Get Competitive.

This is our time. Now, more than ever before, you need to strive to be the best. Business is strategy. It's the greatest game in the world. And now's your time to play. How good are you at your job? And what are you doing to be the best player in the game? Two great questions.

Get into the performance zone and stay there. Our industry is filled with dogma, poor thinking, and a lack of execution. Those who win challenge the norms because it's right to do so when you find a better way. They challenge convention and use creativity to excel. And they realise this one thing: You get known for what you execute.

Let's change the game.

1000s of appraisals, but you don't know what your next listing is? We suffer from pipeline bloat, overzealous tech, and CRMs that promise the world. But what we really need is a hitlist. It's time for change; welcome to the revolution.

There are two things in business: you're either chasing buyers, sellers, or buyers/sellers.

The way the industry qualifies is broken. A, B and C grade, Hot, Warm and Cold, Next 30, 60 and 90 days. No one has ever come into the office and felt pumped about calling C-graders or the cold sellers. The very names prevent great work.

Instead, realise this: The bigger the problem, the quicker they come to market. Arrive home, reveal to your partner that you're having triplets, and see how quickly you move. Never go to an appraisal without filling out the Blue Form.

The Blue Form has 11 different reasons why people sell. Urgent, timeline-driven events.

Growing Family: Think of having a baby or the kids growing up and needing a larger space or a different school zone.

Divorce - one of life's more difficult situations.

Deceased estate - highly emotional, potentially political, but with clear outcomes.

Developers - either selling completed property or development sites that no longer stack up.

Investors - changing their asset mix or exiting property.

Bankruptcy - financial pressure during a cost-of-living crisis.

Job relocation - moving for work.

Nursing home - from respite to full-time care.

Non-urgent, no timeline events.

Sea/tree change - changing the pace of life.

Aspirational - buying the better, architecturally designed home.

Downsizing is non-time dependent but an essential part of life.

Now that you know the problem, what does the customer need to see, feel, or experience to have the confidence to do it now? That's what great agents do. Before they walk into a listing presentation, they think: What am I walking into? Are they happy, energetic, driven and positive about the sale? Or are they under pressure, stressed, anxious and highly emotional? When you know what you're going into, you present at your best.

The challenge is that we're drowning in data, but the good stuff isn't coming to the top. Great agents use CRM for all contacts, and then they take a very specific list of those and add them to their hitlist - either on their phones in the note section or printed out

What turns a buyer into a better buyer? Think specific actions - made an offer, needs to buy by a certain date, has already sold, has financed, is coming to open, returns your calls, has a copy of a contract, bid at auction. For every campaign, 2-3 buyers will be added to the buyer hitlist.

Duplicate the contact to your hitlist on your phone and read over it every day. That list of buyers should inspire better prospecting, either matching them to alternate listings, previous appraisals or past clients. Get opportunistic; if you have demand, create the supply.

Every Monday, we have a 15-minute buyer hitlist meeting. Review all your best buyers and match them. Add, edit, delete. The cleaner the list, the more potent you are. What an incredible listing tool to use for a listing presentation.

Seller Pipeline

What turns a market appraisal into a seller? Think specific actions: has a clear problem, timeline and/or destination, has already bought, is actively looking to buy, returns your calls, is getting the property ready to sell, is ready to decide on agents.

The role of the market appraisal is to learn more about the client. The seller will sell when they are ready to sell, but it's your sales process that gets them ready. Think of one thing you can do today to give them the confidence to do it now.

And that's the problem. Imagine I gave you a list of 10 sellers, and every one of them had a job relocation. How quickly would you call the list and get face-to-face? Now, I'll give you a list of downsizes, all 5-10 years off from making a decision. Whilst still a good list, I'd take the first every time. It doesn't mean you don't work the downsizes; it just means working them in a different way by really helping to drive their vision or problem.

Now, every Tuesday, hold a 15-minute seller meeting. Review all previous appraisals, sorted by problem type. Review your seller hitlist also by problem type and get the listing.

One great question to consider: how many of your sellers are buyers? If you found them something to buy, do you know they'd sell? And that's what the greats do; they turn data into relationships and relationships into transformational transactions.

