Tom Ferry: Here’s Your “Go Forward” Plan for 2020

How does a coaching session with Tom Ferry sound right about now?

As the country slowly re-opens, there are many signs that real estate activity is up. Agents are no longer asking how to make it through the pandemic, they’re asking a new question:

“What’s the best way to go forward and get back my momentum for the rest of 2020?”

We turned to Tom Ferry, one of the top real estate coaches in the world, to answer that question. In this week’s show, Tom shares a 6-step “go forward” plan that any agent can put into action right now. You’ll hear tactics, scripts, and specific things you can do now to charge your business for the rest of 2020. Class is in session, so grab a pen to take some notes and don’t miss part one of our two-part conversation.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered automatically: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to get future episodes delivered automatically: Apple Podcasts/iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube

Links and Show Notes

• HomeLight’s flash survey, May 18, 2020
• TomFerry.com
• Connect with Tom on social media: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | LinkedIn | Twitter
• HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center
• Subscribe and listen to The Walkthrough: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube

Full Transcript

(SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host) Agent optimism is up. Buyer and seller activity is up. A growing number of agents say your business is up. All of that is what we heard loud and clear in HomeLight’s latest flash survey. We asked almost a thousand of you how things are going and it looks and feels like the tide is starting to turn.

From my conversations with a lot of you over the past few weeks it’s obvious that agents like you are putting the past in the past, you’re getting back to work — safely of course — and you’re making a plan for the rest of 2020. And I’m not alone. Listen.

Tom: The person listening to this right now, I want to make a statement to you. I want you to know that I hear you and I feel the same way. Most of us are just tired of talking about COVID. We want to talk about the go-forward plan. You know, what am I gonna do today? What am I gonna do between now and the end of the year?

Matt: That’s the unmistakable voice and energy of Tom Ferry. And he’s going deep with us today, tactics, scripts, and specific things you can do now to crush the rest of 2020. And today, is only part one of our conversation you guys.

This is “The Walkthrough.”

(INTRO MUSIC)

Hi, everyone. I’m Matt McGee, editor of HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center. On this show, you’ll learn what’s working right now from the best real estate agents and industry experts in the country. At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. That’s why we created “The Walkthrough.” We’re on a journey exploring how great real estate agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. If you’d like to reach me with feedback, ideas, or questions about “The Walkthrough” you can send an email any time. It’s walkthrough [at] homelight.com. You can also leave a voicemail. Phone number is (415) 322-3328. I do read all the emails and voicemails that come in. Again, it’s walkthrough [at] homelight.com or (415) 322-3328.

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. And let me begin by saying that all of us at HomeLight join you in remembering and honoring the lives of all the men and women who died while serving this great country. If you’ve lost a loved one who was serving in the military, our hearts go out to you, especially today.

You know, you often hear TV or radio hosts say, “Our next guest needs no introduction,” and then sometimes you’re like, “Ummm, I have no idea who that person is.” Well, I can’t imagine that an introduction is needed today, but just in case….

My guest today is one of the most successful and well known real estate coaches in the industry. He’s on all the top real estate coaches lists and often at the very top. He’s a bestselling author, he’s been coaching for decades, and his company has coaches and clients around the world.

I’m talking of course about Tom Ferry.

Now, my first introduction to Tom and his coaching program came in 2016. My wife signed up for coaching that year. Understand, she was already in the top 20% of agents locally and I was skeptical. Why did she need coaching? What difference would it make? Well, it turns out that after her first year in coaching, her transactions went up by 50%, sales volume doubled and her GCI went up 73%. I was wrong. She was right. Not the first time that’s happened in our house and certainly not the last. I share all of that with you as sort of a disclaimer and just to let you know that I’m not a completely unbiased host today.

So when it came time to plan an episode of “The Walkthrough” about getting back to business and creating a plan for the rest of 2020, Tom Ferry was an obvious choice to have on the show. I sent him an email one day and a few hours later he wrote back, “Let’s do it,” with a thumbs up.

So this is part one of a two-part series. Now next week, Tom and I will chat about the future, how being a real estate agent may change due to the pandemic. Open houses, door knocking, what’s that all gonna look like a year from now?

But today, we’re diving deep into your go-forward plan for 2020. Listen for Tom to share six specific things that you can be doing right now to build your business — with an emphasis on how to connect with potential sellers. And seriously, grab a pen because this is literally a walkthrough of ideas and tactics and scripts and you’re gonna want to refer to this later.

