Welcome back to Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, coach and speaker for the Mike Ferry organization. And you know the drill. I am thrilled if you’re here. So thanks for being here. We are on the week of December 2nd. Okay? This in our world, the world of real estate is crunch time. This is the time where the distractions and the separation from real estate starts to get at its highest point possible. And we’re going to ask you to keep your head in the game. We’re going to ask you to stay focused. There’s only a few more work days in the calendar year 2024. Can you keep your head down? Can you stay focused when everybody else is trying to unplug? Can you push through? Would you be proud of yourself if you did? Okay, I know for a fact that you have two choices. You can either perform well for the next few days, or you can unplug like everybody else is unplugging perform well, would you please? And if you do, you will get rewarded for it. All right, so today this may sound like a negative topic, but it’s not. Okay. The topic is 12 reasons why we can lose a chance for a listing. Okay. 12 Reasons why. Now, I don’t want to sound like bah humbug in December. This is not the 12 days of Christmas.

Okay, this is 12 ways that you can lose a chance for a listing. Let me start with this. How important is a listing opportunity today? How valuable is a well priced listing today? We can’t afford to lose too many, can we? In the Mike Ferry organization, we believe that 70 to 80% of the time that you go out and present for a listing, you should get the listing 70% minimum 80%. You should be getting the listing. We can’t afford to lose often. So let’s look at some of these. And as we go through these, if it. You could flip them over. You could turn it over and say, okay, here’s what I need to do, instead of here’s why I might lose it.

1) We lack aggressive lead follow up 

Let’s look at the first one. You might lose listings when we lack aggressive lead follow up. All right, here’s what I know. The more aggressive you follow up on leads, the more of your competition you eliminate. Look at it like this. If you have to do no follow up at all, and you talk to a seller one time and they say, come on over and let’s talk about listing the home, is there a chance that they’ll say, come on over to a lot of other agents, too? There’s a chance, isn’t there? If you do aggressive lead follow up. You close aggressively for an appointment. You push to get the appointment set. You’re actually eliminating competition. If you don’t have aggressive lead follow up, you’re competing with everybody else.

2) We don’t understand the motivation of the seller when we go on the appointment

Look at two why we might lose a listing. We don’t understand the motivation of the seller when we go on the appointment. Okay. If you go on a listing appointment and you don’t thoroughly understand the motivation, why would they want to do this anyway? How motivated are they? What’s the driving force between wanting to sell their home? If you don’t know the motivation you get in front of the seller, what leverage do you have? You don’t have the leverage. Most agents go into a listing appointment without any understanding of the motivation of the seller. That’s why most agents lose listings all the time. You need to know.

3) We are not highly motivated on the listing appointment

Number three, you lose listings. If you yourself are not highly motivated on the listing appointment. Have you ever gone on a listing appointment that you thought was a sure thing? You went in a little lackadaisical, a little, you know, complacent, a little ho hum. And the next thing you know, you don’t have the listing. Okay. Our job is to get highly motivated for every single presentation. We go on highly motivated. If we’re going to go, we have to be motivated. Basically be on our A-game every time. Have you lost any listings this year because you weren’t as motivated as you should be? That’s a tough one.

4) We skip some of the pre-qualifying questions at MFO

Okay, look at four. We skip some of the pre-qualifying questions at MFO. We have a whole series of questions that we want you to ask to pre-qualify the seller before you go out. If you can’t know too much about a seller today you can’t explore too much. You need to know everything possible about the seller before you go. You know, you skip the question. Are you planning on interviewing more than one agent for the job? You skip that one and then you go on the presentation, only to find out they’re interviewing 2 or 3 other agents. You can’t skip pre-qualifying questions. If you do, you could end up losing the listing by any question that you skip.

5) We fail to send a pre-listing package

How about this number five? We fail to send a pre-listing package. Okay. In the Mike Ferry sales system, we recommend that you send a Pre-listing package every time it has the contracts. It has all the comparables, it has the net sheet, it has your references. It has everything that they need to make a decision. If you don’t send that package in advance, aren’t you taking a chance? How often this year have you went on a listing presentation without sending the Pre-listing package? Man, we can’t afford to lose on that one.

6) We’re not role playing listing presentations regularly

How about number six? We’re not role playing listing presentations regularly. Boy, I tell you, there is nothing worse than going on a perfect presentation with a highly motivated client. And we come in as the agent. Rusty. We haven’t practiced. We haven’t role played. We haven’t prepared. Are you practicing the presentation every day? Boy, you certainly can’t lose one just because you haven’t been practicing.

7) We spend too much time trying to build rapport with the seller

How about number seven? We spend too much time trying to build rapport with the seller. Okay. That’s what other agents do. That’s not what we do. We present. We use a canned presentation. We ask a lot of questions. We don’t spend all of our time trying to build rapport. We don’t need to talk about the kids soccer and the swing set in the back, and how much you love cats and dogs. Okay. If you spend too much time building rapport, pretty soon the seller starts to see right through that. You can’t possibly be in that much rapport. Are you spending too much time at it?

8) We get off the script or only use parts of the script that we’re comfortable with

How about this one? Number eight we get off the script or only use parts of the script that we’re comfortable with. Mike Ferry designed a canned listing presentation script, and it’s designed to work. It was built for you to win the listing, and we know that there’s parts of it that you’re not comfortable with. We understand that. But you can’t skip it because you’re not comfortable. You can’t only use parts of it. Are you sticking to the entire script all the way through? Boy, I sure hope so. We don’t want to lose listings because of that.

9) We talk too much instead of asking questions

How about number nine? We talk too much instead of asking questions. All right, we know that selling is not telling. Selling is asking questions. There’s nothing worse than you going on a big rant or a big talking sequence, or telling them all about yourself and simply not asking questions. Are you using a question based delivery? We hope so. Can’t afford to lose?

10) We let one objection stop us in our tracks

How about ten? We let one objection stop us in our tracks. How many times have you lost a listing because you let one objection stop you? Oh, we’re going to. We’re going to interview another agent. Okay. I’ll talk to you later. Oh, we’re going to think about it for a while. Okay. I’ll talk to you later. We’re going to list it way high and we’ll come down later. Okay. We’ll all get back to you. We want you to cut the commission. Okay? We can’t afford to lose listings over an objection or two. Are you prepared to handle every objection you might receive from a seller? If not, let’s dig into those objection handlers.

11) We get sidetracked and we’re unable to recover

How about this one? 11. We get sidetracked and we’re unable to recover. It’s not uncommon on a listing presentation to get drawn off track, to get pulled away from your script. That’s not uncommon, but do you have the courage? Do you have the skill? Do you have the tenacity to push back, forward and get back on the script? Get back on the direction right? Don’t let them try to sidetrack you about, you know, something they did to the house and you can never recover. Keep pushing forward. We can’t afford to lose that way.

12) We get outpriced or out bonded by our competitors 

And then the last one. There are times where we will get outpriced by our competitors, we will get out bonded by our competitors. We might get under commissioned by our competitors, and sometimes we’ll just flat out get beat by good competition. That’s going to happen once in a while. Okay? But the reality is we can’t let these other 11 things get in the way. We should only be losing once in a while. Okay, so why not take some time, maybe critique yourself in these various thoughts, see if you can’t sharpen it up a little bit, sharpen up your presentation and let’s see if you can’t win practically every listing chance you get. As we move into 2025, I’m going to say it again keep your head down. Stay focused, push through the finish line. You’re going to be happy, and you’re going to be proud of yourself when you do. Thanks for your time today.