It's not where we start; it's where we finish that matters. The famous one-liner used by auctioneers is also a great antidote to how we grow talent. Even the number one agents had their day one. Day one thinking keeps you hungry. Learn it all to excel in this industry.
How we bring people in, the experiences they are exposed to, and the quality of the training program have a marked impact on the speed of ascension and the achievement of their potential.
Whilst no two people are the same, the culture of the organisation they join, combined with the leadership team's learn-it-all or know-it-all approach, has a huge impact. Why can an agent join one firm and go nowhere yet move to a competitor and become wildly successful in under a year?
Let's explore what the best do to scale talent, meet and exceed targets, and dominate their markets.
Pre-boarding
Before someone begins, survey them to see if they have essential skills and app stack knowledge. This allows you to define a custom entry path. Imagine a world where you identify the skill gaps before you start so that you can align them with the right training and resources in your team.
The quickest way to do it is to build a list of all the essential apps in your business.
Think:
CRM
Agency agreement and contract signing
Property data
Proposals
Vendor-paid marketing
Email marketing
Auction live streaming
Internal communications
The list goes on. Here's a list of all the apps we use in our business. Identify your skill level: need help, okay, and high component. Identify key talent across your organisation who can teach each other. Then, align their entry with the apps they need to use first. Set a time with each key person so they can socialise in the workforce.
Next, think of essential skills. For sales, it could be:
Lead generation - favourite lead sources.
Winning - the quality of their listing presentation.
Selling - the sales skills, from launching, to price reductions, to multi-offers, etc.
Think of it as a pre-boarding survey to align expectations, map out key resources, and identify areas of need to build competence.
On-boarding
Now they've joined and been through the essentials, it's time to set some assignments. For any agent to become exceptional, there are four key areas:
Area Knowledge
Think key streets, mini-suburbs, kindergartens, schools, TAFEs and Universities. Add in major shopping centres, cafes, restaurants, doctors and hospitals. Then, add transportation; area guides like parks and bike tracks, travel times to key locations, local councils, builders, architects, handymen, and churches. Now, ask your new candidate in week one to do their research and, at the end of the week, to produce a 10-minute presentation about the area.
Use AI and the Deep Research option to rapidly build area knowledge. Cut and paste this prompt, including your area, to create a concise one-pager on your area.
AI prompt for deep research on area knowledge:
Local Area Knowledge
Hi there -
I'm a real estate agent, and I need to become an area expert on where I sell houses. The location is Balmain, Sydney, Australia.
Please identify Key Streets - think of the main roads, plus where the expensive houses are and any locations with medium to high density. What are the Hubs and Spokes - think smaller neighbourhoods/villages in the area. Identify the local Schools, Kindergartens, and Primary and Secondary schools, both public and private. Identify if there are any local TAFEs or universities close by. What are the Major Shopping Centres?
List the best cafes and restaurants, but do not put them on a map. List two options for each. Think of the best place for an early morning coffee, the best place for an early breakfast, a quick place for lunch, or a great restaurant or pub for date night or something special. Identify the local Doctors and closest Hospital, including travel time.
Transportation — What are the options, and be specific with routes. For example, think ferry, bus, train, car, walking, etc.
Area Guides - Lifestyle - Parks, Bike Tracks. Etc.
Travel Times to the CBD, the airport and major attractions
Local Council
Who are the Local Builders?
Who are the local Architects?
Who are the local Handymen?
Identify local Churches, etc.
Keep it high-level and brief, yet be specific so it's super easy to read. Imagine it as a one-page snapshot of the local area.
Market Knowledge
Once you know the area, you need to know the market. What does a 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 bedroom apartment or house rent for, and what do they sell for? What drives sale prices, like access to waterways or golf courses? Who are the best builders? How much is land worth? And what's the square meter cost to build for low, medium and high-end construction?
What's happened to sales and rental values over the last 5 years? Then, jump in the car and drive to the last 20 sales in the area. This gives you a great idea of density, architecture, and sales concentration. Learn about the demographics for each area, the zoning, and what can be built there.
Transactional Knowledge
Once you've built your market knowledge, you need to become phenomenal with your transactional knowledge.
What do you need to do to sign an exclusive authority with a client? And what needs to be filled in on that agreement to make it legally binding?
What documentation needs to be completed before you can talk to buyers or commence your marketing efforts?
Once the property hits the market, how are you allowed to talk about the price?
When an offer is received, what happens next? And if it's a multi-offer situation, how is that best handled to ensure no clients are bruised?
Once an offer is accepted, what happens next to make that a legally binding contract?
Are there any specific things you can do to make the offer unconditional?
Then what happens up until settlement or completion day?
Once you move through the basic transactional elements, then complexity can arise.
For example:
Can a real estate agent buy a property they've just listed?
If a husband and wife are both on the title, and they are divorcing, and the husband wants to bid at the auction, what happens next?
If either the buyer or seller dies before settlement, what happens next?
If the property floods or burns down before settlement, what happens next?
The better your transactional knowledge, the quicker you can bring together legally binding, unconditional transactions.
Brand Knowledge
Once your transactional knowledge is watertight, then you need to know everything you can about your brand. Brand stories are incredibly important to win more listings more often.
What's your brand's highest, average and lowest sale price?
What suburb, street and block records do you hold?
How many buyers does your brand meet per week and per month?
How many open homes does your brand hold every Saturday?
How many sales do you make per annum?
How many properties do you have under management?
Add those two numbers up, which equals the number of transactions per annum.
X 2 equals the number of consumers you serve per annum.
What are your average days on the market for houses and units?
What marketing campaigns does your brand offer? What's the pricing of those campaigns and the individual components?
What fee do you charge? And how do you deliver it? What are the three reasons why consumers choose your brand?
