Welcome to Mike Ferry TV. Tony Smith here, coach and speaker for the Mike Ferry organization, and I am thrilled to be filling in for Mike Ferry. This is the week of July 28th. Okay, here we are. We are at the Superstar Retreat midway through this thing, and we decided to record some notes from what we’re picking up in our time here today. Okay, we’ve got a room full of fired up people, a room full of people that are just grasping every straw they can, getting all the notes they can, and they are ready to take their business to the next level. I thought today I would share with you a couple of observations that I’ve personally had while we’ve been here at the retreat so far.

1) Do you need more clear direction in your business?

The first thing I made a big note. Do you need more clearly defined direction in your business? Okay, one of the things that came out with some of the speakers we had, the agents presenting Mike’s points was clear direction. You know, if if you’re the type of person that if we say do A and then do B, and then do C, and then take step D, are you the type that can follow that kind of direction? Okay. If you want to succeed in today’s market with the way things are, I would ask you to consider this question for yourself. And it’s basically like this. Where do I need more clear direction in my business? Do I need a stronger understanding of what my daily schedule should look like? Do I need a stronger understanding of where I’m going to get motivated sellers today? Do I need stronger direction on where I should, what I should do for customer service, and where I should be spending more of my time to get some of the properties sold? Where do you need direction?

2) Pre-qualifying a seller is one of the strongest skills you need to have today

The second thing that became really clear here this week so far is sales skills. Okay. It became so obvious in this changing market. In many parts of the world, the market is changing. The skills that I would recommend that you really spend some time with a is the prequalification process. Mike said that right now, pre-qualifying a seller is probably one of the strongest skills you need to have today. Why? Because we need a higher level of motivated people. You know, a greedy seller today is probably not going to do what they need to do to get the home sold. So how strong are you at understanding the Mike Ferry pre-qualification process?

3) How strong are you in pricing property?

The second skill is pricing property. Okay, for the last couple of days, we’ve had agents talking about the structure they’ve put in for themselves to become really good at pricing property in the changing market. Things like spending a lot more time studying the market stats, practicing the pricing portion of the Listing Presentation., working to understand the objection handler. If a seller says, you know, I want to list it, clear up here and maybe we’ll come down later. That’s not going to work today. If you list it up here and you come down later, it may not be worth what it is later. So how strong are you on pricing property?

4) Do you understand price reductions?

And then of course, price reductions. Okay. It’s come up over and over and over the last couple of days about how important it is for you as a listing agent to understand getting a price reduction. You know, something as simple as Mr. and Mrs. Seller, I made a big mistake when I listed the property last week. We only had four showings and we had zero offers, so I’m going to recommend that we adjust the price by 5% today. Wouldn’t you agree? Simple script. But we have to get good at those scripts today.

5) Where do you need to be held more accountable in this changing market?

How about this thought I wrote down with a higher level of accountability and possibly some confrontation. Be okay for you. Where do you need to be held more accountable in this changing market? Things are changing out there. Are you getting up and getting to work at the right time each day? Are you being held accountable to generating more listing leads? How about being held accountable to working some of the sales skills. Where do you specifically need to be held accountable? Mike Ferry is a master and I’ve watched it today. Yesterday, the day before, I watched Mike Ferry do some confrontation with the audience. You know, confrontation is nothing more than asking a little more direct question in today’s market. Does it make sense to take a two hour lunch? In today’s market, does it make a lot of sense to only be working 15 or 20 hours a week in today’s market? Should you only be talking to a few people a week prospecting? Or should you increase your prospecting by 20 or 30% confrontation. Ask yourself, where do I need more accountability today?

6) Do you need to improve the systems in your business?

This came up over and over. Do you need to improve the systems in your business? In Mike Ferry, we’ve got some systems we would ask you to create for yourself a lead generation system. Do you have a system for where you’re going to generate listing leads? We would ask you to create for yourself a lead follow up system. Do you have a system to successfully convert the leads you get? We would ask you to have, of course, a listing management system. Today, you might be carrying more listings than you had been, and you might be carrying for a little bit longer time. So do you have a strong system to manage more inventory? You, of course, are going to need a pending system to manage those escrow, as there’s more transactions falling apart today than we’ve had in years. You know, if a if a listing falls out of escrow today, there’s a chance that it won’t resell for what it sold for last time. So do we need a stronger system to manage the pending we have and then the system of past clients?

7) Have you communicated with your past clients like you should be in this changing market?

I’ve heard 30 times in the last couple of days of how important it is to deliver the right message to your past client and center of influence in this changing market. You know, if the market is changing and I must I’m a potential seller and I’m at home saying, you know what, honey? The market’s been so good. Why don’t we go ahead and we’ll sell next spring? Is that a good idea when the prices are dropping? It’s not a good idea. Now, if if I were in your database and I was a past client in your database, and I hadn’t heard from you in three or 4 or 5 or 6 or 8 months, and I was thinking about selling next year, and you didn’t call me and update me with what was going on in the market. I might be a little irritated that I didn’t get that news. So have you communicated with your past clients like you should be in this changing market? Are you afraid to call them when the news is not like perfect? You have to call them. They’re your past clients. They’re your center of influence. I think they have a right to know the truth of what’s going on out there. So do you have a system for that?

8) Do you work from strong monthly mini plans?

And then the last point I wrote down, really important that’s come up. Do you work from strong monthly mini plans? Okay. This came up today with an incredible agent that we work with, Monique Walker, and she described how important it was for her in this changing market to create a little mini plan for the month. You know, how many days am I going to work this month? How many listings am I going to take this month? How many of my listings am I going to get sold right? How much income am I going to get paid? What am I going to do to improve my business in the month of July? Month of August? Little monthly mini plans. Okay, I’ve got like 50 pages of notes. We’ve still got time left at this retreat. But I have to tell you, if you’ll start paying attention to some of the things and the basic principles that Mike would ask you to do, it’ll change. And you’ll be one of those agents that literally thrives in a little bit of a changing market. Okay. So let’s pay attention to these thoughts and we’ll move forward from here. Thanks for your time.