So without further ado, here’s part one of my conversation with Tom Ferry.

(BEGIN CONVERSATION)

Matt: Tom Ferry, thank you so much for being on “The Walkthrough.” It’s a pleasure to chat with you in this format. I want to ask you as we get going about sort of what the future, the rest of the year looks like for real estate agents, what they can be doing now to get ready for the rest of the year? But first, I want to sort of let you talk about what the last couple months have been like for you and the Tom Ferry organization. Suddenly things start to blow up in March. How has this been for you?

Tom: Thank you for asking and thanks for letting me be on your show. I will tell you we were paying attention to it in January. My former COO being born and raised in Beijing, you know, we were watching closely what was happening there. We obviously, you know, one of my biggest clients and closest friends has 25,000 real estate agents throughout Europe, so, you know, we were watching that closely. So, you know, when it basically made its way into the U.S. and we knew it was going to be the same level of intensity, we pivoted, right? And, you know, really went to a work-from-home scenario ahead of both our governor and then certainly our county.

And that was interesting and challenging when you’re used to a culture of high fives and hugs and lunch meetings and Hangouts and connecting. But through Slack and Zoom and other forms of communication, daily huddles we’ve certainly worked through that. I will tell you, productivity has been extraordinary. Next Tuesday I guess will be our 10th week in a work-from-home situation. And as I jokingly say to my staff every Friday when we get together, I say, “And once again this week, we have no HR issues, right? No one is saying ‘Matt looked at me the wrong way and I’m angry’ or ‘who ate my tuna sandwich,'” right? All of that stuff has gone.

But I will tell you being a CEO of a company as a founder-led company, no outside capital, just me in this and having several million a month that you are responsible for and then thousands of clients around the world, I mean, we’re a client-centric company. We exist because we help our clients move forward. I remind everybody in my company every single day, if the clients aren’t happy, we’re screwed. Like our job is to keep them moving forward. How do you have someone move forward when there is so much uncertainty, right? And even though I can say, “Look, this is what’s going on in China, this is what was happening in Italy, here’s things that we can expect,” we very quickly rallied around this sort of conversation of this is a moment in time we need to pivot. What worked in BC, before COVID, will still work in DC as long as you understand there’s gonna be new principles, new guidelines, a new tone, a new message, and really dealing with the psychology of uncertainty, the psychology of fear that many agents if they got in the business, sort of 2011 forward had never really dealt with. So we just took it as a call to arms to say we’re gonna overtrain, right, all of our clients and break down all of the how-tos, whether it’s how to do a virtual open house, how to do your listing presentation on Zoom, how to get yourself camera ready to how do you negotiate the challenging issues? How to call your lender and say, “Hey, is this loan gonna close? Is this gonna fund?” And that was now seven weeks ago. So I think like most, Matt, we’re just pivoting.

Matt: This has been a pandemic that affects agents in different parts of the world at different times, it rolls through the U.S. in different times, right? So agents in New York and California have been more limited than agents in the center part of the country. When agents are at different stages like this, how does that impact your messaging to them?

Tom: The simple answer is because we have so many clients in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut — Connecticut as a state, the real estate economy, the housing business has not been good for a decade. While the rest of the country roared for the last 10, 11 years, they never got better. So I’m very mindful that I look at state by state, county by county, things like Google Trends, showingtime.com — empower myself, all of my other trainers because we’re doing virtual events now twice to three times a month for thousands of people. And every coach talking to individual client, I say, look at their access to their MLS, right? Let data determine how you’re gonna help move that person forward. The MLS, showingtime.com, Google Trends, what’s happening with homes for sale or home searches on Google, and then mortgage rates. And I think when you break it down to that, then every person can be empowered by the data to do something.

Now, New York City is a little more challenging. We’re talking about vertical living, we’re talking about the governor basically shutting everything down, right? You can’t make phone calls to people anymore. I mean, it’s challenging, it would be an understatement. But look at our friends in Pennsylvania, they’re dealing with the same thing. My client Tom Toole was at 118 closed in pending transactions at the end of March, and here’s one of the most successful agents in the country running this powerful team, a gazillion five-star reviews on multiple sites. And Matt, he did 10 transactions, 11 transactions in the last … call it month and a half, where he would have normally done 55 or 60. But Pennsylvania, they’ve said real estate agents are not essential. What he’s gonna do? Versus my client George, who is in Phoenix, Arizona who did 3,500 transactions last year, it’s gonna be different. So every agent’s got to say to themselves, “Where am I? And then what can I do? And then how resourceful can I be?”

