Quick question: Have you put your sphere of influence to work? If not, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Think of your sphere as a massive sales army. Maybe you have 100 people, maybe 200, maybe 500. But are you actually putting them to work?

That means programming their reticular activator—the brain’s pattern recognition system—to look for real estate opportunities. We all have it, and you can tap into it. I’ll give you two simple techniques.

First technique:

When you’re talking to someone this week, try this script:

“Here’s a crazy stat that might blow your mind—within the next two weeks, you’re going to hear of someone who wants to buy or sell real estate. You might not think so because you’re not tuned in to it, but just watch. And when you do, think of me. If you can, I’d love for you to send me that referral.”

What happens? Almost inevitably, they’ll hear about someone buying or selling a house within the next couple of weeks.

For the second strategy, say this:

“As we he...

If you're a real estate broker, I want you to do something the next time you're in a grocery store. Look at the shelves and notice how many products say new and improved.

Now apply that to your own real estate company. Ask yourself: What about my company, what I'm offering to agents in this market, is new and improved?

If you can’t think of anything, neither can your current agents—and certainly no one outside your company can either. But this is the secret sauce.

We often think recruiting is all about commission splits. It’s not. If the lowest split was all that mattered, then the operator with the lowest split in your market would have every agent working for them—and we know that’s not true.

So what is attracting agents to join one company over another? It’s the tools, the technology, the services, the support, and most importantly—which company they believe can help them close more transactions at the end of the day.

Here’s the challenge: What can you roll out every quarter th...

As a brokerage owner and team leader, I have a question for you: when’s the last time you fired someone?

That’s a big one, isn’t it? Have you ever actually fired someone, or do they just leave on their own? A lot of brokerage owners and team leaders don’t have the strength to say, “This person isn’t working here anymore.” But avoiding that creates roadblocks for recruiting.

Sometimes one agent creates what I call the “bad apple syndrome.” They’re so difficult—dramatic, gossipy, toxic—that potential recruits won’t join your company because they don’t want to work with them.

Think about your roster right now. Maybe everyone is fantastic. But maybe not. Maybe you’ve got someone with barnacles—someone others don’t want to work with.

And here’s another question: how many people on your roster haven’t closed a deal in the last year? You might have five, six, eight, even ten agents producing nothing. Why are they still on your roster? They’re dragging down your company’s production number...

Hey guys, we're coming up on the end of summer. That means it’s time to have a specific conversation with one key group of clients: sellers.

If their home hasn’t sold yet, it may be time to reprice—because fewer and fewer buyers are entering the market. Many buyers want to be settled before the school year starts. Not all, but a large percentage.

We know the bulk of real estate activity happens in spring and summer. But once we hit late summer—August and September—the market begins to slow down dramatically.

So, what do we say to our sellers?

Here’s how I’d frame it:

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"Mr. and Mrs. Seller, we’re entering September, which means we’re approaching the end of summer. Buyer activity is beginning to taper off, and there’s a lot of competition right now. Many other sellers like you are working to attract a smaller pool of remaining buyers.

"What we typically see this time of year is a wave of repositioning. Sellers begin to get more competitive—especially with price and buyer incen...

Question: how fast do you pivot on price when you list a property?

Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes even the best of us get it wrong. When we get it wrong and don’t pivot quickly, we risk missing the opportunity to sell the property for top dollar.

So, how fast do you pivot? Do you wait two weeks, three weeks, a month, two months? Are you setting that expectation upfront with the seller?

Here’s a study from ShowingTime. They’re integrated with many MLSs across the country and help schedule showings. Because of that, they have their finger on the pulse of showing activity.

Their study, based on tens of thousands of showings, shows that after the first five days, showings plummet on most listings.

Why? Because when a listing hits the market, all eyes are on it. Most buyers—probably 95% to 99%—are set up on portals like Realtor.com, Zillow, or your website. When that listing hits the MLS, the entire backlog of active buyers sees it almost immediately.

