The world may be in a crisis right now, but you and your business do not have to be hey. Welcome to the tom ferry show live from my home studio, it's sunday march 22nd, as i'm recording this you're watching it on tuesday or wednesday. I want to start by saying we are no doubt in unprecedented times and for many of us the goals that we set the plans that we set back in october november december of last year. We basically need to rip in half.

What i want to talk to you about today is the five smart actions that great agents like you are taking every single day in this environment, where, without a shadow of a doubt, what we do, what we say, how we communicate and how we market is the Difference that will make the difference in our referral business and our brand forever. So if you were my personal coaching client and we were sitting down one-on-one, there's five things - i'm telling everybody right now - and maybe you saw me last week with steve harney and david childress, where we talked about how's the market - and i mentioned some of these points. But i want to drive them home with you today, because with what's happening in the world, the way i'm describing to be is the world may be in a crisis, but you and your business don't have to be. We can continue to move forward to help people now we may help people differently today, with lots of the country around the world as well going on pause.

We can still do the right things that build our brand and show our value. So we continue to serve and that's what i want to talk to you about. So the first thing i'm telling people what the smart agents are doing number one is they're taking their meds. Now you've heard me say this before, and it's sometimes a funny acronym for people because they say: oh, you know fairy what what medication are you recommending? No meds is an acronym for meditate exercise, diet and sleep in times of crisis.

In times of high stress, there is no doubt the more you meditate or pray you slow down your mind, you breathe, you focus on your body and you get yourself into a centered state. We are like we talked about before it's the squeeze. We've got a pressure cooker situation if you're not taking care of you and recommending to the people that you love the most, that they do something similar, there's a really good chance. They can pop, they can explode on you or with a client or with a loved one.

So meditation is number one number two is exercise by the way, i'm seeing lots of people going on instagram and other social channels and saying hey: let's do a zoom session or do yoga together right. There is no doubt being physically strong in an environment like this. Is a giant competitive advantage? Diet we all know eat for energy, be mindful of putting stuff inside your body that creates a high, because what follows is a low and the last one, because you've been a follower of mine for a long time. You've heard myself and dr amon and others talk about the value of rest and sleep specifically that getting more than seven hours of sleep per night actually allow your brain to wash out and detoxify on a daily basis.

So now, more than ever, take your meds and, more importantly, share that message with the people that you love share it with your community share it with your tribe, get your team on board your office mates. Let's get everybody doing the best they can to take care of themselves because we know in our business and in all business how we feel on the inside radiates to the people on our outside, and we simply cannot afford to put our head in the sand or, Worse, become an energy sucking vampire, so that's the first point number two: we need to over communicate. We need to over communicate. We need to over communicate think about it.

I have clients with 25 pending sales right now. I have clients with 80 or 90 active listings right now. We either communicate what's going to happen or what has happened with the solutions that we have state by state country by country providence by providence. It's all different.

You either over communicate that in advance or you deal with the onslaught of all those people reaching back to you and saying hey, what's going on you're my agent, what are you doing? What i'm telling people is? You simply cannot communicate enough to your sellers to your under contracts. That's number one number two. You need to be in communication with every lead in your database. I'm not saying your database, your past clients in sphere, i'm saying the people that took the time to fill out a form or met you in an open house or referred to you by a pal.

The message we want to be mindful of today is you: can set up research phase. Buyer consultations live via zoom and still educate buyers. We might be limited in showings, we might be limited in opening escrows country by country state by state providence by providence. It's all going to be different, we might be limited in a short period of time.

What we can do is continue to do research phase, appointments for buyers, and we can continue to do listing appointments and talk through strategies about how to get their home prepared and ready to go when the timing is right. Understand this, if you stop following up on your leads, if you stop over communicating with all of your potential prospects, what happens? Is your pipeline goes away and then, as this turns - and they always do, they always do as this burns out. As this turns, you will be weeks or months behind the eight ball and if you think today, it's a little strange, try it when it's a good market or back to a normal market and you're behind the eight ball. So i cannot stress to you enough.

You've got to communicate one on one text: message: send an email shoot a bomb bomb, video make it personal, hey kathy, just wanted to follow up, first and foremost, how you doing you and your family. Okay right. We were in communication about this. I just want to see: is there anything i can do to support right? This isn't about having the perfect script.

This isn't about um, you're, trying to say the right thing. This is about bringing humanity back to the business. This is about putting your hand on your heart and saying hey. I want to reach out to these people and find out how they're doing now.

