5 Ways to Set Appointments Every Day – and Close! | Tom Ferry Podcast Experience

Pat. Yo, so Reagan just text me, and she's like, all right, so how you doing? I said almost a month with no alcohol, meditation twice daily for the last 35 days. Five days a week of working out equals boring.

Yeah.

Boring. But I feel amazing.

So here's the thing. Entrepreneurs, leaders, salespeople, we all want to create consistent, repeatable, and scalable ways to grow our business and our income. And we want to do it better, faster, and more seamlessly.

Why?

So we can actually enjoy our lives, take vacations, and spend the quality time we want with the people that we love. How do we do all this without spending a fortune or running ourselves ragged? That's the big question. And this show is dedicated to the answer. Booking the number of appointments that they need to achieve the results that they want. So I asked my brother Patrick Ferry, to join me today. Patrick, I always smile when I get to say that. I'm so proud of you, man. Like, you. You and all that you've done. So you. I think you've been on the Tom Ferry show four or five times. We've done a bunch of podcasts. You have all. All this great stuff on buyer, agency listing, appointments. But today, I want to hone in on the. The nearly hundred events you did where you had people fly into Vegas, spend two days, and go for a massive breakthrough in their ability to set appointments at will. So if you're watching this show right now and you're like, I'm struggling to get, like, one or two appointments a week, or you're watching this show, and you're my client, Paul Rushforth, who I just talked to, had, like, 65 appointments for the month of January, and he's like, how do I get to 120? I think both parties are gonna get a lot of value out of this conversation. So. So, Patrick, for the person that maybe hasn't seen you on one of my shows or doesn't have context for you, give him a little backstory. I. I did mention all these events that you were doing where you had people coming in from all over the world to book appointments. Give them some insight on that. Now let's jump into the five things everybody has to do to get exponential growth in their appointment setting.

Yeah, can't wait. Yeah. For those of you that I've not met yet, so, you know, I've spent 20 something years now with, you know, you know, dad and Tom, you know, working on lead generation and the mastery of conversion. And so, you know, there's. There was a window of time where I've traveled the entire country two times around teaching scripts, skills, you know, how to book appointments, listing appointments. You know, then I spent five years work with probably, I don't know, you know, I probably helped book at least 10,000 listing appointments within that five years. Literally standing next to an agent, helping them exactly what to say, who to call, you know, how to build that strategy, to be able to do it over and over and over again. And, you know, I'd have people come in and you know, once they come spend two days with me and I help them break, have a breakthrough in, you know, their mindset, their skills, their. What they're focused on and how they're booking appointments, they would just come back, you know, they're just basically like, hey, I want to come every single month, right? And they just come back over and over again and they'd book, you know, more appointments in two days than they would in an entire month on their own. So, you know, I've been doing that forever. And then, you know, after spending a bunch of time, you know, with you, Tom, in the last 10 years, it's really also about expanding all the different lead generation categories. Right. What are we doing online to convert the, the buyer lead, you know, at the open house, work with you on, you know, geographic farm? How are we filling the pipeline? There's, you know, database right now is one of my hot topics. How are we exploding listing appointments with the database? So we've been, you know, I've just been having a ton of fun with all of the modern day lead generation strategies. So it's, you know, it's great to do that with you, of course, and the Tom Ferry ecosystem.

I appreciate it. I was actually thinking about Ruth Pugh, who was at one of our prospecting schools that we did together. And I want to say she booked some. It was like a two day event. She booked like 26 appointments in two days. Now this was, you know, she was booking buyer appointments, listing. It didn't make a difference. But what was unique about the experience, I think was I think when you're in a room, in an environment like that, you know, like success begets success, right? You feed off the natural energy of everybody else. So we want to be mindful that that's not an opportunity for everybody. More than likely, they could be working at a virtual brokerage or a brokerage that feels like a virtual brokerage. So they've got to be able to generate all this stuff on their own. So, so let, let's talk like the, the. Of course you have to and then let's get to the five sort of next level. So I'm going to. Rick, I'm going to rip out a couple. Of course you have to, of course you have to be standing versus sitting.

Right.

55% of the, of your total communication is the way you move your body. It impacts your tonality. If your tonality sucks, you're over the phone. You got five senses, but you only have one over the phone. So you've got to be able to bring the energy when you're on the phone. So standing is better than sitting. We know that. You know, obviously having your scripts in front of you, having a, like I, I used to always have my like appointment setting board in front of me with like my goals and like some objection handlers and like photo my family and the reasons why. You know, a living plant was always a good idea. Music was always a good idea. Getting yourself charged up was always an a good idea. Knowing what to say was a good idea. But Patrick, like I think in 2025, even, even a brand new agent's like, yeah, I know I should do that now. If you're not doing it and you know it.

