Being Consistent and Persistent

Marketing only when your business takes a downturn is too little, too late. In my Coaching Tip today I want to talk to you about being consistent and persistent with your marketing, and tell you how to set up systems that allow you to do this easily.

Your marketing should never be an indicator of how well or poorly your business is doing. Consistency will ensure that you are always visible and relevant to customers whenever they come into your marketplace. What it takes is a decision to set a marketing plan and follow it on schedule, all the time.

You may have concerns about spending funds for marketing, but how much are you willing to invest in building a million dollar business? Start thinking about content, not cost, and how you want to deliver your message to your customers.

You could do a short video each week, a quarterly direct mail update to past clients, and regular email market updates to targeted categories in your database. The key to streamlining the process is building templates. Not only do templates make the process faster, they also maintain your branding and ensure you’ll be persistent in sending out your marketing on schedule.

Relevant content is necessary to maintain customer interest. Some topics to include are current volume of properties in comparison to this time last year, how many people are coming to open homes, how many bidders are registered for auctions, and noteworthy news such as changes in legislation or real estate industry trends. Keep the conversation interesting and fresh, and people will read your messages.

Every person in your marketplace has a brief moment in time when they will be looking to buy or sell a property. Your goal is to make sure you’re being consistent and persistent in your marketing so that person will see you and contact you when they’re ready to choose an agent.

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

Ep 46 — Doubling Your Business

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss ways you can double your business. Alexander maintains momentum, growth and goal-setting double his numbers each year. Josh notes the important numbers to watch and Alexander elaborates on how those affect your business and lifestyle. They discuss recent increases in average sale price, and Alexander compares factors of price and volume noting how adaptability expands your profile. Josh explains how switching markets as trends change keeps momentum and volume high. Alexander shares his preference for fast-paced business and Josh describes the Rule of 72 formula for growth. Alexander describes the rigors and rewards of working in the industry today, and Josh ends on staying hungry for a better future.

Getting Intention to Have a Great Day

You never have to have an unsatisfying day at work again. In today’s Coaching Tip I’m talking about getting intention to have a good day, and it’s all about preparation and clarity based on a few simple rules and habits.

Setting your intentions not only helps you get the most out of each day, but it helps everyone who works with you. Most importantly, it teaches others to respect your time. Begin by setting a few basic rules for each day:
• The time you wake up
• The time you arrive at the office
• How soon you make your first phone call
• The time you have lunch
• The time your day ends

Starting your days a little early at the first of the week gives you momentum and also allows you to be home early some evenings. Making sure you allow for quality personal time helps you avoid burnout and maintain longevity in your career.

You’ll do your best work when you are relaxed with plenty of energy in reserve. The key is to stay ahead of the curve and practice renewal. Having a checklist of daily priorities will help you stay on track without having to think about what you’re doing next. My checklists look something like this:

Monday – Open for inspection callbacks
Vendor reports
Tuesday – Call potential sellers
Review past market appraisal customers
Wednesday – 10-day open for inspection callbacks
Prepare for midweek opens
Thursday – Call past clients
Inspections
Review advertising
Friday – Work potential buyers/sellers
Work market appraisals
Prepare for Saturday opens

These are all simple tasks and having them outlined helps, but many of these tasks should be delegated to your team so you can focus on prospecting and appointments. In particular, you need an assistant to handle incoming Internet and phone inquiries. Responsiveness is especially critical as you scale your business.

Always knowing what’s happening in your business whilst being able to focus on your scheduled daily tasks will ensure you’re getting intention to have a good day every day so you can enjoy becoming the best agent you can be.

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

How to Scale and Build

You have a greater capacity for growth than you think. In this month’s Growth Leadership and Management Tip I explain how to scale and build your business through clarity of vision, organisation, and building a quality team.

Most agents think in limited terms of layered growth, simply improving exiting systems and resources a little bit each year to make 2 times their current numbers. But what if you could achieve 10 times your current success rate? That’s a 2X vs. 10X mindset. Real growth requires getting clarity on what you want to achieve and projecting on what it would take to make that happen.

