No one came here to play it small. Remember that. This is your one shot, your one opportunity to make it big. Carefully define your goals, then commit to the conscious choices and discipline that lead you to what you want.
Mindset Matters
Fixed or growth mindset? Fixed, you accept things as they are. Growth, you chase new ways of thinking to expand what's possible.
Layered or exponential?
Layered growth, you aim for just a little more. From 30 to 33 transactions per annum. Whilst it's fine to do so, playing it safe never achieves marketing-dominating game-winning performance. Exponential growth forces everything to break. Think going from 20 to 30 transactions per annum is a series of small tweaks. Going from 20 to 200 transactions requires a whole new way of thinking, from markets to how you'll service that volume.
Scale
5 opens on a Saturday. It's your greatest limiter in production. To scale, you need to add someone else to do more opens. The personal brand model breaks. Now it becomes about you and your team. 5 opens per agent every Saturday. Now you can pace. It requires growing great talent - people who are far better than you, so that you can chase specialisation by type of client, property, area or price point.
Systems
Is this the sort of organisation where we show people the way we cook the fries? Or is this the sort of place where you can cook them however you want? To scale, you need systems. Think of the Blue form, the market appraisal form that forces you to find out why the seller would sell. A job relocation has more urgency than a downsizer. And that's where the big opportunity is: better documentation.
Here are the essentials:
Forms - they capture all the essential information in the right order. Fill out the form. If the leader doesn't, neither will the new person. Forms prevent errors, and drive service excellence and consistency.
Checklists - everything is done in the right order. You can't sell a property and then sign the agency agreement. You need to get things in the right order. It drives compliance and ensures opportunities aren't missed. If you ever turned up to an open without the key, you missed the checklist. There are read-and-review checklists, like the recipe, where you need milk, eggs and flour, and then there's the read-and-do checklist: sift the flour, add the egg, and add the milk.
Visuals - they sell and tell the story of 1000 words. Amazing how agents have such poor brand knowledge. Think lowest and highest sale price; how many opens across the team on a Saturday? How many buyers did we meet? And what are the street and suburb records we hold? Simple questions that require continual updating. Who's the master of brand knowledge in your business, and where's the documentation to ensure the visuals get distributed and used by your team?
Dialogue - cut to the chase. The reason for my call is... Any chance I can see your place? What would it take for me to have the chance to represent you? Simple dialogue that speeds up the conversation and leads to conversion.
Big Enough Markets
Make sure your marketplace is big enough for your aspirations. It's nothing to do with the number of houses and everything to do with the number that sells every year over the ten-year average.
Where do your customers come from, and where do they go? If your average sale price is $1M, the buyer who buys at that level brings a $500,000 apartment to sell in order to buy the $1M property. The $1M seller goes to the next location and buys up to the $1.5M level. The secret is to know the before, core and aftermarkets. If there's a trend, chase it. Get smart so that every one of your opens leads to buyers who bring trade-ins.
There are only three levers for business growth: think volume, average sale price and fee.
How do you get better fees? Ask for them. If you don't ask, you don't get.
It's amazing to watch listing presentations and see how agents deliver fees. Here are a few things we've learned:
Always present two fees. If there's a choice of fee, the client is more likely to choose one.
Present your fee with two odd numbers after the decimal point. If your fee is 2%, the client thinks the next number should be 1.5%. If your fee is 2.13%, the client will try to round you down to 2%.
Present a higher fee to anchor off to the lower fee that you actually want to get. We have two fee options: our basic at 2.13% or our basic plus fee, which is 1.89% plus 10 cents for every $1 above the reserve.
Make sure your fees are in writing. Place them on a visual, and take them with you. Never pre-send the visual and never include it in a proposal, etc.
With your fee, make sure you have the three reasons why sellers choose to use you, together with all your brand stats. Remember, if they can't see the difference, they won't pay the difference.
Before you blame the competition, get your team to do their listing presentation for you. Film it, and then play it back. You'll be surprised at how many simple mistakes in presentations lead to lower fees.
Volume
To sell more, reduce your days on the market. Forty-two days sounds quick; 28 days is better. It reduces the number of opens you have to do. Simple, that 42 days requires two extra weekends, which cuts production volume by 50%. The shorter the days on the market, the more buyers and sellers you meet.