The stuff we're going to talk about today might be next level. And you might want to just turn this off. Yeah, you don't have the, you know what I mean? Like if you don't have the foundation down, it's going to be hard for you to then go to the next level. So I would go back through that list if you're watching this for the first time and say, well, I better, I better get that stuff in check. Because the stuff we're going to talk about today is how do you convert 5 to 6% of the people that are going to in your database transact? How do we, how do we operate differently with them? How do we book more appointments? So, so Patrick, talk about the advanced stuff. What are the, what are the five things I've got to do to get to go from one to two appointments maybe a week to get like consistently one to two appointments a day?

Yeah. So this morning I was just having a great conversation with one of my coaching clients, Nancy Hackett up in Michigan. And we were talking about this last week with my group. I was like, look, you need to understand who your home selling avatars are. We're right now in the heart with my coaching clients on building their seminar, their seller seminar campaign so that we can book a ton of seller seminar campaigns in the month of February into the month, into the month of March. I say, guys, who are your perfect sellers right now? And then Nancy was like, oh, my gosh, Patrick, you're right. I have a bunch of communities in my, in my area. They were built in the late 90s, sold in the early 2000s. Fast forward 24, 25 years later, we have a bunch of empty nesters who are selling and going to, you know, hang out with their millennial kids somewhere in another state, or they're downsizing and they're moving, you know, somewhere warm or, or they're the super seniors going down. And as soon as I, you know. Cause I brought that avatar up and she was like, oh, my gosh, that was like my last five listing appointments. Oh my gosh, I know exactly what to say to that homeowner, and I know exactly what to do with that property. And I was like, yes, Nancy, that is an avatar. That's one of your most important avatars. Now let's, you know, let's build a marketing campaign, let's build your scripting, let's build your presentation to just win that very similar simple one. Because we know for sure she's going to probably list 20 of those this year, even if she didn't even recognize that was an avatar. Yes, Right. So that's one simple example. I told all my coaching clients, tell me who your top three are for 20, 25.

So give us another example outside of the obvious downsizer.

Yeah, well, the, the other. Right now, in some of my marketplaces, we have the trade uppers, so we've got the millennials who are doing really well. They just got married, right? And then they now have a kid, and then they want to move up. They're in the townhome, the condo, and they want to move into the single family community. So in some of the marketplaces, you have that, like, literally right next to each other. You've got the, you know, this is the lower end area, like for my good client in, you know, kind of Bellevue, the lower end, they live in a townhome worth $900,000, and they want to jump into the, the neighborhood right next door where the average sales price is 2.5, right? They got the great job, you know, with Microsoft, with one of the AI companies, etc, and they're ready to make this transition. So, you know, we see these basic trends all the time. You know what I mean? We see the downsizers, we see these trade uppers, right? And then in your, in some of your marketplaces, you know, you have the. We're leaving the state, right?

You could Be in Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia, which is a. Every four to five years you're moving in, moving out. And there's so many markets like that.

So exactly.

Have you, have you thought through with your clients? And I know certainly someone, someone listening is going to ask, well, how do I identify those people? Like, is there a way to, to build lists, if you will. So then I could market and promote and connect and communicate with them versus sort of a spray and pray. I could be very targeted.

Yeah, I mean there are some list building services. There's, you know, but the key in a list building service, if you're really going to try and do this, is demographics. You have to have demographics, you have to have age, you have to have, you know, kind of status. You got to have income status. And so, you know, getting access to the demographic for list building is a little bit more tricky. Right. So that's one way to do it. But you know, just to keep it very simple. Once I get my coaching clients to just recognize it, write it down, identify. If we just looked at your last, you know, 20, 30 listing appointments, what were the common denominators as great? You know, coach Eileen Rivera would say, you know, we gotta be pattern recognizers. If you just recognize the pattern, funny thing is you're out and about, you're, you know, you're meeting a neighbor and you're like, oh, right, age bracket, oh, storyline. And then in the. The easiest way to build rapport and to build trust with someone is like, I just, as you were saying, the case study, I just recently helped someone just like you. Here's what they did, here's how I helped them. Can you relate to that? Should we discuss your unique scenario? And of course they're like, oh my gosh, right? Like, yeah, when did you want to meet?