Matt: We know that there’s going to be a rebound at some point, right Tom? We don’t know how soon it’s gonna be, it could start within a month, it could be three, four, five, six months from now. But we know what’s gonna happen.

Tom: So hold on, I gotta make a statement. Are you ready?

Matt: All right, go ahead.

Tom: Most agents have already rebounded because they decided to rebound.

Matt: Okay.

Tom: All right. If you decided to rebound, you’re rebounding. I know clients that said, “Hey, you know what? I don’t give a you know what? The world may be in crisis, but I don’t have to be. I’m choosing to work two times as hard, make two times as many calls, be more resourceful, take more listings, make more sales, do it in a safety-first guideline, follow all the rules.”

But here’s the bigger problem. The bigger problem is, what about the other 800,000 agents that furloughed themselves and took a nice 9- to 10-week unpaid vacation? We got to get those men and women back. We got to get them back. I’m convinced when you look at the MLS, you look at the data and you guys see it certainly on your end, it’s the rich and the rest right now. Most have already rebounded, right? They’ve already pivoted, they’ve already adjusted and they’re working their butts off, and God bless every one of them. The challenge is we can’t do it alone. We need to get all the other people to recognize that, hey, whatever the rules are… My dad recorded an audio program, Matt, I don’t know, 5,000 years ago, maybe it was on record I don’t know. But you know what it was called? Listing and selling real estate in a high-interest rate market. And the opening of the audio cassette says, “Hey, it’s Mike Ferry and today we’re talking about listing and selling it a high interest market. With interest rates at 19% today, here are the strategies that are working.” Look, we made it through that, we made it through that. Most of us have already rebounded now it’s about ready, solving the problem. We all need to take three to four times more listings than we’re currently taking. You do that, you are the solution. Real estate is gonna help this country heal and recover.

Matt: Amen.

Tom: It’s not like 2009, where we were the problem. We’re the solution.

Matt: Amen. So let’s dive into that. What can agents be doing now? I’ve had this phrase going around in my head, “get ready for the rebound.”” What can the agents be doing now the ones that are maybe not already rebounding? Let’s dive into some tactics. What can agents start doing right now to make sure the rest of 2020 goes well?

Tom: I have so many things that they can do. So I want to just remind everybody right now, if you’ve ever worked with me before I am never at shortage for ideas proven to implement.

What I want to stress to everybody is I’m gonna tell you the things that are working right now for clients and then you have to decide what is the right one or two that are right for you, right? What are the one or two that are right for you? Because no one in my world, not my absolute, not my client, George Lawson who did 3,500 transactions last year. He doesn’t do 100% of what I talk about, he does about 25% to 30% and makes $13.5 million to $14 million in GCI while he does it. Pick the one or two that are right. Here’s a few. You ready?

Number one, take a look at a software called Remine, R-E-M-I-N-E, Remine. It’s connected to your MLS, right? Just about 90% of the MLSs in the U.S. What it allows you to do is do some data mining, right? So when I go in there, I’m looking for in my community who is most likely to sell? Now I can give you just some options to take a look at. First thing I want to know is how many homes are in my marketplace that are non-owner occupied? Non-owner occupied. Non-owner occupieds right now they’re struggling. How do I rent my property out? Is this a good time to be renting it? Oh my God, what am I gonna do? My tenant just lost their job. I’m getting them out. I need to start over. There is an enormous opportunity to call. “Hi, Matt. Tom Ferry, Banana Real Estate. I was looking at your rental property at 1234 Banana Street. I know you own very little mortgage on that, and I’m just curious with everything happening in the world, have you had any thoughts of selling that property or a 1031 exchanging it, trading it up in the multi-units, or maybe just cashing out? What are you thinking about doing?” And just going right at them, going right at them. Now here’s what’s great about non-owner occupieds. They’re not emotional sellers, they’re like, well, it’s my home and I raise my kids here. It’s an asset, you’ve met me and it’s either great or it’s a pain in the butt and you’re trying to find the ones that it’s a pain in the butt. So Remine for that.

