The late, great Lou Holtz had a way of speaking. If you’ve never seen him speak, I recommend you go check him out on YouTube. Incredible speaker.

But one thing he taught me was that the way people buy is they ask themselves three questions—the essence of these three questions.

First of all, can I trust you?

Can I trust you?

How are you showing that people can trust you? Online reviews. Written recommendations. Testimonials. Can I trust you? Number one question I have.

Second question is, are you good at what you do?

Are you good at what you do? How are you showing that? Are you showing that you're actually getting the job done, or are you getting what I call resistance from your own sphere of influence—not doing business with you or referring you on a regular basis?

Why would that be?

The reason is you're not showing them you're good at what you do. You're not saying, hey, I sold this. I got this pending. I'm out here working every day. I'm working, working, working, and you're...

Brokerage owners, team leaders—I know that you're recruiting every day because you're supposed to do that to build your business. I know you're doing it.

And when you're doing this, and you're setting aside one hour a day for recruiting, who are you targeting? Well, who you should be targeting is the people that are going to be the most receptive to your message.

And often, we just target the top producers in the market, or we target a certain group of people that has done this much production over this number of years.

But let me give you another target: “Gap Agents.”

What's a gap agent?

This is an agent who has not closed a deal in the last 90 days.

They have closed deals in the past. Maybe they've been a top performer. Maybe they were a consistent 3 or 4 or 5, 6, 8, 9 top producer.

But for whatever reason, in the last 90 days, they have not closed a transaction.

These folks will be much more receptive to having a conversation with you because they're looking to be rescued. T...

Hey guys, do you have a client party scheduled for spring or summer? If you don't, you're missing an opportunity. Why? Because the best agents in America generally are doing at least one client party a year, and a lot of them are doing two—the best times to do a client party: spring/summer and fall/winter. So those two types.

And ideally, I would say spring and fall are the absolute best times. Now what's the benefit of doing a party with your clients?

Well, first of all, the benefit is that you're going to treat them as friends. Remember: Friends do business with friends, and friends refer friends. And when you break bread with people, when you have a drink with somebody, when you relax in a relaxed environment, you become friendlier.

You have more conversations that aren't always business related.

So I'm going to give you a couple of tips, two or three ideas, about creating your best event possible.

First tip I will give you is this: it's not about the event size, it's about the...

If you're a brokerage owner or team leader and you're saying to yourself, “hey, who should I target in terms of recruiting in my local market,” I'm going to give you The 20% Rule.

This is something we should all be aware of: There are people that are more likely to move than others in your market area, which falls in The 20% Rule.

Here’s what The 20% Rule means:

People that have had an upswing in their business by 20%, or a downswing in their business by 20% over the past 12 months.

So let's look at the downswing folks. The downswing folks are looking to be rescued. It's a perfect opportunity to be calling them because who do they blame? They never blame themselves.

There's never going to be a time where they say, “well, I didn't do what I was supposed to do.” They're always going to say, “well, my brokerage should have given me better marketing or better support or better training or better leads. It's their fault, not my fault.” It's just a natural tendency of what agents do.

A...

When you're talking to your sphere of influence and you're communicating a message through social media, email, newsletters, email marketing, and physical mail…

What is that message? And do people really like the message?

That's a really interesting question. We can measure that. We can measure it with email newsletters like Constant Contact or MailChimp, based on what they call the click-through rate—how many people are clicking on the topic so they like it and want to read it or dig into it.

And then deeper than that, we can see how long people are on your social media. If they engage, how long they're sticking on that, if they're watching your video for 10 seconds or 20 seconds, getting all the way through it. So that's what we call stickiness with the content.

To make your content more sticky and have a higher click-through, let me give you an idea. And that is to give people social currency.

What is social currency?

That means you're going to give somebody something that the...

Hey guys, we're coming into Spring, and this is a great time of year to offer your concierge services to all of your clients.

What is your concierge service?

You want people to think about you when they think about anything related to their house — whether that's putting a new roof on, new carpet, refinishing the floors, needing an electrician, needing a plumber.

You want to be the first point of contact when they have a need related to their house. But you've got to say it out loud.

You've got to reach out to them. This is a great text, a great call, a great email where you say:

“Hey guys, a lot of times this time of year, coming into Spring, is when people like to do home improvement projects. If that's you and you need a contractor of any kind, reach out to me.

I've got relationships with the best contractors in the market. They give my clients great service and great pricing, so please reach out to me.”

Now, here's how I'm inserting value: I'm saying they're going to get whi...

Hey guys, a really interesting study just came out, and it showed that 21% of agents that are 25 years plus in the business are actively looking for an exit strategy.

So two things here.

Number one, if you own a real estate company and you've got a lot of people that fit that category, your business could be at risk: What if they suddenly all retire en masse?

Second thing about this is: We have a massive opportunity in our market to take advantage of these people that are thinking about leaving the industry.

Here's how:

What if you partnered with one of your agents in your office to go out and target these folks in the industry?

You say, “Hey, there's four or five agents at this company and that company and that company that fit that category.”

And then say to one of your agents, “Why don't we go out there in tandem, you and I together, and let's try to recruit them in?”

You can actually maybe buy their book of business and come up with a succession plan. A recruiting strategy ...

As a real estate agent, you have something in common with every single business owner in your community. Everybody from carpet cleaners, to candy store operators, to toy store owners, to clothing store owners — every one of you has something in common.

Here’s what you have in common: you all want to do more business.

As a small business operator, what you can do is tap into that. What I would suggest to you is you go through your entire sphere of influence today and you take a yellow highlighter out — maybe print it out — and put a highlight next to all the small business owners that you know. You know more than you think.

When you have that highlighter out and you highlight all those folks, the next step is to call them, reach out to them, text them, or stop by their business if it’s convenient and appropriate, and say this:

“Hey, you know what? I want to support a local business every single week, and I’d love to do a collab with you if you’re interested.”

A collab — what’s a co...

How many referrals would you like to receive next week?

If you could just say, “Hey, I want to receive referrals,” how many would that be? Now, everybody would say, “As many as possible,” but let’s be realistic. How many have you received this year? What’s been your average? You’ve probably been getting one a week. For most of you, that’s not the case.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you just got one referral next week? What if you got two? Wouldn’t that be absolutely incredible?

You might say, “How can I start to juice this? How can I get referrals to start flowing to me regularly?”

We often think of it in terms of our spheres of influence, which is good. But we can also get referrals from another category, another source — and that is B2B referrals.

What’s B2B? Business-to-business. We’re always looking at business-to-consumer, B2C, but B2B is a powerful, powerful strategy for you.

Let me give you a good example. If I want to start receiving one referral a week, maybe two, what shoul...

Guys, can I tell you a story? If you don’t like it, don’t watch.

My wife and I are shopping for investment properties in different parts of the country. As we’re looking, of course I’m calling REALTORS. How am I finding them? In these markets, I don’t personally know any, so I went to Realtor.com—just like most buyers would.

I searched for agents, looked at their stats, found a few who looked good, and started calling. I wanted to see if they’d answer or call me back.

Well, no one—and I mean no one—answered their phone.

I get that people are busy or in meetings, but I left voicemails and still… nothing. No callbacks. Crazy.

So then I thought, this is what buyers go through. Everyone assumes agents are hungry, but most aren’t.

Then I tried something different. I filled out the Realtor.com lead form as if I were just another lead. Technically, I am a lead—a big one, actually. I could give these agents tons of business because I’m looking to buy multiple investment properties.

Gues...