Well, hello there, my name is Tony Smith … Vice President of the Mike Ferry Organization. Thank you for another edition of Mike Ferry TV. We are speaking today on the week of August 17th … and I’m excited to spend a few minutes with you guys today regarding a very important topic that I wrote down for us today. The topic is … the services that people pay money for … the services people pay money for.
One of the things we know is that the amount of income we earn is directly proportionate to the services we have to offer. So, if we offer a high level of service at a high volume, we get paid a lot of money, don’t we? So I’m going to start my talk today with the assumption … and this is a big assumption … but I’m going to start with a question. Do you want to make a lot more money? If you do, then pay attention to these notes from Mike Ferry.
Several years ago, he had given me this list, and when I got the list, it seemed very basic in the beginning … it seemed very straightforward … but, boy, when you dive into these things, each one of the points that I’m going to give you today could go on and on and on … and you’ve got to decide how deep you’re willing to go. What I would like to ask you to do … as you get these points, give yourself a little grade on them … a little mental grade on the scale of 1 to 10 … how well do I do at the point.
I want to preface this whole conversation about the services that Sellers pay money for with this idea of volume. One thing we know is if you only go on a listing presentation once every 6 months, it’s going to take a long, long, long time for you to be good at it … isn’t it? If you only practice your scripts for a few minutes a year, it’s going to take a long, long, long time before you get good at it. So, good service equals more money … but you have to consider volume, so I’m going to bring it up in a few thoughts here throughout our time together today.
Here it is … there’s 11 services that people pay money for. Let’s be clear …
1) Getting their home sold or finding the right home for a Buyer.
Pretty obvious, right? Will people pay you a lot of money if you can get their home sold for them? And will people pay you a lot of money if you can find the right home for a Buyer? Of course. Now, you have to consider the things that a consumer is looking for. If we want to provide a high level of service and get paid more, consider these things that Seller or a Buyer considers all the time.
They consider money … am I getting the most money that I possibly can for my listing, or am I getting the best possible buy I can get for the property I buy? They consider … I wrote down … time. Is this happening in a reasonable amount of time? If you have a Buyer … we’ve all known from Mike Ferry … if you have a Buyer and you start showing them homes for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, does their confidence in you grow or shrink? We know that the confidence in you shrinks if it takes a long, long, long, long time to get them into a house.
Then I wrote down …
2) Aggravation
So, if you’re going to list someone’s home and get it sold, or you’re going to help a Buyer find a home, you also have to consider … it has to have the least amount of aggravation for them. One thing we know, they will pay a lot of money if you can get their home sold or help them find a home … regarding the best money … or the best negotiation … in a reasonable amount of time and with the least amount of aggravation.
The second one I wrote down … services that Sellers will pay a lot of money for … naturally, honesty. Honesty. People will pay a lot of money in Real Estate to an agent that is honest. Now, I say this because, you know, we know that the industry has kind of a famous nature for maybe not being completely truthful all the time. “No, no … don’t worry about it. I’m going to run ads every single day of every week for the rest of my life and sell your home.” Or, “I’m doing open houses every single weekend.” “I’ll call you back 24/7.” Those are the kind of things that the public … the people out there … hear from our industry. Not you, of course, but our industry.
You can appreciate the fact that we’ve got to be really, really conscious of honesty. Mike’s kind of approach to that is under promise and overdeliver. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if you have a mindset of under promising and overdelivering, boy, can you stay honest. But if you tend to overpromise … there’s a chance of underdelivering, isn’t there?
I wrote down … services people pay money for …
3) Good communication
We all know the number one complaint that the public out there has with Real Estate Agents is a lack of communication. Are you good at communicating? Are you a good communicator? Do you work diligently at your ability to communicate with people? We’ve got scripts and dialogues … we’ve got skills. There’s a lot of communication that needs to learn how to take place.
I wrote down here … good communication now does not mean text and emails all the time. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world, at times, would rather just text and email, but is texting and email truly good communication? A lot of times you and I both know that it’s not, even though we know the client would love to have that happen … and, at times, we would rather have that happen, but we’ve got to really consider … “This is important … give me a call back.” That would be a good text once in a while.
“Hey, rather than send you a long email, I need you to call me back.” We’ve got to maybe encourage the communication more with the clients that we have … and we’ve also got to work on it and learn to communicate well.
I wrote down … services that people pay good money for …
4) Good follow-up
I’m not talking just about lead follow-up … I’m talking about following up with a Seller’s question … getting things answered … getting back to them timely. Do you get back to all of your clients that need an answer the day they need an answer? Or are there times where you let it sit a day or two? Good news or bad? They need answer … you’ve got to learn how to have this incredible follow-up.
I wrote down under here … we don’t have to have all the answers. Good follow-up does not mean having all the answers. Some of the best salespeople in the world learn the words, “Gosh, I don’t know, but let me find out and get back to you.” “I don’t know but let me find out and get back to you.” There is nothing wrong with that versus either pretending you have all the answers or not getting back to people. How would you score yourself on that one? Good follow-up.