So 1 thought I'd ask everybody to think about is I would sit down with my title exec if I was in the US and I would say, hey, I'm looking for thinking about like downsizers. I'm looking for people that have been in their home for more than 30 years that are in two story properties. Like, that is a sweet spot right now for pretty much any market around the world. Better property for 30 years or more, two story properties. I was just having this conversation with a friend. He's like, I haven't been upstairs in like three years. He's like, I know there's stuff up there, but you know, stairs. And I'm like, I get it. But he's like 70. He's like, we never go up there. And I'm like, you guys need a single story house. He's like, we don't even know where to find a single story house. Like, it was hysterical. How. How classic that scenario was. So. So I love the thought of avatars. It reminds me. I forget the name of the book, but these two gals in the 90s wrote a book called attracting your perfect customer. Yes. Right. And it was. It was basically, figure out who your avatars are, because then you could market to them, message to them the right way, communicate, have the right case studies, give them the right reviews, show them all the right social proof that says, I'm your gal, I'm your guy. So I love that one. Right list. Building is going to be the key. And if you're watching this and you're brand new, the insight I would share with you is if you say, well, Patrick said, like, look back over the last 20, 30 listing appointments. You're like, I've had two in my career. Or I, hey, I had a really bad, you know, call it 2024. Then go around and ask seven or eight other agents and say, tell me about your last couple of listing appointments. Like, who were the sellers? What were the scenario? How long have they been in the home? Were they downsizing? Were they moving up? Were they moving lateral? Were they moving out of the state? And you could sort of anecdotally get the insight from the people inside your office.

Yes. And this is, for me, exercise number one. When we're researching a new geographic farm territory, like, this is a critical piece of that puzzle. Yes. Like, let's pull not only last year, but let's pull the last couple of years, and let's just kind of sort that list by property types, by, you know, floors, et cetera. Just get in there and have some fun with the data, and it'll really open your eyes, and now you'll know what to do. Right.

I agree. And this is one of those little insights. You can go to Revy or ChatGPT or whatever, your favorite AI tool, and say, I'd like you to act like someone like this. What's most important to you when selecting an agent? What are you thinking about? What are your worries? What's your anxiety? What are your fears? What are your concerns? And, like, play around with an AI solution to really go deep with those people. So that's number one.

Yeah, but real, real fun exercise. When. When. When Terry was on stage at the elite retreat. Yeah, I pulled up. I pulled up my Gemini or, you know, you know, Gemini AI could have pulled up, Jack could have pulled up, Revie. And I said, hey, you know, tell me about the, you know, what was that framework that she, you know, the sales framework. I said, tell me about that. And it wrote it. And then I said, okay, good. Then tell me about the, you know, Athos, Logos, Pathos, you know, the Aristotle thing. Tell me about that. And did. And then I said, now can you explain the five generations? And she. And I said, yes. And I said, good. Can you now act as a. As a real estate business coach and tell me how to do a listing presentation leveraging this information above? And it was so fun. Yes. Right. So, yes. You know, there's. There's no excuse today with the tools that we have, you know, and the great resources. Yeah. Let's jump in next. This next point, I think, is really important.

So the next one to me is we have to really start to think, you know, with the new. What is it, the TTTSP or the TPC? TPA.

TCPA. Yeah.

Yes, we have, you know, by the way.

Which, by the way, got pushed back another year.

Yeah, right.

So it got pushed out another year, but we're telling everybody, hey, it got pushed out another year. You should still be compliant today, right? Correct. You should. You should be. How do I alter my business to be ready? Because it's coming.

Yes. Yes. And if we just go back to, you know, one of your mentors. One of my mentors, Seth Godin, who wrote the book Permission Marketing, I don't know, what, a decade ago? Yes. Right. So how about we've, you know, instead of let me, you know, make more cold calls, how about we start to focus on building a database base of homeowners who gave you permission to offer value and services to them? How about we do that? How about we build a big database of homeowners who said yes to following up with you, to working with you, to receiving your market reports, to getting some type of customized unique home value report from you, Right. Where you can offer great services to them. How about we just build a gigantic database of that, of everybody who said yes to you? So my. My number two advance is let's build a gigantic homeownership database. And what was that clever line that you used to say? Was it homes under.

Oh, homes under management. Yes, that. Currently tracking over $200 million in homes under management, meaning the number of properties that my past clients and my sphere of influence and my prospects currently own the value of those properties. And it's a very different way of Thinking it's it, you could say it's a more advanced version of working by referral.

Right.

That I'm going to track all these properties and I'm going to keep these people informed of their assets and the values and I am going to be the gatekeeper of real insight market data and be the one that's constantly educating and connecting value and that's how you're going to win a ton of business. And just fun fact for the person listening, if you're paying attention right now, the current number is 6% of every person in your phone is going to put their home on the market in the next 12 months. And what we know to be true is it's with 6% in the last 12 months. So the first thing I would say to you is if your database is currently full of Hector Meditabar, Brian Dog Park, Phil Barber, like the guy that cuts your hair. If, if and by the way, fun fact, Patrick, we did this, this research with reevaluate 2700 people on average in a Tom Ferry coaching clients database. Most of them when we graded the database A through F just for integrity of name, address, cell phone, email, most of them got like 60% of their clients had incomplete data. Which means you're going to lack marketing modality. How are we going to get more appointments if the only thing I can do is text Hector Meditabar. I like the last name met at a bar.

Right.

