The group certificate arrives. It’s the moment when you realise one of two things: 1. What did I do with all that money? Or 2. There’s a zero missing before the decimal point. Let’s hit refresh, get serious about business improvement, and find the opportunities in your business today as we kick off a new financial year.
Plateaus and Peaks
The law of opposites matters. Hot water wouldn’t be good without cold water. Peaks wouldn’t be peaks without plateaus. Plateaus in performance happen. Think about life stages, life events, and economic and business cycles. When you read the conditions of the day, how do you react? Property planning prevents poor performance.
Strive for what you want. That’s the power of goal setting. Too many are stuck, wondering what their 'why' is. Go to the photos app on your phone; invariably, what you photograph motivates and matters to you.
Get serious about what you want. Answer the questions you can answer. In 25 years time...
Would you like to be healthy?
Would you like $1M in your superannuation account?
Would you like $100,000 in back-up capital?
Would you like to own a house?
And investment property?
Be a business owner?
Have a great relationship with your kids?
Have a great relationship with your partner?
Travel overseas?
Easy questions. Then go to the next set.
When you’re not doing real estate, what do we find you doing?
For me, advanced identity design allows you to lean in to do more of the things you love to do. Some simple pleasures for me include: Running, saunas, motorbike riding, catching up with friends, being creative, building things, reading, writing etc. You have definition when you’re clear about what you love to do. What the world needs is more people who’ve truly become alive.
Set the Vision
You set the vision. Real estate is a results-based industry. As a coffee barista, you might get paid $30 per hour. Whether you produce one coffee or 200 in that hour, it’s still $30 per hour.
Work out what you’re worth so you know the type of person you need to become.
Take your ideal annual income, divide that by the number of weeks you’re prepared to work, then divide that by 25 (the number of billable hours per week).
Think: $1M / 44 weeks / 25 hours = $909 per hour. How focused would you be? What type of work would you do? What sort of team would you have around you to play at that level?
Remember, you set the vision. 44 weeks allows 8 weeks of annual leave. That’s time for the market to be weird or for you to be off-grid. Then, work incredibly hard in the hours you are prepared to work, for your stage of life, and given the life events you’ve experienced.
Choose Your Business Model
Beware of your limiting thoughts. If you’re at 20 deals and push to 22 deals per annum, you’ll try to tweak your way to greatness. If you’re at 20 deals and you want to go to 200 deals per annum, everything breaks.
You need to: Define new markets
Make sure your marketplace is big enough for your aspirations
Realise that 21 opens on Saturday means it can no longer be about you
You’ll need two other listing agents in your team, plus someone full-time in operations.
Then you’ll need to go all in on the marketing and sales process and remove all items of risk; i.e. full vendor-paid marketing, auction orientation and unconditional contracts.
You can have a solo business model - just you. You’re 100% in control, but you can never take a holiday. Don’t buy a job; build a business. There’s nothing wrong with 20 or 200 deals. What is important, though, is that you define what you want.
Intent
$1M in fees per annum.
Divide that by $20,000 per transaction; that's now 50 deals per annum.
50 deals at a 75% clearance rate require 67 listings.
At a 66% success or strike rate in the listing presentation, that requires 101 listing presentations.
At a 25% conversion of market appraisals into listing presentations, that requires 404 market appraisals per annum.
Let’s divide those numbers by 10 for 10 months.
You now need to do 40 market appraisals for 10 listing presentations, to list seven and sell 5.
That’s 50 appointments per month.
Divide that by 20 work days; that’s 2.5, either market appraisals or listing presentations per day.
Now there’s structure.
8 am - 45 min call session
9 am - 45 min call session
10 am - 45 min call session
11 am - Operations - marketing, admin, getting ready
12noon - Lunch
1 pm
2 pm
3 pm
4 pm
5 pm
Everything in the afternoon is appointment time. When the goal is clear, there are no distractions. Set your schedule and stick to it.
People are far too loyal to their distractions to ever achieve their potential.
Now that you’ve got intent, you need to manage risk with organisational clarity.
You need a team member who lists and an operations person if you’re going to scale beyond you to 60-plus transactions per annum. Make sure everyone is super clear on their role. Think KJT - Keep Josh talking.
Now you’ve got things moving. The skill is to stay in the zone and do the work that really matters. If you’re the rainmaker in your team, stay rainmaking.
Think about Formula 1. You don’t see the drivers doing their own mechanical fixes. Be super clear about who does what to ensure your pit stops are effortless and world-class.
Technical Competency
That leads to technical competence.
At the open, find out if they have bought locally.
Then, find out their plans with the existing.
When you call a buyer back, see if they’d like to see the home again.
Then, book the appointment.
Simple. But done poorly by most.
Have you bought locally before?
What are your plans with the existing?
Any chance I can come and see it?
Would you like to see it again tomorrow?
Is it the property or the price?
Simple, highly effective, game-changing questions.
If your team is not technically competent, you won’t trust them, and you know if you do. If you don’t, either train, coach, mentor, or re-hire. It’s up to you. It’s either the system or the person.
