Tweet it out: “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great” @TomFerry

Happy New Year! Today we want to talk about how do you make sure that the first week out of the gate is a powerful one! So I’ve got four actions I want you to consider…

Number one: get your January and first quarter goals up and visual. Remember, if they’re not up, if they’re not visual, they’re out of sight and they’re out of your mind. 

Number two: call every single past client from 2013 and 2014. Here’s a script to make it easy:

“Hey (client name), just want to reach out and say happy new year! I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday. Hey tell me one thing you’re committed to next year. What’s one thing you want to do in 2015, in any area of your life?”

Now what you want to do with this information is put it inside your CRM, so anytime you want to talk to them about real estate, it gives you a reason to call them.

Number three: call every lead you have. Find out how they’re doing, what’s their goals, what’s their plan in terms of real estate. You want to convert this leads in appointments. Your goal in the first week is to set up all the appointments for the month of January. Number four: read your Best Year Ever letter. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go here. Read it three to four times a day. Remember, if you keep reading it over and over, you become those words. You begin to realize all those goals and dreams are absolutely possible.

Tweet it out: “The best way to predict the future is to create it” @TomFerry

As we sit here days away from the new year, I thought I’d give you one last assignment to make sure that 2015 is your best year ever! When you do this exercise, your will achieve your goals faster and with greater ease.

So, I want you to write your 2015 best year ever letter–and here’s how it work. You’re going to write a letter to yourself as if the date was December 30th, 2015. You’re going to write this letter one year out, and are literally going to, in writing, articulate you having already achieved every one of your goals. You’re articulating each of the goals in the appropriate setting all inside this letter. But that’s not all, I also want you to really get into the letter and write something about your mental toughness–your ability to persevere when others would simply quit.

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss–do you remember this book? This is like the greatest sales book on the planet! I think there needs to be some reference for you about being Sam. That perseverance to follow through no matter what until you achieve the vision. And I think if you miss that in your letter you’re going to miss one of the great gifts of life–the balance between good and bad. You can’t enjoy a good bright and sunny day without knowing of a dark, raining day–or vice versa. So write about it. Not that we’re trying to affirm it’s going to happen but we know some things are not going to go as planned. So I’d rather have you write about it and then talk about how you persevered, how you overcame it, how you remained mentally tough doing your job with inspired action regardless of the circumstances going on around you. That’s the power inside this letter I want for you!

And then the last part of that letter should be some acknowledgement of who you’re thankful for. Who you’re grateful for. Who you just want to reach out and say: Gosh, thank you so much for doing all that you did to support me in having 2015 be my best year ever!

So, as we sit here on the nearly New Years Eve, spend 15-20 minutes and articulate everything that you want to have happen. All your business goals. All your personal goals. Get it into a letter dated one year from now and then read it over and over again. Because if you can read it, you can believe it, you can emotionalize it, you can own it, and then guess what?–you’ll do it!

Have a safe new year, talk to you then!

Tweet it out: “Success is the natural consequence of consistently and routinely applying basic fundamentals” @TomFerry

We have another great episode of REal Success presented by Bill Pipes! In this episode, Bill interviews Tim Smith of Orange County, CA. Some of Tim’s accomplishments include: top 1% of all agent in the nation, #14 in the world for Coldwell Banker, #16 in the nation for teams according the the Wall Street Journal, and #2 team in Orange Country, CA. So let’s just dive right in.

Bill Pipes: Tim, you have been through ups and downs, highs and lows, but in the end skyrocketed to the top! People look at you and they go, “Oh, he must have some kind of secret.” And they are right, it comes down to a few key things. So Tim, share with us your journey to this point in your career.

Tim Smith: I’ve always been an above average salesperson, but when I decided to really make a career of out my real estate business, I had some breakdown moments. This lead me to Tom in 2008 when I started coaching and this was when my career really took off. Ever since we started working together, we focused on how to get to a certain level of production by precise design, execution and a little bit of the enabling power of the universe. And that’s a big process, drawing a lot from the book ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill–highly recommend you read this book every year to pull inspiration and get back to the basics.