Hundreds of buyers look...

I've got a question for you as an office leader or team leader:

Do you have a recruiting website?

Most of the people I coach—office leaders and team leaders across the country—don’t. It's just not something they've thought about.

But having a recruiting website is important.

When someone starts to consider joining your company, they’ll do a little Google search. They’ll check out your website. They’ll look to see if it looks professional, if it feels like a good fit, and if it reflects who they are.

Now, if you also have a recruiting website—or at least a dedicated recruiting page—they can dive into the value your company offers without needing to talk to you just yet.

That’s powerful. A lot of agents are nervous about making that first contact. They don’t want to jump on a call right away. You can make it easier by creating a recruiting page on your website—or even a separate website entirely—dedicated to recruiting.

The most important part of that page?

Outlining your entire ...

Let’s say you meet a buyer at an open house, online, or at an event, and you think, "Hey, I’ve got a hot lead here." Then they cool off. Ever have that happen?

Here’s the issue: Most buyers are not immediate buyers. About 75% of buyers are in the buying cycle for six to nine months before they actually close. Only around 25% of the people you meet will buy within the next 30 days.

The problem is, most agents don’t have a strong follow-up plan.

Your follow-up process should have at least five touchpoints during the buying cycle—and for many of us, it probably needs more.

Think about your follow-up: How often are you reaching out? And how many different media channels are you using?

Sure, you can just call. Or just text. Or send video texts. Or rely on social media. Or mail letters.

But really, you should be doing all of it.

The one thing I want to emphasize today is the concept of a video drip campaign.

This is a system anyone can implement, yet almost no one is doing it.

Even ...

When we're talking to our sellers and giving them feedback each week about what's happening in the market, it's really important that we educate them on a few things that often get missed.

One of those is the power of virtual showings.

So what’s a virtual showing? A virtual showing is when someone visits your listing online. They may or may not come see it in person, but that initial view online is still a strong signal. It means your marketing is working—it's attracting people to look at the listing on Zillow, Realtor.com, your own website, or the MLS.

From there, the buyer decides: Is the listing priced right? Does it look like it’s in great condition? Is it staged properly? A number of other factors come into play once they arrive at the listing page—but your job is to get them there.

And when you’re talking to our sellers every week—and this is how you earn price adjustments, by the way—you need to bring up virtual showings.

Right now, price adjustments are on the rise. About ...

When you're sitting with a seller for the first time, I like to have what I call the “Red Flag Conversation.”

I'll say, “Hey Mr. and Mrs. Seller, one of two things is going to happen now that we've listed the property: either we’re going to get showings—or we won’t. That alone gives us valuable insight. If we put your house on the market tomorrow like we're planning, and we get a surge of activity, that tells us something important.

“It means that the backlog of buyers—hundreds of buyers waiting for the next listing—have turned and looked at your property. If they like what they see online—the photos, the condition, the price—they’ll come see it in person. So if we see a surge of interest, a spike in calls and showings, that’s a signal we’ve nailed the price and did our job right.

“But the opposite can happen too. If we don’t get much activity in the first week or two, that’s a red flag. It’s the market telling us we probably missed the mark on pricing.

“There’s also a third scenar...

Is it a buyer's market or a seller's market in real estate today?

If we look at the nation as a whole, we have about four and a half months of inventory. What does that mean? It means if every REALTOR stopped taking listings tomorrow, it would take about four and a half months to sell off the current inventory at the current sales pace.

Is that healthy? Is that where we want to be? Generally, a balanced market has about six months of inventory. So being slightly under that means sellers still have a bit more power overall. When a seller prices their home correctly and it's in good condition, they can still get plenty of showings and, in some cases, multiple offers — even in today's market.

This is also why home prices continue to rise, despite higher-than-normal interest rates and an economy that appears to be nearing a recession.

The limited supply keeps pushing prices up.

However, it's crucial to understand that real estate isn't just one giant national market. Real estate, like...