Mike Ferry: And welcome to Mike Ferry TV, as you can see from my casual attire, we have been Christmas shopping for our grandchildren most of the day. And I come into the studio to chat with you folks for a few minutes. Today actually is Friday, December 10th. And the reason I’m doing this a couple of days early prerecorded to be shown to all of you starting on Monday is on the 13th and 14th. As some of you know, I’m doing a two-day live event in Anaheim. We have 400 and 80 great agents and brokers attending a mid-December event, so we’re excited to see all of them and hopefully some of you at that time. You know, this will be our last Mike Ferry TV for the calendar year. 2021 and we’ll be doing our next one will actually start on Tuesday, January 4th. But I want to say thank you because I started checking the numbers yesterday and I’ve discovered that for this year, we’ve had between twenty-two and twenty-four thousand agents like yourself and brokers watching Mike Ferry TV throughout the course of each month. That’s a lot of people and we’re excited about that. And it’s kind of interesting because Sabrina says to me all the time, why don’t we have more people watching? I said, well, Sabrina, you have to understand I started doing this Mike Ferry TV 20 some years ago, and at that time we were the only one doing anything of this type in terms of a learning opportunity, you know, to share ideas with you through this type of a medium.

Mike Ferry: Today, there’s probably five hundred thousand people that do these every week. So, you know, the audience becomes a little diluted, and I’m just glad that you’re not part of it and I’m glad that you’re here. Ok, I want to spend a little bit of time today going through what I have called for many, many years the Real Estate test, a skills test. You know, as you’ve heard me say, time and again, skills, mindset, activities, action are what builds a great career. And of course, the World Today in Real Estate is all about social media, technology and all the magic formulas and shiny pennies that we can use to avoid conversations with people. And the MO on Mike Ferry for virtually forty seven, going on 48 years is Mike Ferry just wants us to prospect all day long. Well, the truth is, if you listen to the message that I’m going to be giving for the next few minutes, prospecting is one tenth of that message that I deliver. So what I talk about in my skills test and I give this test often to people that first join coaching or attending a Mike Ferry event for the first time. If you take the time to write down number one and then write the words time management, time management without a doubt, is the biggest challenge we all face. And that is because we’re independent contractors. You know, if the broker manager, the coach, Mike Ferry, somebody says, you’ve got to do this at this time, the option is to do it, which is pretty smart. Or the other option is to quit and go someplace else where nobody tells you what to do.

Mike Ferry: We have the right to be independent. And of course, the problem with independence is the fact that we don’t manage our time well. Number two, write down database. It is been the number one method of prospecting during their calendar year, two thousand twenty and twenty one for all of our top clients, you know, contacting and talking to people that have some level of respect, loyalty, some relationship, whether it be a past client, neighbor, friend, family, et cetera. Number three is other lead generation sources of which some of you by chance may have downloaded. I have a report that I wrote a couple of years ago. Sixty one methods of prospecting to find a listing. Sixty one methods that we could come up with. There’s probably more than that today, but there has to be something that we’re doing to create and generate leads, whether it be buying them off realtor.com or calling on a For Sale By Owner or passing out something in your geographic farm. You have to be talking to people to succeed in a people business, which this is. Number four is our ability or skill at Lead follow-up. Somebody gives you a name and gives you their number or their email address. They’re doing it because they have an interest in what you’re doing. If we don’t follow up, we’re actually tossing paychecks out the window. Number five pre-qualifying a buyer and seller.

Mike Ferry: Same thing the pilot does. Same thing, the doctor does. Same thing, the attorney does. Same thing the CPA does. They pre-qualifying as before they let us participate. And our job is to find out if that seller has the ability and the motivation, or the buyer has the ability and the skill and the money to buy a house. And that’s done through the pre-qualifying process. Number six is the Listing Presentation. The Listing Presentation is vitally important. Knowing what to say to a seller the competition for listings today, is stronger than it’s ever been before, and a good portion of those people that are so strong are Mike Ferry trained people. I don’t know what to say because remember if you know what to say, you can do what you’re supposed to do. Number seven is showing property is still a big part of the business. It’s tedious, it’s time consuming, it’s challenging, it’s competitive. But you have to do something besides open the door and say, take a look around. Number eight is handling objections that come up, and objections only come up because of what we say. See, I’ve always said we are the creator of the objections that they get. Number nine is closing the sale. Having the courage to say to them, Would you sign the contract, please? And having the pen in your hand to hand it to them so they can make that decision? Number 10, of course, is a fun one, which is negotiating between Buyers and Sellers.

Mike Ferry: I had an agent recently say to me, Mike, I had a phone call from a cooperating broker. He is calling on one of my listings. And the guy said to me, What price will your seller take? And I didn’t know exactly how to respond. What should I have said? Well, if an agent calls me and says, Mike, what price will your seller take? My response is I know they’ll take the list price. Will your buyer pay full price for this property? And then you’re going to draw the objection from the agent that you know how to deal with and handle? And then, of course, number 11 on this is starting over again the next day. So here’s what I want you to do. Take your pen. Watch this again. Write down these 10 steps and then on a scale from one to 10 one being pretty weak and 10 being very strong, honestly, rate yourself on each step in the sale. How would you rate yourself? Are you a three? Are you a six? Are you a nine? And then look at those scores carefully, because the lower the score, the more unlikely you are to be able to master that particular part of the transaction and move forward with your business. The goal would be to have everybody at 70 or more if you could score from one to 10 on 10 steps. So a score of 70 or more means that you’re competent, you’re working. Excuse me, you’re actively involved in the real estate business.

Mike Ferry: But too many people that we talk to about will have a score of two or three or four. And then I’ll say, well, how many transactions did you do this year? Well, I did three. And do you have an organized schedule now? I don’t like scheduling. Are you comfortable talking to people? No, I’m not a people person. Get a job at the library where you don’t have to worry about these kind of things. So I wrote down this question What’s stopping you today on this list or stopped you this year on this list from being more productive? And then I wrote, down are you going to let that continue in 2022? There’s really no reason to let it continue. Anything on this list is a solvable problem. Any one of these skills is something that all of us could take on and learn. The question is, do you want to do it? Are you letting the economy and the market determine your income? Or are you letting your skills and mindset determine your income? Because the last year, 18 months, it’s been economy and market more than skills and mindset. But then if you take the economy in the market and strong skills and mindset, you finish up here. We want you to finish up here in 2022. Let us know how we can help. Have a great holiday season, whatever you choose to celebrate. Make it fun. Make it healthy. Make it exciting. Enjoy. See you soon. See you in January. Thank you.