What Exactly is a "Systems-Driven" Real Estate Business?

One of the questions I get asked most often, probably because I mentioned the word systems over and over and over again in my training, is what exactly is a systems driven business and why would I even want a business that's set up that way? You know, the word systems for a typical real estate agent, you know, typical real estate agent is sort of high I personality. They're generally extroverted. Life of the party and that type personality, great salesperson doesn't always love the word systems and they're not generally attracted to systems and they think of spreadsheets and processes and like the parts of a business that are not so sexy. And so when I think about business, I do geek out on systems. And in today's video I want to break down what it means and what examples of systems are and how to go about the process of implementing systems into your business. My journey in the early days, I had a business that had no systems and it was me just running and gunning and hoping that I would just sell homes and generate some leads and follow up with leads. And it wasn't orderly and I didn't have a process for, you know, identifying the weaknesses in my business and then plugging those weaknesses with a system. A system is a long term solution for a need that is sort of chronic in your business. And so that's what we're going to do today on the training. If you're at the point in your journey where you know you need this roadmap, you need a little bit more guidance and you just want to know what the path looks like. I put together a training. It's a 15 minute training. Stick around to the end of the video and I'll let you know how to get it. And if you like the video, hit the like button. Please, please, please subscribe to the channel. Turn on notifications so you're the first to know about a new video and make sure you leave comments as well. When I look back on my business growth journey, you know, I mentioned that the early days I didn't have any processes in place. I didn't have a system. I'd never sold anything before. So I didn't even come into real estate with a background in sales, you know, typically folks come in with the right personality. I had the wrong personality for real estate. What I did have though was this sort of geeky focus on systems as the way I was going to build a business that had a life outside of me. So 2007, 2008, as the market was collapsing, you know, we went from 15,000 agents to 5,000 agents here in my market. And it was not easy. Like I just did everything I had to do to bring in income to support my family. I had left this cozy corporate, you know, job making multiple six figures, working probably less than 2,000 hours a year. Not a whole lot of pressure to become a real estate agent. And without systems in place, and this should motivate you to keep watching this video. Without systems in place, I made, I calculated it and it's pretty sad and I'm a little embarrassed to even say it. I made 14 bucks an hour, you know, selling 27 homes in a market with an average price point back then of 225,000. Do the math. That's not really great pay. The thing that differentiated me over 2007 to 2008, I sold 44 homes. I hired an administrator. I had like five or six core systems built out. 2009, we went to 58 to 118 to 178 to 248 homes. In 2012. In 2012, I sold one of those homes. One of the 248 properties were my own production and systems. From attracting buyers and sellers to converting those buyers and sellers, to consultations and clients, to our client care systems, Right at that point, I committed I wasn't going to do any of it myself. Now I know getting out of working with buyers and sellers isn't for everyone. The concept of systems driving your business is for everyone. If you want to have a shot at making more money in less time and not going crazy in real estate, you, you have to start to think about systems in your business. So we have four drivers in what we call the business freedom blueprint. I want to focus on the first three today. It's attract, convert and deliver. So attract is bringing buyers and sellers into your world. Attract. It's not paying money to Zillow to generate buyers for you. So attract, convert. It's a two step process. It's get them to say yes to meet with you and to meet with you and sign them to be a client, a buyer client or a seller client. And then we have deliver, which you're delivering on the promises you made as a salesperson. And so you're showing homes to buyers, you're getting a home ready for listing or activating a listing, getting showings and getting that home sold. And then your contract to closing process and all the critical technologies you need in your business to do that. Let's break it down so slowly. So attract has, it's the number one Driver has three accelerators, Database marketing, listing marketing and buyer marketing. So as you consider your business as it is today and rate yourself in each of those areas, are you systematically generating referrals from your database? Are you systematically generating low cost, high quality listing leads? Are you systematically generating buyer leads without having to pay someone else to generate them for you? So that is the attract Driver. When I talk about Convert, do you have a lead management and follow up system in place? So if you were to generate a buyer lead today that wasn't ready to transact in the next 30 days, what's your text, email call? Sequence your scripts around, making sure that you give yourself the best chances to serve that buyer in the future. The fortune in real estate is in the follow up. How strong are your follow up systems? Are they systems that are running systematically, consistently in your business? And then the next part of convert is your appointment process. How do you go about setting consultations and what's your show up rate? And what are the questions you use to set that appointment? Your scripts, your dialogues, and also what are your qualifying questions when they say yes to appointment to make sure that your time is going to be well spent on that appointment. And then once they show up at your office or you meet them in a coffee shop, say you're meeting