Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. It is the week of January 13th. Well, I guess the key question is have you gone back to work yet? We know that a majority of all agents start with the anticipation of going back to work January 2nd, and usually it’s January 22nd before they show up and work again. So, let’s make sure you’re back to the basics of working every day, five days a week, and doing your job. What I want to talk about today, and I wrote it out very carefully. This is a business of basics that never change. And every industry follows the same basic sales skills, set mindset ideas that we’re going to talk about today. It’s interesting. I’ve had the good fortune over the course of my career, and we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the business virtually as I am speaking to you today. But I’ve spoken to the National Accounting Association. I’ve spoken to the Legal Association. I’ve spoken to the Gas Station Owners Association. I’ve spoken to so many types of companies. My specialty, of course, is with you in Real Estate. And it’s interesting because no matter which kind of which type of company I speak to, they’ll always say, wow, I never realized that we needed to follow these very basic, fundamental sales principles to build our business here at the Mike Ferry Organization. We follow basic sales principles daily.

And as a result, people like yourself get involved with us. You have success. You refer your friends and neighbors in the office to us. We call them. We follow the basics. And that rotation continues and has continued now for 50 years. So, I wrote the basics never change. Every industry follows them. For 50 years I’ve been saying three things to all the real estate professionals I speak to. Learn how to prospect. Learn how to present. And learn how to close or take that pen to the paper to get a signature. The business is virtually that simple. If we could. In fact, it’s so simple. I used to start every seminar with a large whiteboard on the stage with me, and I would take a felt tip pen, and in letters this big, I would write P for prospect, P for present, and C for close. And I used to ask the audiences all the time, okay, what is the most important step? And I would ask them to vote. And I did this every day virtually for 30 years. And they would vote always the same. About 70% of the audience would say, the close is the most important part of this whole sales process. And then about 25% would say, oh no, you can’t do it unless you prospect. So, I would agree with that. And then of course, we would have 5% that had not voted yet.

So, they would pick the presentation. I would tell the audience the same story every day. If you don’t know what to say to the person you’re talking to, which is the presentation, you won’t prospect. You just won’t take the time to prospect. Because what’s the point of prospecting if you have a person you’re sitting in front of and you don’t know how to make a presentation, whether it be listing or selling property. But a lot of the audience always picked the close. You got to learn how to hammer it down and get it closed and button it up. Well, the truth is, the close and you’ve heard me say this for years is the natural ending to a good presentation. The stronger you are in your presentation skills. Now, I’m not talking about jumping up and down and waving my arms and, you know, yelling at the people. And, you know, you see all these videos today of our competition and, you know, they want to be clever and they’re sticking their face right into the camera and they’re waving and jumping. I’m not talking about that in terms of a presentation. I’m talking about the fact that you know what to say to help the client make a valid decision. And hopefully that decision involves you as an agent to get the property sold or sell them a house.

So, I wrote there’s obvious additional sales steps to this process. For example, you get a prospect, you have to do lead follow up. Hi, I met you last week at. You were referred to me by. We agreed we would talk this week. What day would work best for you and your spouse? For us to get together and talk about the sale of your property. Lead follow up. But then the next is pre-qualifying. Before I come out and meet with you and your spouse, there are certain questions I have to get answered. And if you would take a minute with me now and answer the questions, I can do a better job for you. When I see you in helping you understand the process of getting your home sold. And then, of course, the next step is answering their questions and objections. It’s interesting. You know, we’ve had this terrible experience in Southern California a couple of weeks ago with these terrible fires taking place. And it was kind of sad to watch. They interviewed a couple of the politicians that represent the people where all these homes were destroyed by this terrible fire. And, you know, they said to this one, this one politician, what do you think we can do to stop this from happening again? And the response was, well, we need to spend more time helping the homeless. Well, the obvious answer is we need to be better prepared for having a fire like this take place, whether it be in California, Nevada, Arizona or any place in the world.

And I’m not saying this politically, but if you don’t know how to answer their questions, they’re not going to choose you to be the representative to handle the sale of their home and their objections, if you think about it. And this is what makes it fun. The objections never change. They’re always the same. I want to think it over. Got a friend in the business. I want to compare companies. We’re considering selling it ourselves. You know, we want more money than what you’re offering us. We want a shorter length of time on the listing than what you’re suggesting. These are very common. They’ve been around for 50 or 75 years. Why not learn the answers? So, when they say to you, we want to think it over, you can smile, respond to them in a professional manner, and move the presentation forward closer to the contract being signed. And then, of course, the next step is negotiate. Because once you get the contract signed and you, you say to your buyer or your seller, my real strong function is negotiating to make sure that the buyer and or the seller understands what you’re trying to accomplish. And we understand what they’re trying to accomplish so we can bring the transaction together.

But then the hardest part of this whole process is when we get a listing or make a sale, is understanding that we have to start over again. Voice relief. We have to start over again the next day. And do the entire process from A all the way down to Z. So yes, there’s other things you can add to the basic fundamentals. A lot of these options that are out there today, you know, branding, marketing videos. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They’re all good. They add value to what you’re doing. Here’s what I wrote down. Be careful not to substitute the options for the basics. Let me repeat that. Be careful not to substitute the options. Because there’s so many options out there for the basics that you’re going to do. Commit to the basics before you commit to the options. Knowing the options sound like more fun. And certainly, get you very little, if any, rejection at all. Prospecting is going to bring rejection. Doing a video that is being put online. You’re not going to get any rejection. You’re going to feel good about yourself. But you’re not going to get the response you need. Follow the basics. Commit to the basics today. Then decide what options you want to add to your sales process. Thanks for watching Mike Ferry TV. See you next week.