Your Role As a Leader

Most people in leadership roles are focused on managing the change that happens to them. Your role as a leader should be to create the change you want to see. In my Growth, Leadership and Management Tip this month I’ll coach you on removing the fear inside of your organisation and building your people to confidence.

By using change leadership rather than change management you build confidence in your people through training them in the specific skills they require to get better at what they do. Perform a skill gap analysis to determine which new systems you need to put in place. Getting those systems right will change the way people operate and give them more confidence in what they’re doing.

One of the best ways I’ve found to provide guidance to my people is to meet with them one-on-one as needed to offer praise or guidance. Set up a learning development plan to teach the best ways to perform even simple procedures like how to take an offer, what to do in a multiple office scenario, how to negotiate post-auction, or how to book an appointment during an open for inspection callback. Offer them clear methodologies around asking the right questions to get the information they need.

Just telling someone that what they’re doing is wrong doesn’t help them. That approach builds fear inside of your organisation. Your role as a leader is to build confidence and clarity for your people. You do this by providing training for new skills and capabilities and helping them learn by going through processes. The more mistakes people are allowed to experience, the quicker they learn to achieve success because that’s how we all come to really understand what it is that we do.

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

Building Your Profile

Who are you? What do you do? How do you help the customer? The answers to these three questions are the foundation to building your profile. You have to make it clear to consumers why they should choose you as their agent.

There’s no better profile builder than getting signs up with sold stickers, getting listings online, and getting those properties sold. Consumers want agents who are successful in the marketplace. No amount of deals in their letterboxes is going to make that difference in the way your profile is seen. Think about what you must do to put yourself where the customer is before they need you.

To build profile inside of a particular marketplace you can use geotargeting to display your ads and video content specifically to people where they spend their personal time – through their social media. Not only can you email ads and video content to your client base, you can also SMS it, post it to YouTube, and become visible wherever they are online. Get the message right and really connect with your consumer.

Building your profile is about positioning your brand based on who you are, what you do, and how you’re going to work with the customer. You want to make yourself clearly visible and memorable in the marketplace so that people understand what it is that you do. To do this you need to be in all the positions where consumers will be looking for agents. That means getting visible on Google and YouTube by getting a Google Review and producing great video content that clearly shows consumers why they should choose you, from their point of view.

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

Ep 92 — Agent vs. Agency Marketing

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips reveal the difference between agent vs. agency marketing. Alex makes important points around marketing property rather than yourself as an agent. Josh advises positioning yourself in the marketplace with quality, and Alex tells how to balance your focus between new clients and those you already know. Josh reminds that branding and positioning must be digitally and socially visible and relevant, and Alex talks about the importance of his community involvement.

Josh stresses consistency in marketing and positioning your brand based on quality of execution. He advises knowing where your clients hang out before they need you and living where you work as a contributing member of the community.

How to Charge What You’re Worth

The difference between a fee discounter and an agent who earns a full fee is about what you do for the customer. In this Coaching Tip, I’ll tell you how to charge what you’re worth and be worth what you charge.

It’s important that you deliver high-quality service and customer experience. It all begins with your first contact with a new customer and continues through every step they take with you thereafter. Your task is to minimise the variance in your delivery of service so they always have the same great experience with you and your agency.

You achieve consistency of service through systems built on standards that deliver the best possible customer experience. Determine the most effective questions for every process and ask each client those questions.

When you arrive for the listing presentation make sure you are fully informed of the current local marketplace, pricing, recent sales and listings, so you can help this client make their best decisions through the course of the process.

Use retargeting through social media to serve up ads and video to clients you’ve met with. Offer information on services you can provide to them and ways you can maximise their sale price if they sign on with you. Establish a clearly defined path that sets a minimum level of service for your brand experience. Determine what you’re known for in your marketplace by creating a high-quality brand based on your core values.

This is how to charge what you’re worth and be worthy of your full fee. Get clear about what you’re ready to deliver to your customers and provide them with consistently high-quality service.

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

Ep 91 — Being a Person First and an Agent Second

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on being a person first and an agent second. Alex opens with a reminder that your client chooses you to work with as a person, not the agency. They’ll be looking for a hard worker with good ethics. Josh stresses the necessity for dialogue that sounds natural. Alex continues on building and maintaining the client relationship and being a trusted advisor. Josh adds the necessity of being relevant and how to use your database to achieve that, and Alex also states the need to be genuinely interested in your clients.

Josh notes that the key to great dialogue is asking better questions and offers examples. He gives examples of how making some of your private life public lends a human element, and Alex adds the importance of showing you’re a real person that clients can relate to.