a buyer in a coffee shop. What's your sales process? We have an eight step listing process from, you know, someone saying yes to meet with us all the way to the point where they sign to be a client of ours. What is your listing consultation process? Do you even have a listing consultation process? The difference between you working gazillion hours a week and just haphazardly going from here to there in your business, working on admin stuff, working on sales stuff, working on putting signs in, you know, frozen ground. If you live in a, you know, in the tundra in Alaska, right. The difference between that type of agent and someone who is calm and collected and acting like a business owner is your ability to put these systems in place in your business. And so your consultation process, you can't be the person that the only person in your business that can go on a consultation. Most top agents think that that is the only way they could, that they can get paid in their business is that if they're meeting with buyers and sellers, yes, on the one hand it's one of the more highly paid activities that we do. But if you don't have a process around it, you might be doing that forever. That's why we have agents in their 60s and 70s that have no leverage whatsoever. They haven't spent any time to build systems or generate any net worth. And now they have to work with buyers and sellers because it's the only thing they know how to do. And they never made that pivot from agent to owner. The next driver is what we call deliver. And think about the way you deliver your services to buyers and sellers. Is it systems driven? Meaning? I'm trying to think of the numbers from last week. I think, I think we set 14 consultations last week. I think we met 10 or 11 of them. We sign on average between 70 and 80%. So we brought in six or seven new clients last week. To my real estate team. I didn't have a hand in generating any lead, meeting with any of them, setting any appointment. I didn't show a home, I didn't activate an MLS listing yet. Our clients are getting the highest level of service. I would put the way we treat buyers and sellers, once they commit to doing business with us, the service we provide against any, any agent in our market, any traditional agent and any team in our market, we have really paid attention to just over delivering and just wowing our clients. You know, if you think of we have a local amusement park here called Carowinds which it has some decent rides. Everyone that works there is miserable. You can tell it's not their chosen profession. We also have been to Disney and at Disney, everyone that works there wants to work there and they fit those core values. And so is your business more like Carowinds where you're miserable and everyone working on your team is miserable or have you deliberately set up, this is how we're going to work with buyers. This is how we're going to show homes. This is the white glove service we're going to provide so that we can get paid what we're worth. The industry is changing. If you don't figure out a way to wow your clients to knock their socks off with the service you provide, but to do it in a way that's systems driven. Even if you have a licensed administrator and a showing agent, how can you put together a process of working with buyers and working with sellers, scripting for your client care. Everything is sort of sequenced in your business. All of the touch points are the Disney, the, you know, the Nordstrom, the. Think of all the high end brands that get paid, you know, real money to provide the thing that they're giving you or providing you. That's where the industry is going. And if you want to be relevant, you have to think about delivery, a systems driven part of your business. I think about this world. And one of our members, Tyler Goff out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, smaller market, he was working both sides of the business. He was overwhelmed. I think at the time him and Mel had one kid, maybe she was pregnant with number two. They have four kids now. And he was just beside himself in terms of just doing everything. None of the business was really set up in a systems driven kind of way. Taking time to sort of just break down, just these three drivers and the nine accelerators that I went through. Breaking down and assessing where he was and being honest about where he was in terms of, you know, level one systems or level five systems. Right. Do you suck in this area of your business with respective systems or are you really strong? We were able to pinpoint exactly where to work on and over three to four years we tripled the size of his business. And within about 18 months we were able to get him out of production. So he went from about a hundred transactions to three hundred transactions in a three to four year period. His work week went from sixty to seventy hours a week, working seven days to working five days a week. In fact, he went and got his masters of Divinity and actually something I posted on Facebook about a sermon here locally motivated him to like do something outside of his business. If we hadn't set his business up in a systems driven fashion, he never would have been able to go sort of lean into that area of his life where God was calling him to spend some time. And now he has more time than ever to be a great dad. They've got four busy kids, his wife also works and they're just, they're building an amazing family. Their business is having a huge impact in their community. And he's having an impact for his beliefs, his faith. What's possible for you, you know, where are you at today? How strong or weak are your systems? Where's your mindset around systems? Right. When I mention the word, do you cringe and you just want to sort of retract and turn the video off? Are you willing to do the work I mentioned earlier on? I put together a training and if you're partially cringing, partially, maybe systems, you don't know what it is. I put together a step by step path. It's a 15 minute training. Go to predictablerealestatesuccess.com or click on the link below. As always, like the video, subscribe to the channel, turn notifications on and leave comments. We'll see you on the next video.