Opportunity Gaps

If you’re really honest about the status of your business you’re going to see room for improvement. Today my Growth, Leadership and Management tip is about finding your opportunity gaps and planning to grow past them.

The most fundamental area of growth that too many businesses overlook is around recruitment. Just like a sports team, you must always be bringing in fresh talent. Every year that your company grows you must evaluate team members, renew contracts or trade players, and keep upgrading the quality of your talent.

Recruitment also prevents stagnation. You may have the perfect team today, but the profile changes as people retire or look to move on. Often an owner simply loses the drive to continue building their team.

Do you have the right people in the right roles to meet current changing conditions? Are you transitioning those roles, adding new ones, and remaining adaptive to those changes? Does your administration allow a smooth, efficient process for doing business?

It’s easy to get so focused on listings and sales that we become tactically excellent but strategically negligent. It’s critical to find your opportunity gaps and plan for growth if you’re going to build a great business. Just address 3 things every 90 days and you’ll have 12 projects nailed for the year to rapidly reshape your business and increase your earning capability.

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

Feature Interview – Alexander Phillips & William Phillips Part 2

This is Part 2 of our Special Live Project High-Performance Podcast featuring Josh Phegan, Alexander Phillips and William Phillips. Continuing from Part 1 they discuss specifics of building the database vs. nurturing it. The next question they address is why they make so many calls, numbers of calls per day, and what they talk about with those clients.

Next, they discuss using appointments to build relationships and the importance of buyer work, with an example from a recent exchange between a client and several agents from the same office. They close discussion with emphasis on the importance of getting to know your marketplace and being visible, and offer tips for doing that, especially if you’re a new agent.

What Do You Measure Yourself By?

Really growing your business is about focusing on measuring just one or two key things. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll tell you what to do to get that growth you’re capable of. Let’s begin with this simple question: What do you measure yourself by?

In Phil Knight’s book, The Shoe Dog, he says, “You measure yourself by the number of people that measure themselves by you.” That means being a role model inside of your industry. A lot of agents are set on increasing income for short-term gratification. They want to look successful on Instagram and build that image of affluence when they should be building their true net wealth. The conditions of the day won’t always be as great as they have been the last five to six years.

To be a great agent you need that level of stability that ensures you know how to adapt regardless of market conditions. That’s why you need to measure yourself the right way, and the best benchmark is the number of appointments in your diary every week. In my training sessions I teach the 3/15/60 method:

Book 3 appointments every day, which gives you 15 appointments a week for a minimum of 60 appointments for the month.

The other number you can track on is your open for inspections every Saturday. Five to six opens each week gets you three to four listings and sales each and every month. And that income will put you in the position to put on your first assistant.

There’s a system and a formula for everything in your business. If you haven’t achieved the level of growth you want then get focused and put better systems in play. One of the best ways to learn those systems and to get clear on what you measure yourself by is through training at our Master Class Programs and the Josh Phegan Membership. Start measuring those key things you must have so you can fully live out your potential.

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

Feature Interview – Alexander Phillips & William Phillips Part 1

This is a special holiday edition of our High Performance Podcast featuring Josh Phegan in a live interview with Alexander Phillips and William Phillips. Today’s discussion took place at the 2016 List Sell Negotiate event. They cover a list of questions for the audience beginning with database size and time it takes to build it. That segues into how to build a nourished database.

They talk about building and maintaining relationships, using data for client qualification, and taking a long-term view. They do a role-play around how to interview a visitor to an open home to get the information you need to qualify them as a buyer or seller, now and for the future. They emphasize following up in a timely manner. Discussion then continues in Part 2.

Getting Back to Financial Safety

Having money put aside really does change the way that you work as an individual. In this Coaching Tip I’m talking about getting back to safety and out of panic mode with your finances.

You need to be in a position in your life that your income is greater than your expenses. The problem comes when you feel really successful and start to spend what you’re making. Before you start spending that extra money coming in, calculate what it costs for you and your family to live each month, then triple that amount. This is the minimum savings you should have in your bank account. This is your first level of safety.

Next, decide how much savings you need to feel comfortable and put back that amount. Then project on how much you need in order to become entrepreneurial. Here, you won’t be depleting your savings if you buy an investment property or a house, and putting undue pressure downwards on your assistants and yourself because suddenly you’re in panic mode not having that cash at call.

You owe it to yourself, your team and your customers to buy yourself that knowledge that everything’s going to be okay, for you and for them. Yes, it’s tough to start that savings account when you’re a new agent working to just meet your current expenses, but as soon as you start to earn good money make sure you start saving some. With enough reserve income you have no worries around whether or not you’ll survive. You will.

Keep yourself in a position of safety so that you can help people make better decisions around selling their properties now or waiting for the right time. You can give your best advice because you don’t need to make the sale. And that’s where your position is most powerful.

