SKILL: A Top-Producing Agent’s Guide to Earning Unlimited Income

INTRODUCTION

I wrote the first book in this series, SOLD, with the new agent in mind. I still distinctly remember how it felt to be a new agent. It was a ridiculous cocktail of excitement, ambition, nerves, fear, confusion, frustration, and helplessness. I had a lack of direction paired with the drive to create an experience unlike any other. My desire to help other agents avoid that mess drove me to write the first book and provide some clarity.

In this book, I’m speaking to those who undertook that journey and are ready for the next leg. SKILL is, in my opinion, a much better book, with much better content, and will lead Realtors to a much better life. While not being broke is good, being wealthy and having more than one needs is much, much better. SKILL takes the steps of SOLD and shows you how to climb the ladder to where the top producers earn their fruit.

Put simply, there’s not much point in becoming a Realtor if you’re not going to do it well.

Agents give up weekends, nights, normal work hours, and oftentimes their sanity to help others build wealth. Isn’t that a crazy concept? Clients will complain that commissions are too high, but the amount of wealth your client accumulates because you help them buy real estate makes commissions pale in comparison.

Good agents who accomplish their clients’ goals deserve to be compensated well. Great agents need to be compensated even better. It’s my belief that agents who deliver excellence deserve the financial fruits of their work.

SKILL was written to help you become a great agent. This book breaks down into detail every aspect of this job you wish someone showed you (but no one did). My goal is to make you feel like you’re looking over the shoulders of top producers on how they conduct their tasks and speak with their clients. It’s no surprise in this industry that it’s not just what you say but also how you say it. This book provides you the information you need to share and how and when to share it.

You know top-producing agents by how they carry themselves. They dress, talk, listen, and act in a certain fashion. This isn’t coincidental. Successful agents follow the same steps. This book starts by highlighting the characteristics you want to emulate. I call these top-producer traits.

I start here because it’s important that you understand success at the highest levels in this industry isn’t only because of what you know. Success is a direct result of who you are as a person. To experience topproducer fruits, you need to develop the character and characteristics that make clients want to work with you.

I introduced the concept of the Sales Funnel in SOLD. In this book, I go into deep detail about how it works. I developed it as a framework to help my team break down the daunting actions of turning someone from a prospective client into a seller with a closing. While the concept is simple, you can’t achieve sustainably high-volume closings without respecting its principles. The Sales Funnel is a map that guides you from one checkpoint to the next through clear, actionable steps. It will help you recognize where you are failing in your business and which skills you need to improve to have better conversion rates, and it will bring you clarity when you’re confused.

Without the Sales Funnel to guide you, you’ll find that clients will try to lead the transaction by default. For a successful career in real estate, you must have the confidence to remain in the driver’s seat of transactions and have your clients follow your lead. Using the stages of the Sales Funnel will help you build your confidence to do just that.

Next, I speak to the four main tools that agents need to build up their sales skills, or their ability to build a large volume of work: (1) lead generation, (2) appointments/presentations, (3) psychology, and (4) knowledge. Each tool helps you transition from one stage of the Sales Funnel to the next. When you’re ready to move from good to great, use these tools.

SKILL also provides detailed information on using social media to build your business, moving lower-level tasks to assistants, creating a business/vision plan for your company, mastering listings to increase volume, and more. Understanding and applying these concepts will make you a standout among your competition in both quality and confidence.

This book is meant to serve as the mentor that so few of us find in the industry. Use its contents like a trusted guide to help you find your true potential, your unique voice, and your place as a top-producing real estate agent in your market.

If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that real estate can be a hard career. What appear to be benefits (freedom of schedule, no boss, unlimited income ceiling, etc.) are often huge challenges (no structure offered, no accountability or leads provided, no income security, etc.). For a happy and rewarding career in real estate, you need a strong income to justify the sacrifices it requires.

There is plenty of competition from big companies looking to replace us with tech. There is plenty of vitriol directed at our commissions. There are plenty of agents who give our industry a bad name from lack of effort and professionalism.

This book is intended to help strengthen your position and allow you to succeed no matter what you face. It offers you the knowledge and guidance great agents provide to grow their clients’ wealth, plan their future, or find a safe place to live. And to build your wealth along the way!

CHAPTER ONE

TOP-PRODUCER TRAITS

If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself.

—JIM ROHN

What Is a Top Producer?

Top producers are the agents who stand apart from their peers in their market. They close more deals, make more money, and help more people than the other agents in their office. They have a reputation for selling a large number of homes. Top producers not only generate leads, but they also have more leads come to them. When a top producer speaks about real estate, they speak with the authority and confidence that comes with knowing their craft. They dominate their market.

Their reputation doesn’t stop with the local community. Other agents know about them too. When you start working at a brokerage, it doesn’t take long before you know who is selling homes, what their specialty is, and how they are leveraging their talents, skills, and resources to outperform the competition. People talk about top producers. They want to be like them, they want their approval, and they want their results.