Getting clarity begins with focusing on the Big 3 activities you should be doing. Then look at the tasks you actually spend most of your time on. The problem with doing too many tasks yourself is that you can’t do any of them well, and you won’t get the work done that you really should be focusing on. You need to hire people to do those necessary secondary tasks for you.

An organizational chart helps you visualize everything that must get done and who you need on board to do them. The most important position is an office manager who coordinates all your daily operations so you don’t have to. Review the chart periodically, and add positions and people as your business expands. Always be thinking ahead about roles you need to hire for and talent you want to recruit. This will help you make better decisions toward building your team.

Once you have clarity around your Big 3 and your organisational structure you can focus on projects you want to work on throughout the year and over the next 90 days. Put together an execution team of people who are not directly selling or managing properties. Meet with them to establish each role’s Big 3 and their part in your long and short-term goals, and have them chart their own plans for the next 5 years

This is not going to come together in a day, so allow time for everyone to get clear on your proposed goals and expectations. Once everyone is on the same track your momentum will really take off.

Examining what other successful agencies are doing can help you decide how to scale and build your own business, but don’t focus on externals like branding and marketing. You want to know how they’ve structured their internal organization and what kind of people they hire because it’s your people who will drive your operations and allow you the freedom to focus and achieve your true potential.

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

The Hierarchy of Work

Just one listing can change everything, yet so few agents follow a hierarchy of work to get it. Today in my Coaching Tip I’ll show you how to structure your prospecting and discover the opportunities you’re missing.

When you first start out in real estate your prospecting goals are mostly based around getting new clients. At some point your focus needs to shift to working more with the people you already know. These people already see you as a trusted advisor and they would rather work with an agent they know than take a chance with your competitors. Not only are they potential buyers and sellers, they are also your key referrers.

You may think you won’t work with a recent client again for years, but sometimes people turn over a property within days, or even hours, of settlement. Life can switch from red to orange to green in seconds. You want to be top of the list to handle that client’s next transaction whenever it happens. Past clients and key referrers are at the top of your hierarchy.

Landlords are often overlooked as multidimensional customers. Most agents only consider the properties they manage, but landlords have homes, too, and they may live in some of your most lucrative markets. Find out where they own property and put them inside of your database for targeted marketing in those categories.

Buyer work comes next with follow-ups to people you’ve met at open for inspections or who have made online inquiries. Then look at potential sellers such as market appraisals you’ve spoken with.

It’s common to target new potential markets from a geographic base, but think about your relationship areas where you already know a significant number of people. This is a market where you are already relevant and can quickly expand your influence.

There are usually only a couple of things you need to focus on to really boon your business and those activities involve keeping current with people you already know, including your personal relationships. Following a system for contacting all your prospects will ensure you have consistent opens and listings. Always be thinking of people you know but haven’t reached out to and put them into your hierarchy of work.

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

Ep 45 — Narrowing Your Focus

This High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents features Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips on narrowing your focus to areas where you bring the most value to your business. Alexander talks about building a solid team to do other tasks and Josh cites listing stock and lead generation as primary business growth factors. Alexander advises new agents on ways to manage all aspects of your business until you can hire your first assistant and let go of tasks they can manage. Josh notes the importance of systems, checklists and forms for staying on track and training team members, and they discuss how you should be spending most of your day. Josh ends with emphasis on hiring an assistant as soon as you can.

How important are checklists?

There are so many things you have to accomplish in your business every day that you can’t possibly remember them all, especially when things get really busy. In today’s Coaching Tip I’ll show you the importance of running your business as a system and just how simple it is to do that.

First, I want you to realize that a good system isn’t complex or difficult. Systems are checklists — that’s all. And systems are scalable, expanding and evolving as tasks change. A system assures that everyone on your team always knows what needs to be done, in detail. Your business system will be a checklist of checklists, and you create them before events occur.

