Guest Post – Mike Ferry

I was involved in a very interesting discussion recently with a person
who said they wanted to become a client with my company. As we discussed his
present business … he does 25 to 30 transactions a year with an average
commission of around $6,000 … I said, “Okay, what is the source of your
business?” My belief is, if we source an individual’s business carefully … by
“source” I mean virtually look at every transaction you’ve done in 2012 whether
it be a listing or a sale and identify how you found that client or, better
said, where they came from. He told me that 80% of his business comes from his
Past Clients/Center of Influence. My response was … “I’ll bet you’ve had very
little, if any, growth within your business over the last 5 years. Is that
correct?” He said yes, and then he asked how I knew that. I responded that
whenever you are narrowing your lead generation techniques down to, in this
case, one technique … your chances for growth are going to be minimal. I said
to him, “The people that are doing the largest volumes of business in Real
Estate nationwide are varying the types of lead generation techniques they use,
so they don’t get bored with a technique … burn out mentally with a technique …
and they increase their chances for more business because certain lead
generation techniques produce different levels of business at different times.”
This caught him a little off guard.
I then said, “What techniques would you like to use besides
calling your database?” His answer was interesting in so much as he said,” I
think I’d like to produce a 30-second commercial to play on local cable TV
channels about my services … I’d like to produce a weekly 30-minute TV show
talking about Real Estate in the community and pay to have it on local cable,
and I’m going to get a Facebook account and try to get all my friends to
connect with me.” For those that know me, I smiled … and said, “That’s great.”
And then I said, “Are you sure you want to be involved with The Mike Ferry
Organization? Because we’re going to work on skills and techniques that will
bring you results a little faster and a little more clearly at a lot less
cost.” It’s been several days and I haven’t heard back from him … I guess I’ll
have to do some lead follow-up. What are your thoughts about his approach?