Welcome and good morning to Mike Ferry TV the week of August 15th. The month is flying by. I think a lot of the school districts are going back to school this week and next week. So that will give, of course, a little bit of freedom to a lot of the moms and dads that are working in Real Estate. And right now, it’s a matter of pushing hard through the end of the year.

We started last week by giving you ten thoughts about the importance of working on appointments. I got an email in asking from Mike, “You don’t talk about this very often, this thing about appointments, how did it come up?” And it actually came up because on my desk and on my credenza, I had looked for something in particular, and I found these notes from the old four-day Action Workshop from twenty probably five years ago. And I was looking at the notes. I went, “Wow, there’s that information on setting appointments. We need to reintroduce that.” So you’re going to be hearing more about this because the truth is, as we said last week, “If you’re not going on appointments all the time.” and I’m going to repeat this this week, again, “You’re really not in the Real Estate business and I don’t know what business you’re in, but we are in the business of going on appointments of Buyers and Sellers and effectively successfully getting contracts signed.”

I give you ten points last week. I’m going to go to number 11 this week. We have to get clear on this thought. And this thought will sound a little unusual to many of you. Setting 1 to 2 appointments a week is 90% mental, 5% who I’m calling, and 5% the skills that I have. However, if your skills are poor, you will be defeated mentally before you pick up the phone and call. If, by chance, you attended our Superstar Retreat in July in Las Vegas. Virtually the entire four days was on the various skills that a Real Estate professional like yourself have to learn, acquire, maintain, develop and keep growing. And one of those skills is understanding the importance of appointments. Because I don’t understand what a Real Estate person will do in an office four or five, six, eight hours a day, not doing any prospecting at all, not doing any lead follow-up at all, not doing any prequalifying of appointments if they even have one or are not going on appointments. So what is your business? What are you actually doing? What are you trying to accomplish? And as we talk a little bit further in this morning’s conversation, are you waiting for people to discover you because of your social media posts and let’s say you get discovered once in a great while? Do you think you’re going to be discovered often enough to do 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 transactions a year? And the answer is emphatically, “No.”

And if you don’t have the skill of knowing what to say, even if you’re discovered, nothing is going to happen.

Number 12, we have to create an office environment, home or at the office. We’re prospecting, lead follow-up and finding appointments is our primary focus. The focus of the day should be talking to people, following up on the leads you have and setting appointments. An attorney and a doctor, an accountant. Their whole life is about appointments. They don’t get paid unless they’re working with the prospect and or a client. We are in that same category. And the nice part about Real Estate today with the prices being so high, you get paid a lot of money if you’re going on appointments.

Number 13, I have to have a strong pre-prospecting routine if I want to get a lot of appointments. Pre-prospecting routine we talked about 30 years ago and that is the fact that, you know, you’re up at a certain time each day. You’re doing whatever meditation or relaxation techniques or exercise. You’re getting dressed professionally to go to the office and do your job. You show up at a certain time. You have your lead sources prepared from the night before who you’re going to call. You’re not on social media first thing. You’re not answering emails. You’re not looking for texts. You’re doing your job. But it’s all set up by what you did before you started doing your job.

Number 14 and this is a tough one. It really doesn’t matter where the appointment comes from. Just try to find one person a day that wants to talk to you about buying or selling Real Estate. Does it matter where it comes from? You know, people are always saying to me all the time, “Well, where do they come from?” It doesn’t matter where they come from. The question is not, “Where are they coming from?” it’s, “Are you looking for them?” And if you’re looking for them, you’re going to find them.

Number 15 on the list. You always have to keep your three or four or one or two hottest leads with you at all times. And of course, we recommend a very complicated system, a 3×5 card name, address, phone number, contact information, email, the date you got the lead and the date you would like to set where you get an appointment by a given period of time. Call them two or three times a day if you have to. Because see, you have to go back to this thought. If they gave you their name and number and want to talk about Real Estate, isn’t that an invitation to you and I to call them back? “Well, Mike, what if they say you’re being too aggressive?” And I understand that it comes up if you’re aggressive and congratulations in advance if you’re aggressive and if somebody says to you, “You’re too aggressive.” “I want to demonstrate what I’m going to do to help you get your home sold. You do want an aggressive agent, don’t you?”

Number 16. To maximize the equipment you get, you must build your Center of Influence on a daily basis. The target should be for everybody to get to at least 500 names, and anybody that is working at it every day can get to 500 names and it might take 3, 6, 9, 12 months. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to get to 500 names and then you call and talk to 5 to 10 of them a day. They’re the ones that are going to be the friendly conversations that we all want to have.

Number 17, to get more appointments, we need to expand our prospecting sources. The majority of agents and even the most successful get locked into one or two prospecting techniques. And I will admit for myself, 100 years ago, I was a Real Estate Agent. I happen to like knocking on doors and being in conversations with people. I like doing Just Listed, Just Sold doors because now I can brag about something that we had done as a company. I really enjoyed For Sale By Owners because most people would call on them once, meaning a Real Estate Agent, get rejected and then never call them again. And I would go back to the second and third time and just say, “Just in case you’ve changed your mind, I want you to know there’s somebody here on your side.” And I enjoyed calling on Expired Listings because they have already said we want to sell the home. And of course, who does the Expired Listing blame the Real Estate Agent every time. And normally it’s a pricing problem that’s today, whether it be now or 10, 20, 30 years ago. And of course, we know that the Expired Listings are in abundance today because the fact that we listed all these properties 3, 6, 9 months ago this year at prices here and the price is now here and we’re not going to getting price reduction so Expired Listings are more in play.

Number 18, to maximize the appointment you get, set up stronger accountability for yourself. Role-play Partners, Accountability Partners, Mastermind Group, your Broker, your Manager. If you have a Coach, a Coach, tell them what you want to do. Tell them what you’re going to accomplish and have them remind you of what you’ve said as well as you reminding yourself of what you said. Accountability is a big part of getting appointments.