Hello. Welcome to another edition of Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, coach, speaker, and trainer for The Mike Ferry Organization, and I’m thrilled to be here on the week of July 1st. What an incredible time of year for all our Canadian clients and friends. Happy Canada Day for all our US friends and clients. Happy Independence Day this week.

Mid-Year Reflection

Here we are at the halfway point of the year. What a magnificent time to be in the Real Estate industry. There are some changes going on, that’s for sure. There are some adjustments that need to be made, that’s for sure. But for Mike Ferry-trained agents, for the agents that are paying attention, this is our time. What an opportunity to advance.

Evaluating Progress

At the middle of the year, it’s an interesting space in time because it gives us a chance to reflect on where we are, bring our numbers up to date. What has our production been so far? What’s our income been so far? Reevaluate our business plan that we have set out for the year. Basically, get a chance to take a little brief look in the rearview mirror and see where we’ve come so far in the year, and then it’s the opportunity to look to the future and reset, restructure, recommit and get set on where we’d like to take our business for the next half of the year. We’ve got six long months in front of us to perform, and it’s up to us to do that.

Sales Skills Focus

One way to get into the reflection and the resetting part for the halfway of the year is to look at sales skills. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch for me to expect and assume that everybody watching here today has a slightly higher interest in becoming a strong listing agent today than maybe they’ve had in the past, or maybe than they’ve ever had with all the changes going on. Are you convinced that your quest to become a better, stronger, more proficient listing agent is the right thing to do? At the Mike Ferry sales organization, we believe that it’s the right thing for you to do.

Setting Listing Goals

If we’re looking at the halfway point and we want to become a stronger and better listing agent in the second half, we have to look at some specific things. The first thing we have to look at is what are our goals in relationship to listing property from here to December 31st? Do you need to reset those goals? Do you need to restructure? Do you need to recommit? I would ask you to get very clear on your listing, taken and listing sold goals for the remainder of this year, and then we have to address the sales skills required.

Production-Based Schedule

The first thing you must look at is how good are you and how effective are you at following and sticking to a production-based schedule? So far this year. If you’re to take a close look at how you’re spending your days, how do you spend an average workday? Is it production-based? Is it listing-oriented? In our world, we say that you should spend much of every workday revolving around listing property. So how would you grade yourself on that? And then what are you going to do moving forward to strengthen and improve on your operation of a strong production-based daily schedule? That’s a skill. How would you grade yourself?

Database Management

The second skill we must look at is how am I doing at developing, maturing, and getting great production from a strong database? Look, we all have past clients and center of influence. Hopefully, you’re in the mode of developing, building, maturing that group of people. And then are you getting referrals from them? Are you getting deals out of there? In our world, most of our Mike Ferry-trained agents are getting 30, 40, 50, even 60% of their business from their database. Should you commit to a little bit stronger plan of operating your database for the next six months? We think so.

Prospecting for Listings

Obviously, the word prospecting for listing opportunities. We have three choices. We can buy the business, we can wait for the business, or we can go out and earn it every day. We believe that you should spend most of your time out earning listing opportunities, prospecting. What is your stance? What is the position that you’re in right now at this moment in prospecting for listing opportunities? Can you reset, recommit, restructure where you want to go in the next six months when it comes to prospecting for listings? It’s a skill.

Lead Follow-Up

Effectively following up on the lead you get. If you were to take a quick look at your lead follow-up over the first six months of 2024, how did you do? Did you lose many? Did you leave many listings on the table? Were you effective in your follow-up? What can you do in the next six months to upgrade your ability to follow up with leads aggressively? It’s a great way to look at it. It’s a skill.

Pre-Qualifying

I wrote down strong pre-qualifying. Mike Ferry has been completely clear with all of us this year that one of the most important skills in the calendar year 2024 is pre-qualifying. Would you agree with me that finding motivated people is becoming more and more important each day that goes by? One thing we know with all the stuff going out there, commissions, NA, all that stuff. If you find a motivated seller, things will work out better, won’t they? How strong are you at not only finding people but then pre-qualifying to find out if they’re motivated or not? It’s a skill we should address the second half of the year with our pre-qualifying efforts.

