Welcome to another edition of Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, vice president of the Mike Ferry organization, and I am thrilled to come back to you today with another Mike Ferry TV. We’re going to start a two-part series this week and next week about some thoughts from Mike and I titled this 20 Thoughts on Creating High Levels of Productivity for yourself now. Would everybody agree that with things that are going on, the changes in the market, the way that things are progressing today, that high levels of productivity are required today? Boy, here at MFO, we are sure working hard to make sure you’re being as productive as you should be so that you can take advantage. Now, from our perspective, this is a golden opportunity for you to take advantage of the changes that are going on, but we have to be productive. Okay. So let’s start looking at these points straight from Mike Ferry about being more productive and see if some of these apply to you and what you can do in the growth of your real estate company for yourself. The first one, the higher the quality of service, the higher the quality of business you will do. Think about it. The higher the quality of your service that you provide, the higher the quality of business you will do right. What are your standards for service? Are you working from some elevated standards for customer service right now? Here’s what we know. 

Quality service depends on quality skills. So if your skills are of high quality, if your prospecting skills, your lead, your lead follow-up. skills, your presenting skills, your negotiating skills, if those are all super high quality, can you appreciate that the quality of those skills means a great quality of customer service? So how would you grade yourself on your skills today? Would you like better business upgrade the quality of the skills you have? I often wrote Improved service always often requires making faster decisions. Boy, if there’s one thing in the world today that seems to have slowed down as people making decisions, are you urgent about what you’re trying to get done? Are you making fast decisions in your business? If you are, then you’ll actually increase the quality of service. If you’re slow to make decisions, it’s not good for service. Number two on this list. If we want to be in high productivity right now, I have to initiate good business changes, listen to this, initiate good business changes, and stop reacting emotionally to the external changes. All right. If we focus on high self-improvement, it removes the option of letting high self-doubt sneak in. So if you’re really looking at good business changes, what are you trying to change in the way you operate your business? Are you clear in what you’re trying to improve on? If you focus on the changes you’re trying to make in business and even personally, for that matter, then you stop reacting emotionally to the chatter that’s going on out in the world out there. 

And boy, is there a lot of chatter. The economy exists in your head. So if you’re working on making solid changes, increasing your time management, improving your prospecting, improving your skills, improving your mindset, and you stay focused on those business changes. You’re not going to get locked into all the external changes that are going on. Great point, isn’t it? Look at 0.3. Desperation is the downfall of success. Desperation is the downfall of success. If you want to focus on high levels of productivity, you have to come from a lack of absence of being desperate. Now I know there’s times where we need a listing, but mentally we cannot get caught in that spot where we have to have a listing that we come from desperation. If you will start training your mind that you really want business, but you don’t have to have it. Take the ones you want. Strong generation is required, right? And then don’t be attached to the outcome. I’ve always had this belief I’m pretty attached and pretty connected to my efforts. Am I doing the right thing and my tracking and my critiquing my performance but not be attached to the outcome? Right. 

All you can do is your best. So if you focus on doing your best every day and the outcome isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, what else can you do right? Number four on this list, I must study on a regular basis how people that are successful operate. Do you have a strong mentor? Who is your mentor? Mike Ferry has been the mentor of many, many, many real estate agents for a long, long time. If you want to study somebody, he’s a good one. But maybe in your own market, maybe another Mike Ferry agent. Maybe an agent in your office. Why don’t you study them? Do you have role models? Right. Study. Why and how they succeed. Now, we’re not competing against them, but it sure is good to study those things that maybe cause them to succeed. Why not try to emulate a role model? It helps with productivity. Number five on the list price and motivation are the only two issues. Boy, with what’s going on today, we have to remind ourselves that price and motivation are the only two issues today. What hang-ups do you have about pre-qualifying people? Completely. What hang-ups do you have about really understanding what the right price is? Are you taking enough time to really understand it and study it? You know, desperate agents take over price listings and they reduce their commission agents that are prospecting and looking for motivation all the time and have a clear understanding of what the right price is, tend to take listings at the right price with full commissions. 

It’s interesting, right? The market is opening up and we can’t spend a lot of time with unmotivated, unqualified people today. It’s not going to work out that well. Do you know what clear motivation is? People, that have to sell versus people that are just greedy? It’s important if we want to look at productivity. How many leads do you have right now or clients that you’re maybe working with that are not motivated enough to get the job done today? Should we start moving past those people faster? We think so. Six on this list. Sellers and buyers deserve the truth. Always give it to them. If you want to increase your productivity, recognize that everybody deserves the truth. Give it to them. Don’t let your competition and your competition be like you’re competitive. Don’t let your competitive nature skew the truth. Here at MFO, we’re constantly reminding you we want you to under-promise and over-deliver. Many people that get competitive try to overpromise, and then they end up under-delivering. People need the truth. If the house is not in the condition to sell, you have to be able to deliver that truth. If they want a price, it’s clear up here and it’s just not going to happen. 

