A Successful Real Estate Agents Blueprint – Part 2
Welcome and good morning to Mike Ferry TV the week of June 7th, we hope you’re off to a fast start for the month of June. We hope it’s been a good five, first five, first five months for all of you. It should have been, because the truth is, this market we are experiencing today with all the challenges we have with inventory. Is still probably the hottest Real Estate market I’ve ever experienced. I got under Real Estate when I was eighteen. I’m seventy-six. That’s a long time, with the exception maybe of two thousand six early, two thousand seven, which was also a tremendous market. Last week if you were watching Mike Ferry TV, I introduce to you the word blueprints. And of course, those blueprints actually started in 2013. And has been kind of fun doing them and I should say not kind of fun, it’s been a lot of fun doing them because it really does show step by step what a person like yourself can do to dramatically improve the quality of their business. So the real question is not do you believe that these blueprints will work? These real question is, do you really believe that you can be more productive than you are? And I know if you’re a newer agent, of course, all the excitement of yes, I can do it, I can do it. If you’re an experienced veteran doing a minimal amount of business, you’re probably questioning not only am I an authority to help you do it, but are you a person that is capable of doing it? And these blueprints showed the simplicity.
It’s kind of fun is we recorded these first two blueprints for The Valerie Cairo last week. Tony Smith, I’m going to cover today. We did this in two thousand thirteen to present at a four-day action workshop I was doing in Anaheim, California. And it was interesting because I virtually got standing ovations as I read these blueprints to the audience, because a blueprint, as you know, is what a builder developer has to use to create the foundation of anything they’re going to build. Now, the good news is within a couple of years, the state associations, the board of Realtors, the big franchise companies, my competitors all started claiming that they created a new issue called a blueprint. And of course, they heard that I was going to do this again at the Superstar Retreat coming up in July. So now they’re all doing blueprints again. But of course, my friend Gunther Clauss used to say all the time, as did Mike Vance, you know, you have to learn to create faster than your competition can steal because everything you’re doing that is really good, they’re watching and they’re going to steal. And I’m proud to say that we were the creator of these blueprints. So here’s Tony Smith’s blueprint.
I think it was the spring of 2013. I’m pretty sure it was the spring of 2013. I’m going to go through with you one step at a time. And I think it’s something that you’ll learn from, enjoy and be able to produce and profit with. He wrote down first, I constantly set short term and long-term goals to challenge myself and therefore I have a strict weekly plan. The key to succeeding is a schedule. The key to a schedule is trying to follow it. And that’s the challenge because we’re independent contractors. Short term goals, What am I going to do this week? Make me uncomfortable, but I’m going to do it this week is a big part of the planning that you have to do. And then second, Tony wrote, I’m very consistent in my lead generation because my belief is and listen to this quote, “you’re not in the Real Estate business on any day that you’re not generating new leads” close quote. I have not missed a day of prospecting since July of 2001. That’s more than 12 years ago. When in essence, every day that he had scheduled as a workday, he prospected. We’re very lucky now to have Tony as a vice president of our company helping thousands of agents all the time. Third he wrote down, I’ve set up mess of both external and internal accountabilities for myself, daily accountability partners, and I tell everybody about my goals, so everybody can hold me accountable.
Mastermind Groups, role play partners, accountability partners, the broker, the manager, your friends in the office, you know, the more accountability. It’s not really stress and pressure. It’s the push to help you succeed. Fourth, my my mission has always been to improve my skills. In my first 12 months with The Mike Ferry Organization, I spend two hours a day, two hours a day every day practicing my scripts and role playing with somebody or by myself. He said now I spend 30 minutes per day, three days a week. I record my prospecting sessions. He takes his, you know, his iPhone or whatever phone system uses, and he records his prospecting sessions. And I record my Listing Presentations to check on where I can improve. Well, some of you are going to say, well, he’s trying to be a perfectionist, if you’re going to list 70 to 80 percent of the sellers you talk to, you’re going to work on these types of things. Next, he wrote down I have a high focus on quality service and building my database. This means weekly communications with all my buyers and sellers and monthly contacts with all of my tripple A clients in my database. You know, customer service and I’ve said this time and again is probably the single best method of prospecting an agent could use. Next on his list, I’m always one hundred percent profit driven. This is not a greed thing.
It’s a commonsense thing. How do we earn more money and keep more for ourselves? Which is what I know that you and you and your family would like to have. Therefore, I’ve never advertised. I do not have a website. I do not have any Facebook or Twitter accounts. I do not do mass mailings of any type. And I’m fanatical about tracking my numbers to increase my profit. That is strong. But it took a couple of years of working with Tony to get that point and understand that message. Listen to the next point on his blueprint. I have a very strong belief regarding attitude, approach and expectations. Energy and enthusiasm will always win over skills, but energy and enthusiasm with skills allows you to produce at a much higher level. He said I have a very short-term memory, so I work on these all the time. What a great thought. Most of the best athletes in the world have a short-term memory. Which means if they’re playing football and they get hit hard, they don’t get up and spend 10 minutes moaning about the fact they’ve been hit. Or when I talk to Gary Danielson, the former quarterback of the Detroit Lions, I think for 15 years I said, how do you respond when you throw an interception? He said, I walk off the field with the short-term memory, thinking about the next one
I’m going to complete. Strong belief and attitude, approach, expectations, energy and enthusiasm. Next on Tony’s list, I delegate everything possible. I’ve done a time and motion study on myself, so therefore I’m involved in the most productive activities of all time, most of the time. Next on his list. I don’t allow myself to work with buyers ever. Boy, that’s a strong statement. This was 2013. I delegate everything possible. I don’t allow myself to work with buyers ever. I’ve never fallen into that trap. And you know what’s interesting is we talk to great agents like yourselves every day. And, you know, you get caught in the trap of working with a buyer in this market. It is one of the most frustrating and stressful things for you, for your buyer and time consuming for yourself and your buyer. And then last on this particular blueprint that Tony wrote, I made the decision early on in my career that we only have one coach The Mike Ferry Organization. I’ve always cut off every other option that is out there. And of course, as you know today and you know, I had this great conversation over dinner, probably it’s been eight or nine months ago with my son Tom. And we were talking about all the competition we have in this business today because, you know, Tom, as you know, is one of the leaders I know. He claims he is the leader.
So I’m going to restate that. Tom, I love you to death, but you’re one of the leaders in this industry. And then we talked about the fact that when I started, I was the only coaching company. And then in the mid 90s, a couple of them popped up. And then, of course, people like Tom and Matt and other great people popped in. And I said to Tom, there’s probably three to four hundred Real Estate coaching companies today. And all of them offer something good, something valid, something valuable. But in most cases, they offer you the shiny penny. You know, you can get rich quick. And we hear this all the time. Well, what Tony said, I picked one company that had a track record. My company and I’ve stayed with it ever since. Make a good choice, make a good decision, let’s have a great June, so the first half of this year is really strong. And I have to mention, of course, let’s not forget, in six weeks we have our annual Superstar Retreat live again in Las Vegas at the Venetian. Call the office 7029826260. Let’s get you registered. I think we have at this point about nineteen one hundred and fifty registered so far. So this retreat is going to be large, exciting information, inspirational, informational and most importantly, good for you. See you then.