How to use The Mike Ferry Sales System – Part 2

Welcome, everybody, to Mike Ferry TV. My name is Mike De Hoyos, and today I’m going to be talking about, How Do I Take Advantage Of The Mike Ferry Sales System – Part 2. So last week I did a small breakdown of what the actual sales system is, and the steps you’re going to have to take in order to list and sell a lot of Real Estate. Today, I’m going to be talking a little bit more about the business side of it. So I want everybody to consider this thought. This is something that we’ve heard Mike Ferry say since the beginning of the Mike Ferry system which is, “Treat your business like a business.”

“Treat your business like a business.” – Mike Ferry

So I’m going to take you through a series of thoughts that’s going to help you think about this more like a business versus a hobby. Now, the difference between a hobby and a business, of course, is the amount of effort you put into it and the type of results you want to get from it. Plenty of us have hobbies that we like to do outside of the business. Like if you like to do golf or if you like to play music or if you like to go boating or whatever that may be. You have those hobbies that you do. Too often we find that Real Estate agents treat their business like it was one of those hobbies.

1) Business Planning

So I want to talk about just a couple of basic things that you do in a business that you probably don’t do too much in a hobby. For example, I wrote down business planning. As a professional Real Estate agent, you should have a very simple plan as to what you want to accomplish every year. You can do this in a variety of ways. I’ve always preferred the way that Mike Ferry teaches. It’s in its simplest form. Take a look at what you did last year. Break down what sources you got your business from and create a plan around that this year. We always tell our customers to shoot for a 20% increase in business from last year to this year. We tell them to take the sources they know they’re going to get business from, set goals for each of those sources, set a plan in place to do it, and then figure out what skills or activities they need to be involved in, in order to turn those into reality. That’s a very simple business approach. If you think of any big business out here in the United States, Canada, or anywhere else in the world, this is a very simple thing to do. Take a look at what you did last year. Use that as a resource to figure out what you’re going to accomplish this year and then put a plan in place in order to make that into a reality.

2) Goal Setting

The second thing I wrote down goes right along with it is goal setting. Now, I’m not just talking about the big business plan. I’m talking about simple goals that support the plan. Something as simple as how many people do you need to speak to every day in order to achieve the goals that you’ve set for yourself? Obviously, if you are a subscriber to our Numbers Analyzer, you can use that as a tool to track your progress. Part of goal setting, which is also part of the Mike Ferry system, is to track your numbers as accurately as possible. If you are tracking the numbers that you are producing, you can then compare that to the goals that you’ve set and see whether you are on or off track. If you are off track, you can make adjustments. If you are on track, then you continue down that path. If you are going further than you were planning or if you are surpassing your goals, you may want to raise the goals, but tracking your numbers goes hand in hand with your goal setting.

3) Have Business Systems

The next part I wrote down is to have business systems. When you take a listing, what’s the process that you use? Do you have a checklist of things that you do to make it more efficient? Or are you like most agents and you’re running around frantically trying to figure out what’s the next step? A good business always has systems for how they get everything done. Let’s say you’re working with a buyer. Do you have a system in place to make sure that you’ve qualified them? They’ve talked to a lender, that they sign a Buyer-Broker agreement? Do you have a system in place for that? Do you have a system in place to pre-sell them on the types of homes that they are going to go see? To qualify for their motivation so you can find the right homes to show them? Do you have these systems in place? Okay.

4) Time Management

The next thing I wrote down is time management. Now I know what we’re thinking. There are a lot of people out there who are independent contractors and they say to themselves, “Listen, I work my own schedule. That’s why I got into this business so I could have my own free time.” Question for you, if you owned a store and you hired employees and they treated you the way you treat yourself as a boss, would you keep them? They show up late. They take long breaks. They go out for two hours for lunch. They leave early and they don’t really get a lot done. Folks, how many of you would keep an employee employed if that’s how they behaved? As I said, treat this like a business. How many of you would actually fire an employee who keeps their time the way that you do? You have to consider these things because if you truly want to build this into a business, you have to take this type of business approach.

5) Script Practice and Skill Development 

The next part I wrote down was practicing scripts and developing skills. Now, in most jobs, you’re not going to have a bunch of people taking their script and walking around and chanting it. I get it. Well, what you are going to do, though, is require your staff to have certain skills to perform the job. Imagine you had a store and the people that you have employed are constantly losing sales because of their inability to communicate. How long would you keep them employed? So you’ve got to ask yourself a question, are your communication skills strong enough that they are supporting the goals that you’ve set for yourself? If they are not, you may consider working on your scripts and your skills, especially in today’s market. Just a little hint in today’s market, some of the scripts and skills that you should be working on is the prequalifying script. You’ve got to master the prequalifying script right now so that you know what your customers are feeling in terms of motivation as well as you must be excellent at the pricing presentation. You must show your customers better than anybody else why they need to list their home at a price that will cause it to sell. If the motivation is there and the skills support the job, you’re going to take a lot of listings.

6) Money Management and Profitability

The next thing I wrote down is money management and profitability. As a business, you must manage your money in a way that keeps you profitable. It is too common amongst Real Estate people to spend every dollar they have on buying leads or buying some form of advertising, which leaves your profit margins barely, barely in the black or in the red in emergency mode. Again, you’ve got to ask yourself if you had somebody who was managing your store or managing your business and you were constantly in the negative, how long would you keep that manager? Treat your business like a business. If you don’t understand these points, you may consider diving more into the Mike Ferry system in terms of money management and profitability.

7) Customer Service 

Then the last one I wrote down is probably the most important one. I wrote down customer service. Folks in any business, in order to survive, your level of service has to be better than your competitors. So start asking yourself, what could you do in terms of customer service to improve your ability to perform? Does your communication have to get better? Does your file work have to get better? Does your coordination with different parts of the transaction have to get better? Do you answer the phone when somebody calls you? That’s probably the biggest weak point I’ve seen lately with a lot of Real Estate agents. They won’t even answer the phone anymore. You call an agent, they text you back. What do you need? How can I help you? Folks, is that really top-level service? In my opinion, that’s pretty weak. If you’re in a position, you can answer the phone. I get it. But for the most part, can we answer the phone? If a lender is calling you, if a customer is calling you, can you answer the phone most of the time? Up your level of service folks and people will want to do business with you.

These were some of the thoughts I thought of when Mike was telling me, how we take advantage of the Mike Ferry Sales System. The biggest thing I want you to take away from this is to treat your business like a business. Thank you, guys. And we’ll talk to you next week.