You have to be able to deliver the truth. If the buyer is looking or trying to get something that’s unrealistic today. You have to deliver the truth. Do they ever like the truth? No. People oftentimes do not like the truth, but it doesn’t change the fact that they want it and they need it and we have to give it to them. Where in your business do you need to be able to be a little more truthful with the clients? How about those market conditions today? How about condition versus price? How about price reductions? We have to be sure to give the truth for more productivity. Look at seven. We must understand that this is a direct sales business. What does a direct sales business mean? You know, for the last two or three years, it was almost like we were in a retail business. Right? Like, you know, you basically take orders from people. I want to buy. I want to sell. You’re taking orders. All that’s retail. You know, retail is you have a store and you sell cookies. And in that store, you have cookies on the shelf. Clients walk in and buy your cookies. Right. Direct sales. How good am I finding business versus waiting for it or buying it? A direct sales business. We understand our ability to go out and find business versus waiting for it or buying it. 

Boy, we could get away with this the last couple of years. Waiting for it and buying it still did pretty good in today’s times. To be productive, we have to remember direct sales. I also put down direct sales equals a strong canned presentation. It equals finding business daily and it equals our ability to ask the hard questions that lead to a signature that’s direct sales. Most real estate agents were not born into the direct sales business. I know I wasn’t. Most real estate agents were not trained in direct sales. That’s the industry we’ve chosen. How about things like this? How about recording your presentation? Record some of your practice. We know that people that signed contracts, it’s because of the quality of the presentation. When’s the last time you really, really look? Too closely at the quality of your presentation. That’s direct sales. When’s the last time you recorded some prospecting or some lead follow-up? to make sure you’re on cue and you’re doing it properly? That’s direct sales. You know, everybody else in the direct sales industry is out doing this kind of stuff all day long, every day. We need to take their advice and become productive agents in the direct sales business. Next on the list, if you make the mistake and overprice a listing, it requires a strong price reduction system or even a straight price reduction strategy. We’re going to make mistakes, especially in this market, as it’s changing. 

How strong is your price reduction system backing up when you make a mistake? Things like have you fully implemented a price reduction strategy? Do you know the scripts? Gosh, Mr.. Mrs. Heller, I’m sorry. I made a huge mistake when I listed your property. I wasn’t tough enough on the price. In fact, I actually was outsold by you on the price. So we have three choices today. We can either extend this listing for another year waiting for or hoping for a better price, or we can reduce the price by 10% today so we can get it sold for you. Or I can give you a listing back. Which would you prefer? Do you have a strong price reduction strategy backing up any mistakes you might make with the price? If you want to be productive in this changing market, you need to consider that for sure. Number nine. Okay. I waited until way down the list on this section. Number nine, prospect more. There is no other solution. If we want to be productive today, we simply have to generate more leads. We have to find more motivated people, and that means more prospecting. If you’re only making five or ten contacts a day and you should be making 25, we have to hurry up and get there. Do you need to be held accountable? I put down track your numbers to determine your efficiency. 

Boy, if we’re not efficient with our prospecting today, if we’re starting late and not making good contacts per hour, if we’re messing around between dials, if we’re doing research the whole time, we should be prospecting. If we’re not finishing a whole prospecting session, those inefficiencies are going to kill us today. We’ve got to get efficient. I wrote down, Hey, whatever happened to bonus sessions? Remember bonus sessions, you know, some evening prospecting a couple of days a week or one night a week, some aggressive Saturdays all day. We’ve got prospecting clinics live and virtual agents are showing up by the droves to these things. They want to turn in the extra prospecting it’s required to be productive. Today I put down to commit to an absolute minimum of 2 hours per day, 5 to 6 days per week. Can you commit to an absolute minimum of 2 hours of prospecting per day, 5 to 6 days per week? If you do, you will increase your productivity and your production. And then number ten on the list for this first half of this list of 20. A minimum of 30 minutes per day of aggressive lead follow-up.. Why do I avoid strong, aggressive lead follow-up… What hang-ups do you have about it? What hang-ups do you have about aggressively following up with the leads you have? Why do I avoid strong pre-qualifying? Because I don’t want to know the answers. 

You know, you think about if leads are piling on me like crazy as they had been for a long, long time. Buyers coming from everywhere, everybody selling, buying red hot market. You can screw up on a lot of leads and still make a great living, which a lot of people have done. When the market gets more normal, we can’t screw up that much. We can’t mess up on leads, which means we have to be true to it. Are you making some lead calls in the evenings? Are you calling leads that you have two or three times a day? Are you working on your dialogs? How about this? Mike Ferry is always suggested. These two questions. Mr. Seller, do you still have to get your home sold on Primrose? Primrose Lane? When can we set an appointment? This week. So I can get the process started. Right. It’s not that hard, but can you do that? Can you be aggressive? It’s going to be required. This is the first half. We’ve got 20 points on how to be more productive. I wanted to make this a two-part series so it wasn’t too long. Hopefully, some of these ideas work for you. They make sense to you. You can make some of those changes. Let’s go out there and be more productive starting today. Thanks for your time.