What about Remine for just show me every home in my area where there’s no mortgage. I just saw a recent stat from Keeping Current Matters — 42.1%, 42.1% of all homes in America have no mortgage. Either, Matt, they’re saying, “I love having no mortgage, this is awesome,” or maybe they’re saying, “Yeah, you know what? This house is a little too big, maybe it’s time to right size.” If you ask, by the way, separately, go on Instagram every one of you today and on your stories, use the Yes/No feature, the polling and say, “Hey, I’m just serving everybody with everything happening with COVID,” and I know no one wants to talk about it anymore, but just play along here, ask this question for Yes/No on the polling feature of your Instagram story. “Are you living in your dream home now?” You know what you’re gonna discover? 80% of the people are gonna go, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Well guess what? Now if you’re really savvy on Instagram, and I know I’m being slightly ADD and intermixing a few ideas, just consider how easy that is for you to do and then have the second one be, “If you answered no, I’m curious, have you had any thoughts of trading up or trading down in 2020 or 2021? Yes or no.” And know what you just did? You just identified sellers that are your friends that maybe haven’t responded to an email, maybe haven’t responded to a Zoom invite. So think about that.

So with Remine, do the data mining. How about I’m in anywhere in the northeast and I pull up every person 75 years or older who has no mortgage on their house and there are two-story home. You and I both know that person’s probably thinking about moving to South New York, aka Florida, and they got nothing but equity. So these are opportunities for a direct mail, for making phone calls, for doing marketing. So those are my first two.

The third one I would tell you is there’s a tremendous opportunity right now if you have game, if you have confidence, if you believe in yourself, if you have a safety-first listing launch then you could go after expired listings, old expired and new expired listings. We have clients every day, Matt, that are listing expired listings right now and they’re in environments like DC or Baltimore or Philadelphia. And guess what, right? They’re repackaging, repositioning, offering the right marketing strategies, and winning the business. Now if that’s too much for you, don’t worry I got some easy ones. But that’s called hey, I identified a whole bunch of needles in the haystack with those first three. And, yeah, it takes a little more skill, a little more finesse. So let me give you two super easy ones. I know I’m giving you a lot here.

Matt: I’m writing things down. You keep going.

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Tom: But I just want to give people stuff that I know is working right now. So here’s another one that’s working right now. Seller seminars on Zoom. Get this. The backstory is, well if I go way back, my former client, number one agent in the world, Christina Martinez, San Jose, California, right? I got her to be number one in the world, number one for C21, right? Great agent, super just unbelievable EQ and IQ as an agent. Her business was, she’d get four or five people together that had equity in their home that had desire to invest in real estate but didn’t know how. So the hook was … curious about investing in real estate, sit down with a top agent who will help you explore and navigate blah, blah, blah. Well, I turned that little idea on steroids and in a four-year run, it went from having three or four people, a couple meeting at her office to having 1400 people at the Fairmont in San Jose doing literally like a Tom Ferry seminar on how to buy and what to do and panels of people talking about it, single moms that did it and the whole nine yards. Well, four years ago when I knew we were in a listing crisis, I said to all my clients at the summit, you should be doing sellers for seminars, sellers that for people that are elderly, that are looking to go from big house to small house, right? Seller seminars for people that invested in real estate. And you could just see that people were like, “Yeah, that’s a good idea but the market is so good, I don’t know yet.”

So I brought it back nine weeks ago on our pivot training. The first one to do it is Dave Robles. And Dave, if you’re listening, I love you. Dave is a 20-year veteran of the business. But get this, Matt, he’s in Los Angeles like in Silver Lake, Hollywood Hills, average sales price, two and a half million. He does, he announces like a Friday night, 5:30 to 6:15, right? 45 minutes. “Hey, guys, Dave Robles. Join me.” And I forget if it was seven misconceptions of selling your home during COVID or the five mistakes to avoid in selling your home during COVID. And guess what? He announces it on social, he boosts it to his 15-mile radius of where he sells the most houses, he emails and invites every person in his database, he calls all the people that are future sellers, all the sellers that had ghosted him, right, that didn’t respond to him. He calls every buyer thinking they might also have to sell to buy. And he gets, because he does it on Zoom. You know, on Zoom where we are now as we’re recording this, when you set up your webinar, you can hit a button that says registration which means people have to register, cell phone, name, email.