Presentation Skills

How about a strong canned presentation? A presentation has always been one of the most valuable things we do as a listing agent, but even more so today. With the things going on in the world, the quality and the strength of your presentation is going to have a lot to do with your success moving forward. What do you need to do to improve and strengthen the quality of your presentation? We’ve got a good one.

Handling Objections

The script of handling objections. There might be a couple of little twists on the way. Objections might come to us in the second half of the year. When it comes to what do I say to a buyer understanding commission structure? What do I say to a seller regarding commissions for the buyer’s agent? Those are skills, aren’t they? Those are objections that we simply have to learn how to handle. Is that something that you need to commit to at a higher level, learning the skills of handling objections? We think so.

Starting Over

How about the skill of starting over? One of the most important skills I think any agent can have is the skill of starting over each and every day. Do you tend to get knocked down and then you stay down for way too long, or do you tend to celebrate too long after you get a commission check? Either one of those is not starting over. Can you imagine if you were critiqued on these skills every day at the end of a workday? Could you imagine someone could? How did you do it? Following your schedule right? How did you do it? Prospecting. How did you do it? Developing your database. How did you do it? At your lead follow-up? Did you pre-qualify properly? How was your presentation? Did you handle the objections and did you start over? We all know that if you were critiqued on that every day, you’d make a lot more money. We’re in this space to look at that.

The Power of Passion

I want to share another thought with you though. I want to share with you the word passion. I read an article on LinkedIn the other day about passion and more importantly, it was passion in business. I want you to think about this. If I don’t have the passion I need, if I’m not feeling passionate about the growth, the development of my Real Estate business, of my income and my goals that I’ve set out for myself, then there’s some things that are just not going to take place. This article on passion went on to say that there are four main benefits of being very passionate about what you do.

Benefits of Passion

The first one is passion drives you. There are going to be setbacks, there’s going to be frustration. There are going to be times where things don’t go so well. That’s normal. But passion is what causes you to drive through that and keep pushing through and keep pursuing the goals that you have. If you don’t have passion, you just want to go take a nap on the couch. Passion, it says, gets people on board. There is nothing more attractive than a passionate salesperson. It gets buyers and sellers on your side. If you have a choice as a seller, do you want to work with a passionate Real Estate agent or a blasé Real Estate agent? Passion gets people on your side.

Passion in Leadership

If you have staff, if you have team members that work around you, is it important as a leader for you to be passionate? The more passion you exude every day, the more it attracts people and gets them on board working with you. Passion makes you persistent. One thing is, it’s hard to be persistent without passion to achieve something if you don’t have passion and the first little roadblock that you run into, you want to give up these little changes that are coming down the road with Nar and the commission structure and all that. If you’re passionate, you’re going to put your head down, put your back into it, and you’re going to push through and you’re going to end up succeeding at a high level. Unfortunately, some agents without passion for their business, for without passion for their career may struggle in the coming months.

Contagious Passion

And then it also says passion is contagious. Boy, if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, it tends to spill over to other people. Your family gets excited, your staff gets excited, your clients get excited, and it’s contagious. I might ask you at this time of year, mid-year, to really judge and critique yourself. Are you truly passionate about what you’re trying to achieve in your Real Estate sales business? I hope so. If you let go of the past, you reset your goals and you recommit to a strong, compelling, exciting future. You look at those goals every single day. The passion will kick in and you’ll start producing at a higher level.

Upcoming Event

Okay, listen, we have our annual Superstar Retreat coming up here July 16-17, 18-19 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. In my opinion, it’s going to be one of the strongest Real Estate events, not only in 2024, but probably in the last several years with everything going on. Now, I know many of you have secured your tickets, you’ve got your hotel reserved and you’re all set to go. Some of you have not done that yet. Okay, we’ve still got a little time. We’ve got a couple weeks before one of the most important events in your Real Estate career. Give us a call. Call 1-800-448-0647 or go to Mike Ferry.com and get your ticket today. Mike Ferry is going to present 200 specific points on how to succeed. We’re going to have some panels of top agents around North America that are already succeeding. We’re going to have some of the scripts and dialogs available for you of how to overcome these objections. With the changes in our industry, it’s going to be action-packed, exciting, and a whole lot of fun. And we want to see you there. Get signed up, get registered, secure your seat, and I look forward to seeing all of you in a couple of weeks here in July. Thanks for your time.