Set the Strategy. I quit. Imagine if I did. And I went back in as an agent. What would my strategy be? Here goes:
Strategy 1: Five Opens Every Weekend
It builds market share and fast database growth, and gets you exposure to customers. Tactically, I’d want them in a core market, as it is easier for buyer work. Then I’d want one in the high end, three around the average sale price, and one in the low end. The low end listing brings the first home buyer, who brings mum and dad, who have the big house. It also brings the investor, who also has the big house. Never be too good to make money. The average sale price sells; it’s the average. The first home seller steps up to buy the average sale price house, so your open homes generate sellers for you. Then, have one house in the high end, as the average sale price of sellers steps up. So now I have a business built on trade-ins.
Strategy 2: All In on Marketing
It builds your customer base, market presence and flywheel momentum. 100% all-in on vendor-paid marketing. Given how AI now searches, you need lots of great video content. Five videos for every property. Think the feature length Core Video that makes all the portals, then four additional videos - think eight 15-second reels. Launching soon, open this weekend, auction this week and now sold. Boost as much as you can on social. If the market is slower I’d also re-sign all agency agreements at day 60 to make sure you stay exclusive.
Strategy 3: 28 DOM or Less
Sellers are happier, you meet more buyers, and you get known for being really good at what you do. Tactically, every time you win a listing, think about what similar or look-a-like campaigns we have done that a similar buyer would have walked through. Now, call every buyer, see who still has an appetite, book in a private buyer appointment and send a calendar invite. If that buyer is a seller, you’ll win their listing uncontested, given the quality of your buyer servicing. Call all market appraisals in the price range before. So, if you’ve listed a four-bedroom home, call all three-bedroom appraisals. See if they want to upgrade; if they do, you’ve now got a buyer and someone who needs to sell their 3-bedroom home. Also, call all four-bedroom appraisals about the new four-bedroom listing. That way, when it sells, you can let them know the sale price and the number of buyers left over. Create the supply, so when you’ve got the demand, you can keep on selling.
Strategy 4: Manage Risk
Monday - Buyer meeting
Know who the best buyers are in the marketplace. They now move from the CRM to the notes section on your phone. Who are the best buyers based on specific actions? Think second appointments, offers, bids, etc. If you know that you’ve got hot demand for 3-bedroom $1M houses, that’s what you should prospect for.
Tuesday - Seller meeting
You can’t remember the market appraisals you did in February. You know you’d rather go to a job relocation over a downsizer. Problem type determines speed to market. Review every market appraisal based on problem type. Make progress. What would they need to see, feel or experience to have the confidence to do it now?
Wednesday - Listing review
Which listings are green light? (On track to sell). And which listings are red light? (Need attention). Meet with your owners and adjust - think about marketing, sale method and pricing. Offer a menu of the things they can do.
Strategy 5: Measure
Measurement is not about driving insecurity. It’s about improvement. Every Friday at 4 pm, measure your listings, sales and income for the month to date, and then the buyer appointments, market appraisals and listing presentations for the week to date. When you see things are off track, adjust.
Document that strategy into a simple one-pager. Now you’ve got strategic excellence.
Day One
Remember, it’s always day one.
Be hungry, be humble, be people smart.
If you started again today, what one thing would you do?
Business growth comes down to the three levers for growth: Think average sale price, volume and fee.
If an agent could raise their average fee from 1.75% to 2.1%, increase their average sale price from $800,000 to $1.1M, and increase their number of transactions from 20 to 44 per annum, they’d increase their revenue from $280,000 per annum to $1,016,400. That’s a huge increase of $736,500, or 263%.
But how? That’s a great question. And it’s called strategy.
To lift the average sale price:
When your sellers sell through you, where do they move to? If they sell through you but buy in a neighbouring market that you can service, you’ve now got a seller at a higher price point. We call that past client transitional data.
If you have 1000 Landlords or archived Landlords, where do they live? Think about their principal place of residence.
Where are the expensive streets in your area? Think of land size or building density.
You get the idea; you’ll never go there if you don’t plan to.
To lift Average Fee:
If I mention 2%, what’s the next number you think of? 1.5%. If I mention 2.13%, what number do you think of? 2%. Present your fees with odd decimal points; it’s called the rule of rounding.
Present two fees. Here’s our Basic and our Basic Plus. Which one do you want to choose? You want the Basic Plus, but you don’t even know what it is. Welcome to the world of instant upgrades. We have two fees to choose from, our Basic at 2.13% and our basic plus at 1.91% plus 10 cents on every dollar above the reserve, it happens to be our most popular. Which one would you prefer?
How you present fee really matters. Most are playing defence, and no one is playing offence. I might be the most expensive agent you’ll interview, but I’ll be the best value by the time you see what I do. There’s so much you can do. So before you blame the competitors or the market, take a long hard look at what you’re doing and how you can improve.
To lift Volume:
Focus on the number of opens you do every Saturday that are less than 28 days on market. More opens, more volume. Short days on market really changes your throughput. Don’t be limited. Four weeks on the market is 1/2 the time of 8 weeks on the market. List more homes in the average sale price, as they sell faster. List what buyers want to buy. Work more trade-in listings, etc.
The secret is, you’ve got to have a strategy, you’ve got to know the tactics you’re putting in play, and then you’ve got to measure to adjust.
No strategy, no growth. And that's the challenge for many: They float with the market rather than setting the strategy. Too many are strategically negligent, yet tactically excel. It’s time to go there; it’s time for growth. Let’s master those skills.
