Why would you use a pending sign? A lot of REALTORS use a pending sign because they want to encourage people to list their home with them. And they want to show off to the marketplace that their marketing actually worked.

But a pending sign can actually be the worst possible thing you can do for your marketing.

Why?

Because when homeowners in your neighborhood see your listing go up, that's when they're most likely to call you and be curious about the home. The pending sign can help a little bit, but you're going to miss out on the most qualified buyers you can have. 

And I'll give you a classic example:

My wife and I have identified an area of town we want to live in called Echo of the Pines. It's a beautiful area with some nice homes in the neighborhood but very few homes come on the market. The other night when we were driving home, we saw a new for sale sign. As a REALTOR, I get all these alerts, but they become noise and I tune them out.

Why is list price versus sales price such an important number to know and master in your market?

Here's the answer:

Buyers and sellers need to understand that when they're making or accepting offers, this number will have impact. And I'll give you an example:

Every buyer wants to get a great deal, right? Every buyer wants to feel like they're beating the market. So when we sit with a buyer, we need to educate them about what's happening in the marketplace. For instance, in my market today, sellers are receiving on average 99% of list price. Some are getting much more — they're getting 105% or 106% of list price. But the average in our market is 99%.

So with a buyer, what I'll say to them at the beginning of the relationship is:

"Hey, you know, many homes sell for full price in our current market, or even over full price. But the average is 99%. The key is to see how aggressively the sellers price their home compared to other listings in the area....

You are sitting on one of the best CRMs on earth — but you probably know that.

Facebook is absolutely your best CRM on earth. And then Instagram comes second and LinkedIn is third.

All of these social media platforms give us an insight into what's happening in people's lives.

Now how do you use that information? A lot of us just get up, drink our coffee every morning and scroll through social media meaninglessly. But you don't actually look at it as a CRM.

I want you to look at your social media differently. Look at it like it's a CRM Strategy Feed.

That means, I want you to look for "life changes" — meaning new jobs, new babies, retirements, and college graduations. Or people that are sick or going on vacation. There are many different scenarios where people have life changes — even divorces and engagements.

There's so many different life changes that people go through and today it's all public. Every single thing is public.

Now, when...

Have you ever heard of the aggregation of marginal gains? I hadn't either until I read a story about the British cycling teams winning the Tour de France. They never won the Tour de France before 2010. But their new coach, David Brailsford, challenged them to look at everything they're doing — even the smallest things — to see if there was a way to improve it.

They started with the typical things you'd look at like their diets and exercise programs. But then he went a step further — and started looking at the pillows cyclists were using, the exact time they fell asleep and woke up, their daily routines and more to give them insight into their overall training system.

They figured out that even a 1% increase in any area of efficiency would aggregate marginal gains and finally create wins.

You can do the same thing in your real estate career. You have so many different avenues you're managing, but just getting 1% better in each of these areas can create big wins for...

You learn something new every day in real estate. Even after 31 years in this business, I'm still learning.

I learned something fascinating this morning based on a study from Zillow:

In the last half of 2020, the number of listings taken week by week were about even with 2019.

There's a sense that there's a lot less listings in the market as a result of of us not taking as many listings, but it's just not true.

In the last half of 2020, we've taken as many listings as a nation as we did in 2019. But it doesn't feel like that.

So why doesn't it feel like that?

It's like if you own a grocery store and had a delivery guy come every Friday to fill your shelves with the same order. But what has changed is the number of buyers walking into your grocery store and how many products they're buying each time they come in.

If more buyers are coming into your store and buying more products from your shelves, it's going to seem like there's not as much on the shelves...

Join this incredible conversation with REALTOR, Team Leader, and Podcast Legend - Greg McDaniel.

Growing up in real estate and learning the business first-hand from his father Terry (affectionately known as the Grandmaster) Greg learned the old-school fundamentals of salesmanship, from door knocking and cold calls to scripts and dialogue.

Combined with his passion for the latest tech and social media, Greg has created a blend of high-tech and high-touch that allows him to regularly sell $1M+ homes in the East Bay. With over 20 years in the business and 450,000+ cold calls under his belt, Greg has truly earned his nickname “The Junior Grandmaster.”

Are you ready for a Real Estate Coach? Check out the Path Performance Coaching Platform!

• 16 Weeks of Daily On-Demand Coaching
• Hundreds of Downloads - System, Forms, Checklist, Scripts..
• Live Coaching - Multiple Times a Week
• Goal Tracking and Activity Tracking
• Marketing Assets Delivered...

Do you use a Social Media Blitz every single time you take a listing?

If your answer is no, you're missing a huge opportunity to create energy and excitement around your listings to capture more buyers and sellers and potentially add more closings and referrals.

Here are six posts you should do for every listing you get:

1. The Coming Soon Post

First thing you do when you take a listing is you record a raw, no edit walkthrough video of the house. This could be an Instagram story, a Facebook story, or both. This shows people you're actually taking listings and that there's a new listing in your market.

Now, in some markets, you may have to adhere to your MLS rules before you start marketing the property — it's usually between 24-72 hours in most markets. But in some markets, you can't do it at all. Hopefully, you can do that quick, raw, no edit video where you're doing the quick walkthrough in your market.

2. Launch it into your social media when it...

One thing we're all challenged with right now is the speed of the market — or how fast listings sell as soon as they hit the market.

When you listed a house in a traditional market, you would have 90 or 180 days of market time. During that market time you'd able to be able to put out just listed cards, call and farm neighborhoods, host multiple open houses, and receive sign calls from your marketing. And with all that marketing, you would be able to convert those interested people into more buyers and sellers.

So every listing could easily lead to five or six more opportunities for more buyers and sellers.

But today things have changed. Every time you put a house in the market, it's generally selling within a few days with multiple offers. So you're getting robbed of that extra marketing opportunity.

But you can change that by using what I call a Marketing Sequence.

A marketing sequence simply means that you have a strategy about how you...

There's one key thing that all great leaders possess: The ability to be self-critical. They're aware that they're not perfect. And that they need to change, adapt, and pivot to be more competitive in their market.

So how do you do that?

One way is to encourage brutal honesty and absolute transparency with your teams — both inside your office and community as well as outside of it.

If you're an agent, this means asking your escrow officers, lenders, and co-op agents to be brutally honest with you.

Now there's a magic question to help you do this that I learned years ago from a top producer that took her business from around $2 million a year to $10 million a year in only about two years.

When I asked her what she did to transform her business from 2 million to 10 million, she told me she just started asking this key question after every closing.

Here's her key question: "Hey, listen, I'm working really hard to improve my business this year. I really...

There are 8 key systems I recommend you create this year to help you scale your business and provide consistent raving fan level service to buyers and sellers.

By the way, a system is nothing more than a checklist. In the real estate industry we often make systems sound complicated, but a system is nothing more writing down all  the things you need to do in order to do something efficiently.

8 Key Systems to Quickly Create Predictable, Repeatable Success:

1. Pre-listing Checklist

You should have a list of all the things you need to do to get ready to take a listing to be at the top of your game when you meet with that seller for the first time.

2. Listing Launch Checklist

This explains what you're going to do to launch a property into the market. Think about the 5, 10, 15 things you're going to do every time you launch a listing in the MLS.

3. Marketing Plan Checklist

This should include everything you're going to do to actually promote a...