Tom Ferry outlines four tactics for real estate agents to drive spring sales now: daily outreach to ten contacts asking about moving plans, a text to old leads asking if they've given up on moving, personalized contact with owners of expired listings, and repositioning overpriced homes through price adjustments and video collaborations with loan officers.
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Hey, what's up? Thank you so much for checking in with me today. It is Monday, the 23rd of February, and I just jumped off an unbelievable day of private sessions. I worked this morning with 250 sales leaders trying to get them to engineer growth to jump into the spring market. And then I had the same, same exact conversation with a bunch of top agents all day. And I thought I would just share with you and. Excuse me, I know I'm a little tired. It's been a crazy start to the year. I have been on the road nonstop. But I'm here in Dallas and I wanted to go live and I wanted to share with you the four things I'm telling people right now, whether I'm live at an event or in a private one on one session with you. What's up there, Kirk? You will appreciate this, Kirk. Matter of fact, you can give me number five. I just saw my buddy Kirk from Philly over in Instagram. So here's what I'm telling people. If, if you're like me, you're thinking about the spring market, if I haven't backed up even more and said, let's look at the macro we have been talking about for a year, that the market is getting better. Is it getting exponentially better? Does it feel like champagne and cocaine of 2020-2023? No. But is it getting better? Are we seeing a lot of positive signs even today? Interest rates at 5.99 is another positive sign. The difference between 5.99 and 6.04, by the way, for a $500,000 house with 20% down, is like $35 a month in terms of payments. It's not astronomical, but it will get more people off the market. But here's my point, man. I almost feel like I'm a little ADHD today. Cause I've just got. I'm looking at Brian, one of my producers and videographers. So, Brian, here's what I'm thinking. I wanted to shoot this video because I know there's four things you can do to engineer growth. Four things you can do to engineer growth. And not wait for the spring market, but engineer it. So I'm going to go through the four and then you tell me what's the action you're going to take. So no order of importance. Number one, if you're currently not reaching out via text, call dm, private email to five of your past clients every single day. You're making a big mistake. Five past clients a day, every single day. Five people in your Sphere every single day. And if you say, well, I only have a few past clients, then go to your sphere, but make sure you're talking to five people that already know you, like you, and trust you every single day. And you could do the Ford method. You could do happy belated New Year's. You could say whatever you want. But the only thing I want you to promise me, promise me that you will do is at the end of the conversation, you'll say something like, you know, I'd be the worst real estate agent on the planet. I mean, the worst agent on the planet if I didn't say to you, have you guys had any thoughts of making a move this year? Guys had any thoughts of making a change or maybe buying an investment property this year? And let them say, well, no, we love our house. And then every time they say, like, no, or, you know, we love this house, or, you know, heaven forbid, we're not moving until the good Lord takes us away. Like, don't say, and when would that be? That would be weird. But instead, hey, brother Brian, have you had any thoughts of making a move this year? Say no. Just do the same thing that every great salesperson does. If my lovely wife, who's in the office over there, meeting with the president of the company. I've been shopping with her, and every time we go out shopping, I like, I want to pull my hair out because she'll, like, walk into the department store with the focus to, like, I got to buy a new black dress because we're going to a function. And you know what happens? A great salesperson walks by and says, hi, can I help you? And my wife every time says, no, no, no, I'm just looking. Well, it's the same exact thing. It's a Didn't ask you. Have you had any thoughts of making a move this year? When they say, no, just do this. Really? Really? You've had no thoughts of making a move? And then shut up. And in that moment, you're giving them permission to actually go? Funny enough, we've been thinking about it, but we're not exactly sure where we want to go or they go. No, we're totally good either way. But I want you to. To engineer growth. I don't want you to wait for growth. So now is the time, my friend. It's still early in February. February 23rd. We can wait until the spring market. And for all my friends in the Northeast, I know you're getting buried in snow. Make more phone calls. That's my response to you five A day to your database, five new conversations every day. That could be anybody you want to call. You can go stand in line at Starbucks and just wear your company name badge and someone's going to say to you, oh my God, you're in the real estate business. How's the market? Like, I don't care how you do it, I don't think you need to cold call. I think you probably look inside your database and go a little deeper to people that you haven't talked to in a long time. Maybe you can go into Instagram and actually start DMing people that you say you're friends with on social and engage with them. But what I know is true is whoever talks to the most people before the spring market hits finds the most opportunities and engineers growth. You don't want to wait for it. So I'm talking about 10 conversations a day. Could be text messages, could be direct email and then they respond, could be DMs. But mostly it should be old school, getting on the phone and having conversations and then having the willingness, the open mindedness to say, oh my goodness, I'd be the worst agent on the planet. Jimmy, my guy from a 35, he is the best. Like, he gave me that opening line, I'd be the worst agent on the planet. And then Timmy Smith, a phenomenal agent from Newport Beach, California, hey, he's like, have you had any thoughts of selling that combination in is going to find you opportunities, your engineering growth. So that's number one. Number two, if you look back over the last, let's call it September 2022 to today. September 2022 is when the rates went above 6 and quickly got to 7 and then 8. And when that happened, obviously for a lot of buyers, they put