Are you a dialogue master? The worst thing we ever did was ask more questions. What we need is the question, that one question that changes everything.

Learn the critical path.

You have a seller who has a job relocation. You can either ask about where they are moving to or about the job.

About where they are moving to:

That's exciting, where are you moving to?

Will you buy or lease when you get there?

How much are you looking to spend there?

And how much would you need to get from this one to make that happen?

Simple, progressive questions that develop your understanding of the client.

Now go the other way, the job:

What do you do for work?

How soon before they need you there?

Could you go earlier?

Will they be paying for your relocation costs, including the removals, agent and marketing fees?

Simple and super smart. Now you know more about the situation and what to do next.

Critical Path

We need to teach the critical path method. Think about the game-changing questions:

How can I help?

What do you need to see, feel or experience to have the confidence to do it now?

Have you sold before?

Do you have a preference between an auction or for sale?

What are you looking for in an agent?

And how will you know when you've found the one?

What's your plan, on how you'd like to separate your home from all the others on the market?

Is there a price you need to get?

Looks like we've done everything yeah? Let's get to it, yeah?

You get the idea. Simple questions that have the ability to change the entire presentation.

Get your best, and go all in. Less questions, but more powerful game-changing ones. Remember, the goal of any question is to demonstrate your knowledge and speed up the customer's decision-making cycle.

Don't make it hard; know the three reasons why a seller would choose you.

45 minutes in the lounge room, hoping the customer will work out why they should use you.

It is better to have a clear one-pager on the three reasons why a customer would choose you

You have your marketing team from the office call:

Hi Hannah, I'm Jess from Josh Phegan's team. I thought I'd call you today, as I'm the head of marketing. We're doing some customer research to understand how modern consumers choose their real estate agent. I've got a few questions. If you could give me some quick answers, we can organise a little voucher at Restaurant Margaret for you. Would that be OK?

How did you find out about Josh?

How did you meet him?

Do you follow him on social?

Have you enquired about any of our properties before?

Have you experienced his team's service at an open?

What expectations did you have before the meeting?

Did you receive any written materials or video content before the meeting?

How many agents did you interview?

Have you already made your selection before they came out?

Was there anything that was said that made Josh stand out?

Anything the competitors said that really got your attention?

How did you make your decision to select an agent?

When it came to fees, did you negotiate?

Were you going to proceed regardless if Josh negotiated on his commission?

Anything the agent could do to make it easier/faster for you in your decision-making?

When we did this, three things emerged. People use me:

1. For my energy

2. For the way I think

3. For the way I show a form, a checklist, a visual or a dialogue that allows them to execute and be super productive straight after the session.

Great brands tell stories that customers connect with. Think Harley Davidson and the Freedom Machine. The moment you get on that bike, all your troubles melt away; you've found freedom. I'm amazed at the complete lack of brand knowledge in any business.

It's time for some better stats, think:

1. Highest sale price

2. Lowest sale price

3. Number of suburbs/postcodes we sell in

4. Number of sales per annum

5. Number of sales per annum x 2 = number of customers we’ve successfully served

6. Suburb, street and block records we hold.

7. The number of opens we hold per weekend and the number of buyers we meet on average at those opens, which lets us show how many buyers we have left over every month.

Now, think about the elevator pitch you can build.

Hannah, we hold 50 opens every Saturday, with 10 buyers at each; that's 500 buyers we meet x 4 weekends, that's 2,000 buyers. If we sell 50 homes a month, that's over 1,950 buyers we have left over from last month alone. What would it take to get them through your home?

We've been trusted at the highest levels, selling properties for $60M to first homes at $400,000. We've sold in 30 different postcodes. Last year alone, we sold 500 homes and leased out 1000. That means over 500 sellers and 1000 landlords trusted us to represent them, and over 3,000 consumers were successful in a residential real estate transaction with us.

Powerful, simple, and easy to execute. You can say it's the market, you can worry about the competition, you can blame the economy, you can stress about what the future holds, or you can get seriously good. Just be the best because there's no competition at that level.

It's time to be competitive.