Well, the first time he does it, Matt, he gets 78 people to register. Now are you ready? 78 people that said, “I’m interested in learning the mistakes to avoid and selling.” I would call that a research-phase seller someone that’s thinking about selling but they’re concerned, they’re worried, they’re nervous and you’re gonna solve the problem, you’re gonna answer the question. And then get this only like 38 showed up. Oh shucks, that’s a loss, right? 38 people. Get this because Dave is a really savvy guy, Dave was very early on YouTube and Facebook and social marketing. He’s a phenomenal geographic farmer, great at open houses. He’s great all of the things that matter, great at internet marketing, great at online lead conversion. He said to me, “Tom, I’m like 15 minutes into the presentation. And I say, by the way, guys, as he’s going through the mistakes, if you have a question you want to go deeper, you can just simply send me an email or you can send me a text.” And boom email, “Dave, we’d like to list our $3 million house.”

Matt: Oh, nice. How fantastic is that?

Tom: I’ve got agents all over the world doing it. And I haven’t even given you the easiest one but tell me your thoughts first?

Matt: I mean, what’s great about that is that it’s recognizing that you have a very captive audience right now because people are at home, they don’t understand what’s going on in the real estate market in general, but now they have more time to engage and get their questions answered. That’s what makes the idea of doing seminars so perfect right now.

Tom: Yes. So I’ll give you guys the last one. I know for the listeners out there, you know, hopefully you are not just getting value out of this, but you’re seeing that there is just so many ways for you to grow your business, right, and to take more market share and to take more listings, that I want to just say to you a quote that I’ve been saying over and over again that we all have doubts, right? We all have moments where we doubt ourselves our abilities. You know, am I worth it? Am I worthy? Am I good enough? And I want to just say to you right now, if you must doubt something, doubt your limits. If you must doubt something, doubt your limits. I’m watching brand new agents kill it in this market. I’m watching veteran agents that couldn’t even figure out their MLS, right, that are now doing everything I’m talking about, doing Zoom listing presentations, doing virtual open houses. Listen to me. It’s about being resourceful and getting out of your own way. Done is always better than perfect. Just try it, just try it, my friend.

Now here’s the easiest one on the planet, consumers right now have a lot of questions, right? Kelsey, who’s behind me, who’s, you know, was born and raised not too far from where you work and live. She said, her mom said to her, “Honey, I’m just deeply concerned that, you know, the housing industry must just be destroyed.” And Kelsey is my producer, “She’s like, wait a minute, I’m on shows every week with Tom Ferry and, you know, talking about This Week in Housing and what’s going on in the national numbers and how the unemployment rates and the interest rates and what’s really going on.” The average consumer has no idea, and most of them are in your database. So what if, if you have a thousand people, don’t do this with all a thousand in your database, if you got 500, I probably wouldn’t do it. I’d isolate it. But if you got a 100 or 200, send them all an email today, and in the subject line put, you ready? “Want to know exactly how much your home is worth during COVID? 15 minutes, just you and me.” Want to know how much your home is worth? And obviously that huge — “Matt, your home’s value during COVID just you and me? You and me or I’ll keep it a secret.

Matt: I love it.

Tom: Guess what? Like I would shoot a video and I’d post it on my Facebook page or I’d post it on my Instagram and I’d say, “Hey my friends, thank you so much for watching this. I’m being inundated every single day with basically three or four questions. People call me, they’re saying, Tom, how’s the market? But what they’re really asking me is how much is my home worth right now? And I’ve been scheduling 15 or 20-minute meetings just to show them the MLS, just show them the data and show them what’s going on. Because many people have a misconception that A, it’s like 2007, 2008, 2009 again, and it absolutely isn’t. That was a real estate crisis that became an economic crisis, where today we are in a health crisis that’s become an economic crisis, but real estate is not in crisis.” So I’m answering that question for my customers. The second question I’m answering is, you know, how can you buy or sell today safely, right? And that’s on the forefront of everybody’s mind, myself included. Because remember, I’ve got my 93-year-old mother-in-law living with me and she would be susceptible, so safety is my highest priority as well. And then people are asking me, “Tom, what about the mortgage world? I’m hearing about, you know, no loans and no jumbo and no QM. Will that impact me?” “So as a friend of mine here on Facebook or Instagram, if you’d like to schedule a 15-minute session, just let me know below, send me a DM and you’ll see in the link I have a little thing that says Calendly. You can actually book an appointment with me at the time that’s right for you like you book with your hairstylist or anybody else. So just click that link below and I’ll take the time to prepare and have all the data ready to go to answer your question. So thank you so much. I love you. I hope you and your friends and family are safe.” And boom, the video ends. And I’d freaking do that… Did I just almost curse? I apologize.

