Ep 68 — Building Your Market Profile

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about building your market profile, establishing differentiation and branding yourself. Discussion begins with Alexander on presentation through quality marketing, and Josh continues with knowing and addressing the basic factors that drive consumers. Alexander continues with positioning, longevity, and understanding market forces for building credibility.

Alexander explains why he uses a simple brochure rather than a lengthy multi-page piece for multimillion-dollar homes, and Josh emphasises using the marketing elements that present a property at its best.

Modernising Your Marketing

The shift from newspaper to digital is changing the way we do marketing. Today my Coaching Tip is about modernising your marketing using social media communities like Facebook to expand your audience.

There are two Facebook tools you want to be using called Facebook Pixel and Facebook Custom Audiences. Facebook Pixel is a piece of code you embed into your website that notes when a customer visits your website, then finds their Facebook account and targets your advertising to them there.

Facebook Custom Audiences is even more sophisticated. It allows you to load your entire customer database into it and serve marketing content to those people specific to their situation. You can basically create specific content, such as video, for each of your database categories, and Facebook Custom Audiences will serve those specific videos to those custom audiences. From there you can link them back to corresponding landing pages at your website. It’s a powerful way to stay relevant to those people you already know.

You can also take an integrated approach to multiple social media sites like Instagram and LinkedIn, which have their own sets of tools and capabilities and often connect to each other. So if you can connect with a client at one site, you’re then connected to them at all the sites they visit. It’s all about retargeting so that once the customer has interacted with you they will continue to see your ads and can then reconnect with you when they need your services.

What you’re doing as an agent is changing. Modernising your marketing assures you’ll really get through to your end consumer on a regular and consistent basis. Make the decision now to become a great agent by getting good at digital.

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

Making Time for Talent

If your vision is big enough then you know you’re always going to be hiring new talent. In this Growth, Leadership and Management tip I’ll show you why making time for talent is crucial, and how to stop missing out on your best hires.

Too often potential new hires looking to work with an agency are simply sent away when there’s no current job opening. But then when an employee leaves, that agency suddenly has to scramble to try to fill the vacancy. It’s a good idea to gather information on those interested in your business and keep them on your talent bench. Then when the inevitable vacancy occurs, you’ll have a ready list of quality talent to call.

Really, everyone you’ve met has the potential to work inside of your company, but you’ll never know if you’re not having those conversations and thinking ahead. If you think you don’t have time for that, consider how much time it takes to find a new hire that’s a great fit when you’re trying to fill an open position as quickly as possible. Every individual in your organization has an expiry date, including you, and each of them will leave someday. Wouldn’t it be great to have a ready list of potential talent to start calling immediately when that happens?

Taking time now to do some long-term planning can save you significant time and urgency in the future. Keep in mind it’s your people who maintain momentum and grow your business, so you want the best talent. And you want to bring in new talent regularly to keep your organization fresh and progressive. Part of that is having a training platform and career progression in place so you can onboard new employees quickly and often as part of your expansion model.

You want to build the kind of company that attracts great talent, places them into dynamic roles, and realizes consistent growth as a result. As growth requires expanding positions with more people to fill them, making time for talent now will benefit you for years to come by bringing all the right people into your organisation.

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

Ep 67 — How to Break Into a New Market

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on how to break into a new market where there are already established agents – especially if you’re a new agent – beginning with points to consider around timeline to get started and matching demographics. Alexander details the work involved, with examples from his own campaigns. Josh shares a case study to demonstrate the importance of a winning mindset. Alexander tells how to present to a customer who is also consulting with a dominant competitor and win the listing.

Josh notes the importance of confidence and initiates a discussion around maintaining long-term momentum and excellence. Josh adds the importance of knowing the lifestyle of the area, and ends with the intent to own your new market.

Are you living a life of regret?

Your future can and should be bigger and brighter than your past. In my Coaching Tip today I’m talking about living a life of discipline rather than regret. But in order to do the things you want most to do in your life, and to become the kind of person you want to be, you have to know what that looks like.

First, you need to be financially secure and that takes planning. Balancing assets and liabilities is more important than profit and loss. Most people tend to raise their expenses to meet their revenue, but you need to be investing in valuable assets and really thinking about what you spend. Wealth is not just about having money, it’s more about what you do with your money and the short term decisions you make that impact your long term reality.

Health is the next key consistency, because if you lose your health you have nothing. Staying fit is easier than getting fit, and getting fit is much harder the older you are. Maintaining fitness and energy is crucial in your life and your business, and doing the things that keep you performing at your best is a decision you make every day.