And over the last seven or eight years, as you start growing, adding team members, understanding where you’re trying to go and understanding your numbers–it’s just the fundamentals of appointments, contracts and getting back to the basics. For example: if I want to make $3 million this year, I need to know how much to produce in volume, listing appointments, buyer appointments, and what my team needs to look like to get me there. It’s really that simple. 

BP: Was it a natural move for you to build a team for the production you wanted to make? What is your structure like? What does it mean to be on The Smith Group? And what are some of those expectations and standards that you have for them?

TS: Yes, building a team was a natural step for me. At first, I took anybody that wanted to be a part of my team. But now, as we continue to grow, I’ve become more selective, hiring people right for the job and right for the company dynamic. I don’t expect my agents to do anything that I’m not doing. And it’s not just about the production, it’s also the daily routine–the building blocks that create results. I feel very lucky to have a team in which we have a culture, where people want to be together, mixed in with some healthy competitive tension.

BP: I love that statement you just said: “I can’t create an expectation for anyone on my team that I’m not doing myself.” I notice that there are two types of leaders in the world, leaders that sit back and say, “go do this” and leaders that are working alongside everyone that pulls the team forward. That is such a great perspective to have. Walk us through how do you create that?

TS: Life has a way of breaking us down. And what I found for me, and what I’m starting to find that’s consistent among all great agents, is committing to your daily routine. The great thing is that anyone can do it. I like to think of doing my daily routine as “putting my armor on.” And this is how it goes, every night, I plan what I need to do the follow day. It takes 15 to 30 minutes to write my list. I go through my CRM and plan how I’m going to get my appointments and contracts for the day. This serves as my fundamental building block and has proven more important and useful this year than any years past. This year has been much more of a grind than last year. Last year was such a good year. We were making money so easily, and it was one of those things I wasn’t used to. It was just an incredible thing. Well, this year, it’s back to a grind… over inspections, deals falling out of escrow and we’re really grinding to get to our numbers. Our goal was 400 million and we are going to push with new affirmations, new daily routine, new planning and pressing forward. It’s not easy, but what I know is if I do my part, I can expect the results.

BP: Now talk to me about fundamentals: what are you working on to position yourself for 2015 and what’s going to make the difference for you to have a breakthrough year?

TS: When you start getting clearer on your business, you find out how important knowing your numbers is. It’s very easy, if I want to do this much in production, I need to know my average purchase price, the number of listings I need to sell, the number of appointments to get a listing, the number of conversations to get get an appointment, etc. It’s all about the numbers and it’s so easy to engineer these numbers, but not everyone is willing to do it. For me, the difference between the successful and the rest is the successful are not comfortable with doing these things, they’re willing to do these thing while the rest aren’t. And when you can get comfortable doing those things, the blocking and tackling, the appointments and contracts, the prospecting, then and only then will you succeed. I can’t emphasize enough that it’s that easy and simple. It’s like the better you get out, the more eloquent it becomes. So it’s one of those things where it’s just getting up to bat, increasing the frequency of those opportunities to get the results.

BP: So, hypothetically I join The Smith Group. What advice would you give me to make the production I want to make? 

TS: I would just pretty much rephrase what I just said. We would take your goal and reverse engineer that. If your batting average for listing appointments to converting the listings taken is 60%, for every 10 listings, you’re going to take six, for every six listings, you’re going to sell four. When we figure out your numbers, I’m not going to be holding your hand. I’m literally going be in the trenches aside of you working on my numbers. If you’re not getting your numbers, I’m not going to grind you. It’s up to you. I will empower you and support you, but I’m not going to do it for you. At the end of the day, you worked for where you’re going to be. You’ve chosen to be there. So, the only one you can look at is yourself if you’re not getting the results. And when you get really clear on taking one hundred percent responsibility for where you are today, that’s the only way you can improve. If funny you asked this question because a lot of agents come up to me asking for advice and they have no clue what their numbers are. I know how many listing appointments I’ve been on this year. I know exactly how much I’ve closed, pending, in escrow, what my team is doing. This is something every agent should know and do.

BP: Where does most of your business come from?

