Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. It is the week of February the 3rd. One month down, 11 months to go. We still have plenty of time to do the number of deals that we’re aiming to do. Last week I had the good fortune for speaking to a company up in Toronto, Remax Realty Specialists, which they had 350 people in the room, and they asked me to speak for a little over one hour. And I want to share with you what I talked to them about, because there was in the room about probably 25 to 30, maybe more people that were involved in MFO coaching. So, they were very receptive to what they are trying to accomplish and what I was trying to accomplish. So, I talked about three words two different times. There are three times I talked first about the words attitude, approach and expectations. What is the attitude you have towards the business when you start the day? What is the attitude you have when you pick up that phone to do some of your lead generation? What is your attitude towards making a strong presentation to a buyer or a seller? Attitude is what’s going on the inside, showing on the outside. It’s how you feel, what you think about in terms of a person or a situation. But then we went from attitude to approach and approach is everything from the smile on your face to your fingernails cut? Are you dressed appropriately? Professionally? Do you have a good script you’re using that is going to be question based, so you can move forward in the conversation with the buyer and the seller.

And then third was the word expectations. What expectations do you have as you start the month of February for your production and the goals you set based on the year, based on the quarter, based on the week and based on the month? What are your expectations? I start every seminar by saying to myself three times, this is the best audience I’ve ever had. This is the best audience I’ve ever had. This is the best audience I’ve ever had. My expectations. And I said this to the group in Toronto. I said my expectations that 100% of the people are going to do 100% of what I say, and I never think anything different. So, what is your attitude? How is your approach and what are your expectations? But the second three words I talked about, and I used to start every seminar, gosh, probably for about 20 years, I would have a whiteboard next to me on the stage and I would have three letters. The letter P, as in prospect, the letter P as in present, and the letter C as in close. And then I asked the audience, which I do this on a repetitive basis, which step in the sale is the most important? And I’m going to ask you to all take a moment, look at the prospect, look at the present, look at the close. And it’s interesting because I used to survey the audience every day, no matter where I was speaking.

And I would say that realistically 80% to 85% of the time. When we took the vote, they voted for prospecting being the most important step. And when I would ask them why, they would say, well, Mike, how do you expect to present and close if you don’t have a prospect? I said, that’s very valid. And then about 12% to 14% would pick the close. And I would say why. They would say, well, Mike, if you can’t close and get a signature, if you’re afraid to hand them the pen, you’re not, you might as well not have shown up in the first place. I said, that’s very valid. How many picked the presentation? And normally 1 or 2 people would sheepishly put up their hand. And I said, well, let me give you guys an example. You’re driving down the street and you see a for Sale by owner sign. Do you stop or do you accelerate? And the majority of all agents, when they see a prospect live and in person, which is what a by owner is, they don’t know what to say. So, they don’t stop the car, and they say things like, I can come back later, I’ll write the phone number down off the sign. I’ll give them a call later in the day, and they never do. And then some agent that knows the presentation has the courage to stop and get a listing.

Because the clothes, as you’ve heard me say in the past, is the natural ending to a good presentation. So, then I would circle the middle P and say, for 99% of you, your attitude is correct, your approach is not correct, and your expectations are low because you don’t know your presentation well enough. Then the third set of words I talked about were probably as important as any, because we’ve moved away as an industry from basic sales techniques and sales skills, and we’ve moved into everything from social media to branding and marketing and advertising, promotions, mailings, you know, anything from bus benches to big road signs with your picture on it. I mean, it’s amazing for an industry that requires direct contact with a buyer or a seller to get them to list. No. Yes, you can do some through the mail if they live out of state or out of town, but 99% of the time you’re involved sitting with a couple and you’re going to be presenting to them. So, my third part of my presentation that I made, and it was last Tuesday, was the following. You can sit and wait. Wait for people to find you, which is very common in Real Estate. Whether you do a 500-person postcard or mail piece and wait for them to call you, which you notice they almost never do. Or you sit at an open house on Saturday and Sunday and wait for somebody to come in and buy it, which you’ll notice they almost never do.

Or you’re sitting in your office, you know, on Facebook, you know, on Instagram, which is social media based, waiting for somebody to respond to you. The biggest challenge in real estate is we’re not taking positive action. We are waiting for somebody to find us. Waiting for somebody to call us. Waiting for somebody to walk in and say, “would you show me property?” So, the first of the three words was wait. But the second word was the word buy b u y. And we do that through anything from cutting commissions to lowering the price or raising the price of the home beyond a realistic value to committing to heavy marketing, heavy advertising, heavy, heavy spending of money. It’s so interesting. The commissions have increased, as we all know, dramatically over the course of the last 2 to 3 years, because as the inventory has shrunk, prices are forced up and are 5% to 6% or 4% commission. The checks are bigger and bigger and bigger while the transaction count is getting lower and lower and lower. And I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I heard two reports in the last week. One, that in the United States this last year, we had the lowest number of transactions we’ve experienced in 30 to 40 years. Now, think about that for just a minute. We have more agents, 1.5, 1.6 million agents doing less transactions than ever before. And a smaller group are doing more, which means more are doing none.

And then I saw a report that said 81% or 82% of all the agents last year in the US did not do a transaction at all. And while I was in Canada a couple of days ago, one of the broker agents that was in our coaching said that the Greater Toronto Market has like 76,000 agents in the board of realtors. Can you imagine being in a competitive market of that type? So, they have 76,000, but that same group only did like 67,000 sales for the year, and I might be off. It might have been 87 and 76, but it was less than one transaction per person. And yet they’re all spending that one commission check, trying to get somebody to call them to stop in and see him to buy or list with him. We can either wait, we can buy, or third, we can earn the business by going out and talking to people. And when I say that most people just immediately close their ears to any conversation from that point on. So, we had a great meeting in Toronto. I wanted to share with you what we covered with those that great group of 350 people, and we want to help you make February your best month of the year. Call us and let us know how we can help. Go online, look at our scripts, our dialogs, what we recommend, and we will look forward to seeing you again next Monday. Have a great week!