I would do that tomorrow on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, probably put it out on Twitter but that would be too long for one of their videos. But then that would be the email message, Matt, that I would send to my database. That would be the email message. And then you know what I would do, I would stack, I would chunk some time. I’m making this up … 10:00 to 12:30, I want to try and do six or eight. Then I’m gonna do it again. I’m gonna do that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday because people are at home and they want the break. You with me on this? I’m totally not gonna do them on the weekends because everybody wants to try and be out and try and get outside and try to have some fun. So I’m gonna stack up chunks of time, and whether I use Calendly or I just blocked the time and tell them this, “These are the options.” You know what you’re gonna discover? Matt, there is so many research-based sellers out there that aren’t living in their dream home, that have realized they don’t have a home office and they’re probably gonna be working from home for a while. They don’t have the backyard they want, they don’t have the living situation they want, they got too much space, not enough space. Think about the people that bought an apartment in Manhattan, that are like 2000 square feet, “Oh, my God. It’s in the right part of town.” Well, now that’s them, their spouse, their dog, and their two kids and they really only have 850 square feet of living space. You know what they’re thinking about right now? Hello suburbs of New Jersey. If you’re not providing this, it’s okay, someone else will. They’ll click on another website and you lost.

Matt: Let me just recap. I’ve been taking notes as you’ve been going through this. Number one you started with Remine. Is that just remine.com?

Tom: I think it’s remine.com but it’s all inside their MLS. This is an app inside their MLS that almost everybody has access to.

Matt: Okay. And so you’re researching your neighborhood, who’s most likely to sell non-owner-occupied, that sort of stuff. You talked about Instagram polls, are you living in your dream home? You talked about going after expireds in the neighborhood. The seller seminars on Zoom, which I love. The email to your database, not the whole thing, but maybe 100, 200 people, do you want to know what your home is worth in this environment?

Tom: Yes.

Matt: And the thing that you said that I love is when you said that done is better than perfect, because that’s the one thing that I’ve been trying to get across and we’ve been trying to get across to agents is that especially in this environment, Tom, nobody expects you to look like a million bucks and nobody expects your Zoom video to be, you know … ABC, CBS, NBC quality. Just get it done and get out there and connect with your people.

Tom: 100%. And listen, on that note, I get asked this question a lot because I give out my cell phone to people and I say, “Text me if you got a question,” right? And I get 50 to 300 questions a day, which is by the way, when I started doing this, I didn’t think about how much time that was gonna take. So I had to kind of adjust my schedule and think about what, it’s 12:30 at night, I put everybody to sleep and I’m like, okay, now to respond to 50 people and answer questions.

But here’s the reality. The question I get is, What’s the most important video I should be shooting? And the answer is you should be doing a weekly MLS-based, ShowingTime-based, Google Trends search-based, interest rates-based show for I don’t know, one minute to two minutes. “Hi, it’s Tom Ferry Banana Real Estate. This week in housing here in Minnesota, here in Oshkosh, wherever you are in the world, right? Here’s what’s going on. We had this many new homes come on the market, right? We had this many go pending, we have this many closed. The current days on market is now X, which is up or down from last week or year over year, right? We had this many withdrawn, we had this many expired. Let me explain what that means, right? Now all of this tells us because here’s the Google Trends, what we’re seeing is from 2004 to today, we’re at the highest peak of people ever looking for homes online. We’ve never seen these kinds of numbers from every website on the planet, but I use Google Trends, it’s a pretty reliable source. And here’s what’s going on from ShowingTime.” And literally I’m just showing them the graphics, right? Or I’m describing the graphics and giving them the example in my show. The point is when you wrap all that up around interest rates, it’s not that every week you’re gonna say, “Now is the perfect time.” Don’t do that. Because if all you ever do is ask people and tell people now is the perfect time, then when it isn’t and you say that, you’re stupid.

Matt: Oh, you have no credibility when you do that.

