Welcome to another edition of Mike Ferry TV. My name is Tony Smith, the Vice President of The Mike Ferry Organization, and thrilled, as always, to spend any time with anyone here in the Mike Ferry TV world. Okay, so here we are. This is the week of September 5th. What a phenomenal time of year this is. The market is phenomenal for us, if we pay attention. This time of year is phenomenal for us if we pay attention. Question for you … Can you remember how you started this year in terms of production? Can you look way back into January, February, March of this year? Do you know how many listings you had coming into the year? Do you know how many pending’s you had coming into the year? How important is it to have a good start of a year if you want to have a good year, right? We do these things like, “Finish Strong and Start Fast” because we know here at The Mike Ferry Organization how important it is for you to Finish Strong if you want to Start Fast.

And so here we are in September, one of our long term, one of the best agents of all time, long term agent, Mr. Ed Kaminsky, down in Southern California, Manhattan Beach. There was a few years ago we were in a Mastermind Group and I was working with Ed and he came into a year very soft and I can remember it plain as day as he came into the year and said, “Gosh, Tony, my listings are way down, my pending’s are way down. I don’t even have that many leads. This is horrible.” And it took him two or three or four months to get his business back up to that momentum that he’s so accustomed to. Right? Selling 100 and 175 to 200 homes a year. And I can remember plain as day that, “I’m never going to let that happen again. I’m never going to come into the year soft like that.” I said, “What’s your solution?” He said, “I am going to create September to Remember.” “So tell me about this.” He said, “I know for a fact that if I have a September to remember, it basically puts the wheels in motion to have a strong October, November, December, when all the other agents are not doing that. And then I’ll start the year fast. I’ve just virtually created an environment where I’m going to start the years fast from now on.” And he has. And so you have to ask yourself this question. Here we are in September. Will September be anything memorable for you? Have you decided I put this down. So have you set some really exciting goals, production goals for yourself for September? Do you have a strong listing taken goal? How about a strong new escrow goal? Prospecting goals, right? Skills improvement goals, which we’re going to talk about here in a minute. But the truth is, you have the opportunity this month to do something spectacular in your life and business. How many times have you heard Mike Ferry say the words? “Could you make this your best month ever?” Is there anything physically stopping you in having September be one of your best months ever in some category of your business? Maybe it’s your best prospecting month ever. Do you know what that would look like? Maybe it’s your best listings taken month ever. What would that look like? Maybe you follow your schedule better than ever for the month. How would that be? If you decide some areas that you want to be spectacular for the month, it could be a September to remember, so I’d ask you to set that up.

And then the second part of what we want to talk about today is we have September, October, November and December. And one of the ways that you can get a very clear understanding of improving. Now, I’m assuming a couple of things here. First, are you planning on selling Real Estate in the year 2023? I hope so. Are you planning on finishing this year selling Real Estate? I certainly hope so. Would you like 2023 to be better in terms of income and production than 2022 is shaping up? Then it’s very important to finish the year strong, isn’t it? And here’s an approach that you can use. And those of you in Coaching have seen this many times, but it’s a great time of year to do this. How about taking the Real Estate test? Mike Ferry created basically a simple little test for yourself to give you direction, give you a pointing place, a place for improvement. And so if you take this little test, it helps you understand where you want to improve. And there’s ten areas that I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. So let’s look at these one at a time.

Number one, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade yourself on your ability to effectively manage your time? Do you have a solid schedule? How effective are you at managing your time? Be honest with yourself on this. On a scale of 1 to 10, where do you stand? Number two, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade yourself in your ability to prospect for Sellers? Write your daily lead generation, your sources, making the right amount of contacts, being there for present for the prospecting times that you have set up for yourself, your consistency. How would you grade yourself on prospecting for Sellers? Number three, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade yourself on effectively, aggressively following up with leads? Do you have a good lead follow-up system? Do you have clear-cut standards on the leads you have? Do you throw leads away when you’re supposed? How would you grade yourself on your lead follow-up system.

Number four, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you score yourself on prequalifying the Seller appointments you go on? Are you using the Mike Ferry prequalification process? Are you practicing the delivery? Are you good at it? Do you do it every time? How would you grade yourself? Number five, how would you grade yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, at delivering a professional Listing Presentation? What’s your score? What if Mike was watching? What would he grade you on a Listing Presentation? How about number six? How would you grade yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, on your ability to handle the objections you know you’re going to receive? Hey, we’ve got 12 common objections that we know are going to come to you all year. Every year. Right? And then, you know which objections you get more than others. How would you grade yourself on your ability to handle the objections you need to handle in today’s world? Number seven on this list, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you grade yourself on your ability to close the sale? You know, ask the questions, ask for the signature. Would you sign the contract, please? How would you grade yourself on that ability? How about number eight? How would you grade yourself on negotiating contracts? Boy, today, negotiating is becoming a bigger deal, isn’t it? It’s more important today than it had been. Your ability to negotiate with the Seller, negotiate with the Buyer and negotiate with the other agent. How would you grade yourself on a scale of 1 to 10? How about number nine? How would you grade yourself on maintaining a strong mindset? How would you grade yourself? Are you doing affirmations every day? Are you keeping track of your goals? Are you reading and writing and dumping all of the Mike Ferry stuff into your brain? How would you grade yourself on a strong mindset?

And then number ten. Now this is the big one … the most important one of all and oftentimes the hardest one to achieve. What is your score, on a scale of 1 to 10, on starting over at the top of this list each day? Are you consistent? Are you sporadic? Do you get complacent? Do you get frustrated and step back? So far this year, how would you grade yourself on your ability to start over? Okay, now then you come up with a score. So if there’s ten different points, scale of 1 to 10, you have a score. Add them all up. What’s your score? Right? 100% would be perfect. Ten out of ten. You’re perfect in all these categories. You know, that’s a tough one, right? This points us in a direction of where you need to improve. Where are you the weakest on this list? Which one do you give yourself the lowest score? Could you come up with a couple of real, actionable steps to improve? Something tangible, something you can measure. Can you come up with a way to be held accountable to improving?

Let’s look at it this way. What if you took each one of these and you improved a notch or two? Well, “I’m a six.” What if you took it to an eight between now and Christmas? What if you took handling objections? “Oh, gosh, I’m not very good at that. I’m a four.” What if you took it from a four to a six in the next four months? Can you imagine yourself getting in a seven, eight, nine or ten in all ten of these categories between now and the start of 2023? Here’s a question for you. Do you believe your production and profitability would improve during the process? We all believe it would, right? As you start to improve with time management, doesn’t that affect so many other things in your life? Of course. So this is a great time of year to take this little test again for yourself. If you haven’t done this before, take this little test, talk to the people around you, talk to your Brokers, Managers, talk to your Coach if you have one. And let’s get on a pathway to moving forward with the important test of skills that you need as a successful salesperson. I got to tell you, what we know is that everything is stacking up for this to be one of the best windows of time for you, because your competition will be going the other way. Your job is to set a series of goals for yourself and go after them. Have some fun. Thanks for your time.