There’s a common maxim in real estate sales: Eighty percent of the business goes through the top 20 percent of the agents. If you’re going to work in this business, you want to be in the top 20 percent. If you’re not, you’ll find yourself fighting for 20 percent of the business with the other 80 percent of Realtors.

This book is for those who don’t want to just call themselves a Realtor—they want to become a top producer and experience everything this profession has to offer. Odds are, you didn’t invest all your time and energy into becoming a licensed agent just to be mediocre. Getting to the top 20 percent is the key to the Realtor good life.

Reverse Engineering Success

A common mistake newbies make is to ask, What do I do first? and then work forward from there. These newbies learn from their mistakes, just like everybody else. But their path is dictated by trial and error. They take the wrong step, they learn their lesson, and they take the right step next. Rinse and repeat. Progress can be made like this, but it’s not ideal. Rather than figure out the path to success by potluck, it makes much more sense to start with the end in mind and work backward. By doing this, you reduce the number of missteps to your desired result. The more direct your path, the faster you’ll reach your destination (that is, top-producer status).

Being a top producer in real estate sales is more about who you are than what you do. When you follow top producers, you start to notice many of them have similar character traits. For instance, they have more disciplined work schedules. They use leverage to get ahead. And they insist on high standards in anything they do. If you want to be a top producer, start by valuing what they value. Doing so early in your career will help you develop the habits you’ll need to support a big business later on.

Another wrong question new agents often ask is, How do I get leads? Although this appears to be a practical place to start, it assumes you’ll know what to do with a lead when you get one. The truth is, if the agent knew how to close a lead with a high level of skill, the confidence they would exude would bring leads to them. Instead, I recommend you ask a different question: Who would I need to be in order to draw a large number of leads?

Think about how the top producers in an office act, talk, and carry themselves. How do they dress? In which direction do they steer conversations? How do they make you feel after speaking with them? These are the traits you want to emulate. When you come across this same way, clients will find their way to you. If you still want to find leads, you can do so knowing you can close the deal and your efforts weren’t in vain.

Understanding who you need to become to get the results you want starts early in the process. This book offers helpful information, but nothing I write could possibly bring the same understanding as watching a top producer in action. The body language, facial expressions, and confidence with which they carry themselves is really what you’re after. No text by itself can explain how that works.

The traits used by top producers are not easy to come by. If they were, there would be no top producers—everyone would be getting the same amount of business! Top producers are where they are because they are better than their competitors. Building up these characteristics in yourself won’t come easily, and it often won’t feel natural. If you find that to be the case, that’s okay. The more difficult the transition is for you, the more valuable it will be when you get it down. It is no different than anything else you have learned in life. As a child, it was challenging to learn how to walk and speak. As an adult, it is hard learning a new exercise like yoga or developing a new skill like cooking. Everything is difficult in the beginning and becomes easier with repetition.

Top-Producer Qualities

In my time working in the real estate sales space, I’ve found top producers to have certain traits in common. Here’s how you can channel and improve on those qualities.

Be More Direct

Those you communicate with perceive directness as a hallmark of confidence and skill. When someone is unsure of the direction they should take or how to communicate an issue, it’s usually because of inexperience. Clients understand that the less experience their agent has, the less likely they will do their job well. Avoid looking insecure and inexperienced. Instead, act confident in front of clients. Direct communication is an easy way to accomplish this.

Beating around the bush, failing to answer a question clearly, or fumbling over words all portray a lack of experience that induces hesitation in your clients. Speaking directly to a situation and letting your clients know what comes next before they even ask works wonders in earning their confidence. To establish yourself as a confident leader who’s in control, end every conversation by sharing next steps you’ll be taking.

Directness in communication also saves you time, which is why top producers develop this trait. It’s a requirement when you’re operating at a high level with a lot of clients. You need to get things done faster! When you speak clearly and get your point across quickly, your clients tend to mirror this trait and will give you the information you need faster as well. Directness is more efficient and more effective, and portrays more confidence, and those three are important in this job. Start practicing being more direct in both your decision-making and communication style.

Ways to Be More Direct

Set the boundaries of the conversation from the get-go.

Example: Hey, I have five minutes, and I need to ask you something. Here are our options…What information do you need in order to know which direction you’d like to take?

When providing options, paint a picture of how those scenarios will likely turn out. This makes it easier—and therefore faster—for your clients to make their decisions.

Example: If we ask for a credit of $5,000, the sellers will likely put their house back on the market and find another buyer. That means we’ll be out looking at properties again this weekend, and there isn’t anything else on the market with a pool. Or we could ask for a credit of $1,500. I think I can get them to give it to us. That should be enough to fix the major problems but not the cosmetic ones.

Help clients see the value in eliminating options. Many clients make the mistake of trying not to miss out on a great opportunity. This fear of missing out creates a scenario in which the client is overloaded with options and can’t decide at all.