Having a checklist for each task removes the stress of trying to remember everything under pressure. Details like pens, forms, displays and name badges, table decor and complimentary water, what time to show up, what time to leave, and having the right key for the right address are all handled.

Being prepared and presenting well are all about the small things. Checklists help you remember every single detail for every meeting or event without fail. They standardise operations and are especially effective when onboarding new hires. Giving your team access to your business systems minimises risk, improves performance, and relieves anxiety.

You can use a shared system like ASANA (click here to check it out) so everyone has access from their phones, or even a printed booklet for each task, but systems must be centralised and standardised.

Here are just a few areas of your business that will benefit from checklisting:
• Open for inspections
• Listings
• Appraisals
• Going to market
• Sold at auction
• Settlement

Even a checklist of recurring tasks for each day of the week will keep everyone on track and getting things done, right down to making coffee and tea.

Systems and checklists make operations and expectations clear for everyone, and assure that performance goals are met consistently. This is how the best agents stay focused and keep their teams coordinated. This is how you’ll become a top-level agent as well.

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

Ep 44 — Database Maintenance

In today’s High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips stress the need for regular database maintenance. Josh notes the difference between a fat vs. fit database and Alexander describes ways to keep your database clean and functional. They discuss how to use the database for scheduling tasks around clients, and which clients to maintain or drop out. Josh points out the advantages of working categories rather than individual clients and Alexander expands on that idea, then continues into how he structures his call lists. They reinforce the importance of database structure and usability for maintaining relationships and progressing clients, Alexander touches on generating referrals and keeping current data, and Josh ends with a reminder that everyone in the database was a buyer at some point.

Can you deal with success?

One day soon your business is going to take off in a big way, and you’re probably not ready. That sudden rapid expansion in your business will either carry you or bury you. What do you do when you get really successful? In my Coaching Tip today I’ll tell you how to prepare for that next level of success.

Building capacity allows you to do more with less. The 3 core activities you must dial in are your fitness, your systems and your people.

Fitness is not just about going to the gym. It’s about your business fitness: prospecting, listing, sales, and everything in between. Systems are structured teachable processes that keep your business on track and productive. And it all ultimately depends on your people being better than you are at the tasks you need them to perform so that you can stay focused on your own work that’s most important.

When you think of putting on an assistant you know you want someone who can handle things like scheduling and emails, but there’s more to it than administrative tasks. This person will represent you and your brand to your customers, so you want someone with a high level of maturity and capability. Those qualities will not come cheap, but they will make an invaluable difference to your success. As you build your team you’ll want to hire people who can scale with your growth and add to your capacity.

Keeping your team current and aware of special challenges you face will help them help you. To make sure everyone in your business stays focused and on track, schedule a daily directions meeting. There are 5 key questions to address each morning:
1. Where are the biggest opportunities?
2. What are the next 5 deals?
3. Who are the top 5 people to go after?
4. What one action will give us the most leverage?
5. What didn’t get done yesterday that must be done today?

No matter how much new business you’re generating, prospecting is still your most important task. Let your team do their jobs for you so you can keep yourself focused and energized. Make sure you’re working in 45-minute sessions, prospect in the mornings, meet appointments in the afternoons, and stay consistent with your commitments. You’ll set a good example, and be the agent your clients and your team want to work with.

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

Ep 43 – Pacing Against the Marketplace

In this High Performance Podcast for Real Estate Agents, Josh Phegan and Alexander Phillips discuss pacing your business against trends in the marketplace. Alexander tells why it’s important to know what’s coming up during stages of the year such as holidays and other events that affect the overall market, and Josh notes the effect media has on consumers. Alexander relates how staying current makes you a better advisor and discussion continues around analysis and research for timing listings and sales. Alexander offers his view of the coming year, and how he will maintain momentum and maximise pricing throughout. Josh closes with tools and methods the best agents will employ to make the right decisions as the market changes.