How to Beat the Competition as a Realtor

SUMMARY

The first secret to beating the competition is the stop trying to beat the competition.

Remember the picture of Michael Phelps going for the gold medal and the swimmer in the lane next to him looking over at him. The caption said “Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners.”

Here’s 5 steps to win over any agent your competing against:

1. Be the best at what you do.

Then you become the competition.

Michael Jordan.  “I am the competition.”

2. Play your game.

Stop trying to “beat Zillow at their game.” Stop trying to beat your competition by doing what they’re doing.

Be YOU and use your strengths.

3. Forget the competition.

Competition rarely matters.  70% of sellers will only interview one agent.  Focus on relationships and positioning.

4. Focus on the results your clients want and the life you want.

5. Make competition a game. Have fun with it.

Nothing is more empowering for you than when the competition sees you’re not bothered by them.

Winners are going to win.  Collaborate with them and all grow.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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. I was just talking with my team this last week about all 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 year real estate coaches and trainers every single day and I’m like, “Whoa, lots of competition.”

I’m like, “Yeah, it’s just like it was when I started real estate and all these new realtors were coming in and it was like, “How do you beat the competition?” 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 and, with that, how do you approach the competition?

In this video we’re going to talk about how to crush; not just how to beat the competition, we’re going to talk about how to crush the competition. 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 of years ago in the Olympics, the summer Olympics, when Michael Phelps was going for his world record, history breaking, more gold medals than anyone else in history and continuing that thing where he 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 breast stroke, 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.

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 on the competition. Now, how do you then execute? 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 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. When you do that it gives you all kinds of edge. When you are better you don’t have competition, you are the competition. Michael Jordan who is my sports hero, I love basketball, I always loved 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. When Michael Jordan walked into the colosseum, because he was so much better, because he trained harder, worked harder, prepared harder, he walked into the colosseum, he was better and it affected everybody else in the entire colosseum. 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’d I get beat?” 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 beat because somebody offered, and I’ll give you an example.

When I started real estate I was through Century 21 and so they’d 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 they had a 21 step marketing plan. I was so proud of that. Man, I had it all fuzzied up or fixed up and it was beautiful and I went out and had a 21 step marketing plan.

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?” They went, “Well, because this other agent, their marketing plan was much more extensive than yours.” I’m like, “More extensive? I had 21 steps. How could they beat that?” They were like, “Well, theirs had 50 step marketing plan.” I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I got to come up with a 52 step marketing plan then.”

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.” 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 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.” 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.” I’m like, “Wait a second. I don’t need to try to play is game or beat them at their game.”

Now, the reason I say that and it’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. 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.”

Now, you can try to 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. Then, number three, once you figure that out you play your game and then what do you do with 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 was coming in and the other swimmer is right along side of him, and what’s the other swimmer focusing on? He’s focused on Michael, he’s focused on the competition.

When you focus on the competition you take your eye off the ball, you take your eye off the game. When you take you 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.

That is focus, forget about the competition and focus instead on the clients. Focus on the people that you serve, don’t focus on the people you’re worried about beating. Your clients, your prospects, the sellers, the home owners, 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?”

Focus on the result that the clients want. I realize as a coach, as a trainer, just 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 am talking about signing up for one of my coaching programs, I tell them 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 but look and go like, “Uh, competition, what are they doing? Cool. Now I’m going to go back to what I’m doing.” 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 no longer about the clients that you serve.

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? Don’t take your eye off the goal, don’t take your eye off of the ones you serve. Be better, not better at a marketing plan, be better at this, be better at delivering results for your clients. All right now, last thing. 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’ve got competitors. Here’s the reason, it makes you better. When somebody’s competing, I love competition. When I played basketball I never wanted to get beat, I hated it when I got beat but I loved the competitiveness of it. 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 winners from winning?

They’re not your competition, they’re going to get their deals but guess what? There is plenty of space for the best, there’s 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. When you look at competition and you hear they’re competing with you … And I remember when I started real estate there was a couple of agents that were the best at going after [inaudible 00:12:30]. 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 were with Coldwell Banker. At that time in our market in Dallas/Fort Worth it was Century 21 and Coldwell Banker were the two big ones. Remax was third, and then Keller Williams was still kind of like, who’s that?

Back then, this was like 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. Joanne had one market where she dominated and Paul, he was great with Expires. I knew that every morning when I went in to call Expires 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. I hated getting beat by him and I hated getting beat by Joanne but I loved the fact that it was the hunt.

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 them. I’m going to tell you this one last thing on this video that I 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, he did not play nice.

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. One of the things that he would do is before a game whenever a team would come to town or when he would go to their colosseum, he would actually … Because as a superstar he knew the other superstars on the other team. 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. 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.

He’d just walk in, he’d walk back maybe to one of the other fellow Hall of Famer, somebody that he knew and he’d just go up, shake his hand and say, “Hey, good luck tonight.” Then he would just 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.

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 is me.” When you get to that point, and the way you get to that point is not by shortcuts, it’s not by tricks, it’s not by dirty pool, it’s by just simply playing your game better than anybody else can play it. When you enjoy the competition, look, you actually can have fun with it. You can actually have lunch with them, play with them, have a great time with them. It makes you better, it makes them better, and that elevates the bar for all of us.

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 thumb’s up.  Post on it, comment down below, love to hear your comments. Share this with some other agents who need to get better at the competition. I’ll see you on the next video.