TS: Number one source of business is my sphere of influence. Number two is past clients. Number three is my geographic farm. And number four is direct mail marketing. The interesting thing that I’ve discovered is the best business for all agents is either your sphere or your past clients, but it’s probably where most agents nurture the least. We spend more time chasing strangers than we do nurturing the ones that are our best business sources. Something my admin team helps me with is getting me to the golf course, charity events, places to connect with those people that are more of the people that are going to do business with me.

BP: That’s a great point. We need to pay more attention our sphere and past clients for repeat business. Last question, a hypothetical one–suppose I’m an agent that wants to break into the luxury market, what advice would you give me?

TS: This is perfect question for me because I grew up with no high end relationships, so I had to build mine.

Step one, you need to be an expert. You need to know your data. You need to know who’s buying houses, what they are buying. You need to know the houses they are buying, and property that isn’t on the market. You need to know everything about this houses and people living in them, because the people living in and looking to live in the luxury market will know it better than you do, and they’ll size you up in 30 seconds. But once you know your stuff, you’ll see how easy it is because you’ll be able to tell them things about their specific neighborhood–who’s buying and who’s selling. So there is no substitute for information and knowledge. What’s great about Zillow, Redfin and Trulia are the public records–all that information is available. Pull the grantees. Figure it out.

Early in my career, I used to sit at open houses three, four or five times a week at the most expensive houses I could. And when people would come in, I would know everything about them because they are the neighbors. And I would talk about the William’s who live next door or the Johnson’s who lived up the street as if I knew them. I never met them before, and all that information sounds a little creepy, but the truth is if you want to attract those people, you have to have the knowledge.

Step two and probably the most important thing is we all know that what sells homes–90% of homes sell because of price and the MLS. But we have all these different marketing tools and techniques that we can do. Whether it be property films, virtual tours, story book, etc. There’s all of these different tools we have that don’t necessarily bring luxury buyers, but they do sell the luxury sellers. So, understanding that marketing done effectively makes selling superfluous and helps you to understand spending money on things that are going to sell this type of person.

Tweet it out: “A goal is a dream with a deadline” @TomFerry

Ready to make 2015 your best year ever! Of course you are! So let’s do a little exercise I like to call the Wheel of Life by Design! You can download and print out our graph here to follow along.

First, rate yourself on the following areas of your life:

• Health
• Family
• Career
• Travel
• Contribution
• Relationship
• Social/Fun
• Wealth

Second, assess your graph. 

Third, set some goals based off your assessment of your graph. For example, say you want to accomplish 2 or 3 things when it comes to your health and vitality. Do you want to run a marathon? Do you want to weigh a certain amount? Do you want a certain pant size? Is it just an overall feeling. What is it for you? Do the same thing with your family, career, wealth, relationships and all the way down the line.

Fourth, set deadlines for your goals. Remember, it’s not a goal unless you can say how much, of what, by when. If there’s no by when, it is not a goal. It’s just a dream. 

Fifth, create a vision board. Take all the things you want to experience in your life – pull from magazines, cut out photos or download it from the internet. If you can see it and you can believe it, then you can achieve it!

Tweet it out: “Start strong, stay strong and finish strong by always remembering why you’re going it in the first place” @TomFerry

Happy December! Let me ask you a question… generally speaking in this month, what do you do? Is this a big month for you? Is this a slow month for you? As I look around the country, they either made money or they’ve given up on their goals and ultimately what that means is they’re not going to finish the year strong (and they most likely aren’t going to start the year strong.) So if you’re motivate for action has been a little low, this is an excellent opportunity for you to learn four different things you can do to close out the month of December and finish strong! 

1.) Decide your goals, specifically for the month of December. How many days are you going to work (or how many days are you planning on taking off), how many buyer/seller appointments are you going to take and how many new sales are you going to generate for the rest of the month?

2.) What are the most important levers for the month of December. I bet there’s 30, 40, 50, 70 things you want to do inside your business but what I’m looking for is what’s the lever that can generate results right now! You probably only have two or three very significant levers that will move the needle this month and all I want you to think about is.

3.) Schedule it. Because if it’s not in your schedule, it doesn’t exist and never gets done. 

4.) Be accountable. Plain and simple.

So decide on the actions you need to take today. There is still plenty of time this month for you to go out and help lots of buyers and lots of sellers achieve their dreams regarding their real estate. So get to it right now!

