How many referrals did you get last week?

If you received none or just one, you might be wondering, "How can I get more?"

Well, here's the secret: To get more referrals, you need to start by sending more referrals. It all begins with the concept of giving. When you give generously, the power of reciprocity comes into play, and you'll start receiving more referrals.

As REALTORS, we often act as real estate concierges, with a network of contacts at our fingertips. When clients ask for recommendations, it's common to say, "You should use my friend John for that. Let me send you his number." However, this might not be the most effective approach.

Instead, consider this value-added strategy to increase your referral potential. Say, "I have an excellent gardener who does exceptional work and offers my clients special deals. Would you mind if I give him a call and have him contact you, so he knows the referral comes from me?"...

People ask me all the time, Jim, how do you retain amazing agents? You've recruited and retained some of the best agents in America. They've stayed with you for years. You took a company from a hundred million to 1.4 billion over 10 years, created a company from 39 agents to one of the top companies in America. How'd you do it?

Well, the answer is, I want you to think about the people that work for you. Just think about the landscape of people that work for you today. And I want you to ask yourself, how many of those people consider you to be their personal friend? And if the answer is, I don't think any of them do, you have a problem because you're looking at them transactionally. And that's the first mistake.

It's the same mistake agents make when they look at their clients and customers transactionally too.

I look at the top agents in America. The top agents in America don't look at their buyers and sellers as buyers and sellers. They...

What are the six things that you're gonna get done today?

Now, why do I say six?

The reason is studies show that most working adults can only accomplish six big items a day. Most of the things that they want to get done then are gonna come down to your priority setting. And how good you are at setting true priorities, and how committed you are to getting those priorities done.

So if we think that we're only gonna get six things done in a day, we have to say, how do I prioritize to make sure I get those six things done? Well, the first thing is this understanding when you build your to-do list is prioritizing what's truly important.

Some of us—I've been guilty of this too—create a to-do list that's got 30, 40, and even 50 things on it. It's two or three pages long, and we tend to do the easy things first instead of the important things.

We wanna just scratch off items because we like to see those lines.

But we...

Hey guys, as you're preparing for the new year, you should start to think about what you can do differently for 2023 that you have never done before?

A lot of you have a listing presentation. Some of you have a buyer presentation. Some of you have a pre-listing kit and a pre-meeting buyer kit for buyers. And a lot of you don't have those things.

But if you do have those things and you're saying, what's the next thing I could add to my overall mix of marketing materials?

I'm gonna give you an idea right now:

It's called my "success portfolio."

If you were gonna go to an architect, photographer, or even a baker or wedding planner, when you go into those places and you talk to them about doing business, a lot of times they'll bring out their portfolio. And their portfolio is kind of a graphic representation of what they've done. A visual representation of what they've done in the past for other clients.

So the...

Five things to do in the first quarter of the new year:

1. Refresh your brand

Refreshing your brand means getting new photos taken. Why? Because you are first and foremost your brand. So you need to get a new, fresh photo. You should do this every year, maybe twice a year. But that new photo is not just a straight headshot, it's multiple photos in different settings. Why? Because your photo is the most used branding element in your marketing arsenal.

But what happens when you don't do this? What happens is people then meet you and there's an immediate brand disconnect. There's an immediate feeling, at least at a subconscious level, that they've been deceived. If they can't trust you with your branding, what else can't they trust you with?

It's more important than you think it is. So get that brand updated and refreshed.

Also, look at your bio. So once you get this new photo, you're gonna update your bio for the new year. And...

There's a great book by a guy named Harvey Mackay. He wrote the book Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty.

And in the book, he talks about this $25,000 question, and I'm gonna pose this question to you.

So the $25,000 question kind of goes like this:

Imagine you own a muffler shop or some kind of business. And it's payroll week and you don't have the money to pay your employees. And you know, if you don't pay 'em, they're all gonna walk because everybody's trying to hire right now. So the question mark is it's 2:00 AM you wake up in the morning and you're like, I've gotta come up with $25,000 by tomorrow morning. Otherwise I'm probably gonna lose my business. Who do you call? In your friends list, your personal friends list, right now, is there someone you call and get $25,000 from by tomorrow morning?

If the answer's no, the reason you probably don't have anybody that qualifies in that category is because you haven't helped enough...

I'm gonna give you some numbers that are just reality in our business that you should know. And these numbers are going to drive your success throughout your career — whether you like it or not.

Are you ready for these numbers? Here they are:

They may be slightly different for every person, but in general, across the country, here's what the numbers look like in our industry:

* For every 30 conversations you have, you'll average one closed transaction.

And I want you to remember this:

Almost every single transaction you will ever have in your career will be the result of a conversation you've had in the last two weeks. You want more closings? You're gonna have to have more conversations.

Here's another one:

* For every 10 sphere members you have in your database today, you should average one closing — assuming that you've made 20 to 50 contacts with them in the past year.

20 to 50 contacts will get you a 10 to 1 closing...

I want to talk to you about what I call the algorithm of sales. And what that means is that there's some base numbers in our industry, that if you embrace them, it can unlock unlimited opportunity.

The problem is most agents don't want to embrace them. They just want somebody to hand them a buyer or seller. Or for a buyer or seller to literally lay down in front of them so they can just start working with them.

Guys, that doesn't work.

You have to go out there and work the numbers if you want to do well.

I'm going to give you six numbers that are going to be just what I would call standard in the industry that you have to embrace for you to have success.

1. For every 30 conversations you have, you'll average one closing.

So if you want to make 300, 400, 500, $600,000 a year, you just have to figure out how many closings you need. And then multiply that number by 30, which will tell you how many conversations you need to have in...

If you have a gap in your income right now and you're out of escrows, what's the cause of that?

The cause isn't anything you're doing right now.

It's not the market conditions.

It's not something you just did yesterday or the day before.

It's actually something you've done 90 days ago.

Whenever I do this with my coaching students when they're having a gap in closings, I tell them to look back to 90 days ago.

What were you doing 90 days ago? Let's really look at the calendar and open it up. When we open up that calendar, we'll inevitably see a gap.

Maybe they went on vacation. Maybe they just took a few weeks off because something was going on in their lives and they stopped prospecting 90 days ago. And that's what comes forward like a snake eating an egg. It just travels down the timeline and then boom, it blows up resulting in them having no escrows in the moment.

So how do we eliminate this situation so we don't have gaps in the future?

It's...

What is Q2?

Well, Q2 is your most valuable asset. And you might not even know it.

Your most valuable asset is your database, your sphere of influence, we know that.

But what's Q2 mean?

Q2 represents the quality and the quantity of your database. So let's look at those two issues and how they can impact your bottom line coming into the new year.

Let's start with the quantity. What does that mean? Well, if we know that for every 10 people in our database, we'll average one closed sale, knowing that quantity makes a big difference. In fact, when I talk to agents on a regular basis, and I ask, how many transactions did you close last year? And they say 10, 12, I'll say, how big is your database? Let me guess. It's probably 80 to 120 am I right? Most people will say, yeah, you're right on the money.

Why?

Because your database is a reflection of your performance. Smaller database, smaller performance. Larger database, larger...