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.

Effort Is Not the Same as Impact

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You’ve got some great people inside of your business right now who are putting in a lot of effort but getting nowhere with their careers. In my Growth, Leadership, and Management tip this month I’ll help you see how effort is not the same as impact, and help you coach, mentor, inspire, and lead more effectively.

There are a lot of things you can do in real estate, but knowing which efforts you actually should make requires that you understand where and how you create impact. I like to work with each agent to trace and identify their success points and major lead sources. Those can include open for inspections, past market appraisals, past clients, or existing landlords. Once you know where you’re creating the greatest impact you can align your efforts to be there.

Help your agents to feel really confident around their phone skills. You want every call they make to contribute to an overall result of booking at least three appointments every day. Focusing on that goal will radically shift their careers and change everything that goes on inside of your business.

As a leader you need to see that effort is not the same as impact. Then you can clearly identify areas to strengthen, tasks to stop doing, and key numbers to watch as you help your employees grow their careers.

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

Ep 88 — Improving Your Knowledge as an Agent

This High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on improving your knowledge as an agent. It’s important to know the reasons a buyer is buying a property, and Alexander begins with why that’s important to making the sale. Josh continues with insights on evaluating property values, the depreciation factor, yield/rental return, and capital growth. Alexander explains how those considerations affect buyer decisions, especially for investment properties. They also discuss handling renovation properties.

They continue around types of buyers they’re seeing in the marketplace currently and what their advantages are. They also discuss what makes a property attractive, and list attributes those specific buyers are most likely to be willing to pay more for.

Why most Assistants fail

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Putting on a new person is a real test of your existing business systems, processes and skill sets. Today my Coaching Tip will show you how to grow people who can help you scale your business for the next 10, 15 or 20 years.

As soon as you put someone on you must teach them the core skills you need them to have. To do that you need a career development plan based on what those skills actually are. Start by writing down the 10 key skills required for an assistant to come into your team. Things like file preparation, open for inspection processes, vendor communication, and running a photography session.

Put those skills in the right order to start making the new hire useful right away. Schedule 15-minute training sessions for every day of every week until training is complete. Then each Friday assess their progress on the skill for that week, give them some appropriate feedback, and either deem them fully competent around that skill and move on to the next skill set, or give them areas to improve on for the next week.

Evaluating skill sets you require is an ongoing process. If you really want to be a much better agent you’ll regularly review the systematisation of your business and think of ways you can significantly increase the skill base of all the individuals within it, including you. Now you’re becoming consciously competent about checklists and forms that you need, systems you want everyone to follow, and a structured learning program for the people working inside of your business.

It’s up to you to decide what type of agent you want to become and what type of business you want to lead. If you’re going to be an agent for 10, 15 or 20 years you’re going to train 5, 10 or 15 assistants over the life of your career. The sooner you learn how to grow people, the sooner you can increase profitability, ease off of the stress, and ensure all of your people are productive members of your team.

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

Ep 87 — Call Reluctance and Procrastination

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about overcoming call reluctance and procrastination. Alexander notes some reasons it happens and tells how he avoids it. Josh cites the effectiveness of starting the morning with intensity and clarity, and Alexander offers tips on getting the first few calls out at the start of the day. Josh notes the most important measurement is your number of appointments and gives tips on dialogue and delivery. They discuss high energy maintenance and Josh tells how to make and use a high-quality hit list.

Alexander stresses having a structure and process to create your lists. They discuss the role of your assistant in helping you stay on task, and Josh tells how to calculate all your numbers and use your database to build your call lists.

Working your Pipeline

Mastering your pipeline will make a massive difference in your business growth. My Coaching Tip today is all about building and working a pipeline, and how your resulting campaigns will make you a better agent.

Agents who are actually successful always know a good number of qualified clients who are coming to the market. They’re building a good quality pipeline by knowing and working their best lead sources like open for inspections, past market appraisals, past clients, and landlords.

First, identify which of your leads will be selling and when. The best way to do this is to maintain a fit, functional database with searchable categories. If you prefer a manual system you could make a wall calendar with movable sticky notes. However, you do it the point is to have the best system possible so you’ll know your potential sellers, know where they are in relation to the market, and be ready to bring them into the market when they’re ready.

You’ll work your pipeline through marketing campaigns. To be truly successful you need to run more than one campaign at a time. For example, every time you list a property search your database for all the people who own a similar property. Call those people, invite them to the open home, send them a just listed letter and a brochure, and schedule an SMS reminder for them. Then follow up and show them how the sale result affects the value of their home. The goal is to book an appointment with them, but either way, you’ll send them a summary letter.

Most agents fail to follow through. They don’t remember who their clients or leads are, they don’t make the phone calls, and they don’t have just listed and just sold campaigns running concurrently. These are the crucial steps to building and working your pipeline to really put yourself ahead.

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