Mike Ferry: Welcome and good morning to Mike Ferry TV. This going to be a two-week segment recorded today. Halfway through, we’ll stop and then we’ll continue with February 14 for the second half of today’s recording. We are doing it this way because I’ll be overseas for the next several weeks. So, this is the week of February 7th and the week of February 14th. And we’re going to talk about a topic that has been talked about, discussed, beat up, thrown aside, used unused forever in Real Estate, which are topics regarding the words of lead generation or prospecting. I wrote, and I’m going to read a lot of this to you because I think it’s important that I do. I wrote, Welcome to what I believe is one of the most important topics for Real Estate professionals like yourself. However, it is unfortunately rarely taught or used in our business. Every sales organization that I’ve ever come across to my life, every sales business or sales industry recognizes the importance of prospecting. With the exception, of course, of our industry, Real Estate. Whatever title you give this particular sales activity, territory management, talking to people, having conversations with potential clients, it doesn’t matter what the topic is, lead generation or simply good old-fashioned prospecting, which is what I refer to it. Every sales-oriented industry not only wants the salespeople to do it, but requires it.
Mike Ferry: It’s not even an option. It’s not something for an individual’s consideration or choice. It’s not something you may feel like doing and probably never feel like doing. It is the foundation, and this is what I want you to understand. It’s the foundation. Ok, this podium is on a cement floor on the third level of our office building. There is a foundation and there is a structure to hold the third floor up. This podium sits on that foundation without the foundation. I couldn’t have the podium. So, it is the foundation that makes the sales business work. The first question that I would ask each of you to address is quite honestly, look in the mirror and I want you to say to that wonderful, great agent in the mirror, what is my hang up about talking to people? What is my deep concern about talking to people I’ve never met or talked to before? Or in essence, why am I trying to do everything I can possibly do to generate listings? A sales without prospecting? Our industry, which involves independent contractors, as we both know, allows Real Estate Agents to decide if they want to prospect or not. As you both know, as I should say, as all of us know, the majority of the people in Real Estate choose to use the words “I am not going to prospect”.
Mike Ferry: Then we add the fact that too many Real Estate organizations do not teach prospecting. Which I have never understood. A Real Estate sales organization should be always working with all the salespeople on how do we improve the quality of the prospecting we do. Or they have a fear of teaching prospecting, the fears the agents will quit if they are asked to prospect with the result that I would estimate that probably 80 percent plus of the agents that are licensed today, and that’s 1.875 million agents in the U.S. in 2022 two will simply not get involved in the foundation of what we call selling, which is prospecting. As many of you know, time and again, I’ve talked about the fact that I was very, very lucky to have a Real Estate Broker, Pat McVeigh, who’s unfortunately we lost to a couple of years ago. But I think he was in his mid-80s. He had a great life. He was a great guy. And the first thing he did with all the agents the company was say, I want you to talk to one hundred people a day, five days a week for your first three months and all the good salespeople, and I was considered one of those because I did what he asked went out and prospected. I prospected, usually from nine o’clock until three Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then I changed my schedule after six months to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday.
Mike Ferry: So, whatever the schedule is, how much time are you spending talking to people? Because see, there’s only two kinds of people in the world, and you’ve heard me say this in the past. People I know, people I don’t know. And then, as I said to the Century 21 convention in Orlando years ago, if you have two groups of people, people I know, people I don’t know which group is bigger and it’s the people you don’t know. But then I said, if you won’t talk to the ones you know and you won’t talk to the ones you don’t know. How do you expect to do business? Which is why the majority of Real Estate people do from zero to two or three transactions a year. We’re going to look at prospecting this week and next week from a number of different sides. My job is to help you understand why you should be doing it and if you’re going to do it, what to say and what to do, because that has been the specialty of the Mike Ferry organization for forty-seven years. Getting people to understand that simple, simple thought that if I know what to say, I can do what I’m supposed to do. But if I don’t know what to say is pretty hard to get out there and be involved.
Mike Ferry: If I was doing an event today for Real Estate Brokers and Managers, I would say to them quote recruiting, which is prospecting, solves every problem of Real Estate brokerage firm will ever encounter. However, recruiting generally revolves around prospecting. But then I would say to each of you, the prospecting will virtually solve every problem you have in Real Estate today can be solved by talking to people on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter what your personality style is, doesn’t matter what your background is, doesn’t matter what your experience or lack of it is. You’re going to win the game of Real Estate production and sales if you talk to people. So, I stated in a seminar years and years ago, the Real Estate business are involved in people, communication and image. We’re the people business. How do you list and sell homes without having people involved? And now if you’re handling an investment property for somebody from Colorado and you’re in the state of Washington, you may not have the interaction personally, but there are still people involved. So, we’re in the people business. The communication business, deciding what we’re going to say, how we’re going to say it, how well are we understood when we talk to the people that we talked to and the image business, which that which is what they judge us by so often? So how would you rate yourself on a scale from one to 10 in your ability to communicate with people? How would you judge yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 in terms of the image they see? So how good are you talking to meeting and conversing with strangers? Remember, as I stated, there’s only two kinds of people in the world.