the brakes on. And that means also sellers put the brakes on. My advice to you is, should you send the world famous text? And you know it, it's a text message to every single one of them. Ready? Hey, have you guys given up on making a move in 2026? Send. Have you guys given up on making a move in 2026? That'd be the number two thing that I would do to engineer growth. Let me give you number three, number four. And then we got to jump to that dinner. So number three, I would tell you I was talking with David Childers over Keeping Current Matters. Huge shout out to David Childers and the team Bill and everybody at Keeping Current Matters. He shared a stat we talked about in early January. Listen to this, dad. There was approximately 2 million expired listings in the US in 2025, a giant number, right? What we know to be true is half of them have still not realisted their house. Half the people that expired last year have still not relisted their home for sale. And my question for you is, are you willing to reach out to them? Are you willing to talk to them? Are you willing to market to them? I got my favorite text message. I'm going to read you the text. By the way, if you have their cell phone, you should text it to them. Otherwise maybe you write a handwritten note and you drop it off on their doorstep, right, With a little birthday cake envelope that makes them want to open it up and get excited. All I want to do is get a conversation started. Here's the text ready. Hey name, I know this is probably the wrong time, but I've been talking to a lot of buyers who are very serious about buying in the next 30 to 90 days. Would you be open to the idea of selling if you got a great offer? Let me say it to you again. Hey name, I know this is probably the wrong time. Been talking to a lot of buyers who are very serious about buying in the spring market. Would you be open to the idea of selling if you got a great offer? And yes, I'm saying send that to an expired listing, someone that didn't sell last year, maybe didn't sell this year. And instead of treating them like an expired listing, instead of treating them like somebody that put their home the market and it didn't work out, why don't we instead just treat them like a past client or a friend saying want to let you know there's an opportunity. We're seeing a lot of buyer activity. We don't have enough nice homes on the market. If you would be, you know, would you be open minded if you got a great offer and just watch what happens? What I know is, and Brian, my guy knows this because how many times you heard me say action solves everything? Action solves everything. We started this by saying are you going to wait for it or are you going to engineer growth? Are you going to wait for it or are you going to engineer growth? And I don't know about you, my friends, I'm going to engineer as much growth as I can going into the spring market and I know you're going to do the same. Here's the last one. Number four, I literally just talked to one of my clients. She's been a client of mine for 17 years and absolute rock star. Consistent, you know, two and a half to $3 million a year. GCI producer in Orange County, California. And I said to her, how many active listings do you have right now? She's like, I have. And I said, how many of them are overpriced? She said, well, in my marketplace right now, they either sell real fast or it takes some time. And I said, so I'm going to go with six. So what if, what if you went to every one of those sellers and you did your best to repackage and reposition the price, to repackage and reposition the price. But it's not just a price adjustment, it's not just amending the price. Then what I want you to do is follow up with a massive neighborhood open house, a massive promotion of that property with the new price. But then I thought, wouldn't it be interesting? Because we don't want agents to be loan officers and we don't want loan officers to be agents. But what if you did a show standing in front of that house with like your favorite loan officer? I think about my guy JJ Mazzo, speaking of Orange County, California, or Jeremy, who I just talked today from Napa Valley, right? They're both the cross country mortgage shout out to those guys. I would grab my favorite loan officer and I would stand in front of the house and say, okay, this is what we're going to do. I just reduced the price from X to Y. I'm going to ask you this question and we're going to do it live on video. Like I'm doing this now. And I'm literally going to say, I'm going to ask this question, what are all the creative ways we can get financing for a home like this today? Lay out all the scenarios. And I would literally do that video live on Facebook like I'm doing right now. And actually I think I'm on YouTube and X and all kinds of other places, plus Instagram and. And I would literally whip my loan officer, say, hey, our seven year arms back. What kind of terms can I get? With rates today at 5.99, man, I might be able to get like a five and a half percent interest rate. Like that creates affordability, that creates movability. And all I'm thinking is this. I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait. I don't want to wait. I want to engineer as much growth as possible. So that's all I wanted to share. It's like 5:22. I got a little company team meeting I'm going to right now for a dinner. Thank you for being in my universe. Tell me in the Comments I said four things don't wait. Engineer growth. Four things. 1, 5, 5, 4. Talk to five past clients every day. Talk to five new people every day. Do four follow up sessions every day. Cause sales cycles are longer. Right. Number two, we're gonna send the world famous have you given up on making a move in 2026 via text or a personal email to every old lead you have. We know that that works. The old expires from kcm. Half of them have not put their home in the market. And the reason why is you haven't reached out, you haven't called. Be the person that helps them. Try the text message. I know it's probably the wrong time, but I'm talking to a lot of buyers that are very serious about buying in the spring market. Would you be open to the idea? If you got a great offer, shout out to Jimmy Macken and listing leads for that killer tax. And then the last one is let's repackage and reposition our listings and get ahead of the curve. And then do that video with your loan officer on all the creative ways that someone could get a loan based on all the different scenarios to buy that house. That's my advice to you. It's Monday. Let's get to work. Let's go. All right, talk to you soon.
