How To Get 50-Plus Transactions In A Year Part 2

Welcome and good morning to Mike Ferry TV. My marketing department told me something that I was very excited about a couple of days ago, that we had a record number of viewers watching Mike Ferry TV during the calendar year of 2022, and we’re hoping that number continues to grow. We started talking last week about the fact that my belief is everybody in Real Estate should try to attain a minimum of 50 transactions a year. And if you look at the people that are doing a lot of those types of transactions, they’re generally people, as I mentioned, our strong listing agents. Because listing agents put you in a position that allows you to multiply the transactions you’re doing. Because a sign on a property, a listing generally draws potential buyers to the listing agent. So there’s multiples that are often come from the fact that you take a listing.

I also understand fully that a majority of the agents in Real Estate for the last couple of years are more driven towards working with buyers because we have this belief that working with buyers is a lot simpler or easier than listing property. And I’m sure there’s some valid thoughts behind that. But I’ve always stated and I’ve done this all of my career, that the foundation of the business is always going to be inventory. Inventory in our case is listing property. So we’re going to look at some more thoughts in terms of how do we assist you in the course of this year. Or it may take two to three years for you to attain and get to 50 transactions. But as long as you’re pursuing something bigger than what you’ve had, as long as your dream is to become more productive as an agent. In terms of listings taken, buyer controlled sales and income, you know, the ideas we have will assist you in that process. So we covered four or five last week. I’m going to cover four or five this week and then we’ll keep moving forward.

So I wrote down first for today once a month, and we could do this several times this week if we chose to, ask yourself this question … Are my daily work habits allowing me to achieve the production goals that I’ve set or are my daily work habits lowering my chances of achieving the production goals I’ve set? In Real Estate, there’s just certain activities, as we’ve talked in the past, that are very much designed to assist an agent on creating listings and sales. There’s a lot of activities that are designed on everything but getting your listings and sales and some are productive. Some are nonproductive. The nonproductive are generally a little bit less stressful, but also less productive. So if you take and you analyze … Let’s take last week and you look at your planner, your calendar, how many listing appointments, how many showing appointments did you have or did you have any? What type of prospecting activities were you involved in each day? Do you have leads that you haven’t followed up on and tried to set an appointment? When you had an appointment, did you prequalify that particular buyer or seller in depth? Did you go to that appointment by having sent out a Pre-Listing Package that will help educate the seller on who you are and what you do? These are production-based activities. So we have to really look at the fact that are my daily habits proceeding, pushing me, assisting me, helping me achieve my long-term goals. Or are my daily habits just filling that space called time during the course of a day?

The next thought I wrote down, and this is probably one of the more difficult for most of us to attain … We have to learn to stay out of the drama and the emotions of transactions that we do. Transactions, I wish I could say, are not complicated. Almost every listing sold, and in many cases listing taken, buyer-controlled sales. There are certain facets of that, that create some drama and emotion. You know, somebody takes and shows one of your listings and writes an offer and then they change their mind three or four days later, the buyer backs out, buyer doesn’t qualify, your seller won’t accept the terms, you’ve tried to get them to adjust the price to open the market up, they won’t adjust their price, their price is too high for the market that you’re involved in. People get a little upset, people sometimes even get angry and that type of emotion and drama slows the process down of productivity. The most important thing we have to understand emotion and drama pulls us off our schedule. If we’re trying to work and follow a schedule each day.

I think most of you recognize the next thought I want to give you. As your transaction count in 2023, it grows or it grows over the next 2 to 3 years as I’ve stated, you have to be really careful not to read what I call your own press releases. Or in essence, you have to learn to control your ego. Because when you start producing over 10, 20, 30 up to 50 transactions, you’re going to get a lot of recognition, you’re going to get a lot of criticism, you’re going to get a lot of people patting you on the back, a lot of people giving you a dirty looks. It’s called jealousy in Real Estate is very common. Well, that ties into the last point on emotions and drama and at the same time, it ties into the fact that if we start believing because we’re doing more business, we are somewhat the king or queen of Real Estate in our community, we’re losing sight of what we have to do every day to keep a business operating. So interesting to me that I see two types of agents and Real Estate almost every day. Those that really believe they’re the best based on their activities and production and those that have done a couple of transactions and therefore believe because of a couple of transactions that they’re the best. I guess the answer is … Keep your ego locked in a closet. And remember, there’s always somebody a little bigger, a little better, a little stronger, a little more experienced, maybe a better presenter, a better closer, in many cases, much more profitable, bigger, stronger, better than we are in most cases.

The last point today I want to mention to you is probably one of the most important. If you really want to raise your long-term transaction count. Learn, study, understand, and we’ve talked about this so many times over the last couple of years, the various Personality Styles that if we spend the time prequalifying a buyer or seller and we really do listen to what they’re saying, we’re going to identify what their personality style is. Whether it be an analytical or a driver or an amiable or an expressive, we will find out if we ask and listen. If we’re asking and not listening, we’re not going to determine the personality style of that lead that we have. We can easily alter our presentation to a buyer or seller when we understand the nature of their personality. For example, if they’re an analytical seller and we say things like the following, “I’d like to make sure we give you all the facts and figures so you can make a very intelligent decision. I’m assuming that’s what you want to do. Is that correct?” And they’re going to say, “Yes.” because they love facts and figures. For the driver personality, you can simply state, “We probably need to spend less time talking and more time taking action. You do want the home sold as quickly as possible, don’t you?” A driver will say, “Yes.” To the amiable, “We want to make sure that the potential buyer sees the home with the same love and excitement that you folks have had in this home during your time here. Wouldn’t you agree?” “Oh, that’s so important to us.” Or to the expressive, “Tell me all about what you think are the reasons a buyer should buy this property versus the competition.” Remember, the more time we spend asking and listening, the better we get to know the prospects we’re working on.

As I stated eight or nine minutes ago, there’s really not any valid reason why every person in Real Estate couldn’t set a goal for a higher level of productivity than what they achieve. The problem is always the same. The commission checks, as I mentioned last week, got bigger during 2021 in the first half of 2022, and that due to the fact that prices kept going up. And then, of course, a lot of agents, once they get past 10 or 15 transactions, start making big demands on brokers for more commissions, which makes no sense whatsoever, but is very common. So as commission checks increased, the desire to do more deals often decreases. Think about this. If you increase your transaction count and your commission checks are stable, you’re going to have a very good profit. Your job is to create a system for creating production and profits. Our job is to help you do it. I think these ideas will help. We’ll talk to you next week. Thank you.