How to Get More Listings: Power of Preparation
Summary
In 7th Grade football I learned one of the most powerful lessons about life from Coach Burge: Always have your helmet on…so when the coach calls your name, you’re ready to play.
EXPECTATION. Expectation shows up as preparation.
Surprised how many agents aren’t ready to take a listing. Prospecting every day. Pounding phones and pavement. “I have an appointment…what’s next?”
1. Pre-Listing Process & Packet. (Pre-Qualify, Action plan. CMA. Net Sheet.)
2. Listing Presentation Mastered.
3. Listing Docs Prepared & Know of to go over it.
4. Selling Process Ready to go.
5. Every day, suit up.
“When the opportunity knocks, have your coat on.”
When you’re ready for “YES” you can expect yes.
Full transcript
Always have your helmet on so that when the coach calls your name, you’re ready to go in the game.
Hi, there. It’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YESMasters Real Estate Success Training helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. Let’s talk about getting the big yes today, how to get more listings.
I think one of the greatest lessons I ever learned about success was from my seventh grade football coach, Coach Burge, and this is what he taught us: Always have your helmet on so that when the coach calls your name, you’re ready to go in the game. What he was teaching us was the law of preparation, the importance of always being prepared so that when opportunity came, you are ready. In fact, there’s a saying that says, “When opportunity knocks, have your coat on.”
One of the things that has always amazed me in real estate is when I first got in real estate, the first thing they started teaching us was how to generate leads, how to prospect, get an appointment. It was almost like they were going to let you make up as you went. Number one, prospect, get an appointment, and then as soon as you had an appointment, you’re like, “What do I do next? I’m not ready for this. I don’t know what to do. Now I have 24 hours to figure out what to do to get ready to go on a listing presentation and how to do all that.”
I realized as I’ve began training agents and coaching agents, I was always stunned at how many agents had been in the real estate business for months if not years, and they naturally found themselves working with buyers because, intuitively, it’s not that hard to show a house to somebody, to show houses to buyers. They’re looking … It’s easy to do it, and it doesn’t take that much skill, doesn’t take that much expertise, and so agents automatically get sucked into working with buyers by default, not only because it’s easier to find people that want to go look at houses, it’s also easier to show people houses than it is to talk to them about selling their house, which is what you have to do to be a powerful listing agent.
On this video, I want to talk to about how do you get more listings just by one simple strategy, and that is preparation. I’m going to share with you why this is so critical and so powerful and helping you do it.
As I look at agents who are out there, they set an appointment, they go like, “I got an appointment tomorrow, what do I do?” I’m like, “You’re not even ready. You don’t even know what’s going on. You don’t have your helmet on.”
I want to share with you five things that you need to have prepared, five things that need to be in place so that when the opportunity comes, when the coach calls your name, when the seller says, “Yes, come over and talk to me about listing my house,” you’re ready for the game, you’re ready to go in.
These five steps, I’m amazed at how many agents do not have this stuff ready, so I’m talking to whether you’re a brand new agent or just an agent who doesn’t have this stuff ready is, if you don’t have this stuff ready, these five things I’m about to lay out for you, this should be something you start working on today, I mean, put the hours in. Do your lead generation in the morning, and then spend four, five, six, eight hours a day until you get this dialed in so you know exactly, you’re ready whenever that listing appointment opportunity comes.
Number one, first thing you gotta get ready is you gotta have your pre-listing, you gotta have your pre-listing process and packet read to go. You need your pre-listing process ready and your pre-listing packet ready, so when you get an appointment, again, you know exactly what to do.
Your pre-listing process is once you set an appointment with them, what do you do next? You pre-qualify them. Now once I get them pre-qualified, now I’ve gotta do a CMA, I’ve gotta prepare a net sheet, I’ve gotta send them out a pre-listing packet, which is going to have your action plan, testimonials, and reviews. It’s going to have information about your action plan, all of that kind of stuff ready to send along with the listing documents and everything else. All the stuff that needs to be ready to go the moment I set a listing appointment needs to be ready to go. Powerful to have that ready to go.
Next thing is your listing, actually, your listing presentation is do you have your listing presentation ready to go? Do you know exactly what you’re going to say, how you’re going to say it from the moment you knock on their door until you get the signatures? Do you have that process laid out? Now, one of the things that I lay out for you in my book, The Book of YES, is exactly how to set up for a listing presentation, how to pre-qualify it, and then how to actually do a rockstar gold medal listing presentation.
Now, it’s one thing to have the script. It’s another thing to master it. It’s not just a matter of … It’s kind of like a football player. If you’re getting ready to go in the game, it wasn’t just having the helmet on. I also had to have the plays known in my head because I couldn’t run out on the field with the play book in my hand. Like, “Okay, what’s the play … ” Oh, and I’m … You can’t do that so when you want to get listings, you gotta get your listing presentation. Master it. This is going to take some time. There’s going to be some work, but if you want to be ready, if you want to be prepared to get more listings, you gotta get prepared to get more listings.
