best feedback regarding price.

[optin-form title=”Looking to subscribe?” description=”Sign up to get all Josh’s articles and more sent straight to your inbox”]

Communication
Buyers will tell you there’s nothing worse than an agent who never calls them or answers their phone. Remember, you’re most likely selling a vendor’s most important financial asset so you need to treat it as such. Add your vendors to your favourites list on your phone and start calling. Make it a habit to call your vendors every business day. Let them know where negotiations are up to with potential buyers, discuss new properties that have hit the market in their suburb and fill them in on the latest sales. Keeping your clients informed every step of the way lets them know you really are working for them.

Become a trusted advisor
At the beginning of the campaign hold, a ‘set up to sell’ meeting. This is where you explain to your vendor what they should expect throughout the entire selling process. Discuss the level of interest in their home you expect to receive, including the number of enquiries. Decide how inspections, both open home and private viewings, will work as well as details on second appointments, contracts and offers. It’s also the perfect time to finalise the marketing plan. For the duration of the campaign hold a weekly, 15-minute meeting at your office to run through the key information about their property that week and give your recommendations for moving forward. You should also call an extra meeting when anything significant occurs, such as when an offer is received. They key is to become a trusted advisor so you can keep the sale moving forward and work towards the very best result.

Don’t get shaky in negotiations
Too many agents don’t know what to do in the negotiation process, particularly when things get tricky. Make sure you have your vendor’s instructions clear and your plans in place before the property goes to market. That way you’ll know exactly what to do, even in tough conditions such as multiple offers or one-buyer situations. When negotiating an important question to ask is not how long the property has been on the market but how long the buyer has been searching for a home. A buyer who has missed out on other properties is more emotional and emotional buyers tend to lead with their heart, not their head. It can pay well to target emotional buyers. Keep a list of buyers that have shown signs, such as attending more than one open home or bidding at auction, they are ready to purchase. When an offer comes in work to make it as unconditional as possible. That way you’re set up for a smooth sales process.

Beware of becoming the second vendor
The property market changes rapidly and top agents know how to change with it. While vendors may have a fixed price in their head, agents need to be more fluid. Beware of becoming a second vendor and defending the original price sought for a property without listening to the reasoned market commentary. Learn to read the market and help your client understand what’s happening so that you can achieve the best sale price possible.

Feature Interview LSN 2017 – Part 2

This is Part 2 of the special edition of our High-Performance Podcast live from List Sell Negotiate 2017 featuring Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips. Continuing from Part 1 they discuss keeping calls brief and productive, Alex addresses sustainability and adjusting your expectations to your life circumstances, and Josh speaks to the value of continuous learning and the benefits of coaching. Alex talks about the importance of relationships and loyalties, even with competitors. They then note the reasons for keeping celebrations brief and getting back to work.

Alex explains the necessity for progressing vendors, and they recommend keeping goals visible. Alex advises maintaining and leveraging a great database, and Josh ends with a reminder to stay on the phone if you aspire to make millions and achieve your goals.