If you’re struggling in some aspect of your business, you should be looking at your real estate skills, not the market.
Your real estate skills are what will make you or break you – or, potentially even worse, hold you back for years without you even realizing it.
Let’s just focus on that last one right now. How could you not notice that your skills are holding you back?
Well, naturally there is a learning curve to just about everything, but in a market this competitive, there isn’t a lot of space to develop your skills while running your business. This can lead to anxiety around having certain conversations or trying something new, and it can even cause you to think that certain tasks “are naturally always going to be this hard.”
I want to clear this up right now… Not everything is supposed to be hard or uncomfortable if you know how to do it right and have developed the confidence for it.
Right now, there are three essential real estate skills that are holding agents back more than any others – and they come into play at different stages of their careers. In this blog, we’re going to explore what they are for rookies, novices, and more seasoned agents, and then I’m going to make a BIG announcement about something that will help you hone those skills so that you can skip the learning curve and truly succeed in your business with less struggle.
Let’s start off with what exactly I’m talking about when I say “skills.”
Why Understanding the Elements of a Skill is Crucial
I know… You already know what skills are. But when have you taken the time to break down what they really mean? Doing this can actually show you how to develop them.
To make it very simple, a skill is the combination of two things (three if you want to be picky):
- Your knowledge of how to perform a task in the most effective way possible.
- Your confidence and ability to perform the task in your chosen way on command.
Knowledge can either be gained over time through trial and error or it can be distilled for you by someone who has already done all the trial and error for you. Rookies without a clear ambition or purpose often choose the former option. I recommend you choose the latter.
Confidence and ability come through practice, but I can’t say this enough… DON’T PRACTICE ON YOUR CLIENTS! You only have one reputation and every interaction affects it.
Ideally, you’ll develop these at the same time during professional, intensive trainings which have been proven to show results (more on this later!).
My point is that a skill is not something you’re just naturally good at. They can be sharpened and developed, but they can also go the other way from learning bad habits – which is likely what happens most often for agents when it comes to the three most common skill deficiencies I’m about to list.
Real Estate Skill Deficiency No. 1: The Foundations
Nothing will slow down your progress like learning the foundations incorrectly – or in many cases not learning them at all.
When you were getting your license, how much did they teach you about running a business, doing effective marketing, becoming competent at sales, and managing your time? I’m willing to bet, pretty much nothing.
Remember that movie “No Country for Old Men”? Right now, this is No Market for New Agents. Of course, I’m not saying that new agents shouldn’t be joining the industry or that rookies should just give up. I’m just saying that they don’t have the leeway to make mistakes like they used to. It’s the quick and the dead, the rich and the rest.
Now, I know it seems like cheating to call all these foundations one skill because they encompass just so much, but a large part of this has to do with when these skills are learned and how they’re integrated together into a routine and a mindset.
Here are just a few of the elements of your foundational skills:
- Understanding how to control your time
- Mastering the art of the buyer consultation
- Comprehensive annual reviews
- Hosting successful open houses
- Handling objections to close deals confidently
- Creating social media videos for brand growth
But the main reason I count them all together is because of the solution I’m about to announce which covers all of these and more… Stick around for it!
Real Estate Skill Deficiency No. 2: Phone Prospecting
While the foundations come in first place because you absolutely can’t start making decent money until you have some grasp on them, phone prospecting is the hands-down No. 1 most common issue among all agents. It doesn’t matter if you’ve found some other lead gen channel that’s working – if you’re not making your calls then you’re not reaching your potential.
The obvious culprit here is a crisis of confidence. It can be awkward to call strangers or people you barely know. It’s uncomfortable to ask for an appointment, and it can be a real confidence killer to be hung up on or to sense someone’s annoyance. But it’s only awkward/uncomfortable/draining if you haven’t developed the skills for it. And please keep in mind that developing these skills is a part of your job. You might not like it, but it’s part of the career path you’ve chosen.