Tom: Right. I mean so instead of saying, “And now is the perfect time,” you can say, “Clearly there’s a perfect storm, right? Buyer demand far outweighs the number of homes on the market, right? There’s no doubt, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. If you have questions, if I could ever be of service, you can text me, you can email me. Thank you so much, Tom Ferry, Banana Real Estate.” And I’m out. And you do that every single week and you post it on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, I mean put it everywhere, right? But keep people informed. Be the good news show versus the drama of the media that makes us all feel like we should just never get out of bed and eat a bowl of ice cream.

Matt: I had Gary Gold on a couple of weeks ago on the show, Tom, and he said this is not the time to be BS-ing anybody. People want the truth right now.

Tom: Well, that’s why, again, I go more quant-based. I don’t care how you feel about the market. Show me the data, right? Show me the data. That’s why it’s like MLS, ShowingTime, Google, interest rates, data, data, data, data. You decide what does that mean? You can give your opinion about the market because people want to know what’s your opinion, I mean, that’s every talk show on the planet. But great leaders, and you know this, Matt, great leaders, right? They control the narrative by keeping things as it is. They don’t make it better and they don’t make it worse. If you’re like … now is the single greatest time on the planet to sell. I don’t think you can afford, right? But it’s also not the absolute worst time to sell, right? It’s just, hey, if you got death, divorce, default, too small, baby coming in, in-laws moving in, too much space, job transfer, work-from-home, if you got some of the normal factors that are causing people to sell, give me a call.

(Speaker: Matt McGee, Host)

How great was that you guys? There’s so much in there and that’s only half of our conversation by the way. For our takeaways segment let me recap those six things Tom recommended for your go-forward plan. And I want you to notice that the first five are all about identifying owners in your area who may be ready to sell soon. So if you’re looking for new listings, here’s a roadmap.

Number one, use Remine to look for homeowners in your market who are most likely to sell this year, homes that are non-owner occupied, for example. You can probably find Remine integrated with your MLS, but if not, just go to their website, it’s remine.com. That’s R-E-M-I-N-E.com.

Number two, Tom mentioned the, are you living in your dream home Instagram poll, and then following up with the people who answer no.

Number three, he said if you have your safety-first listing plan in place, reach out to the owners of expired listings in your area.

Number four, do seller seminars on Zoom. Set it up as a webinar and invite people to register, teach them about what it takes to sell in the current market and then be sure to follow up afterward.

Number five, email a select group of your database, not the whole thing — but he said maybe 100 people at a time or so, and then invite them to do a 15-minute, “what is my home worth now” call with you.

And then number six, Tom suggested that every agent should be doing weekly videos on social media with updates on what’s happening in your market.

All right. Coming up at the very end of the show, I’ll have a preview of part two with Tom Ferry, so stay tuned for that.

First, a quick shout out to Jill Penman, she’s an agent in Miami, Florida who emailed after last week’s episode when I talked to Melinda Elmer. Jill said in the email that she agrees 150% with everything Melinda said about running a small team and then she ended with, “She rocks” — about Melinda, and we certainly agree. So thanks for the email, Jill.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Email me at walkthrough [at] homelight.com or you can leave a voicemail (415) 322-3328. We may use your comments on a future show. Again, it’s walkthrough [at] homelight.com or (415) 322-3328. When you call, it’ll go straight to voicemail, so use that number any time of day. You don’t have to worry about waking me up at 5:00 AM Pacific because you’re listening at 8:00 AM Eastern and you have something to say. Just go ahead and call, it’s all good.

Next week I am back with Tom Ferry for part two of our conversation. We’re going to look ahead. What’s the future of open houses and other tried-and-true real estate practices like door knocking?

Tom: I think some of that’s gonna carry all the way through 2021. So door knocking, if I had to bet, I probably … I’d minus it by like 90%. If that was my only strategy, I’d be pivoting hard.

Matt: So there’s a sneak peek at our show for next Monday, June 1st. We also talk about keeping your finances in order and a lot more. Tom even told me that I can give out his text number if you want to message him directly, so don’t miss it.

That’s all for this week. Thanks to Tom Ferry for joining us and thank you for listening.

Remember, at HomeLight we believe in real estate agents. That’s why we created “The Walkthrough.” We’re on a journey exploring how great real estate agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd and become irreplaceable.

Go out and sell some homes, do it safely, please. We’ll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.