Welcome to the Tom Ferry Show. Welcome back to the Tom Ferry Show episode 288. It's 2024 and it's the year of the five. So I Had a great conversation a couple weeks back with my dear friend.

Steve Harney You know David Childers CEO Founder of a little company called keeping current matters and when we spoke with a couple weeks ago about 4,000 agents on a kind of kickoff the new year maybe you were with us If you're with us, let me know in the comments. Um, we talked about basically 2024 being the year of the five and what does that mean? What does that mean in the US That means we're expecting interest rates in the fives called it June July Of this year, we're also looking at 5.5 million homes sold. That's 11 million units that is geometrically better than 2023 and we know all the reasons why. We know it's because of the rates.

We know it's because of pent up demand and you know what? Nothing but opportunity. This is going to be a banner year. So 5% interest rates, 5.5 million individual units sold, and the third part of that is we're expecting about 5% across the board appreciation now. I Know it's going to be different Market by market, but that in of itself is a very encouraging thing.

Now the reason why I Bring this up to you is starting back with the Tom Ferry show just a few weeks ago. I've been challenging you to say hey, for things to change, things have to change. So I have a couple questions, a couple insights, and a couple recommendations of how you can get even more business from your clients from your sphere. Called it repeat and referral opportunities.

So let's unpack that. The first question that we always should start with is if I was to reflect back on 2023, what was the marketing that worked to get referrals to get repeat business from my clients in sphere And and if you haven't take of the time to really explore that to sit in front of a whiteboard and just list out what are all the things we did Big And small. It's never one thing my friend. it's always an accumulation of hey, I did that event we sent this email I did the Zillow's estimate thing like you talked about.

Thank you very much. By the way, I told you that a couple weeks ago, have you sent the Zmas the Zillow estimates and have you sent those emails and if you have I want to see it in the comments and if you haven't go back. a couple of shows where I talk about that strategy. So the first question is hey, what worked in 2023 The second question really is and it's not too late to shape you're thinking on this.

It's where do I want to place my energy, my concentration, my marketing dollars, my time in 2024 So we're several weeks into the new Year. you now have enough time to reflect back and say okay, where did I waste time? What's working, What's not working Where do I need to double down my efforts to get the kind of results that I want? So today I want to go just a little bit deeper on your database to set an intention for the year in terms of the number of transactions you can generate from your database Now I'm referring to your clients and your sphere and I will reference also the prospects that are in your phone. but they're different from clients and sphere versus those prospects. So the first thing I if I was sitting with you face to face in your office meeting right now or one Oho with you I would say hey, grab your phone and tell me exactly how many contacts you have inside your phone, grab your phone and tell me exactly how many contacts you have inside your phone and again to the best of your ability, you want to separate clients people I've you know helped buy and sell and sphere like people that know me and like me and trust me and I just haven't done a transaction? Maybe they referred me versus the prospects and here's why we talked about this Before we said it's the year of the five, but it's also the year where 5% of the people in your phone listen up.

5% of the people that are in your phone are going to put their home on the market this year. Now there's a lot of reasons why we see as rates come down, more and more people are saying well I can now move from rate X and I can comfortably move into rate Y And whether that Delta of the difference between their current rate and the next rate is 150 basis points, 100 basis points or 200 basis points, What we are seeing what everybody is predicting for 2024 is a massive unlock of inventory from people that are like I'm tired of this house I'm dealing with all the D's that would drive me to ultimately make a decision to move to buy and sell again and the rates no longer apply. They're not the driving force behind my decision. Marketing is ever evolving and with the emergence of AI, the rate of change is faster than ever adapt quickly to Aid driven marketing strategies or risk falling behind.

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So back to the question right: How many people do I have inside my phone? and if I had 5% of them, 5% of my sphere and 5% of my clients transact with me this year, what number would that be? So again, how many people do you have in your phone? How many of those are your clients in sphere? 5% of that number is going to list their house this year. So let's just say you had 500 people inside your phone. Right for easy map. That's 25 people that are going to make a move this year.

Now with 500 people inside your phone that are your clients in sphere, you've got to get through 500 to identify who are the 25. Now by the way, you might have 30, you might have 35. It's one of those years. There's so much pent up demand from last year.

Like, be okay with that. But what am I really asking you to do? The first thing I'm asking you to do is write down that number somewhere inside your office. somewhere at your home office. You need to acknowledge that you've got this wonderful database of clients and sphere before your prospects and 5% of them are going to move this year and we know whoever gets closest to the client wins.

This is why a couple years ago I'm like send the Zilla's estimate, Send out those emails. Let's activate who's ready. Let's stay on the Forefront of their mind. so you are the obvious choice.

So you got the total number of people in your phone. You now have a number that you should be fixated on. Hey, I got 275 people or 300 people or 100 people. Whatever the number is, we know that 5% of them are going to do a direct transaction with you, a repeat transaction with you, and then we want to look at the other side which is that same number using 500.

Again, what percentage should I expect of referrals from that group in 2024? Well, what if I told you most of my best client say, well, I'm going to stay with 5% So again, I've got 500 people, sphere plus clients. That's another 25 referrals that I should close this year. That's 50 transactions just from my database of clients and sphere before my prospects. I Would encourage you to write down that number now just to cover the prospects in your phone I Think it'd be pretty safe for you to say let's say I've got a thousand people and again, these are just I'm making up numbers here I've got a thousand people in my phone.

500 of them are clients in sphere and 500 are like Larry 31055 51212 I Have no idea who Larry is? Well, what I would encourage you to do is take the balance of that number if you're willing to call and to text and to do Zilla's estimates and emails and communicate and invite them to events I Think it's pretty safe to say 1% conversion, 1% conversion because there's a pretty good chance if you have someone named Sally in your phone and a phone number and no email and no mailing address, there's a pretty good chance that Sally has like 13 other friends that are real estate agents. So I say count on a 1% conversion. So now I know I've got a few more transactions from that other side that other 500 and I'm going to write down that number and say that's my goal if I'm willing to do the work. Now here's what you and I both know: in the US we got an election cycle going on.