Remember here that confidence comes from experience, and still, it’s only one-half of what forms a skill. You need the knowledge of exactly what you’re going to say and the training to anticipate what they might say next. This is what will allow you to steer the conversation in the way you want it to go. Once you have that, confidence will come naturally and phone calls will become predictable commission.
Real Estate Skill Deficiency No. 3: Recruiting
The longer you’re in this business, the more you’re going to want to start delegating tasks to free you up to focus on the most important – and rewarding – aspects of the role. And that means building a team around you.
Think about it… wouldn’t it be lovely if you could work less and make exponentially more money? How about going on vacation while your business continues to run smoothly without you?
These are just a few of the incredible benefits of having the right team. But the right team isn’t easy to build, especially when you first get started.
After years of mastering the fundamentals, becoming fearless on the phones, and raising their annual commissions, many experienced agents believe that they know it all just to find themselves completely lost again when it becomes necessary for them to expand.
Recruiting is a different ballgame than any other aspect of the business. On the one hand, you want to take the time to find the perfect people for every position and train them properly so that they can fulfill their roles. On the other hand, you don’t want your business to completely collapse while you take the time to do this and go completely bankrupt on paying people you can no longer afford.
It seems like a Catch-22, right? It doesn’t have to be if you know how to:
- Implement the right recruitment strategies
- Find the right employee lead sources
- Build a strategic recruiting plan
- Identify the best talent
- Craft an efficient onboarding process
And with what I’m about to show you, you can do all these things without them ever interrupting your business…
The Greatest Solution Yet for Developing These Skills
These three essential skills have been on my mind for quite a while now. My top team and I got together to acknowledge that there was a skills crisis in these three areas and brainstorm a way that we could help more agents overcome these hurdles and help people on a greater scale.
What we came up with is something I’m extremely proud to be able to share with you now…
Introducing Tom Ferry’s Programs!
These are exactly the skills-based intensives I was talking about earlier – a mixture of self-guided and coach-led training sessions designed to give agents everything they need in these three vital areas of the business.
For the past couple years, these Programs have been available only to coaching members, but after such rave reviews, we decided it was time to share these game-changers with agents everywhere.
Right now, there are three Programs, each one designed to help you conquer one of these three skills…
The Programs
Fast Track was named that because it was designed to do just that – fast track your progress as a new agent by giving you ALL the fundamental skills you need to compete with even the most experienced agents. It covers everything from your overall strategy to the most dialed-in tactics of marketing, time management, sales, lead gen sources, and so much more. This is four years’ worth of experience condensed into 12 weeks of training and accompanied by 40 self-paced videos.
Prospecting Bootcamp is the treatment I’d prescribe to ANY agent who isn’t making their calls. Over 14 hours spread across 7 weeks, I will guarantee that you will shed your fear of the phone and see your transaction count begin to rise more quickly. For the duration of this program, you’ll get access to Espresso Agent so that you and your group can make live calls, guided by a professional coach. This is the best way to become comfortable with interesting openings, hooks, value ads, and closing techniques.
After Prospecting Bootcamp, I’m pretty sure you’ll need to start bringing on some help to manage the number of transactions you’ll be juggling, and that’s where Recruiting Roadmap comes in. These 10 sessions are the training that every leader wishes they would’ve had when they stepped into the role. You’ll learn not only what it takes to find, identify, and onboard the right people but also how to train and lead them effectively. While developing it, I actually wondered where I’d be now if I’d had access to this when I first stepped up as a CEO.
Be Honest with Yourself
Let’s go back to what I said at the beginning… Pride and ignorance are the opposite of confidence and they can prevent us from recognizing where we really stand.
It’s embarrassing to admit to ourselves that we didn’t master all the fundamentals when we first started, so sometimes we’d rather blame the market than admit to our own lack of skills.
It’s easier to say that we don’t have the time and energy to make our calls than to admit that it’s a lack of confidence holding us back.
And it’s easy to say that you’ve become successful on your own so you don’t need help in becoming a leader.
These are all excuses that are holding you back. So I challenge you to be honest with yourself. What would actually help you? Choose which level you’re at, then click on the link of the program that goes with it to learn more.