Work the before, core and aftermarkets. Make sure you follow where your clients go to next. Work with more buyers that bring trade-ins. Even in the low end of the market, there are plenty of Landlords walking through those opens who have the big house you'd love to sell.
Two listings for every sale is a simple mantra. One from the buyers you meet, the other from the seller you meet during the campaign. From 101020 to working open callbacks, turn every sale into a winner. There's nothing worse than arriving on settlement day only to see the next-door neighbour is now on the market with a competitor, even though you were in the street for four weeks in a row.
The sales process really matters. The more unconditional the sale, the less energy and effort it takes to work cool-offs. Auction allows for an unconditional sale and requires less re-work.
Scale your team. If you're sitting on the edge of 5 transactions a month, add a co-agent. Someone you can train to prospect, list and sell. It's critical to get someone who can come to a listing presentation and play an active part in it. "Either Hannah or I will be at every single one of your openings." Now that lets Hannah turn up, so it's not an issue when she does. You want to grow your people to be the best in the market. It allows for further specialisation in area, price, type of property or people.
Average Sale Price. Where do they come from, and where do they go?
If a seller sells for $1,000,000, maybe they buy in the next suburb for $1.5M from a competitor.
Now you've got your loyal client who sold with you and paid $20,000 for your service, and you're in a market you can serve. Stop leaving great relationships behind. Get good with past clients, who are really future clients.
Landlords and archived Landlords
Where do the Landlords and archived Landlords live? Their principal place of residence is a huge source of sales. Make sure your BDM, PM, and sales teams have a strategy on how to ask and what to do to create opportunities for the biggest lead source for more expensive real estate.
Target key streets and areas
Where are all the expensive homes? Think land size and building size. Think access to water, transport and schools. Whatever drives price in your area, know why it does and use it to your advantage. Every time there's a listing or sale in that street, use that as a trigger event to meet the neighbours.
Recruit talent with all the relationships.
There's the great story of the real estate agent who once sold Mercedes Benz cars. When he got into real estate, he called everyone who bought a car from him and offered them an appraisal on their car and their house. He is one of the most significant fee writers in our industry, and it's a great reminder to never leave a relationship behind.
Conscious Choice And Discipline
If you want to be more successful, you have to pay the price. In a world filled with distractions, you need to be super focused on what you want.
Here are some conscious choices:
1. Go all in on video. You don't have to be in the video, but make the video your major brand experience. Every property has a video; in fact, they have five videos. The cinematic trailer that makes the portals, then 4 x 15-second reels, launching soon, is now live, open this weekend and now sold.
2. Commit to a better plan. Know how many sales you want and then how many listings you need to win. That determines the number of listing presentations you need to go do, which determines the number of market appraisals you do. I've never met anyone who lists more than they appraise.
3. Set the boundaries from day one and play to the level. If you want to write $1M, with a 44-week work year and 25 billable hours per week, your new hourly rate is $909 per hour. At that level, you need a great team around you to refine what you do, edit frequently, and become your best.
4. If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen. A calendar-led life is a great life. It requires better strategic planning. Put the holidays in first, then set the boundaries for your stage of life. If you have kids, know that it's really important to work your calendar so you can be more in the moment and a great parent to them.
5. Shift to discipline. Review the numbers every week. Think buyer, market appraisal and listing appointments. These are outcomes. Then think of results for the month to date - listings, sales and income, actual versus target. Measurement lets you adjust so you can achieve your goals.
Remember this: when you first start, you're just excited to be able to log in to the CRM. As you get better, you realise that there's always something to do. If you just focus on using what's been listed or sold as a trigger for great work, then everything changes for you. There's always someone to call. It's about making the decision to go pro. Wherever there's stress, it's usually a broken system or limited thinking. Never let complacency slip in.
If you're unhappy with your current performance, remember it's a simple game.
It's either:
Generating leads
Winning listings
or Selling them.
Sometimes, you'll have the trifecta. Focus on the one area that gives you the best momentum. If you list them better, they sell better. Remember that. Skills really matter. How can I help? It's such a great question at the start of a listing presentation. Make it easy for people to buy from you. Make it easy for them to see the difference. Make it easy for them to give you money. Simple, straightforward business, down with exceptional customer service and experience.
Business is the ultimate sport. Get good at playing the game, have fun with it, love what you do, and strive to become the best in the world. The world needs more people who've come alive.
This is your time. We've got a strategic plan; it's called Doing Things. Remember, you get known for what you get executed.