I will tell you, i have already hundreds of stories of people saying tommy i've been taking this advice and i'm booking appointments and i'm doing it via zoom right, i'm booking listing presentations and we're doing it via zoom. I i followed up on one of my clients. Somebody just sent this to me recently and they said: hey, i'm in the middle of a virtual cocktail party with all of my friends and the buyer was a 70 year old. Think about it.

The world has pivoted, the world has adjusted, we must communicate and then the last one your mindset matters you've got to be in communication with every single person in your sphere. Now, there's a pretty good chance, because you're in my tribe, you've heard me say this before. I cannot stress to you enough: i'm asking my clients to be talking to 25 to 30 people a day, a text message. A video goes a long way, a personal email, a dm on any one of the social sites.

Just to check in why? Because the right thing is always the right thing and now more than ever, what you say and what you do or what you don't say and don't do, will massively impact your brand and your referral business forever. So let's talk about number three: for years i've talked about this script of how's the market. It's the one question that we get all the time and today you might be getting it differently from buyers and sellers how's the market. What's going on right, there's a lot of people that are so interested in doing transactions, some people think in an environment like this, that they can buy and potentially get a deal right.

So people are going to continue to ask you because you're, a rockstar professional anywhere in the world how's the market. What's going on now, the script we recommend is hey it's day by day hour by hour. Some of my buyers are telling me that they want to hold off for now and i'm supporting them with that decision. While i continue to communicate and keep them aware of what's next, let me say it to you again, it's day by day hour by hour.

Isn't that the truth right now, some of my buyers and sellers are telling me to hold for now and i'm supporting them in their decision. While i continue to communicate and keep them aware of, what's happening next take a little breath and some of my clients need to sell now and need to buy now and we're doing that with all of the appropriate safety protocols. Smart marketing, virtual showings and more to get the job done. So my question, for you is: does that give you an upbeat or not an upbeat, an understanding of what's happening in the market by sharing that over and over again my friends and you can modify and tweak and adjust again, it's not about perfect done is what It's about answering the question is what it's about.

You know not letting your emotional state, maybe of the moment or something that's gone, a little haywire a transaction or you heard about a friend impact. How you're communicating with people. Remember people feel your communication, even in text. Even an email, and especially like this in a video or face-to-face setting, now, let's go to number four number four.

What i'm asking everybody to do is to really look at this moment and say this is an opportunity to sharpen my ex and we've all heard the metaphorical story of the two men working for a guy at a logging logging business, and he says i can only Hire one of you by the end of the day, whoever cuts down the most today gets the job and the first guy frantically grabs his axe and he just starts whacking the trees and going at it as quickly as he can thinking to himself. This is my competitive edge, while the other one sit back, took his axe and spent 35 40 minutes sharpening his axe and making sure that it was ready to go and guess what we know how the story ends. The one that took the time to sharpen the axe is the one that got the business well today think about this environment, we're in so many of my coaching clients. Maybe you right now watching this have said to me.

Thank goodness. Three years ago we switched to all zoom right video, first communication, tom you've been talking about youtube and facebook live and instagram live and doing all these videos. You know for a decade, and so many people have taken that on. Are you in that same situation? Are you truly a tech enabled agent, or is this now really telling you this moment in time? You need to dig into your crm.

You need to learn your process for closing transactions. Digitally. Are you comfortable with all the e-signature platforms? Are you comfortable inside of say, google drive as an example or zoom as a video, two-way communication, where i can literally throw a virtual cocktail party with 10 or 15 of my friends just by getting an upgraded pay account versus the free account or, more importantly, if I'm in new york city and i've got to have buyer seller attorney attorney right agent, agent and the managing broker just to get the transaction done. Yes from my friends that don't know imagine now, i could be sitting at my home send out a zoom link and i can get everybody there together to close the transaction.

Now, more than ever, you need to be sharpening the acts of not just your tech skills, but also your ability to negotiate your ability to connect with a customer who maybe is in a fearful state and move them from that emotional side. Right, brain to the logical side left brain think about it. Greg markov, one of the master trainers of a company called reni real estate negotiation institute. Just did a training for a lot of our clients last week and what he kept saying was.

We have to listen with tremendous empathy, that's a skill that many people don't have think about it. If you're watching this video and you got into business in 2010, you've never really been in this kind of market. Before, where my friends had were with us during sandy hook or tragically 911 or the dot-com bubble of you know the early 2000s or the reo crisis of 2008, 9 and 10 or short sales they've never experienced this. So they don't know what it's like to talk to someone and really listen with your eyes and your ears in an empathetic way.