You know Brian Dog Park. Right. You have to get accurate integr if you want to exercise what Patrick's talking about. So 6% are going to move. 6% is the number. If I was listening this right now, I would grab my phone, I'd look at how many contacts I have and I would calculate what is 6% of that number. That's the addressable market of transactions sitting inside your phone in the next 12 months. And the bummer is you don't know who's going to do it. So you have to communicate with every single one of them. Call, text, email, snail mail, you know, open house, invite to a party, whatever it takes. Because if you don't get in front of them, they will find someone else. They always do. So what's your, what's your best strategy here? What's your recommendation for this is a big subject and if they just went on, this could be a lifetime of business.

Yeah. I have two quick case study scenarios of clients of ours right in the coaching number one of course is you. You had a famous client, Lisa Munoz in Austin, Texas. Right. So I was having a conversation with her the other day on a coaching call and she gave me a term which I liked a lot. Households. Yeah. So she has 900 households in her database. And of the 900 households, there's a certain amount of repeat business, I. E. Turnover rate, meaning that of the 900 households, a certain number of them are going to sell their house this year. Some of them will upgrade, some of them will leave the state, some of them will downsize, and she can keep track of that turnover rate of households and then another percentage of them will refer her. And so she was very upset this last year, of course, because she only closed 50 referrals in 2024. And that's not repeat business. Those are pure referrals from the households. So having that level of relationship earns the repeat business to trade up in the downsize. And then on top of that is getting 50 referrals closed, which means she's probably getting in the range of 75 to, you know, 90 referrals at the conversion rate. Right. And. And her, Kobe, her ops manager is tracking that. We just didn't get that number right out of the gate. So that's number one. How many households do you have in your database right now and what's the level of relationship you have with them? Okay, that number two is more of the case study where I took on a new coaching client, Michael Saunders over in Raleigh, S.C. and he did a phenomenal job early in his career with the prospecting. He booked a ton of appointments, got a lot of listings, and he was really a good listing machine over the phone. And then he learned YouTube SEO and created all those YouTube relocation buyer clients. And he scaled that up to about 20 sales a year. And what happened was, is he dropped off his prospecting discipline, but he had Tom 1300 contacts that agreed that Michael could follow up with them. So he had 1300 contacts of homeowners that he had talked to who said, yes, Michael, please follow up with us. We're not a now, but we're, we're definitely in the future and we're comfortable with you following up with us. With us. Well, after he started working all those buyers, he dropped off that. Then I started working with him. I said, michael, let's start going through the 1300. And just like you do, you know, and everybody's done with the revaluate, we realize how many of the 1300 Michael had in this permission based database that literally already listed. So we now have a new plan of activating that 1300 database and that's going to represent somewhere in the range of 20 listings for him in 2025. So that's an example of, you know, I find that a lot of kind of some of our, you know, clients, we, we either, either bought a bunch of the home value leads. We bought a bunch of leads. We've met a bunch of people from open houses. We have these huge rich databases. Let's first convert that into a new, you know, permission based. Yes, I want to follow up with you and let's get our, let's get 10 listings right now from your database right now. Just from that one thing. I have to draft this listing today. It's already late.

I still have to create that post.

For the open house.

I have to prep for this call.

I need to figure out how to negotiate this deal. I'm still behind on email, I'm falling behind on my phone.

I still have to set up that open house.

I still have to upload DP files.

I am so excited. Tom and I made the decision to bring back the appointment setting game and we're going to now do this at the Tom Ferry office office and get a bunch of you to come in and we're going to focus on getting you appointments. We're going to start early in the morning and you're going to, I'm going to guarantee you eight one hour prospecting sessions. As Tom would say, hours of power. We're going to do some training and scripting and role playing. We're going to talk about what's working right now in the field. That is what is available at this event. We're not only going to have, you know, my instructions but we're going to have a great group of other coaches supporting everybody in the room. There is a limited number of seats. Go down below, get yourself registered for the next one and or get on the wait list. All of the best players have the best coaches.

You and your business are no different.

It's time to get in the game. Find your real estate coach today.

Right. And the problem that I'm experienc Tom and you and you've talked about this is, is I, you know, you know, this is why I think the, the tag event is so important. I need to get all these guys in a room for two days so we can just keep them focused to get through the list because right now everybody's too distracted. They, they can't get enough momentum through that list. Right. And so, and I'm sure you know you've been talking about multitasking as an issue. So yes, you know, you already know that problem.

I am, I'm excited we're bringing that back. So for the person listening, somewhere here there'll be a link. You should check it out to come.

Yes.

