- Have you seen or felt the change in the marketplace?
Today I'm talkin' about the five adjustments
you must make in order to
guarantee your success in any market.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to the Tom Ferry show.
Today, I wanna set you up for success.
Let me ask you a question.
If you knew the market was going to make an adjustment
in the next 18 to 24 months, knowing what you know now
about your business, about the natural cycles
of the real estate industry,
what adjustments would you make?
Well, what if I told you over the last five months,
I've been getting that phone call
from C.E.O.s of real estate companies
and from top producing agents and brand new
real estate agents that are walking in and saying,
something just feels strange about the market.
Well if you study the trends as we do, right?
K.C.M., matter of fact, recently put out a report
that said we've experienced six recessions in the U.S.,
since the mid-70s, two of which had a pretty significant
impact on housing, certainly if we reflect back
to 2007, eight, nine, we all can remember that experience.
Now my question for you is, knowing what we know
about the market, about real estate,
about the cost of money going up,
about inventory in the current situation that it's in,
knowing what we know now, what would you do?
Well, the opening of my summit, I'm walking you through 12.
Today I'm gonna share with you five
of the most important strategies, mindsets,
and tactics I'm recommending to all of our coaching members.
Not, my friends, in any way, shape, or form
trying to create any fear about the market,
but instead one of the most important disciplines
every great C.E.O., every great entrepreneur has,
and that is the ability to anticipate and adjust,
so if we can anticipate the change
and make the adjustments now in your business,
two things happen, your business becomes bullet-proof.
Market proof, ready to dominate, regardless of what happens,
and secondarily if nothing happens, what happens?
Your income skyrockets, so let's have the right mindset
as we look at these five points,
and what you must do to prepare for what is most natural
and automatic, which is the cycles just continue to change,
so here's my five things I want you to start with.
Number one, acknowledge, are you a hobbyist
or is this a business?
Now that's not designed to be offensive.
I'm certainly not trying to slap you in the face,
but I'd like you to consider that the vast majority
of agents around the world are hobbyists.
They're not running their business like a business.
They don't know their numbers, they're not making
analytical decisions, they're not thinking through
innovation and marketing on a daily basis.
How do I surprise and delight my clients?
No, the vast majority of them are trying to figure out
how to answer their phone on time,
and should they buy leads or not?
So I challenge you, as you go into this next level
of real estate, this new change in the economy,
can you survive as a hobbyist?
Can you survive selling five, six, eight, 10,
15 homes a year, mostly by default,
or is it time for you to shift your mindset
and your strategy up here and everyday in your business,
to be by design?
Think about it, no more being a hobbyist.
Now, you're running a business.
So that's number one.
Number two, I wrote down for you.
Again, there's 12, I'm just giving you the top five here.
Multiple lead-generation sources is the solution.
You've heard me talk about it before.
The vast majority of real estate professionals.
Because the economy (mumbles) so good,
have relied aggressively on their database,
and what happens is, my friend, when you become myopic,
singular focus in terms of just one thing that you do
to generate business, any hiccups in the market
and you're out of business, which is why we've always said,
from 16 years ago when we started this company,
the very best agents have four
to six different lead sources.
No different from, if you needed to fish to survive,
you wouldn't show up to the spot where there's no fish.
You'd go where the fish are and you'd get as many lines
in the water as you can, as many opportunities for you
to attract buyers and sellers to bring your service
to them and ultimately help them buy and sell real estate,
and listen my friend, too many agents today
with those two or three, they might be using,
they're doing it, dare I say, half-ass.
Could that be the first time I've cursed
on the Tom Ferry show?
I apologize, but I really wanna get this point across.
The market doesn't care if you don't do your marketing.
The market doesn't care.
Buyers will find a real estate professional.
Sellers will find a real estate professional.
If you're not, you know, sending up smoke signals,
doing your social media, making your phone calls,
sending out your direct mail, doing your email,
no one cares if you stop, but you will be out of business,
so that's number two.
Number three on my list, they live inside their C.R.M.
Now, think about how simple this is.
We know that there's two kinds of agents, right?
Agents with a CRM and agents without,
and when you look at our studies,
nearly 64% of the people we talk to,
a hundred thousand people a year, 64% either have no contact
relationship management solutions, CRM, and a chunk of them
think that outlook on their phone is their CRM.
Listen my friend, I'm telling you as a business coach,
I'm telling you as a student of business in marketing,
we've gotta have a beautiful CRM with all of our contacts
bucketed and organized by group with the frequency
of how often I'm going to speak with them,
text them, email them, send them a video,
whatever you choose to do, but here's the deal, you ready?
The consumer has choices and just like with multiple
lead sources, we know that your business from
your past glance and spear still should represent
30, 40, maybe even 50% of your business,
because you're staying in communication
and you're bringing them value,
so if you're not living inside your CRM today, my friend,
your business is going to struggle as things adjust,
just like if I look inside your CRM or your phone
and I see Larry, three one oh, five, five, five,
one, two, one, two, and you have no idea who Larry is,
there's no last name, there's no email,
there's no address to mail to, you're also being myopic.
You're, you're making your business only a call
or a maybe text, when sometimes a hand-written note
or a direct mail postcard is gonna be a better way
for you to reach them.
