Ep 108 – The Role of a Great Sales Manager

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss the role of a great sales manager. Alex addresses negotiation skills and preparation. He and Josh tell why they support open office information sharing and how this exchange helps your brand. They also discuss how to deal with conflict and competition between your own team members, and why that might happen.

They continue around when it’s a good idea to bring in another agent on a deal, how to establish a “the more, the more” mentality, how your principals help bring deals together, and how you can help your people grow their skills and confidence.

How to Succeed As an Agent

A great agent is essentially an all-around great person. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll tell you how to succeed as an agent and as a person by merging your business life and your personal life. It’s important for your business that you leverage every relationship you’ve got, including your personal contacts.

A big part of what you do as an agent involves understanding what it takes to provide the right advice at the right time. That’s as much a personal quality as it is a mark of expertise. You work with a diverse customer base at various stages in their lives. You have to truly care about giving them the best service possible or you can’t deliver on what they’ve hired you to do.

Leveraging every relationship you have means understanding that clients, family and friends – including everyone you know on social media – are all potential customers. If you’re ringing up a client about a significant listing or sale, shouldn’t you also tell people you know personally about that great opportunity?

Building a great business takes consistency and routine based on systems, scheduling, and attention to the simple things.

Prospecting means using all your lead sources to meet the people who have houses to sell. You need to understand that the listing presentation is the ultimate story of what you do to help your clients meet their unmet, unsatisfied, and unidentified needs.

Knowing how to succeed as an agent means knowing how to leverage every relationship you’ve got, maintain consistency and routine, find and connect with your best lead sources, and ultimately understand how you can really help people. You’ve got to have tenacity and desire, but you also have to care about your customers.

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

Ep 107 – Determining the Customer Service Journey

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about determining the customer service journey. Alex tells why setting standards for customer service are important and Josh defines some of those standards. They discuss basics agents need to get right for business growth, customer touch points that shape the customer experience curve, and describe why maintaining your energy matters.

Alex explains why he sends out pre-listing kits and how following a consistent process puts you ahead. Josh wraps up with understanding how to deliver service, and that every call is a standard of service experience you provide to your client’s journey.

Commitment to the Game

A lot of agents simply don’t know what it is that they’re doing, or why. Today in my Coaching Tip I’m going to show you how to make that commitment to the game by helping you understand that it’s not just about making calls; it’s about providing a high level of service to every one of your clients.

There’s nothing like the power of routine to help you provide the great service experience that is critically important to your customers. If all you’re thinking about is that you have to make all of these calls and connections and appointments then you’re missing the point. It’s about creating touch points where the consumer gets involved with you, like online inquiries, phone calls about properties and prices, private appointments, and open for inspections.

Agents who are best at the game are good at the basics. It’s the way we treat the customer on the day of the auction, going to meet them at a market appraisal, and then following up with them. You can’t resent getting on the phones because rejection is unpleasant and you don’t know what to do if they ask a question you don’t know how to answer.

Remember the customer is human just like you, and they have the same issues you have. It’s their level of dissatisfaction plus a vision for where they want to go that’s really going to drive their decision to go to market. Ask the right questions, learn what their dissatisfactions and visions are, and then you can give them the drive to take their first steps toward making a move.

Your commitment to the game includes a willingness to be driven yourself. You need energy and discipline in all areas of your life. Build routines, use forms and checklists, and always deliver a high-quality customer service experience. That’s how you get to charge the fees that you’re worth.

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

Ep 106 – Marketplace Seasons and Cycles

 

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on seasons and cycles in the market that you need to understand. Alex tells how to recognise and respond to changes in the marketplace so you can advise and progress clients. Josh talks about what to do when your marketing slows and fewer people are looking at homes, and why you must be adaptable. Alex explains why you shouldn’t pigeonhole yourself into a single market. Josh advises on nurturing relationships and dealing effectively and explains the Power of One.

Alex tells how to stay ahead of the curve on market conditions by knowing those seasons and cycles and planning ahead for them. Josh wraps up with advice on finding a way to do what needs to be done no matter what the market is like.

Growth in Your Career

Having fun in what you do makes all the difference to growing your business. In my Coaching Tip today I want to talk to you about the importance of growth in your career so that you can become the agent you’re capable of being and charge the fees that you’re worth.