Discipline is about knowing where you want to go in life and setting a path to take you there. Too many people never think about how their lives should look in 20 years, and then they end up someplace they don’t want to be and wish they had done better. People also let daily obstacles or trigger events from the past affect their lives in negative ways. You can take charge of your outcomes by setting some simple rules for yourself now around finances, health, knowledge and capabilities.

Really start to think about the time you have and the time that’s passing, especially at the incredibly fast pace we live in today. Realize your time on the grid determines the off-grid time you get for yourself. Your future will be bigger than your past if you make it that way through making good decisions and living a life of discipline.

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

Ep 66 — Primary and Secondary Markets for Career Growth

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips talk about primary and secondary markets for career growth. Josh describes how these markets differ and Alexander talks about how to choose the market you should target. Josh notes advantages of matching age, profile and demographic of agents and clients, and they discuss the concept of growing with your clients.

Alexander talks about gaining market knowledge across multiple price ranges and why you should be willing to handle properties outside your usual range. Josh talks about working a campaign file properly and ends on working trade-ins.

Becoming a Great Lister

When it comes to becoming a great lister there’s no better formula than to simply care about your customers. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll tell you how to get the information you need by asking the right questions and mastering the art of really listening.

There’s a short list of essential topics you need to cover off on. The best way to get all that information is to follow a sequence of questioning that leads to your desired outcome. Those essentials are:

• What is the client’s situation?
• What are they looking for in an agent?
• What is their preferred method of sale?
• What is their preferred approach to marketing?
• What are their pricing expectations?

Cover each topic in detail to make certain they are making fully informed decisions. Take notes. Once you have that information, summarise it and read it all back to the customer to make sure they’re in agreement with what’s been discussed. Also do a trial close for each point before moving to the next one. This maintains a smooth flow and allows you to really connect with your customer.

Never underestimate the effectiveness of visuals. Nothing communicates quite so completely or engages as deeply as attractive, informative images, videos, charts, brochures and other visual material. Because visuals are so powerful, make sure your support materials are relevant to the property you’re discussing. Beyond that, keep your terminology consistent, present in an orderly manner, and keep your presentation cohesive so everything fits together and makes sense.

Becoming a great lister requires a real interest in other people. If you sincerely care about your customer they will sense that energy and respond to you. You’ll be a winning agent if you make the effort to understand what your clients need and help them get to their best possible outcome.

Ep 65 — What Would You Do Differently?

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on how they might do things differently if they were starting their real estate careers now. Alexander lists new technologies and opportunities available to agents today, while he and Josh agree on the importance of having a great network. Josh emphasises being interested in people and relevant to them, and Alexander notes ways social media can work for you or against you.

Josh highlights the necessity to always be prospecting, and Alexander tells why the way you present yourself is crucial. They agree on the need for coaches, and mentors, and the willingness to learn. Josh ends on delivering high-value service.

How Fit is your Database?

Database categories are an integral part of database fitness. Like your own fitness, it’s a decision you make and follow through on every day so you can perform the way you want to. In my Coaching Tip today I’ll explain why these categories are necessary and how to use them.

Defined categories let you target marketing to groups of customers rather than individuals. Our first category is the general buyer category you’ll send your automated buyer alerts to. Then you have a buyer hit list of active buyers who have made a bid or offer on a property, come to a second appointment, and otherwise demonstrated interest and emotional involvement in doing business with you.

Similarly you have potential sellers you want to get face-to-face with. A market appraisal will tell you if they’re at a red light, orange light or green light position toward selling a property. Your seller hit list, then, will be those green light sellers you’ll place in your lead nurture sequence for listing presentation to receive market reports, videos and other timely, relevant news. Once they are selling with you they become vendors.

The next really important category is past clients. These are all the people who have already bought and sold with you. They would likely do business with you again and are great key referrers if you simply maintain that good relationship with them.

It’s important to define these categories so everyone working with you understands who they are working with and how to progress those customers into their appropriate categories. The key to a clean, fit database is clear, active database categories that allow you to serve the category, not just the person.

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

Ep 64 – Backing It Up Month After Month

In today’s High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips focus on maintaining momentum month after month. Alexander tells how he avoids the roller coaster of good months/bad months by always striving to improve, working ahead of the curve and avoiding burnout. Josh notes the importance of planning ahead, and of setting long- and short-term goals. Alexander adds the danger of missing opportunities by slacking off when you’re doing well, and the necessity to maintain drive and motivation.

Josh outlines a destructive scenario agents tend to fall into before going on holiday and advises on what to do to avoid losing ground while you’re away. Alexander reinforces this advice adding consistency, communication and experience.