HOW TO BEAT THE COMPETITION AS A REALTOR - KEVIN WARD

Yikes. The competition is getting heavier. Hi there, it's Kevin Ward with yes, Masters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. And I was just talking with my team this last week about the real estate training and the real estate coaches that are coming out of the woodworks and showing up on the Internet, on social media, especially on Facebook, because Facebook ads has become such a big thing that it's like there's 20 new real estate coaches and trainers every single day. And I'm like, whoa, lots of competition. And I'm like, yeah, it's just like it was when I started real estate and all these new realtors were coming in and. And it was like, how do you beat the competition? And so in this video, I'm going to share with you some of the stuff that we have been dealing with in our own business as a real estate coach and trainer. How I'm approaching the competition. So. And with that, how do I. How do you approach the competition? So in this video, we're going to talk about how to crush. Ah, not just how to beat the competition, we're going to talk about how to crush the competition. So first, the best way to beat the competition. Not even point number one yet, but just as a principle, the best way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition. If you remember back a couple years ago in the Olympics, the Summer Olympics, when Michael Phelps was going for his, you know, world record history, breaking more gold medals than anyone else in history and continuing that thing. Williams has won well over 20 gold medals in one of his events. I think it was the butterfly. He was ahead, coming in to win. And right down the home stretch, right near the end, a photographer got a snapshot of Michael Phelps swimming, doing the breaststroke, going for the finish line, and right next to him was another swimmer, neck and neck, and that other swimmer was looking over at Michael Phelps. And the caption on the video said, winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. If you want to win, if you want to beat the competition, number one, don't focus. Focus on the competition. Now, how do you then execute? So let's talk about how do we actually execute on beating the competition. Now, this first one is probably the most profound, so don't be shocked, but it's this. If you want to beat the competition, be better than the competition. Yes, that is actually the biggest and best solution. If you want to beat the competition, you. You'll be better. You got to be better than the competition. Every sport, every performance, the one that wins most of the time is the one that's best. Now in real estate, it's not always a head to head competition, it's not always a fair competition. But the reality is the better you become, the more likely you are to win. And when you do that, it gives you all kinds of edge. When you be better, you don't have competition, you are the competition. And Michael Jordan, who's my sports hero, I love basketball. I always love Michael Jordan. And he always said, he said, I don't have competition, I am the competition. His approach was that if you're going to play the game, you have to compete with me. And when Michael Jordan walked you into a coliseum because he was so much better, because he trained harder, worked harder, prepared harder, he walked into the coliseum, he was better. And it affected everybody else in the entire coliseum. It affected the players, even on his team. Players on the other team, the referees, the coaches, the fans, the cheerleaders, everybody was affected because Michael Jordan was in the house. The biggest and best edge to beating the competition is to get better. And when you get beat, it's not like, oh no, why did I get beat? And don't start trying to look for some secret strategy or some magic bullet that's going to help you beat the competition. Get better than the competition. Number two, if you want to beat the competition, this is so important. Play your game. Don't try to beat the competition at their game. In other words, if you get beaten somebody because somebody offered like, and I'll give you an example, when I started real estate, I was century 21. And so they give us a marketing plan. Guess how many steps the marketing plan had to it? Yeah, 21 step marketing plan. Because of course it was century 21. So I had a 21 step marketing plan. And I was so proud of that. Man. I had it all, you know, fuzzied up or fixed up and it was beautiful. And I went out and had a 21 step marketing plan. And I was so proud of that until I lost a listing one time and I'm like, what happened? Why did you not choose me? And they went, well, because this other agent, their marketing plan was much more extensive than yours. And I'm like, more extensive. Like I had 21 steps, how could they beat that? And it's like, well, there's had 50 step marketing plan. I'm like, oh my goodness, I gotta, I gotta come up with a 52 step marketing plan then. And so I added steps to my marketing plan. But What I realized over time was that I was trying to beat them at their game, which was their value proposition was I have more marketing steps than the competition, therefore I am better. And I realized that if I started trying to go in and beat everybody based on having more steps in my marketing plan, that that in the long run was a losing proposition. Because now I just became a commodity. Now I just became who had the biggest, baddest marketing plan. I realized that all the bro, all your trainers, all the coaches, all the speakers out there, they all said, your marketing plan is not what sells a house. Your marketing plan is just to satisfy the sellers. And I'm like, wait a second. Marketing plans don't sell houses, okay? I kind of knew that if you price it right and all of that, it's going to sell. So the 21 step marketing plan, the 50 step marketing plan wasn't better. It just beat me. And so I'm like, wait a second. I don't need to try to play his game or beat them at their game. Now, the reason I say that, and that's important, is whenever you start trying to beat somebody at their game, unless you are willing to commit to be better than them, to become the best in the market at their game, you're going to get beat. And it's so funny to me because one of the things I see out there is I'll see advertisements and marketing things. They'll say stuff like, beat Zillow at their own game. Really? You're going to beat Zillow at their game? No, you're not going to beat Zillow at their game. All right, now, you can create a game to try to compete with Zillow, but why would you do that? Play your game? What is it that you're the best at? What is it that works best for you? And master getting great at that. And then number three, once you figure that out, you play your game. And then what do you do at the competition? How do you beat them? You forget them. Just forget it. Forget the competition. Just forget about the competition. And that goes back to that Michael Phelps moment, that gold medal moment when Michael Phelps is coming in and the other swimmer is right alongside of him. And what's the other swimmer focusing on? He's focused on Michael. He's focused on the competition. And when you focus on the competition, you take your eye