Spend two days with Patrick in Orange county at my office with, you know, 40, 50 other, you know, buddies who are all doing the same exact thing. You know, a bunch of my besties are all going to show up. I can't wait for like Andy C. To show up, Tommy Tool to fly in from Philly and like try and set the all time record. But, but I go back to this, this issue with the database. I think about Riley down in Miami, a tremendous real estate professional, built a huge email marketing database. He takes his data, we run it through the reevaluate process. He discovers and I, I don't want to, I'm going to say this number. It's going to sound insane. But remember, he's in Miami, very expensive properties because he only had an email address and he had incomplete data the first year out of the gate. He lost $35 million in the last 12 months in closed commission income from people that were buying and selling in his email database. And he's like, I have like unbelievable open rates on my email newsletter. He's like, but because I wasn't doing any mailers because I wasn't saying, hey, let me mail you a home value on your property every six months. He, you know, he would put in the email, would you like to get a property valuation? But, but everybody provides that. In the vast majority, people just go to realtor.com or zillow or something else and AVM and they get it. It's, it's sending it to them in advance. Like it's that, that seems to make the difference and then the follow up phone call to have the conversation. And Patrick, you, you gave some lines the last time we were together.

Have you heard any rumors like give us some of those little lines that, that seem to be so provocative and interesting that, you know, give people like the, the opportunity to send you a referral or open the door for what's possible?

Yeah, well, we know right now just a couple quick ones. We know right now the, the I have a buyer. The real I have a buyer is one of the most successful campaigns. Either phone call, text message, right letters have been outperforming anything else. So, you know, right now in a low inventory environment, we have to be signaling to our database that we do have very serious buyers who are looking in this environment. Now that brand identity means that your community can be saying, you know, if they talking to another one of their friends, Tom, their friend says, yeah, we're thinking about selling. And I should be like, oh, well, you should talk to Tom Ferry, he's my Realtor. And they're like, well, it's fine. I already have a, you know, a friend or a neighbor. And they're like, oh, no. Tom always has buyers right now looking actually here, let me pull up this latest email. I think he was just, or he just pulled up this text or he just called me recently, was asking me about this particular buyer here. You should give him a call just in case. I want to own that minds. I want to own that mind, share with my community that, that I always have buyers and I'm looking. And then also the off market opportunities, the quiet sale, whatever you guys want to talk about, everybody in, in, in the, you know, all of our friends have off market opportunities right now, but they don't know how to market that as a, as an offering. So we want.

I'm gonna make.

Everyone should be saying to them, like, hey, oh, like we're thinking about buying a home. You know, my friends think about buying a home. Oh my God. Well, you should talk to Tom Ferry. Well, why is that? Well, Tom always has listings that are off market currently. He always has available inventory. You should definitely give him a call. Hey, who knows? Here, let me just, let me pull up his contact information. Let me introduce you to him. Right, so those are like, we need to have that for sure. In terms of, you know, our community just knows that about us. That'll dramatically increase what I refer to as referrals or opportunities. I want introductions and I want more recommendations. Yes. Right. So that's number one based upon what you were just saying.

So I'm going to make this statement and I'm sure someone will get mad at me, but others will be excited. How else are you going to thwart Zillow? How else are you going to disintermediate Zillow? The reality is the vast majority of people in the United States or in Canada, they go to realtor CA or in the US to go to realtor.com or whatever their favorite portal is when they should be going to you. And the reason that they don't is you have not planted the seed in their head that you have boots on the ground. Buyers today looking at properties and we know, like looking at the data around listing leads, sending out an email every time you go on an appointment. I'm about to go meet with a potential seller. They're in this area, they're looking to sell. Properties like this sell very quickly, usually with multiple offers. If you know someone that is trying to buy a house right now, reach out. And putting together a VIP list, sending that email every time you go on an appointment is planting the seed in all of your homes under management, your households that you are, the way they can get the buyer for their property or for their friend. Right. And again, these. Like, all these things that we know to be true. But I'm now talking to my friend that's watching right now. I want you to be honest, right? If you know it and you don't do it, do you really know it?

Right.

And. And we know that.

But.

But let me give you another one, Patrick. You know, I've been asking this question a lot, maybe at your level. So I'm just talking to you, my friend that's watching right now. I don't know if you're on video or audio. However you're listening to this is probably at your level. You need to ask yourself, what do I need to remove so I have time and capacity to go on more appointments? When I look at. When I look at some of the great increases in performance I've had with clients as a coach, and very often it wasn't adding on. It was removing the. The noise, the distractions, the mistakes that they were making. The metaphor I always give is, you know, if I go into the closet with my wife and I say, honey, we're going to a function. She's like, oh, I have nothing to wear.

Right?

I'm like, well, how about one of these 47 black shirts, one of those nine black jackets, and all these black jeans that you like to wear? I don't like any of those. Right? Every woman listening, you know what I'm saying? And then we donate 25 or 30% of the clothes, and suddenly there's room and she finds things that she likes. And as always, the closet suddenly becomes full within 60 to 90 days. The reason why is we need to sometimes cut in order to grow. So maybe for the person listening, ask yourself, what do I do that gets in the way of booking appointments? What do I need to be honest about? What do I need to do cut to make room for capacity for more? All right, so, Patrick, we've gone through, I think, three. What is the next one on my list if I want to book more appointments? We're talking a lot of strategy here. What else do I need to do?