How Clients Determine the Fee

Everything you do as you work with your client establishes the fee you’ll be able to get. In this Coaching Tip I’ll explain exactly how clients determine the fee they’re willing to pay and how the best agents command the highest fees.

A lot of agents panic when it comes to selling their services at a reasonable rate, especially with the new fixed fee discount that’s come into the marketplace. Great agents think differently about the way they work, though. They operate in a no-competition space. They simply focus on running their business and never worry about what the competition is doing.

You can improve your customer experience with more attention to detail. For example, some things you could do after a market appraisal include sending a follow-up email, placing the clients in your Facebook custom audience and serving them videos about how you can maximise their sale price. This lets you increase your brand awareness and demonstrate your marketing capabilities.

Your personal presentation and style of conversation must reassure clients that you have sound market knowledge and can effectively identify their needs. This allows you to charge a much higher fee. You need to cover the cost of serving your customer, which includes occupational business expenses and paying the support people who help get the property sold. Knowing these costs helps you set the right profit margin.

It’s critical that you calculate what to charge to be highly profitable, so you must get clear on how clients determine the fee. Profitability is a requirement for you to have the resources to run your business, plus the fee you’re able to charge establishes your standing in the estate agency arena. You don’t want to be seen as the cheapest agent. You want to be known as the agent who delivers the most value in your marketplace.

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

Ep 90 — The Race to Getting to 30 Deals a Year

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about the race to getting to 30 deals a year. Alex begins with what you must have starting out to get those hardest first 30 deals. Josh adds the importance of lead sources as well as numbers of appointments and opens. Alex notes the time it takes to build momentum, and advises focusing on buyer work and building your reputation. Josh calculates the lifetime value of every client in your database, and describes the process of building momentum.

Alexander advises getting out of your head and into doing the work with your clients. He explains how those clients generate referrals for you, and Josh follows with quality vs. quantity of client entries in your database, noting there’s no rejection if you’re relevant.

Where Does the Customer Hang Out?

Knowing just one key thing will maximise your exposure to your audience and potential customers every day. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll answer the question, “Where does the customer hang out before they need you?” This knowledge will change the way that you prospect.

Of course, your customers will be showing up at open for inspections and auctions, as well as inquiring online. Opens are a major lead source and you should do as many as possible on Saturday mornings. The reason is that this is where you’ll meet people who have trade-ins and also investors with investment properties.

You want to get these people into your database, but especially make sure you find out where they live. It’s this critical detail that allows you to become relevant to the client. You do this by letting them know when there are new listings and sales in their area. It only takes a simple question that I’ll give you in my Coaching Tip to get your marketing in front of potentially 500 new customers every month.

Also, attend auctions that other agents in your office are handling. You’ll meet buyers who are active in the marketplace, have better conversations around what’s happening, and identify the people who are genuinely interested in buying and selling. You also want to deal with your online inquiries in a timely manner. Online consumers are looking for agents who are responsive and informative in answering their questions. Follow up with emails that address property inquiries you receive over a week and that alert them when the property is sold.

Where do your customers hang out before they need you, and what can you do to anticipate their needs and serve them better? Answering these questions will help you tighten your process and make you a much better agent.

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

Ep 89 — Major Lead Sources

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips reveal major lead sources you should have inside of your business and how they determine your fees. Alexander tells why you should have several lead sources and what those sources might be, including referrals. Josh tells why the colder the lead source is, the lower the fee you’ll get. He explains why you should maintain three major lead sources, and they discuss why people you already know are extremely valuable.

They outline how to work with people to generate those leads, and how your clients’ roles change as you do business with them over time. Alexander explains how referrals get a much better fee for you, and Josh tells how to position yourself to get that higher fee.

Scaling Your Assistants

A big part of running your business is identifying key issues that keep coming up and getting those under control. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll discuss working with your assistants to give them the confidence to play much bigger roles in their positions.

The point of hiring assistants is for them to do the individual things that will allow you to be a much better agent. The real challenge for you is to communicate all the things you expect from them. Everyone needs to know what’s happening in the business as it happens. The simplest way to do this is to have a shared agenda.

What that looks like is, say, every Monday you have a marketing agenda. Make that an all-day appointment inside of your diary. Start with a morning meeting to cover all the key things you need to do to stay consistent with your brand out in the marketplace. Then have a little check-in meeting with the team by phone around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. Then Tuesday do the same with maybe a stock review meeting, and likewise the rest of the week.

These agendas keep everyone on track. More importantly, they keep communication and information flowing. That communication is vital to really growing your team by building trust relationships and giving your assistants the confidence to step up, take initiative and really shine as a great team member.

Working with your assistants means making sure everyone knows what the common goal is and what your expectations are for each of them. Your confidence in them will give them confidence in themselves. And that will build a strong team.

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