Let them get all the emotion out so what's critical is that we help the customer move from the right brain, which is all the emotional reasons why they wanted to buy the house. So the emotional reasons why they wanted to buy the investment or the emotional reasons. Why they wanted to sell their home and move them to the left side, which is the logical side where we validate our decisions? Now we can spend days talking about negotiations. My point to you is: there's a wonderful site called youtube.

How much time are you going to spend over the next weeks days? However, you want to do it working to sharpen your acts, working to improve not only your tech skills, but also your negotiation skills and even more important. Your marketing skills, your ability to message to people because, let's be clear - and this is just a little public service announcement - i know it's a long time fairy show, and i appreciate you hanging with me here: it's really important. You go and look at every automated email or subscription marketing solution. You have because, if they're sending out on your behalf, automated things like hey, it's a great time to buy because the spring market is here, your brand will be really tainted by that it is critical.

We work on the skills we improve it and i'm going into marketing right now, critical that you look at everything you're doing to make sure it has the right tone for today. The right tone for today, just like me, taking the time today on a sunday to film this show where normally i would have recorded it last tuesday. Does that make sense. We want to be as real time as possible.

So here's the last one, the fifth thing that smart agents are doing in this environment is they're redoing their business plan and their marketing plan. We call it the 30-day pivot plan, where i literally stop and say: okay, how many hours am i going to work? How many days am i going to work? How many conversations do i want to have per day that are nurture oriented versus, say you know reaching out to new conversations? Yes, people are still having new conversations and then a marketing plan, for example your email right free. You could literally be sending two to three emails a day to different segments of people. You're working with you could have an email, that's going out that is purely nurturing based to people that are thinking about buying or thinking about selling and simply sending a video like this saying we're in unprecedented times.

I hope first and foremost, you and your family are okay and if you're ready we're ready, don't say it like that. But you know my point right. The key is, you got ta communicate and that needs to be done in a new marketing plan for the next 30 days. So email nurture email, past clients and then maybe just those individual videos you want to send because you just want to connect with people.

So that might be the first thing. The second thing i wrote down is: should you stop your geographic farming, or should you switch the messaging to be more about what's going on today? I would argue that you have built up so much credibility in that geographic farm that if you just stop, if you just stop saying just listen, just sold and here's what's going on the market and here's what's happening right. You know that would be a bad thing, but we need to be mindful of tone right. One of my clients has multiple billboards around his town and one of the things we talked about was in this in this day and age, with what we're currently dealing with those billboards, probably shouldn't be saying thinking about buying or selling right.

You know contact us here right, looking to make a move right, find your next home. Instead, what if it said you know hashtag we care right or support local or something that's meaningful to you. My point is this: don't stop your marketing and branding make sure your tone is right, make sure your tone is right and if you were sending two cards a month, it's okay to cut to one card a month in the short term, make sense now. In addition, we know that daily we need to be posting on all the major social platforms.

Facebook, instagram, linkedin, twitter, right snapchat. If you're there youtube, we want to be everywhere because now, more than ever, if we're out publishing good conversations, publishing good content talking about good things that are happening not like a you know, not egotistical, not braggadocio, being real with people right, hey, we were able to Successfully close this transaction and get the couple into their home, and in a time when that felt impossible, we were able to do it. That could be one. Another could be so excited to spend the last three days knocking on the doors of my neighbors that are an average of 70 years old and just dropping off toilet paper or other supplies.

There's just things that you can do on social that will set you apart and remind people of who you are and your values and what you stand for. So don't hide. Just like. I said you in point number two.

We need to be communicating. Look at what i'm doing on social right, i'm literally shooting a daily video, i'm trying to encourage everyone to keep moving forward, to remember that this will pass and when it does, our commitment is to be even stronger even better than we were when we came into This and that my friends is my commitment: what's yours, so i've, given you five smart things, there's lots of additional things you can be doing. If you got questions, you can always text me otherwise, look and check out on my facebook page or my instagram page or my youtube page or my linkedin page or my twitter profile, because i'm going to keep doing everything in my power to keep you moving forward. As i said, the world may be in a crisis right now, but you and your business do not have to be.

Let's continue to move forward, to support people to help people and to do the right thing. Why? Because it's always the right thing thanks! So much for watching and i look forward to seeing you soon -.