Let's let's do a simple one. Right. Which I've been having a lot of conversations with my coaching clients and slightly disappointed in some of the answers to this. And here's the question. Classic Tom Ferry script from I don't know how long ago. Which is. Can you answer eloquently? How's the market? Oh, yes.

Without. Without having commission breath.

Thank you. Right. Yes, it's. And the commission breath is just, you know, just oozes. Oh, my God. It's. If I hear the word great, if I hear the word hot, if I hear the word now's the time, then you already lost. You have bad commission breath. So, you know, you've done an amazing job trying to help all of the coaching clients. Kcm. There's so many great resources. You know, I was just going on with, you know, you can go on Perplexity, you can go on Gemini, and you can just ask the question, hey, give me a quick year in review of 2024. Give me some great talking points for my local market. What are some of the general predictions for 2025? And you can get right now really, really good talking points. But what I've learned is my clients are, they're just, they're just spewing all over the place and they're not earning that respect. They're not getting confidence from the customer. So the customers still, they're like trying to listen to what we're saying and they're going to, I don't know, like, I'm not, I don't feel comfortable to move forward or in the worst case scenario, I don't respect your grip on the understanding of the market. Therefore, I'm going to bully you into my pricing, not yours. And I think that is a big trap right now because a lot of our great coaching clients, they're going to get a lot of these listing calls and then they're going to be like, and you. And you're going to get it. I'm going to get it. All the coaches are going to get it. And they're like, yeah, I took it a little overpriced. Well, well, that's a symptom that when you basically, when they asked you, how's the market, you just, you lost the plot. You didn't earn the respect that you could summarize. So I, my, my framework is very simple. If you can't square up what happened in 2024, square it up. Right. What happened? Right. We did at the beginning of the year. We were hoping and praying that the interest rates would come down. They didn't. Right. They stayed at an average. How did that influence the market? We were all concerned about the election cycle as an independent influencer. We were concerned about the economy, we were concerned about inflation, and we all had some opinions about how these were going to affect both buyers and sellers in our marketplace. So can you square that up just a little bit? Little bit. So that you can bring them to a respectful position of today? And now I can say, here's kind of what I'm looking at to follow. Here's where we are today. Here's I think is important. And now I can get. Get a sense of respect because that's what, you know, if you and I, as people who study the market and know a lot of smart people, if they don't square up what happened in the past, I really don't care what they think about today or the future.

You can almost start with every forecast for 2024 was wrong.

Right. We.

I was just looking at the numbers. We expected 5.5 million transactions, including construction. What do we get? 4 million resale and another 600,000. Duke. Way off. Remember, rates were going to be at five and a half in the second half. Way off.

Right.

It was a. So I, I love that. Can I, can I, can I interject one. Actually two simple things for people.

Yes, please.

We talk all the time about the greats, are looking at the MLS and the hot sheets multiple times throughout the day. I want to take it one step further and go back to an easy way to position yourself as the knowledge broker in a modern way. And that is, what if every week you took last week's listings and sales, put them on a spreadsheet, uploaded it onto Notebook LM and you went to Grok, Right? Grok, right. As. As in X, formerly known as Twitter. And you got local comments of what's happening in the real estate market in your area of the last week, uploaded them into Notebook LM and said, convert this into a podcast for me. And now you're sending that market update podcast brought to you by your favorite real estate agent, Tom Ferry at Banana Real Estate. Even, even just doing that for yourself and listening to it over and over again because it takes minutes to download it, upload it, boom, in a minute you have a podcast. It's 17 minutes long. You can listen to that. And now every week, you're reciting the most important bullet points and what's happening on the market. It just. Knowledge equals confidence. When you understand the market, you speak with more authority and you Speak beyond just headline reading, which was a lot of agents will do. They'll just go headline only versus being able to go deep into the market and say, well, four bedrooms this, three bedrooms that, condos this. But what is sitting is this side of town. What isn't sitting is that side of town. And here's my pulse on why. Because people, people want to work with the smartest broker they can every day, all day long. So I know I interrupted, I apologize.