Got it. There's plenty to teach and lots to learn. Question to coach to the solution. Teach, train and test to ensure the skill is built.
Skill Layer
Now that you've perfected your area, market, transactional, and brand knowledge, it's time to move to the skill layer. That skill layer consists of how you generate your leads, win your listings, sell those listings, manage your team, and then strategically grow your average fee, sale price and volume.
Generate Leads
It's a science and an art. If you reviewed the last 100 agency agreements signed, how did your team meet the owner? What did you do to bring them to market?
The quickest way to build momentum is to set some aspirational goals. Our quickest way to build brand momentum is to think, how do I get to 5 open homes every Saturday in a core market with less than 28 days on the market? That's why we love someone working in a team. Teams are great as you leverage momentum and do something amazing with it.
Why go cold when you can go old?
Every business has many past clients, market appraisals, and archived landlords. Get access to those lists and get calling. Before you do, work with the best agent in your office and get them to do a sample call with you. iOS 18 has an incredible feature that allows you to select a recording option in the top left corner once the call is connected. It lets both parties know the call is being recorded. Then, at the end of the call, the audio and the transcript are saved in your notes. It's an awesome way to do role play and ensure the best dialogue that converts is used. I only do that in role-play situations, never with an end client, and it helps to ensure new people don't burn great data.
Where does the customer hang out before they need you?
Buyer work is the quickest way to produce revenue. There's always a listing in the office that someone can't sell. Get permission to do great buyer work around it. Call back through buyer enquiries on similar properties the brand has represented in the last 12 months. See if the buyer still has an appetite to buy; if they do, book them in for an appointment.
The best lead sources are:
Personal network
Past clients
Market appraisals
10/10/20 around just listed/sold
Buyer work
Expired/withdrawn listings.
The greatest mistake is those who just want to get their name out there. First, get really good at what you do, and work on what works in your marketplace.
Winning
How can I help? Four incredible words that open clients up. There are only 11 reasons why people sell. Know what those 11 reasons are. The bigger the problem, the faster they move. Think, you can go to one of two listing presentations. One has a job relocation; the other is potential downsizing. Which one do you choose? Everyone goes for the job relocation. So, it turns out the problem does matter and changes how you follow up.
There's a lot to learn in building an incredible listing presentation. One of the most important is to find out the three reasons why someone chose you. With established agents, the first thing we do is call and survey their most recent sellers who've just signed agency agreements. The feedback you receive, as to why they chose you and what the one thing you said that really mattered, provides you with an incredible insight into what consumers really want.
When we did that work, our clients told us:
They love our energy
They love the way we think
They love that we teach systems - think forms, checklists, visuals and dialogues.
Now that I know this, every time I go out on stage I make sure I've got great energy, that I'm thinking ahead of the client, and that I'm showing some form of system that they can use.
How We Sell
It's no mystery. A documented set of service expectations is easy to deliver. Great agencies have a documented process from listing to selling. Think off-market, launch week, on-market, week of the auction, auction day and post-auction sales process. In each of those strategic areas, there's a series of tactics. Think launch week, where you bring buyers who inspected in the off-market phase back, and then introduce new buyers from the market. It's where you hold a mid-week open home first, so by the time you get to Saturday, you've already got buyers coming back to see the home for a second time.
From how you work with buyers to the service experience that needs to be delivered to sellers, it's critical that everything is mapped out and followed.
Manage
Managing a team requires a series of meetings.
Think:
Monday - Buyer hitlist meeting - who are the best buyers in the market?
Tuesday - Seller hitlist meeting - who are the best sellers in the market, and what are we doing to progress them?
Wednesday—Listing review meeting—which properties have a red light and need work, and which properties have a green light and are on track to sell?
Each meeting has a series of questions. You can find a weekly calendar here. The more often you meet, the more likely you are to reduce risk during the sales campaign.
It shouldn't be surprising what happens every day of the week. Monday is callbacks, and Friday is preparing open packs for the weekend. To the amateur, there are lots of options, and to the professional, there's a series of checklists that guarantee success.
Measurement
Measure from day one.
Every week, measure your buyer appointments (BAPs), market appraisals (MAPs) and listing appointments (LAPs). Aim for double digits. Ten-plus appointments a week sets you up for success. The only reason someone only books buyer appointments is they never ask the question, 'Have you bought locally before?' and 'What are your plans with the existing?'.
The only reason someone only books MAPs and never gets a LAP is that they don't find out the problem the customer is trying to solve. If you know it's a job relocation, there are a series of very simple questions to ask.
Then, the only reason someone books LAPs and never gets a listing is because they aren't good enough in the listing presentation.
I often teach people how to list first, as it changes how they prospect, the quality of the questioning skill, etc.
Then, for the month to date, measure each week how you've progressed to achieving your monthly target of listings, sales and income. I.e. four listings, three sales, and X in income are great ways to start. That way, if you get a listing a week, you're on track for success. A good rule of thumb is, the number of opens you do on a Saturday with less than 30 days on the market is usually the number of sales you'll make per month.
Measurement is about course correction, so you know what to do to get things back on track.
Micro Skills
The best map out which skills need to be learned first.
Think:
Conduct an open house.
Conduct open house callbacks.
Take an offer from a buyer.
Get a buyer to bid up to $10,000 at an auction.
Exchange a set of contracts.
Where do you sit out of 12 on each of those? Teach, train and test your team members until they are 12/12. Once they've perfected each of those 5, choose another five micro skills.
That's why we use a job scorecard, which maps out all essential skills combined with essential apps that need to be learned in order to perform at your best.
Our Real Estate Blue-print manual is an incredible resource that has all the essentials mapped out. It's simple to use and lets you scale your team and success.
Start Here is a never-ending journey to become the very best in the world at what you do. That means you need to be a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all, because that really is the key to success.