We got rate Cuts we got massive pent up demand and we do not have enough inventory. So with all these things happening, what is the single question you're going to get asked over and over and over again. We've covered it hundreds of times on the Tom Ferry show. You know what it is.

Hey, you're in real estate. how's the market? Well today I Don't want to talk to you about a script though. One of my most famous Tom fairy shows was the script that I wrote almost 12 or 13 years ago. Hey, it depends.

Are you looking to buy, sell? invest your rent? Which part of the market are you interested in? and then you would discover more from there right? because you're trying to narrow the focus? Well, instead today I want you to think about the person that's asking that question. So I started doing some surveys and I know my friends at Thousand watad have done surveys and N has done surveys and and guess what? what I discovered is There's three primary reasons why people are asking you, how's the market Now don't be shocked, they're not looking for you to be Bloomberg they're not looking you to say well, the 10e treasury is currently at and this is what's happening. Like like you know, there's a percentage of people want that for the most part, when someone's like hey, you're realid side, how's the market, what's going on like they want to know one of three things. Number one: write this down in your notes They want to know is My Equity safe is My Equity safe.

Now think about it coming out of the global you know meltdown of real estate back in 2007 8 9 10 Any hiccup in the economy, any adjustment of the economy remember during the pandemic, everyone's like oh my God real estate prices are going to go down. The whole world's going to fall apart. That wound emotionally is still so real for people. 2007 8 9 10 that I wasn't shocked as people would say, hey fairy, how's the market I'm like hey, what are you really looking, You know, what are you trying to get to like? what like, what part of the market, what are you thinking about? Why are you really asking And then at the end of the day they would say well, you know like the second thing our home Valu is going to go up or down this year that's the second thing everybody wanted to know and I'm like oh they want to know is our Equity safe is home values are they going up or are they going down, are they going to be flat? what's going to happen and then the third one that I thought was really interesting and obviously when I say it to you, you're you're going to say that it's a segment of the population that's thinking about this right? but I would argue it's everybody but it was certainly I certainly heard it more I would say from the sort of mid to late Boomers and the matures right, the silent seniors and and that was how is this economy? How is this Market going to impact my future plans I Was at lunch in Seattle a couple weeks ago with the pal mine and he's 72 years old and when I was sharing this information he you know he said to me afterwards at lunch he said it's so true he says Tom every time I look at like My Equity I think okay well when I'm gone or maybe I refinance and pull some cash out like this is going to go to helping my son buy a house and this is going to help my daughter buy a house and this is going to help you know maybe grandkids one day go to college like like that's how he's visualizing his Equity So I don't want to give you a script today instead? What I want you to do is I want you to have tremendous empathy for the person that's asking I want you to have the humility to be able to say tell me what you're really looking for So when they say how's the market I can go a million different directions, tell me what you're really looking for.

Well you know I Just like is everything going to be okay like that? That's what I got a lot from people is My Equity safe home. Pric is going up or down and how is this going to impact my future plans I Promise you when you do that, you're going to get an unbelievably positive response now as we get near wrapping this up I know you now have a number right? I've got x amount of people that I'm going to. You know, get repeat business from. you know from my sphere they're going to refer me x amount of business.

my clients are going to refer me x amount of business. There's going to be a tremendous amount of opportunity, so the question now becomes what do I do So I'm not going to be super prescriptive with you Instead I'm going to assume you already have some time allotted to reach out via text and call and personal emails, right to your entire database. Well, whatever you're currently scheduled to do, my advice to you is frontload all of it to the first half of the year I Can already see you Oh my goodness. Frontload all of it I Was going to I was going to prospect an hour a day or I was GNA I Was going to do three events for my clients.

one in the summer, one in the fall and one in the winter. As a as a thing that I do every year and my response is do those three, but do three more in in the first half of the Year Whoever gets in front of their clients in their sphere and their prospects the most in the first half of 2024, What's going to happen? Think about it like this: If look at the little diagram I'm giving you here as rates slowly begin to drop, if your marketing and lead generation isn't crusting High Going high and right ready for when the rates drop, what's going to happen? You're going to be behind the eightball and I just think coming off last year, the last thing you or any smart agent would want to do is intentionally put themselves behind the apall. Now before you say to me, Tom I'm already busy. Remember we talked last week about if it's not in your schedule it doesn't exist.

Maybe just maybe just as this is the year of the five, maybe this is also the year where you take control of your time, where you take control of your destiny. You take control of what's going on every single day to to build your business because the opportunities are there. The opportunities are there. but if you don't get after it, if you don't make the adjustments, if you don't acknowledge that 5% of repeat and referral and that 5% opportunity of people to refer you more business, if you don't acknowledge that, there's a pretty good chance you're going to miss the opportunity and that would be a shame.

It would be a shame to come off 2023 and have the streets essentially paved with gold in 2024 and intentionally miss it because you were unwilling to do the work. Does that make sense? Now you might be like oh, Tom getting a little tough on me. It's called carefrontation I Care enough to confront you on the obvious. The buyers and sellers will find an agent.

Let's just not have those buyers and sellers be people that are already inside your phone. All right. I Can't wait to read your comments. You know at least two people you need to forward this to.

Thank you so much for watching today. Remember always your strategy matters and now more than ever frontloading all of your marketing. That's what rules the day. See you on the next show! Hey, if you like this content, make sure you get back to my channel and check out Jason Pantana this week in marketing the Tom Ferry Podcast Experience and of course mindset Monday.