Well, no, that your point? So this morning I'm coaching call with Nancy Hackett in, in Michigan. And she said, well, you know, it's February and you know, the Northeast is having a really cold, you know, you know, season. It's a cycle. The beginning of this year, it was warmer last year. And she said, well, this million dollar A property came on the market for 999,000. I forgot the exact number. And she says, and it sold for, you know, one, two or something or a million 20. I forget what the exact numbers were, but meaning it sold for way over really quick. And I said so Nancy, let's talk about that because I was, I was really working with her on this scripting for her seller seminar and for all of her listing appointments to make sure that she's winning this game and getting good price listings. And I said so let's talk about how you would explain that, right? And she, she basically said, well, it was a perfectly remodeled and updated house. And I said good, so can we create a contrast in that same neighborhood, a non perfectly remodeled versus a perfectly remodeled. And can you show us the difference of what that looks like? And then can you actually show like almost the same exact property versus one? Because she's like an expert at like helping them prep and prepare and to stage and to do all that stuff for that perfect one. Like she's an expert at. I'm like. And then I'm like, Nancy, can you explain that to the other two sellers, the ones that didn't do that? And then why in this environment, the incentive of the buyers to go out into negative 2 degrees to come to a property is you either you have this amazing property with only 12 homes on the market or that this is the best price property and they, and they should bear the two, the two degrees to get there. So you know, our agents have to get much more savvy with their scripting and their ability to explain to a seller like what's going to drive this buyer demand when there's a small number of them, but there's only a small number of homes for sale, right? So they got to get much more savvy at this stuff so that their clients respect them and go, wow, thank you. I didn't understand it that way. It's now much more clear. I trust you. I'll move in the right direction on your advice. And that's what we need more of. And number four, every agent has to understand what is the unique value proposition to the homeowners that they're talking about. Let me explain for a second. You know, when I was working with people in the, you know, the schools where I was listening to their calls, having a conversation with, let's say, an expired listing, and. And then they would basically just say, hey, I would like to come over and show you how to sell your home for the highest price as fast as humanly possible. When would be a good time for us to get together? You know, Monday or Tuesday at 4. And what I kept hearing from the seller was a lot of resistance to that. And I just heard that there was a. There was a mismatch between what their clothes was, the unique value proposition, and what the seller wanted. And so I made a quick little pivot and I said, hey, guys, let's really think about what it is that you're going to do for this homeowner owner. And I started to think about it and role play with the agents, and I realized, look, one of the things you're going to do is you're going to spend a couple hours doing some research on what the buyers did buy and why they chose other homes and not this homeowners. I was like, ooh, that's definitely something that we're going to bring to the table. And then from there, I said, okay. And then what we're going to do is we're going to create a custom marketing plan to get their home sold within the next 30 days or less for the highest possible price. And when I really just started to think through that, that's actually what we were going to do, that is the unique value proposition. And then it was very fluid. It became a close. It was, hey, here's what I would be willing to do. I'd be willing to spend a couple hours doing some research on what did those buyers buy while you were on the market for six months, you know, and why did they choose these other homes and not yours? And then you can kind of throw in a fun little question. Did your last agent explain that to you? Did they show you that research? And of course, we already know the answer. The answer is no. And then you say, great. And then after that, what, what I'll do is I'll create a customer marketing plan just for your property. My goal will be to show you exactly what it's going to take to sell your home within 30 days or less for the highest possible price that I could sell it for. Right. And then they basically are like, thank you, that sounds great. And then one of my favorite little next steps is, right, because I don't want to waste any of your time or I don't want to waste any of my time. Is that fair? Right. And then of course, the homeowner is like, great. So what I've learned over the years is, yes, this thing called you gotta have a great close. But I also just reverse engineered and said, what is the unique value proposition we're going to bring to them? And then actually, what is the close that just articulates what that value is? And I just found thousands and thousands of listing appointments were booked once we were just crystal clear about that. Another example of that is, of course, when we're doing kind of talking to neighbors and we're doing neighborhood calls. One of the things that I discovered was that a lot of neighbors of a current listing, they were interested in selling their home within the next year, maybe even two years. And so there was a lot of interest, but they didn't want an appointment right now. So when my clients were kind of going through the normal clothes, hey, why don't I come over and I'll show you exactly what it would take to get your home sold for the highest price super fast. That was a turn off to the neighbor that was thinking six months, nine months to a year. And I would hear all this resistance to that. They'd be like, I don't. No, that's okay. Why don't you just, just call me back later? And then, of course, you know, we're. The average, you know, trainer is like, close, harder, be more aggressive. You know, it's like, calm down. And then the sellers just gets turned off. Right. So, well, what is the unique value proposition to that neighbor that is considering making this move within maybe the next six months, nine months, 12 months or more. Right. And so that's when I started think, okay, what do these neighbors want to know? They want to know what's the direction of the market. They want to know what's going on with prices in the neighborhood, and they definitely want to follow up on that. So that's number one. And then number two, what do they want to know? They really want to know two other things. What to do to prepare their home prior to putting it on the market, and what are the best options? What are the the lowest cops options? What are the do nothing options? What are the do the extensive remodel options? And then what's the return on investment of that time and or that money? They definitely are interested in that, so we can discuss that with them. Right. And then of course.

I had it in my brain.