Growth is actually a really simple thing. It’s all about understanding how to measure the numbers that count. For most agents the most important number is the amount of income you earn. I’ll show you how to use that number to think about what growth looks like to you, how to figure your annual growth rate, and how often you can expect your business to double.

As your business gets bigger you’ll need to consistently improve your level of customer service. How you serve the customer directly involves thinking about your product and service mix plus the type of staff you need onboard. You simply can’t achieve significant business growth by yourself.

The way I measure my business growth is by measuring this month this year versus last month this year. I also compare this quarter with the same quarter last year, each half year, each financial year, etc. What I’m doing is tracking those numbers and then coming up with ways to get the numbers exactly where they need to be.

There’s never a year on my watch that I let my business go backwards. Every year I want it to be bigger and bolder, I want to always do more things and I serve more customers. That’s because I love what I do. There should be no difference in the way you treat growth in your career.

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

Ep 105 – Extending the Team Environment

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss extending the team environment. Alex describes the basics of team building based on what you need as a new or established agent. Josh tells how a new assistant shows you where your systems are lacking so you can improve, and suggests where and how to find new talent. They discuss recruiting the right people and looking outside the industry for people with the skills you need.

They talk about the things that make real estate a great career and taking an unconventional approach to finding the best talent for your team. Josh closes with looking at people you already know who could be the best people to hire.

The Constant Upgrade

In order to build your business right, you can’t settle for second best when you hire new talent. With this month’s Growth, Leadership and Management Tip I want you to start thinking about how to achieve the constant upgrade in quality of the people in your team.

Just like managing a sports team, you’ve got to get the best people on the ground in pivotal roles. Who are your star players right now? Who should you be looking at to sign in the next 5 years? Who’s in your development squad coming up in the ranks? And who should you be looking at to trade out?

This is not about having a revolving door around recruitment. This is about your training and development plan for growing your people into all they’re capable of becoming. It’s knowing when to give them the opportunity to play full forward and run with the ball. Have a look at every single person inside of your business and grade them as to where they belong, or whether they need to go.

In your leadership role you need to think about what you must do to realign your business and get back to having all the stars you need. Also consider whether you’re actually wasting the star talent you have by not doing anything about talent development. The constant upgrade is necessary for growing the skill base of your people and getting better people on board. And that’s a quality conversation you’ll never be done with.

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

Basic Negotiation

I see a lot of agents who don’t have a real understanding of what it takes to bring a deal together. My Coaching Tip today is all about basic negotiation, and I’m going to give you some tips that will surprise you.

It’s the simple things that make all the difference in negotiation. The most basic reality is that the buyer buys a property based on the feeling that you sell them. There’s a difference between a home that feels beautiful to live in and on that feels beautiful to buy. The customer experience you create is the first step in successful negotiation. The customer should feel like this is a simple step into a home they can live in. You want to get that feeling right.

Once the mood is set you can discuss terms. Remember there are lots of things to consider apart from just price, like the entity, the solicitor, deposit amount, settlement timeline, and conditions of the offer. You can quickly put yourself in the best position from the client’s perspective by taking care of things like pest and building inspections ahead of time. That way the process becomes easier for them.

One thing I find really effective is to have a bit of fun with the customer. You might find this to be unusual advice, but a little well-placed humor with the right customer can smooth negotiations, especially around settling the dollar amounts on offers. I’ll give you a few examples to work with in the video.

Also start to think about closing the deal in percentages rather than dollars. This is one of our favorite basic negotiation techniques because looking at percentage points bypasses any dollar amounts the client may have embedded in their mind. Give them that perspective on value so they can justify making the decision to purchase the property at that particular price.

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

Ep 104 – The Team Advantage

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about the difference between a lone agent vs. the team advantage. Alex lists limitations of what you can do alone, then shows the advantages of working with a team for you and your clients. Josh offers perspective by comparing agents and teams in real estate with operations in other industries. They discuss the nature of competition between the “one man band” and a team and note that team members are specialists and not just assistants.

Josh notes how each team member brings diversity and new clients with them. Alex describes how severely working without a team would limit his productivity. Josh ends on how a team helps you build better systems and a long-term sustainable business.