Traction Series – Part 1

This begins our Traction Podcast Series, a special edition of our High-Performance Podcast featuring Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips. Traction is an in-depth look at top agent Alexander Phillips’ career and success. He describes how he started, how he grew the business, his prospecting fundamentals, and his year-on-year growth methodology.

Alex and his team sold over $500 million this year. In this series he and Josh will give you the basics of what it’s taken for him to become number one in Australia, starting with a definition of the job we actually do for the real estate consumer.

Alex continues around developing your identity in the marketplace, why you should start out in the market area you want to end up in, choosing a big enough market for growth, and choosing a demographic you’ll appeal to. Discussion then continues in Part 2.

Ep 126 – Expired Listings

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 the 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.

Josh tells what to do with marketing that hasn’t worked and re-pitching the property. They discuss the legal and ethical components of transitioning respectfully from the last agent to you and making sure you get the job done for them.

Starting to Plan For 2018

If you’re going to be great in the New Year you need to start thinking now about how you’re going to make that happen. My Coaching Tip today will get you starting to plan for 2018, so pull up your calendar and let’s get started.

Your first auction days are in February. You want to get going early because the later you start your auctions the less you’re going to sell in the first quarter. For auctions in February you’ll be doing open for inspections in January, and there’s no reason to wait for any holidays, like Australia Day, to pass first. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’re in business for the year.

It’s important to consider all the upcoming holidays, like Easter and Anzac Day, as well as school holidays, and that means long weekends for several weeks. This is where you really need to understand the rhythm of your marketplace and have your campaigns listed well before time to get to market.

Start thinking now of ways to get your clients to market. Get photos taken before Christmas decorations go up. Make sure legal documentation is ready before you take a property to market. Ask customers when they want to sell and when they want to settle, and get a basic agency agreement signed. Be ready to talk now with your clients who sell in November and December about forthcoming auctions in 2018 when they’re going to be looking to buy.

Some agents don’t sell any properties in January, but you can if you list your stock well before the first of the New Year. There are strategies and tactics you can use to make sure you maintain momentum right through the holidays. Starting to plan for 2018 now is critical because if you don’t, with all the upcoming holidays you’ll only have four weekends to hit your entire target numbers for the first quarter. The key, then, is to list consistently, sell consistently, and write consistent numbers.

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

The Secret to Success

Success – it’s all up to you. That may be blunt but it’s the truth.

You’re the only one that can carve out a successful real estate career for yourself. The trouble is many people don’t succeed and here’s why; they’re scared to. They’re scared of failure and, surprisingly, many are afraid of going all in and being incredibly successful. But there are some things you can do to ensure travelling those unchartered waters is a little easier.

The first is changing your mindset and realising that failure is not something to be feared. Rather than holding back and not attempting anything new because you’re worried you won’t succeed, give it your best shot.

The more you fail the quicker you learn and the quicker you learn the more you earn.

It’s important to have a real passion and drive and to understand that every no you get is another no closer to receiving a yes. Push past rejection and people hanging up on you and you’ll discover that asking great questions, such as ‘what are the next steps’ or ‘how can I help’ and ‘if I had a buyer could I show them your place or should I sell them something else’ can unlock the customer.

This develops a confidence so it doesn’t matter what the customer says you know to focus on them and their situation.

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When changing your mindset it’s also vital that you leave all of the emotional issues, challenges and distractions from your everyday life at the front door when you walk in the office, this makes connecting with the customer so much easier. One thing I’ve discovered training my clients is the power of the past and how trawling past market appraisals and clients can be a goldmine for fresh vendors.

After asking those key questions you suddenly discover you’ve booked marketing appraisals and they turn into listing presentations and they become listings. Then you discover you’ve got open for inspections and potential buyers to call back and your confidence soars. The trouble is no one tells you that for the first handful of transactions you’re going to be as shaky as hell.

The key is to ride that choppy surf and sail into the calm water.

But don’t think you’re safe just yet, all could go pear-shaped if you don’t look after yourself. It’s not unheard of for real estate agents to find themselves rocking backwards and forwards at the bottom of the shower unable to deal with all of the stress and pressure. The secret to getting past that is to look after yourself and that means eating well, exercising and getting enough sleep.

On the work front, you need to work from a task list, manage your time well, have a start and end time for the day and implement systems to maximise your abilities and capabilities. Once you know these systems and can teach them to others all of the stress and anxiety starts to evaporate.

The key is, once you reach $30,000 GCI three months in a row you can hire an assistant, which will force you to have those systems in place and make your business more successful.

This article first appeared on Elite Agent:https://eliteagent.com/the-secret-to-success/

Business Growth

Too often business leaders fear rather than celebrate the swift growth of their business. Management becomes overwhelmed and bogged down in processes that hinder rather than aid expansion.

However, the one area you should never get too afraid of is business growth and the pace at which it is building. Business growth should never be about speed but, rather, your capacity to understand who your next employee is and the systems needed to keep up with that demand.

Building your capacity for growth starts with alignment and ensuring everyone on your team understands the business vision, what their role is and how that contributes to success.

To keep everyone on the same page you must first know and understand your Big Three primary functions.

  • You must be good at what you do in order to succeed. If you’re mediocre or worse, the business will fail.
  • You must clearly communicate your vision, direction and expectations.
  • You must build capacity of scale so your business can grow consistently without stalling.[optin-form title=”Looking to subscribe?” description=”Sign up to get all Josh’s articles and more sent straight to your inbox”]

To foster and cope with growth great business owners must employ great employees. They need to let go of non-essential tasks and find the right team members with the right skills and right attitude to take care of important tasks and do them well. This allows you to focus on your primary role and performing it well.

The key is to have a recruitment plan in place so you’re hiring ahead of time and not waiting until you’re overwhelmed.

Three critical leadership functions include:

  • Your clarity of vision sets the direction your company will take. Know where you’re going, what markets you will serve and determine your product and service mix.
  • The capability of each new employee determines your ability to scale successfully. Forget about snazzy titles and think about what each potential employee can bring to your business. What is their value? What are their strengths and will they strengthen your business? You’re much better to have a really good quality office manager that can take ownership of key business tasks and allow you to focus on scaling the business.
  • Your systems for recruitment and onboarding must ensure alignment and scalability. One of the most important roles in any real estate business is deals support. Who do your sales consultants go to for advice on their latest listing or sale? Failing to provide focus and clarity on such a big factor can lead you to scale too fast and that creates stress and a desire to have a much simpler business.

Sustainable growth requires highly functioning people, regular team planning, capacity for growth and systems that work.

With these elements in place you can’t grow too fast as you’re well prepared in advance for every leap forward. 

This article first appeared on Elite Agent: https://eliteagent.com/aint-no-mountain-high-enough/

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.

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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.