So really it's, they live inside their CRM,
and let's be clear, they've taken the time
to organize their database in a way that they know
who their very best are, and the frequency of touch,
and who are those people that, they're trying to figure out
who are these people in my database
and how do I nurture those relationships
and bring them value so they get into that
B and C category, so those are the top three.
If I asked you just to stop right there,
and said to you, hey, are you in business
or is this a hobby, right?
If you don't have a CRM or your CRM isn't organized,
I would challenge you to say you're a hobbyist
in today's business, now you're like Tom,
you're coming across strong.
Remember how I started this video.
The market adjusts, it's not me, it's not you.
I'm not negative, I'm a realist.
When the market adjusts, I want you to stand up and win,
and be proud of the business that you built,
and let's face it, there's gonna be some waves crashing,
and some people are gonna get rumbled and tumbled.
You my friend have the opportunity and the anticipation
to adjust, to ride those waves to success,
and that's what those first three points are about.
So let me share with you number four, the intelligent agent.
The strategist going into this market,
is gonna ask themselves, am I safe in terms of
where I'm marketing with my price points?
Is there opportunity for me to move it up,
or should I really being paying attention to
the moveable middle or maybe even lower end?
I was working with thousands of agents, post nine 11,
in the high-end market place,
and as you can imagine, probably remember,
the high-end just died for about six months.
The smart agents already had those lower to mid price range
farms and marketing strategies and ad spend,
so guess what, they continued to sell a lot more property,
yes, at a lower price, yes with lower fees and commissions,
but every closing is a good closing,
in serving every customer is a good idea,
so from a strategy standpoint, number four is,
look at your business and ask yourself,
what's my average sales price, what's the moveable middle,
when the market slows down, which part picks up
and which part dies, and make sure that you're not myopic
in your pricing, so let's look at the last one, number five.
I actually just had this conversation with a personal client
and I can tell that there was, I don't wanna say fear,
but there was some worry in the back of her mind.
She's like, Tom what do I need to do, I mean,
I live inside my CRM, I've got nine different drivers of,
this is a 150 million dollar a year producer,
small team family business doing it the right way,
very operational-minded CEO of the team.
She said what else do I need to do?
And I said, my most important advice for you
is start to stock pile cash, the market's good right now.
She's selling a lot of stuff in the broader better
price range, and has a pretty decent amount of stuff
in the high end, so when these are popping,
they're savings, this is running your life
and running your business, I said everyone of these
that we sell, we need to stock pile the cash,
and she said, if I stock pile the cash,
do you mean so I can buy when the market adjusts?
And I said that would certainly be a good strategic move.
I'm not a financial advisor, I'm telling you
as your business coach that when the market adjusts,
when things get a little different,
what's the very first thing, the vast majority
of real estate professionals stop on a dime?
What do you think it is?
It's their marketing, it's their marketing.
They panic, right, I don't know what to send.
I don't know what to say, I'm not, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna kill all my online advertising.
I'm not gonna do my email, I'm certainly not gonna spend
money on direct mail, and overnight,
they put themselves out of business,
and as soon as I said it, she got it immediately.
She said, oh, I've got the cash to keep my business going.
I've got that nice ward chest, so I can get
more market share, now this particular girl
just turned 40 years old, she really hasn't been around
through the real estate business long enough to know
that in every changing market, when it's going like this,
or it's like this, that's when the phoenixes
come out of the ashes, that's when all the best agents
show up, matter of fact if you were to Google right now,
when have the vast majority of the most successful
businesses on the planet, when did they get started?
In almost every case, it was during a recession
or a depression, she got it immediately.
So here's my question for you.
Knowing what you know, and especially if you're one
of my veteran friends watching, and you were around
as I was, maybe in the early 90s or again during
2007, eight, nine, if you were around,
knowing what you know, what do you need to do?
That my friend is the question you need to answer,
and then get in a massive action,
and create as much accountability as possible
to make sure that you're falling through on the disciplines,
to makes sure your business is market-proof.
So, I know kind of a heavy show.
I can't wait to see the comments.
We probably need to link up guys.
The last KCM article, so everybody can see
what we're referencing, from all those recessions,
from mid-70s forward, so you are more informed
and more empowered.
Now remember, when things change, people get in their head.
When you're in your head, you're dead.
I've said to people for years,
look your neighbor right in the eye,
and look him right in the eye and say you're head
is a scary place to be.
I'm not trying to affirm that.
I just wanna make you aware that when things adjust,
people create fear.
When they create fear, they create doubt.
When they create doubt, guess what?
They get into a state of paralysis,
and when you're in a state of paralysis,
how many phone calls do you make?
How much marketing do you do?
How much proactivity do you do?
No, you hide, and if you hide, you're dead.
We gotta keep our mindset right and fall through
on these five actions and I promise you,
your business will ride right through this,
and you will be an extraordinary real estate professional.
Thank you so much for watching.
I can't wait to read your comments, see you soon.
Hey, I'm Tom Ferry and I wanna say welcome to real estate.
Now, there's a pretty good chance no one's told you
there's an 87% failure rate every five years
in this business, and there's only two factors.
Agents don't have the tools and they don't
take the right action.
I'm gonna invite you to click the link below,
and get access to the tools,
so you can win in this business.