I wrote down number 6 on the list that people will pay a lot of money for …
6) High efficiency and high ratios
High efficiency and high ratios … you know, if … you have to understand that if you go out to list property, for example, and you’ve got to go out six or seven times to get a listing … you go on six or seven listing appointments before you get one listing, that ratio does not really equal good service. If you are prospecting and you only make one or two contacts an hour, that’s not good efficiency … that’s not a good ratio … which equals bad service and the Sellers won’t pay for that.
Do you need to have a world-class listing presentation if you want to provide good service? You do because it’s efficient. Do you really think that most Sellers want to have you in their house for an hour or two? Now, they do, and they will … and I get it … some Sellers would love to sit and chat for a couple hours, I completely understand. However, don’t they kind of expect you to be efficient in that process? Our Mike Ferry presentation … the 5-step process … is ultra-efficient. If you’re not using it, you should because it is the ultra-efficient thing that I believe clients expect from us.
Efficiency … how about time blocking? Do you think that a client would pay a lot of money if you took your admin and it took 8 hours to put a listing in the MLS? Or you spent all day answering emails all day long? Good efficiency is you being able to block your time in a way that you could show it to a Seller. Wouldn’t it be great to say, “Hey, here’s my schedule … here’s my daily schedule. Here’s what I do … kind of an outline of what I do every day.” That’s efficiency. Won’t people pay a lot of money for that? Gosh, they’ll pay a lot of money for efficiency.
I wrote down …
7) Good skills
Boy, if there’s something I know people personally I know people will pay a lot of money for is good skills. Knowing what to say in every selling situation. You know, if you’ve got those kind of rock solid skills where you know how to respond and what to say in every situation that comes up in selling … this is one place that you have to consider volume. If you’re not prospecting all the time, if you’re not handling all of the objections we get all of the time … if you’re not presenting all of the time … then how good can you possibly get at skills?
So there’s a solution. You may not have 19 listing appointments lined up in front of you, but you can practice 19 days straight, couldn’t you? You may not have five Buyers that you’re working through objections live with now, but, boy, could you sure practice the objection handlers that a Buyer might give. Of course, you may not quite have your prospecting resources set up and under control, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t practice your script and skills. You practice an hour a day, 5 days a week, will you get good at your skills? Oh my gosh, you’ll get so good you couldn’t stand it.
People will pay a lot of money for somebody with good skills. And here’s the … I wrote down on here … here’s really something that’s important about this … most of our industry doesn’t address skills at all. So if the industry doesn’t address good skills and you do … do you rise up out of the pack? Of course you do, and you get paid a lot more money for that.
I wrote down …
8) A strong knowledge of the market.
Listen … I’m convinced that one of the most important things that people pay us for as Real Estate agents is that if we know what’s going on out there. Do you know exactly how many homes are for sale in your market right now? Do you know how many are selling per month? Do you know what the average time on the market is today? Do you know how many homes are selling per month this month compared to this time last year? Are you studying where the trends are going, what does it look like is going to happen?
If you do not know the market and the stats and how to deliver them, you can’t get paid that much. So, do you need to spend a few minutes a day, a couple hours a month … do you need to spend a lot more time understanding and studying the market? I think we could all spend a lot more time there.
I wrote down …
9) Good negotiating skills
Boy, will a Buyer and Seller pay a lot of money for a good negotiator. Now, this is an interesting one because a lot of people sometimes think, you know, negotiating … some kind of a big, crazy, “ooh” negotiating. I wrote down … negotiating is simply asking a lot of questions instead of making a lot of statements … asking questions that you don’t necessarily want the answer to but need to be answered … and being unattached to he the outcome. A good negotiator … ask a lot of questions instead of making statements, be sure and ask the questions you may not want the answer to, and do not be attached to the outcome.
Number 10 … I wrote down …
10) Great customer service
Sellers will pay clients … people will pay a lot of money in Real Estate for good customer service. I wrote down the words “thank you” and “I’m sorry.” Good customer service means you know how to say “thank you” and when … and you know when to say you’re sorry. Good customer service means that you’re consistent in your communication … you call your Seller every week … good news or bad news. Good customer service means maybe you go the extra mile in a few places … and they know … and they notice that you’ve gone the extra mile.
Then, the last one I wrote down …
11) Nowadays, in today’s world, Sellers … clients … that people will pay a lot of money for is a service of knowing a solid virtual listing presentation and a virtual Buyer presentation.
I’m convinced that the climate has changed a bit and you need to really have a solid virtual approach to this job. Do you know how to present to a Seller virtually? Do you know how to present to a Buyer virtually? If you know those things, that’s the next layer of services that clients will pay a lot of money for.
So, we’ve got 11 services. Grade yourself in each of these. I bet each and every one of us could find two or three places here where we can improve the services we offer so we get paid more money. It’s been a pleasure, like always, spending a few minutes with you here at Mike Ferry TV … thank you so much for your time.
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