Blog / Prospecting
Brad Miller, Learning to ride the waves of real estate
How agents answer the key questions has a direct bearing on the amount of money that our clients get in their pocket at the end of the day."
In Brad Miller’s mind, real estate follows a wave pattern. The gun director from PRD Nationwide in the gorgeous seaside town of Warrnambool says, “It starts with the build, build, build, build, build with prospecting. Get some listings and then all of a sudden it’s sell, sell, sell, sell. You sell them all, you have this low and then build, build, build, build, build and you’ve got to sell them; sell, sell, sell. It’s a constant flow of waves.”
For a successful business to flourish, Brad knows that he needs lots of surfers able to ride the waves and it is the role of the leaders in an agency to teach them how to do it. He says, ‘Leadership is not about you as an individual; leadership is all about your business and creating duplicable revenue streams and processes that you can roll out and teach other people to do for you. And that’s where you start to become a great leader of your business rather than someone who has just got a job within your business doing it the way you want to do it.”
Brad knows that you can’t just hire a new agent, show them what to do once and then expect them to bring in revenue. ‘Developing talent is a long-term project,” he says. “You have to impart your wealth of knowledge that you’ve learnt over your career to help them and to help you with your business.”
So against this background, perfected over a number of years, Brad has developed a cracker of an induction program for new agents that lasts over a period of months and makes clear the agency’s desired approach. It is framed around the concept of ‘Five Key Revenue Generators’. Brad explains, “The five areas are prospects, buyer management, inspections, opens strategy, negotiation - and how we approach them is always evolving. It’s always being tweaked and changed with the market, with technology.”
Prospecting
Brad is of the view that prospecting has a number of aspects such as business development area calls, price drive campaigns, letterbox drops and landlord calls. “Prospecting is definitely an area that’s going to be very important for any new starter,” says Brad. “But it’s not easy though. You can’t just say: ‘There’s your desk. Go and prospect’, and ask people to sell.”
Brad has found that there can be a lot of fear around prospecting, He says, “It can be one of the biggest killers of people today. You have to nurture someone through that process and let them understand that fear is part of the process, and they’re going to need to understand that, and you’re going to need to give them ways to be able to handle the different types of fear and anxiety that someone might have around the phone. You have to build resilience to the negativity behind prospecting.”
Brad requires his agents to set goals, “…because we want to make sure that they understand what they’re trying to achieve out of their prospecting plan: how long it’s going to run for, what it can mean to their career, their daily numbers, what they’re trying to achieve, their conversions to appointments.”
He continues, “The first thing I teach any new starter is what’s expected of them when someone calls our office. So, what are they saying on the phone? Are they just telling them the property address and then losing any potential future listing?”
He says, “A lot of people leave out developing relationships with landlords. Landlords are our clients and our salespeople offer our best service. Landlords are investors and they’re using our property management service to manage that investment to create wealth for them.”
Listing Presentation
For Brad’s agency, listing presentations take a uniform approach. He explains, “Over the years we’ve refined and evolved our listing presentation so that everyone says the same thing. We run new recruits through the actual scripts that we use, word-for-word, which lays down the foundation for them to be able to deliver a consistent and effective listing presentation.”
The presentation has been recorded. Brad says, “The scripts and dialogues are exactly word-for-word as what’s on the video. Agents watch it over and over again throughout the 12-week achievement plan.” It becomes ingrained and second nature.
Open homes and how to run them
Like Listing Presentations, a thorough approach is adopted in learning how to conduct effective open homes as well. Brad says, “At our office, you don’t just turn up, open the door, flick on a few lights. There’s a lot more involved. We run through a checklist. We have a property display that sits out. We’ve got the same music at every open home, we’ve got the same scent through every open home that is the same as our reception area as well. We’ve got things displayed correctly and we make sure the owners have been through the checklist for staging their home and make sure the presentation is perfect.”
In addition, Brad says, “We have half an hour gaps between open homes because there’s a lot of preparation there. We open, spot on time and we take everyone’s name, address, phone number at every open home and we run through all the objections that might come up. We also see opens as marketing opportunities, so make sure we talk to each person and take down their details.”
Negotiation
Again, agents are guided as to how to handle negotiations. Nothing is left to chance. As Brad explains, “How agents answer the key questions has a direct bearing on the amount of money that our clients get in their pocket at the end of the day.”
Therefore, Brad says, “We want to give everyone a bit of a framework for how we’d like things to be handled. We don’t do backwards and forwards bartering for our clients. We explain the process; what outcomes we’re looking to achieve, and how we answer certain questions such as ‘What will the owners take?’, ‘Will they come down?’, ‘Do you think they’ll take less than the asking price?’.“
With Brad’s approach, each agent does not keep reinventing the wheel. Agents learn from the collective wisdom gleaned over many years and they learn to ride the waves faster than the rest.
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