Personal and professional growth is charted by one's level of confidence and the ability to set boundaries, execute processes, live by rituals and routines and stay completely focused on the details that will lead to a larger goal. That confidence continues to grow with experience and your ability to express it to others. That act of communicating probable results in advance, based on your experience, is called SETTING EXPECTATIONS. Setting expectations is where confidence, experience and your boundaries meet, giving you the ability to run a productive business on your terms and live an intentional life all while operating with manageable stress levels. By properly setting expectations, it allows you to save time, not just your time but also your clients' time. You know you are hitting your stride when you have the confidence to proactively speak the truth in an empathetic way.
As your leader, coach and mentor this is what I do all day. I speak truth based on my experience. I stress-test ideas, concepts, methods, trends through my experience to help you better serve yourself and your clients. The goal is to save you time so you can re-invest it back into your life and/or your business.
So today, as we head into the 2nd week of March 2021, my goal for this call is to set expectations for you, as it relates to your mindset and this market, so you can better educate your clients and mentally navigate your day. As I wrote this MMPT, I catalogued and pulled from an index of recent conversations I have had with individual agents. I'm hoping that to pass on some of my thoughts to all of you just like I did in those specific conversations with agents.
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Each micro market is completely different. If you are selling in neighborhoods where the majority of the product is SFH, townhome, row-home and other single entry product types, you are seeing an incredibly competitive market. If you add a resort element, it's hard to wrap your arms around what is going on. If you have high-rise and mid-rise product, the game is much different as many buyers are just not yet ready for shared elevator access to their unit. That has started to shift slightly as COVID is improving. By summer, high-rise and mid-rise product will be a real option for more buyers. Your buyers might want to consider it now, while that product type is on sale.
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Today's market requires a broker not an order taker. You will need to dig up inventory for your buyers. It's out there, keep your ear to the ground and go find it. The days of just waiting for it to hit the MLS, schedule a showing, view it 3 times before making a decision does not work in most micro markets right now. This market requires a different version of you, the broker.
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It is a perfect time to connect with all of your past clients and ask them a simple question: "Have you put any thought into selling your home in 2021?" As you know, many people are on the move with newly created flexibility as a result of COVID. My prediction is that when school is out, you may see the next round of the population migrate to the next phase of their life. Get ahead of it and help them do it. If you are not proactive, someone else will be. Relationship based brokers are built for this type of market.
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You have to let your clients know the competitive playing field before they enter it. In some markets, a buyer should not even wade in if they are not all cash and even then, that is not enough. Also, they cannot fall in love with a house until contingencies are cleared. In most markets, sellers hold all of the cards and in some cases, show no loyalty to the current buyer in an attempt to maximize the proceeds from their property.
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We are not economists nor are we financial advisors. We can give our opinion on price but based on the pace of some markets, comps are meaningless. Just relay that we are in uncharted territory, from a competitive standpoint, navigating a market we have not seen the likes of ever. In most cases, the buyers are just expecting us to procure a property. You may even start to find a lack of loyalty.
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Overpriced listings will still sit. Sellers wanting to price in an annual projected gain up front should just wait until the market hits their price. Study your micro market, understand the trends and give your advice based on the most recent data. The goal is to always price listings at or just slightly under to get the best result, the approach the Sotheby's auction house has been taking for 277 years. You should let your client know the 10-day, 30-day and 90-day price. If you take an overpriced listing and it doesn't sell, point the thumb not the finger. That was your fault.
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If you see over priced listing that your buyer clients might be interested in purchasing, you will want to reach out to those listing agents and discuss the situation or start the conversation with an at-market offer.
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You will be disappointed throughout your life and business. You'll put a lot of effort into certain clients and they'll go a different direction for reasons that you cannot understand. Get over it. It's life. You'll have 3-5 major disappointments per year and 3-5 "out of nowhere, pleasant surprises" per year. They balance each other out. Life is about navigating the middle efficiently, staying evenly keeled and you'll find yourself not getting too low when you get disappointed and not too high when you are stacking victories.
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Getting off to a great start to the year doesn't mean that you will end the year exceeding your goal expectations. Same thing goes for getting off to a slow start. It doesn't mean you'll end poorly. Keep grinding and you'll be just fine.
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To survive the intensity of this market, you must play on offense not defense communicating with your clients and navigating your transactions. You must own your mornings (or evenings, based on your rhythm).
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Don't get lazy on the marketing of your listings. Stay creative and thorough. An elite level of marketing of your listings isn't just for selling your properties but it also builds your personal brand. This market will not always stay like this and the pendulum will swing back to even out the playing field for buyers. Sellers will gravitate to the best marketers. Use this market to level up your personal brand.
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We are in one of the best real estate markets of our career. It will not always be that way, of course, so my advice for you is to work as hard as you can, talk to as many clients as possible and build up your "financial freedom" account during a market like we are experiencing. There will be another correction. It's not a matter of if, but when. Go back and listen to my recent MMPT "Financial Literacy 101."
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In piggybacking on the last point, while you are navigating this current market, do not fully focus on what we are experiencing right now. Stay true and consistent to your business plan. It's so easy and tempting to go fully transactional during times like this. Fact: Relationship-based businesses are the answer in any market. If you get out of that zone, it will catch up with you at some point.
I would listen to this call until you understand the points and let them seep into your DNA. The truly successful brokers enjoy their businesses because they've created boundaries. They look to avoid the 20% of wasted time that steals 80% of their joy. They also realize that the tiny decisions they make now will impact them not just today but in the future. One's ability to sniff out the challenging elements of this business, in advance, and say "HELL NO" eliminates the friction that stalls growth. Be honest and transparent with your clients. Be honest and transparent with yourself. Set boundaries. Say Yes. Say No. Execute brilliantly today. Don't forget tomorrow.
