Welcome and good morning to Mike Ferry TV. It is the week of March 31st. Well, it’s been a good, solid first quarter. The first month was a little weaker than probably all of us expected, but the business has rebounded. And most importantly, most of you are doing better than you had probably thought you would. And that’s a big congratulations for me. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I go and check LinkedIn as a social media platform every morning and every late afternoon. And there’s an author that publishes a lot of stuff on LinkedIn named Tracy Stein. He’s from Orlando, Florida, and he published an article recently, and it was The Skills That Pay You Forever. And of course, I think he’s thinking more about general business than real estate sales, but I’ve converted them to real estate sales, and I want to cover six of those points today, and I’ll cover six again next week. So, if you got your pen handy. Let’s get to work.

1) The ability to sell and negotiate 

So, the first skill that Tracy talked about was the ability to sell and negotiate, which is of course, our business. Real estate agents are often very hesitant to say I’m a real estate salesperson for some reason. I’m an investment counselor and I’m a residential specialist. We’re salespeople. Our job is to list homes for sale, sell properties to buyers, negotiate contracts between the two, and those skills are very specific and required. If you’re going to do more than a couple of deals a year. So, I thought Tracy’s first point was excellent.

2) The ability to present

The second point, the ability to convey what you think and how you feel, or in essence, your ability to present. Because presentation is the name of the game. As you and I have talked about in the past, we prospect, we present, and we close. You know, people tell me all the time, you can’t present if you don’t have a good prospect, well, you most of the time you won’t have a good prospect because you can’t present. Think about it this way if you’ve driven by a for sale by owner and not stopped your car, it was probably because of the lack of skill of presentation. So, the ability to convey what you think on how you feel.

3) The ability to break a process down into smaller steps

Number three, the ability to break a process down into smaller steps. Listing and selling real estate is not complicated. Watch. Somebody has to buy. Somebody has to sell. Our job is to bring the two together, or in essence, get in the way of these people that are trying to buy and sell a home. So being able to break the process down is very important. There are certain things we can say to a prospect to initiate a conversation. For example, when do you plan on moving creates more of a conversation than do you want to sell your home? Where did you folks move from? Creates more of a conversation is, well, how did you guys get here to Blank City? So, the ability to break a process down and create a conversation is vitally important. And I thought Tracy’s point was very well taken.

4) The ability to shut up, listen and learn from others

Number four, and this is a fun one. The ability to shut up, listen and learn from others. The ability to shut up, listen and learn from others. Günther Klaus used to say to all of us all the time, the good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth for a purpose. Do twice as much listening and half as much speaking, and you’re going to be ahead of the game. So how often do you find yourself with a buyer or a seller prospect just talking incessantly? And how much good is that doing? You notice they start yawning, they start looking away. They say excuse me, I need to go get a cup of coffee. And we’re thinking that they’re in, you know, enthralled by what we’re saying. And the truth is, they gave up listening because we never were listening in return. So, the ability to shut up, listen and learn from others is vitally important. Mike Vance used to say all the time, if you ever understood how much people know, then you would spend more time asking questions about what they know so you could know what they know, and you could grow as a result of that particular thought.

5) The ability to adapt, improve and overcome obstacles

Number five, the ability to adapt, improve and overcome obstacles. Adapt. We talk about versatility all the time, the ability to adapt to a variety of people, variety of situations and a variety of ways. So, the ability to adapt, but then the ability to improve. Okay, I’m trying to get better at what I’m doing, so I’m practicing my scripts, I’m role playing. I have support from my broker, from my manager, from my role play partners, from my accountability partners. I’m improving and then overcome the obstacles because there are a lot of obstacles. As we learn new things, we forget a phrase, we forget a word. Oh, I should have said because as you’ve heard me say in the past, we generally make three presentations, one on the way to the house where we’re all excited about the presentation, the prospective seller, one at the house, and then in the car on the way home, which is the one we should have made back in the house.

6) The ability to read, understand and memorize information

But then number six, the ability to read, understand and memorize information. It’s interesting. This last week we just had a Productivity School in Orange County, California. I think we had 230 people registered to take it, and some of the feedback I got, it was such an impressive group of people because Ron Cronin did such an impressive job and, you know, getting the people engaged. Well, you have to understand that. You have to learn the scripts that we suggest. I had a great conversation with a great client about two weeks ago, and I said to the client, do you use scripts? And the client said, no, I don’t believe in scripts. I said, okay, when you’re selling your service, do you have automatic responses to some of the objections that they give you, he said. Of course, I’ve learned exactly what to say to respond. I said, okay, so then just substitute and say, I’ve got a planned presentation or a script to use when I’m responding to a potential prospect. And he smiled and said, I got it. So, in essence, think about it this way. You’re walking down the street, you see a friend of yours approaching on the sidewalk. Hi, Don. How are you? Hi, Mike. How are you? How have you been? Fine. How about you? I’ve been fine. What’s going on? Not much. How about you? Not much. Have a great day. Okay, have a great day. It’s all scripted. You have the same thing you say each time. So think about what Tracy has taught us. We’ll cover it some more next week. But these tips for that will pay you forever are really valid and really good, and certainly fit right into everything that we teach. Have a great week. We’ll look forward to talking to you next week.