Prices, how to prepare. What the hell is that number? Oh, yeah. And then the third thing that they want to know is you just had the listing, you just did an open house, you just marketed this property. They want to understand what the buyer demand is for the neighborhood in the community. So that is definitely something if you're the next seller in a community. You want to know, was there a lot of people that showed up to the open house? Was there more than one offer? Was the offers really strong or weak? That is what you want to know. And where the terms good for the seller based upon the buyer demand and the negotiation skills of the listing agent. So once I started to understand that, now I'm talking to a neighbor of a listing, you know, just listed, just sold classically is what we call that. Or neighborhood prospecting, classically what we call that. Now, if they say, yeah, we are maybe thinking about it in the next couple of years now, you could say, hey, couple things that I found that others would want to know who are considering selling maybe in the next year. Number one, they want to talk about, you know, what, what are the best practices to prepare their home for sale? You know, either to make it an easier experience to reduce stress, to get a higher price, just to, you know, kind of review all their options and the best return on investments. That's number one. Number two, a lot of neighbors want to follow the value of their home in this environment. They want to follow the comps and they just want to know where prices are so they can make better plans for themselves as they transition. And then of course, what's the demand right now? Are there a lot of buyers? Are there a few buyers? Are there buyers who are willing to pay top dollar for anything? What is that buyer demand? Are these three things that you would be interested in? And of course, their answer is always like, yes. And then you just simply say, you know, I'm going to be in the area over the course of the next 30 days. Why don't I just stop by and say hi and introduce myself and let's just have a conversation about whatever is important to you. Right. Are you going to be around this week? And that's so simple. They're like, of course I will be. Well, which are you going to be is which is better for you? Maybe kind of afternoons or in the early evenings. Right. What time frame makes the most sense? Oh, well, you know, my spouse won't be home till, you know, it's probably around blank time. Good. You want me to want to do this early this week or towards the end of the week? Well, actually, you know what would be better would be like Saturday morning. Oh, okay. Let me just check my schedule. Saturday morning, perfect. Why don't I pencil you in? Why don't you talk to your spouse, let them know that we're just going to, you know, I'll just stop by and we'll just have a quick conversation about 1, 2, 3. Right. Let me confirm your information grade. Right, I got you down. I look forward to meeting you then, my friends. Right. The unique value proposition that you offer the homeowner, if you use that in your scripting, you have an amazing close and everybody says yes. All right, so the last point, number five is having an online brand as a listing agent is no longer optional. Let me explain. So having a Google business profile with 105 star reviews, no longer optional, easy to do. Everybody can do it. You can get anyone to give you a review. Really, it doesn't have to be a past client and I tell a lot of my coaching clients, stop chasing your past client from 10 years ago to give you a review. The person that you know is taking care of your, your the auto mechanic that's taking care of your car this afternoon, who you give them a five star review for their business and ask for one in exchange. The person at the coffee shop that you've been tipping for the last two years, give them a five star review for the coffee shop and ask one for yourself. My friends keep this much more simple. So Google business profile, 100 plus reviews, period, minimum standard. Once you get to 100, get to 500. Once you get to 500, get to a thousand. And then that profile will just start making you money. It's fantastic. Right? Right. Number two is make sure that you have a good online website presence with a seller page and you should be optimizing. There should be some ability to customize your seller page. Let's get some case studies, let's get some, you know, steps of what you do to help people prepare. Let's get some tons and tons of reviews on your website so that when people look you up, they can see that website and find that page very easy. Let's do that for sure. Right. And then at the advanced level, I would love to see that you have a YouTube channel or a really strong social media platform, one or two, you know, kind of either a strong Facebook or strong Instagram. Right. LinkedIn is something I highly recommend everybody build into. I'd love to see a lot of recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. Right. But on the YouTube channel, of course, we should see some listing tour videos. We should see some how to's, how to prepare, how to price. We should see a lot of educational content there. My clients who are doing all of the, the relocation SEO, YouTube stuff, they're just, they have a buyer lead generation machine on their YouTube channel. So they're able to show all of this online success and presence to the sellers. And the sellers are like, wow, you're legit. Or if they look you up, they're like, wow, you're impressive. And what happens, my friends, when you build this, all of a sudden you actually just start getting discovered. And that's where the win is. When you really build your online brand in a successful way, you can actually start booking, listing, appointments for free with all of these resources. So, you know, I just believe that we all really need to level up our game there. And it's never been easier today in 2025 to make that happen.

All right, so you heard it here first. We know the fundamentals. Everybody's got to do the fundamentals. But once you've got the routine of making your calls, really getting focused, how do we now take it to the next level to get you even more appointments? I can't wait to read your comments. I can't wait to read your insights. Patrick, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm looking forward to watching you have a breakthrough in your appointments in 2025.

5.

If you want more information about this episode, including my show, notes, mentions, links, and everything else, make sure you visit tomferry.com podcast. That's tomferry.com podcast. Thanks again and talk to you soon.