Tweet it Out: I’m starting 2015 on fire because I’m planning now!  @TomFerry

Make sure to schedule everything because as you know, if it’s not in your calendar it doesn’t exist.

The market is going to be moving quickly in January so get prepared this November and December.

Tweet it out: “What you’re willing to do now that others won’t, will allow you to do in the future what others can’t” @TomFerry

Here’s episode 3 of REal Success with Bill Pipes!

In this episode, Bill talks about current market trends: listings sitting on the market a little longer, inventory growing, and buyers being skittish. Bill brings in top producing agent Tom Toole of Philadelphia, PA who specializes in working expired listings to help you gain market share dealing with expireds, move your business forward, earning more money and help a lot more deserving home owners.

Bill Pipes: Tom, thank you for being a part of REal Success, please tell us a little about yourself.

Tom Toole: I’ve been in the business for 13 years and before coaching I’ve been getting by. About 3 years ago I noticed my business plateauing and I decided to join coaching and it was the best decision for my business. A little overview of my business since being in coaching: in 2011 I did 40 transaction and 300k in GCI, in 2012 I did 55 transaction and 350k in GCI, and in 2013 I did 80 transactions and 668k in GCI–that year was my breakthrough year!

BP: Incredible, let’s talk about what was the cause of this growth. What are your 3 key lead generating tools?

TT: Before coaching, leads only came from my database. Since I started coaching, my coach said I needed to diversify my lead sources, so we added For Sale by Owners (FSBOs) and expired listings. Expireds have been really good for me and my business.

BP: That’s an understatement, you are an expired specialist! Tell me, how do you work expired listings?

TT: This past year was a great year for a lot of people, the market is returning to normal. Homes are not selling as quick and it’s a bit more challenging market. Sellers aren’t going to get it right the first time around. And that’s okay! The thing that I really like about expired listings are that you know they are motivated. They have put their home on the market once and hired an agent–they didn’t try the for sale by owner route.

The system that I use is to get on the phone at 8am and call all the newly expired listings. I want to be the first one to reach them. I know with the scripts I’ve practiced with my coach, I will be able to ask the questions to get the appointment. That’s the goal of the call, to get an appointment. It’s not about getting the listing over the phone, but that does happen sometimes. And if you don’t get them to schedule an appointment with me, I get their email address so I can put the right information in front of them.

BP: You talked about using scripts to schedule appointments, are you using the same script on every expired listing conversation?

TT: Yes, same script. Every expired listing seller ask the same questions. The first thing that my coach told me to do was to internalize the script, because if you don’t know the script, you aren’t going to get the answers to get the appointment. If you don’t know the script, you don’t know what to say that’s like putting another obstacle in front of you. You should be on autopilot and listening to what your prospects are saying. By asking the right questions, you can determine if the prospect is even motivated or not so you don’t waste your time or theirs.

BP: How did you master the scripts and use it effectively on expired listings?

TT: I role play the scripts with other agents in the coaching program. If you aren’t practicing scripts with other agents, you are practicing it on your prospects and that’s not who you want to be practicing it on because that’s where the revenue comes from. And that was a big game changer for me. I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t like doing it, but it helped improve my skill so much and I saw that with the amount of appointments I’ve been booking.

BP: What else do you do besides calling expired listings? Direct marketing?

TT: Absolutely. When sending a direct marketing piece, it’s like a billboard because you are calling them and your mailers supplement your efforts. The system I have in place is 9 touches in 2 months for every new expired that comes off the market. First is an intro letter that includes 3 testimonials, an expired listing that I sold, the days on the market the first time, the days on the market when I took it on and a hand written letter. I then send them a jumbo postcard of an expired home I sold, how many days it was on the market, how long it took me to sell it and a review from the former home owners of their experience with me. I send 4 of those mailers back-to-back, 5 mailers in a row in the first 5 days. Then they will get a mailer from me once a week for the next 5 weeks. Expired listings get hit hard with mailers in conjunction of me calling them.

BP: And what response have you gotten from your efforts?

TT: It keeps me top of mind. Lots of agents don’t follow up, which is really where all the money is at. As real estate agents, it’s really easy to make the first connection, but it’s the constant follow up that most agents don’t do. I do it relentlessly and it helps me get through the doors for appointments.