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

Ep 84 — Why Age Is Not a Barrier

In this High-Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips tell why age isn’t a barrier. Josh notes that agents may think they’re too young on the one hand, or too old on the other. Alexander explains how to counteract perceptions other people may have about age with demonstrated knowledge and confidence. Josh states that capability and competence are what people are looking for, and advises getting skills and knowledge from great mentors. Discussion continues around ways that mentoring helps.

They discuss how to combat complacency as you get older, and stay fit and healthy to remain competitive. Josh ends with a reminder to have a vision for a bigger future than your past, and stay hungry to achieve it.

The race for growth

Your only job is to be on the phone or in front of the customer every day. If you’re doing anything else you’re doing it wrong. In my Coaching Tip today I’m going to tell you how to scale by 300 using milestones to guide you in leveling up inside of your business.

Administrative work is necessary, but it’s not the work that brings in the fees. If you’re doing $30,000 a month 3 consecutive months then you’re at the point to put on an assistant. Once you get on the phone booking appointments full time you will radically see the results shift, but you have to make that decision to become an absolute specialist around making those calls and getting face to face with customers.

One thing you will surely discover when you put on that assistant is all the flaws inside of your business. You will have to stop working emotions and improve your systems, your checklists and your database, and that’s a good thing. You’ll learn to build a team and scale the effort in lots of 30 transactions, first to 300,000, then to 600,000, and beyond. Build that momentum and then you can scale around that.

Set your vision to focus on what you’re really good at, and have someone else to do 100% of the other work. You’re the one who understands how to take a client from one point to the next, wherever they are in their process. You help them make the decisions that will take them where they want to go. Let go of the less specialised work – including some of the phone work – and let your assistant provide the value you hired them to do. Help them build confidence and capability so they become a real asset to your business.

So, starting from day one, treat each new hire the way you want them to work inside of your organisation and they will help you scale by 300. Teach them your systems and make sure they follow them. Use checklists and forms to maintain consistency. Give them everything they need to do their work better than you can, then focus on doing your own work that mattters most.

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

Resetting for a New Year

Beginning a new year is an opportunity to think about what it takes to be that great real estate agent you want to be. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll help you focus on resetting for a new year through scaling, planning, commitment, and making good decisions.

Multiplying your business really comes down to understanding three simple numbers: average sale price, volume, and fees. Every year you’ll want to think about how you’re going to scale your services so you can do more, charge more, and sell higher priced properties than the year before.

Scaling is about increasing your capacity through fitness, systems and people. It’s getting fitter at the work you do, like fee delivery and the way you prospect. Systems involve checklists and forms that ensure everything gets done properly and consistently. Position the right people at the right time, beginning with yourself. Make that decision to be a much better agent. Prepare to deliver a higher level of service. Follow the routines that will set you free to be at your best every day.

Plan ahead to make the most of your time this year. Know that there are only seven auction Saturdays in the first quarter, so set your auction dates early so you can run great campaigns in March and early April before the holidays. Plan your first quarter well or your second quarter will suffer. And make sure you schedule in your own holidays so you can really be customer-focused every workday.

Don’t forget that we’re here to help you with a range of brand new programs. There’s also our continuing MasterClass Program, and the Josh Phegan Membership will feature new short courses and additional content this year. We’d love to be involved in helping you become that much better agent in 2017.

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

Mergers and Acquisitions

So you’re ready to open your second site. Brilliant! Have you considered buying out an existing agency? In my Growth, Leadership and Management Tip today I’ll advise you on the benefits of mergers and acquisitions, being friendly with your competitors, and growing a business that’s sellable.

There’s an organic way to grow a business, but you might do better to grow through through a merger or an acquisition of a competitor’s agency. It’s my opinion that you should always buy someone out, especially for your second site, because you won’t have to start from scratch with your building and equipment, with hiring all new people, and prospecting for new clients. Particularly in buying a property management business you’re also acquiring a whole book of potential sellers and investment properties to establish your brand with. Plus a property management asset is a sellable element

Negotiating a merger can be an advantage for you and the people you’re acquiring the business from. A merger with a sunset clause can help them save face upon their exit by removing any appearance of failure. This is why you maintain good relations with all of your competitors, because you never know which one you’re going to buy out one day. And you never know when you’re going to need to sell, so set a long-term goal toward building a sellable business driven on renewable income streams.

Buying a great property management business and bringing it into your own helps you get to that next scalable commercial size more quickly. You’ll have more property managers who can then split portfolios based on geography and functionality, and the way you do the work will also change. Once daily property management revenue meets cash flow requirements, sales will happen naturally. That annuity income will get you through bad markets as well as good, establishing your business as profitable and thus sellable.

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

Ep 83 — The Power of Routine

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on the power of routine and how it affects an agent’s fees and success. Alexander  explains how following a routine helps you stay fresh, balanced and structured. Josh points out the importance of focusing on making decisions that are important and simplifying everything else through routine. Alexander describes prospecting and training routines new agents can really benefit from.

They discuss the necessity of building recovery into your routines, knowing when to be flexible, working smarter and always being “on.” Josh suggests identifying opportunity gaps and challenging the routine you have in place if it’s not working for you.