Number three is all the listing documents, all the listing paperwork, all the listing documents so that’s your listing agreement, it’s your disclosures, all of that kind of stuff that you, everything that requires your seller to sign it, for you to sign it, your seller to sign it, in order for you to put their house on the market and sell it. You gotta not only have that, have it ready to go, you gotta know how to fill it out, you gotta know how to take a seller and walk them through it so that when they get done, they actually make sense, and they’ll actually sign it rather than going like, “I’m totally confused now. You mean I gotta read all eight pages of this?” You gotta be able to summarize it concisely and clearly and in a way that makes them feel safe and confident to go ahead and put pen to paper.
You gotta get this ready. I know it’s like … I’m always amazed how many real estate agents have never actually read a listing agreement. Are you kidding me? You should read one today. As soon as you get done watching this video, if you haven’t read a listing agreement this month, you should get one out and read it today. Read it out loud word-for-word all the way through just so you know what’s there, and then you’re going to work on how do I summarize that paragraph and this paragraph and this paragraph. How would I summarize that and take a whole paragraph and summarize it into one sentence? Yes, I know. It’s work, but you gotta do this work if you want to be prepared so you can get more listings.
Then number four, once you get the listing, you gotta know, you gotta know what you’re going to do to get it actually sell for top dollar. You gotta have a selling process in place. One of the worst things that can happen, one of the worst experiences that an agent can have is to take a listing, and then it not sell. You took it overpriced, and then you put it on the market, you put it on the MLS, and you didn’t really have a plan, and if you didn’t have a plan, you didn’t have a process to follow, then all you know how to do is put a sign in the yard, put it in the MLS, and then you’re like, “Now what do I do? Pray. Hope it sells. Hope the seller didn’t get mad. Hope it sells before the seller gets mad. I hope the seller doesn’t call me going like, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Oh, I’m not doing anything because I put it on the MLS. I don’t know what else to do.'”
My friend, you must have a selling process. If you don’t have a selling process yet, get one. Find somebody that’s got a great one in your office, your broker, get in my coaching, yesmasters.com, join my coaching. Go to Double Your Listing Power Training Camp. Do something so that you can master having a selling process so that you know how to sell every single listing every single time. Then with all of that preparation done, all this gotta be done, here’s the most critical preparation that must happen every single day, and that is simply this: Suit up every day.
Now, I’m going to repeat this, and then I’m going to explain what I mean by that. You have to suit up every single day, which means every day that you’re working, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, if you’re working Monday to Friday or Monday to Saturday or whatever days you’re working, when you show up at the office, you gotta be ready to take a listing.
If you’re prospecting today, and you’re not dressed in business attire to go a listing presentation, what you’re saying is, “I’m not prepared to take a listing today.” The worst thing is, you call an expired or you run across an expired whether you’re door knocking or phone calling them or just it happens out of the blue, and all of a sudden, they’re like, “I need you. Can you come over this afternoon?” and you go like, “Oh, my gosh. Let’s see, well, I gotta do my CMA, I gotta blah, and then I gotta go home, I gotta take a shower, I gotta shave, I gotta get dressed. Oh, my gosh. I forgot to iron my shirt.”
You are not ready, my friend. You’re not prepared. When the coach calls your name, when the coach calls your number, you better have your helmet on, and if you want to be successful in real estate, if you know that you want to get more listings, and that’s the way to be successful in real estate, you know you want to get more listings, you gotta be ready for this. You gotta be prepared.
Not only do you gotta be prepared in knowing what to do and how to do it, but you gotta be prepared here, and it shows up by the way you show up. If you’re not dressed and ready for battle when the opportunity comes, you’re going like, “Oh, my gosh,” and you’re surprised.
Here’s the most powerful thing. When you do all of that, something changes in the way you think, and that is the moment that you show up and you’re completely prepared. Preparation reflects and is reflected in your expectation, and this probably to me is the most powerful thing of all when it comes to getting more listings, and that is as I looked around on myself, I looked around when I was starting real estate and other newer agents, agents who are trying to get started is they’re like, they don’t believe they’re ready. They don’t expect to get a result, and so guess what, they don’t get a result. They don’t get a listing, they don’t get business, they don’t get appointments because their expectation is not there. Maybe some day, but not yet, and when it does happen, I’ll get ready.
No, no, no, no. Get ready now so that when you have the preparation in place, the expectation will follow so that I show up … Look, you suit up every day, here’s what starts happening. You start expecting something to happen. When all of this is ready, now I’m confident, I know what happens. Once I get a listing appointment, I know what to do next. When I show up at their house to do a listing, I know what to do next. When it comes to actually sign the listing documents, I know how to do that. I know what comes next. When I get the listing, I know how to sell it.
When you know how to sell it, all of a sudden, your confidence goes up a level, it goes through the roof, and the moment that happens, boom, expectation of success goes up and up, and then you show up suited up and ready. Expectation is everything. I’ve always taught about the law of attraction. The greatest factor in the law of attraction is the power of your own expectation, and expectation happens through the process of preparation. When you’re prepared to get “yes,” you can always expect to get “yes.”
If you like the video, make sure you give us a thumbs up. Put your questions and comments below. If there’s something else you think I missed and are leaving out or you have questions about any of this, make sure you post it below, make sure you subscribe to the channel if you have not done that yet. Share this with other agents that you know need some help. Get some more listings, and I’ll see you on the next video.