BP: Do you take every expired listing you go after? And if no, how long do you wait until you stop calling and mailing expired listings?

TT: First, I convert 70% of expired listings I go after and second I don’t believe in giving up on a lead until they list with someone else. If expireds don’t list with me after my 9-touch system and calling efforts, I put them on a 90-day follow up, where every 90 days I check in with them via phone call.

BP: That really speaks to your work ethics. What is the mindset and attitude you have to work expireds?

TT: In this business if you aren’t coming from the position of helping people and are only in it for the money, people can sense that and won’t want to work with you.

BP: And last question, what is one advice would you give to someone who wants to go from 10 transactions to 20 or 30 and is looking to work expireds?

TT: My best advice I would give them is to join coaching. I wish I joined coaching years ago! With a coach, I was able to have work-life balance. I was able to do things I didn’t think it was possible. All the coaches are doing this now or have done this before, so it’s a no brainer. Do this for yourself and your business.

Tweet it out: “All lasting business is built on friendship” @TomFerry

One of the questions I get all the time is “what CRM do you recommend?” And you know what… That’s the wrong question! Every CRM is great but every one of them is missing something that you want that would suddenly cause you to have magical success inside your business. So this is what I tell people: Whichever one you have is AWESOME! If you don’t have a CRM, get one!

But that’s the wrong question. The right question is “Why CRM?” Because here’s what we know: The goal is to be the Hub–the center of everything happening in the real estate world globally and locally.

Think about this: The average consumer today is moving every ten years, which means if you’ve got a thousand people in your database, that is 100 transactions you should be doing a year! If you’re not the Hub, there’s no way you’re doing that level of success, because you’re still asking the question “What CRM?” The minimum goal is 10% conversion every year in your database. Also you should be getting 15% of your agent database sending you agent-to-agent referrals. You and I both know a referral fee is arguably the best check in real estate.

Being the Hub means if people are thinking about selling, they call you. If they’re thinking about buying or someone they know is thinking about buying, they call you. If they are looking to refinance their home, they are not calling their bank to sit on hold, they call you. Home values, a gardener, a handyman, something at home needs fixing and everything that’s real estate related: they call you.

So now the question is how do you become the Hub? The plan is to connect with everyone in your database, every 90 days. You would want to take good notes in your CRM that are context specific, meaning things that are important to your customer. So when you’re reaching back out to them, whether it’s “Hey, how are your kids doing in the transition between middle school and high school?” you have meaningful conversations that make you the go-to source of everything real estate in your market. 

Tweet it out: “Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today” @TomFerry

Now, I get asked this question all the time, “Okay, Tom. I wrote down my plan, but at times I still feel like I’m operating by default. How do I tighten things up? How do I ensure success? How do I make sure that following through and achieving the kind of success I want is a total no-brainer?”

It’s two things:

• Marketing plan
• Outsourcing … outsourcing a lot of your marketing

Now with your marketing plan you’re going to take the core of your business and you’re literally going to go through January, February, March, all the way through to the end of the year, and you’re going to decide the most important marketing pieces and activities that will be done month in and month out to cause you to achieve your goals.

What you don’t want to do, the cardinal sin, is to wake up in the morning and scratch your head and say “When was the last time I sent out a mailer? What should I send next time?” That’s rolling the dice, my friends. You want to take as many of your lead sources as you can and design the core of your marketing plan for the year. This is going to make your business a lot more bulletproof.

So, get your marketing plan completed and organized. Download a free copy off my website today if you haven’t already done so ==> www.tomferry.com/agent-tools

Now to outsourcing. The minutiae in real estate. The amount of things that you’re responsible for, that you have to remember to do and have a checklist for, is enormous.

Why don’t you find somebody for three hours a week, and maybe even a full a day to get those things done for you. There are extremely bright people inside your marketplace that understand project management and have got an eye for marketing.

You’re essentially structuring your financial future because you’re now focusing on getting transactions closed or deal doctoring deals.

And when you do that, guess what happens?… your success goes through the roof because your busy doing what you do best. The other things aren’t always the highest and best use of your time. So, short message today: get your marketing plan done. It’s early November, you got plenty of time. And start looking around for an outsource solution.