Hey guys, you’ve probably noticed in your market a lot of new construction when it comes to apartments. That’s common across the country right now. Tons of apartments coming online, tons of rental properties.

What’s happening is it’s putting pricing pressure into the rental market. I own rentals in my own small town here in southern Oregon, and we’ve seen pricing pressure here locally.

And what that means is that people that have rentals might be feeling a little bit under pressure, especially the higher-priced rentals.

So let’s assume somebody bought a home. They’ve got a mortgage, they’ve got taxes, they’ve got insurance, they’ve got a property manager to pay, utilities—all the costs associated.

So you’ve got to ask a pretty steep price.

And now the number of renters willing to pay their price has dropped, so they’re sitting vacant.

This is an opportunity for you to pick up listings.

Watch for those high-end rental properties in your market. Watch those rental websites. Watch ...

Let me give you a quick, super simple thing that all REALTORS should do.

Once a week—maybe once a month at the very least—you should do the 24-hour report as a live report on your social feeds. It could be a Reel, could be a story.

But what is a 24-hour report?

It simply means you're on your hot sheet in the MLS, and you just read off the stats of the hot sheet. You're going to say something like this:

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“Hey, I just want to give you a quick update on what's happening with the market.”

It's been 24 new listings in the last 24 hours, 18 listings went pending, 32 have closed, and we've got 25 price reductions.

The market is really humming along. We've got a lot of great things.

I saw this really incredible buy come up that I'd love to share with you—if you're looking for a rental property, it looks incredible. We've got another one on a rural property that looks fun too, right on the river.

If any of you have a real estate need, I'd love to be somebody that you talk to. Give me a...

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...

Hey guys, have you ever thought about how you're interacting with your Sphere of Influence on social media?

Now, obviously we need to be really smart about this, and every single person that's in our Sphere of Influence, we need to make sure that we're connected with them on Facebook and Instagram and all the other possible places, maybe LinkedIn. And that should be maybe a spreadsheet or a checklist that we're checking that box off.

But let me give you one more idea. It's from a top producer I recently saw and thought it was brilliant:

What this agent did is he built a closed Facebook group for his, what he called VIPs—people that have sent him business or done direct business with him. So referral partners, people that have sent him referrals, or people that have done business go into his closed VIP Facebook group just for them.

And by doing so, he does all kinds of fun things. He runs contests in there where he rewards people for sending him referrals or doing direct business wi...

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...

It happened, you were able to set a recruiting appointment.

Now what do you do when you’re going to meet someone for the first time at coffee or lunch? Do you immediately launch into your pitch?

That’s the worst thing you could possibly do in your first meeting with a potential recruit.

The first thing you need to do is build rapport and trust. One of the best ways to do that is by understanding who you’re talking to — doing a deep dive and some intelligence research on the agent before the meeting.

What does that look like?

Obviously, you can Google them. You can look at their social media accounts. You can talk to other people in your office about what they might know.

But here’s an easy strategy most recruiters miss: dive into their current inventory.

Look at their listings. See how long they’ve been on the market. Look at their price points. Where are they focusing? Go back and look at the trajectory of their business. Are they up or down compared to last year at this time?

Hey guys, when’s the last time you put an in-search-of ad out on social media? We’ll call it an ISO.

An ISO ad could be as simple as saying, “Hey guys, I have a buyer looking for a home in the Jacksonville area. Three bedroom, two bath, up to $600,000. They’re looking in this school district. If you hear of anybody thinking about selling, please send them my way.”

This has so many benefits you don’t even realize.

You might say, “That’ll never work. I’m not actually going to get somebody who says they’re interested in selling. That’s a waste of time.”

That’s not the point.

The point is that you’re telling everybody in your sphere, everybody in your social media audience, that you are a busy REALTOR and that you will leave no stone unturned in finding homes for your clients.

They’re going to say, not only is Jim busy, he’s actually going the extra mile for his client.

If you do this consistently, you’re helping people see you through a different lens.

Some of you have a problem w...