off the ball, you take your eye off the game. And when you take your eye off the game, you're living and playing in reaction to somebody else and what everybody else is doing instead of what you're doing. Forget about them and be the best at being you. Focus on the relationships that you're building. Focus on positioning with the people that you want to serve. Which actually leads to the fourth step of how do you beat the competition? And that is focus. Forget about the competition and focus instead on your clients. Focus on the people that you serve. Don't focus on the people you're worried about beating you. Your clients, your prospects, the sellers, the homeowners, the buyers. They're not focused on the other agents. They're like, what can you do for me? How can you help me? Are you better? Can you deliver for me a better result than somebody else can deliver? And focus on the result that the clients want. And I just, I realized as a coach, as a trainer, here's how I approach my business. We have this conversation with our team all the time and I have this conversation with my inner circle members and I talk to people who come to my events, people who I'm talking about signing up for one of my coaching programs. I tell them this, that I want your success more than I want your money. That the most important thing to me as a coach is not having you as a coaching client. The most important thing to me is how helping you achieve your dreams and your goals. That's what I want. I don't care what the competition is doing. Now. In saying all this and forgetting about the competition, I'm not saying don't be aware, I'm not saying just ignore what everybody else is doing, be aware of it, look and go like, ah, competition, what are they doing? Cool. Now I'm going to go back to what I'm doing. But never lose sight of why you do what you do and who you do it for. Because when you're focused on the competition, you're focused on beating somebody else, it all of a sudden becomes about you. And it's not no longer about the clients that you serv when your focus is on delivering the best results. If I could help every seller sell their house faster and for more money every single time, better than anyone else can do, who's going to compete with that? So don't take your eye off the goal, don't take your eye off of the ones you serve. And be better, not better at a marketing plan, be better at this, be better at delivering results for your clients. Alright, now, last thing, and this is my favorite part. It's not maybe the most important, but it's my favorite part. And that is how do you beat the Competition. Have fun with them. Enjoy the fact that you got competitors. Okay? Here's the reason it makes you better when somebody's competing. I love competition. And when I play basketball, I. I never wanted to get beat. I hated it when I got beat. But I love the competitiveness of it and having knowing that there's people out there that want to win. Look, I'm going to tell you this, that when you're dealing with other agents in your market, winners are going to win. You can't stop winners from winning, period. In real estate or in anything else in life, you can't stop winners from winning. But why would you want to stop other winners from winning? They're not your competition, okay? They're going to get their deals. But guess what? There is plenty of space for the best. There is plenty of space for greatness. When you're great at what you do, you're going to get yours. You're going to get more than you need to have the lifestyle of your dream. And when you look at competition and you hear they're competing with you. And I remember when I started real estate and there was a couple of agents that were like the best at going after for sale by owners and expireds. And one of them's name was Paul and the other's name was Joanne. I don't remember either of their last names. Both of them are with Caldwell Banker. At that time in our market in Dallas Fort Worth, it was Century 21 and Caldwell Banker were the two big ones. ReMax was third. And then Keller Williams was still kind of like, who's that thing back then? This was back in the 1900s. But I remember that there was this guy named Paul and I can't remember his last name. And there was this lady named Joanne. And Joanne had one market where she dominated. And Paul, he was great with expireds. And I knew that every morning when I went to call expireds, he was going to beat me on the phone to them. Because he would start calling way early in the morning, earlier than I would call. And I hated getting beat by him and I hated getting beat by Joanne. But I loved Joanne. The fact that it was the hunt. And here's what is so cool. Whenever the competition knows that you're competing with them and it doesn't bother you, it actually empowers you and disempowers them, you have fun with it. I'm going to tell you this one last thing that on this video that always thought was so cool, Michael Jordan. What a lot of people don't know about Michael Jordan was that he was ruthless with the other players on the other team. He was not, you know, he did not play nice, okay? And I don't mean he played dirty, but he played smart and he understood it was a mental game. And so he had fun with the competition. And one of the things that he would do is before a game, whenever a team would come to town or when he would, they would. He would go to their coliseum. He would actually, because he, as a superstar, he knew the other superstars on the other team and he would walk into the opponent's locker room and he would walk in with a basketball and he would just walk into the locker room. And as he walked in, he would just make eye contact with the players on the other team that were getting ready, they were getting suited up, and he'd just walk in, he'd walk back. Maybe one of the other, you know, fellow hall of Famer or somebody that he knew, and he'd just go up, shake his hand and say, hey, good luck tonight. And then he would turn around and he would just saunter and slowly walk out of the locker room. When he did that, every player in that locker room, their minds were totally messed up because now what were they going to be thinking about? They couldn't stop thinking about the competition, Michael Jordan. And that goes back to his mentality was, I don't have any competition. I am the competition. When we walk out onto the court when there is competition, it's not me having to think about them, it's all they can think about me. And when you, when you get to that point, and the way you get to that point is not by shortcuts, it's not my tricks, it's not by dirty pool. It's by just simply playing your game better than anybody else can play it. And when you enjoy the competition, look, you actually can have fun with them. You can actually have lunch with them. You can play with them, have a great time with them. And it makes you better. It makes them better. And that elevates the bar for all of us. So don't fear the competition. Be the competition and you will always win. Oh. Oh, yeah. If you like the video, make sure you give it a thumbs up. Post on it. Comment down below. I'd love to hear your comments. Share this with some other agents who need to get better at the competition and I'll see you on the next video.