Mike Ferry: We’re in the people business, which means we have to learn how to talk to people every day. I have told hundreds, if not thousands, of agents over the course of my career. If you’re uncomfortable in day-to-day conversations with people. Take a Dale Carnegie communication course, they’re not expensive. It’s a wonderful series of trainings that they do. They operate throughout most of North America. Dale Carnegie Communication or Dale Carnegie speaking or Dale Carnegie sales. Ok? You learn to ask questions of people and present it to them in an intelligent manner, which is what the people business is all about. We’re in communication business, simply stated, learning to ask a lot of questions to a lot of people and importantly, listen carefully to the answers and the image business, which we are in. How do people see you? How do people view you knowing the people today and I’m talking about today? In February of 2022 are more judgmental of people than I’ve ever seen in my past. And they make the decision to go further in the conversations with you, often based upon what they see versus what they actually hear, which is really too bad.
Mike Ferry: But it does give those that understand the importance of image a big advantage. So, it would be surprising to get on a commercial aircraft and have a pilot standing by the door in shorts, tennis shoes and a T-shirt with a baseball hat on backwards. Which is the image you often see in our business. It’s not the image that an airline wants to present. I wrote, if you are in court with an attorney representing you, the court expects a professional attorney dressed in professional attire, using professional language, and asking pertinent questions. With all that being said, in most cases, you’ve got to consider some form of conversations lead generation quote unquote prospecting, and they’ll usually revolve around first waiting for people to find you, which is very, very common. Sit in the office, sit at your desk, have your headset ready and if somebody calls, answer the phone. Ok, let me ask you a question. How many times per week has somebody calling you and asking you if you’ll sell them a home or list their home? Be honest about that. Now a lot of the top producers, because of their signs and because of their reputation and their image and the production they’ve achieved, get those calls.
Mike Ferry: But we don’t have a lot of top producers involved in Mike Ferry TV, they’re involved in our Premier Coaching. And we have thousands at all times. So many of the people watching Mike Ferry TV and it could be you I’m talking about are a little bit newer to the business, are still working up ahead of steam and getting the skills and scripts and dialogs and work habits and disciplines and consistency and schedules. It’s a lot of work. So, if you’re sitting and waiting for people to find you two words, good and luck. And somebody may find you, but can you make a reasonable living of that thought? Or second, we take the approach of buying business, running extensive social media campaigns, advertising, promotion campaigns, branding campaigns, direct mail campaigns or when you find a prospect, you buy the business by cutting commission or overpricing a property. In today’s common model, buying leads off the internet and repaying high referral fees to referral companies is, in essence, buying leads. So, let’s say your average commission check is $8,000 gross to you as a Listing or Buying agent, and you’re paying 25 to 30 percent in referral fees or you’re spending a thousand dollars per lead. It’s pretty expensive, and most people that are not doing a reasonable volume cannot afford to pay those expenses or third outside of waiting and buying, earning the business, taking five or six of the direct sales techniques that we teach, learning how to apply them and putting them in your business.
Mike Ferry: I wrote the following Selling you on lead generation has been one of the most challenging things I’ve experienced in my forty-seven years of doing seminars. With the fact that three to five percent of the people in Real Estate have direct sales experience, which therefore they come into the business knowing they have to talk to people all the time. I asked 14 or 15 of our great Coaches a few days ago, can you identify a couple of the simple, direct thoughts that I can present to this group on Mike Ferry TV and on how Real Estate people benefit from prospecting? So, section two, which would be next week, which I’m recording both sections today, as I mentioned, I’m going overseas are really what are we going to do to build our business? And there’s a series of ideas and there’s a formula that I will give you that may help you understand it. Here’s the formula. Then we’ll go to next week’s second half of this concept. I want you to write A B C on a piece of paper three by five card. Next to A write your production goal, listing sold by or controlled sales for the year.
Mike Ferry: How many of your listings you take will sell, and in most cases, it’s most will sell in this market. And then, of course, how many Buyer controlled sales. Next to Letter B, how many of that number will come to you from your database, past clients, Center of Influence, referrals, etc. So let’s say the goal for the year is 20 and you’re going to get 15 come from your database that you can count on here in 2022. Next to Letter C, write the difference between 20 and five, which is 15, and then you circle the number of 15 because that is the number of people you should be talking to per day about Real Estate five days a week for the balance of this year to achieve the goal you have set. Basically, your job is to create a certain number of transactions. If the goal is 20 and you’re going to get five, you have to create 15 transactions over the course of now, the next 11 months. What are some of the benefits to you if you take these thoughts and use them? So next week, which I’m again recording today, is going to be followed on some of the benefits to you. If you choose to follow the advice we give. Thanks for watching today and see you next Monday.