Example: There are twenty-five houses in town that fit your budget. Ten are in the wrong school district, five need significant work you don’t have the money for, and four of them have lots that are too small for you. That leaves us with six houses I’d like to show you. Let’s focus on making sure we don’t miss out on the best one of these six!

Improve Your Skills

It should come as no surprise that top-producing agents are highly skillful in their craft. Top agents are known for something special that makes them better than their competitors, and they often brand themselves this way. Sometimes they sell homes faster, or they earn more money for their clients, or their customer service is superior. Top producers simply do certain things better than agents who perform at a mediocre level.

Luckily for you, there are many skills an agent needs, so there are many ways you can be better than your competition!

Skillful communication is a key skill to develop. Your ability to convey information in a way that keeps your client excited and feeling positive will affect how many houses you sell. Strong communicators highlight the best aspects of the deal for the client, provide possible solutions to problems, are easy to understand, and sound confident in the information they are providing.

Market knowledge is also a skill that requires a high level of mastery. Top agents know how fast houses sell, how much they sell for, and which parts of town are most desirable. This carries over into design as well. You want to help your sellers prepare their homes to be appealing to as many buyers as possible. You also want to know how to help buyers estimate what it will cost to fix up a property to the way they say they would like it. Knowledge of home values, rehab prices, and design styles will set you apart from less experienced agents.

Another beneficial skill is negotiation. Negotiation is an important part of an agent’s job, especially with those who are primarily concerned with the financial components of a transaction. Sharing how you handle offers on a client’s listing or what you do to eliminate leverage in transactions (when you represent the seller) will showcase your skills as a listing agent. This will work when representing buyers too. Share how you get sellers to cover closing costs or how you get your offers accepted over others in a hot market. Buyer clients will take note of this and be impressed by your negotiation skills when you bring this up in conversation.

Negotiation is not limited primarily to the other agents. More often than not, you will find yourself negotiating with your own clients. Your ability to convince your sellers to give a little in closing costs can make the difference between a house selling in the first two weeks on the market versus six months down the road. Your ability to negotiate your buyers into shortening their inspection period by a week can be the difference in them getting their ideal house or something less than their ideal. Strong negotiators highlight the benefits of the solution they are presenting while helping the other person feel they are getting what they want. If you want to sell a lot of homes, learn how to negotiate with your clients!

Ways to Improve Your Skills

Improve your communication skills by learning how to get directly to your point.

Learn how to negotiate so everyone feels like they’re getting something of value.

Start every day with research. See which homes hit the market that morning, look at the listing prices, and note when a listing is posted noticeably lower or higher than a comparable property. Casually mention this information when speaking with clients during lead generation time.

Example: "Yes, I get a fair commission of 6 percent, but you get the best Realtor available in this entire market."

Build Your Charisma

Top-producing agents inspire others. This results in loyal clients returning to you time and time again for their real estate needs as well as referring others your way for the same reason. When you have an army of fans supporting your business, it’s hard to fail. You may have this trait naturally. If not, you’ll need to cultivate it.

Keep in mind not everyone’s charisma is the same. Some people have a gregarious charm that inspires others through fun and goodwill. Others draw people to them through their genuineness or authenticity. Consider someone like Tom Hanks. His popularity in Hollywood is based on his reputation as a genuine guy others can relate to. His ability to relate to the working person makes him a movie draw and thus a powerful Hollywood player.

The same can be said of Elon Musk. Most people would describe his personality as downright awkward, and many who work with him claim he is incredibly difficult to get along with. Despite this, Musk has a massive following of devoted fans who believe in him and his ability to be on the cutting edge of progress. Why? Because he is considered smarter than everyone else around him. His intelligence creates a charisma his personality never could.

Charisma comes in all shapes and sizes. Each of us has our own strengths that allow us to inspire this type of devotion. Top-producing agents harness their power to help grow their businesses. What are your charismatic traits? If you don’t know, ask the people who know you best. They’ll tell you when you are most confident and in which situations you tend to shine. Then, look for ways to spend as much time in those situations as possible.

Ways to Build Your Charisma

Believe in what you say. It’s hard to fake conviction. If you aren’t sure, study the material until you are.

Be aware of how you come across. People notice if you mumble, stare at the floor, or try to blend into the shadows. Work on outwardly expressing the confidence you have inside you.

Don’t try to be someone you’re not. If you’re introverted, focus the attention of your conversations on the data you’ve collected that other agents miss. If you know contracts well, mention ways you’ve kept your clients out of legal problems that other agents can’t do. Let people see you through the lens of confidence you project when you are in your element.

Increase Your Leadership

Leaders inspire confidence in others who rely on them for guidance. As a real estate professional, that’s the exact situation you’ll find yourself in. The better your leadership skills, the more comfortable your clients will be trusting you and following your advice. The less resistance these clients give you, the more deals you can close in a shorter amount of time. Improving your skills as a leader is a nonnegotiable tenet of becoming a top-producing agent.

My best advice for becoming a better leader is to practice the concept Jocko Willink and Leif Babin detail in their book Extreme Ownership. They state that every error or mistake ever made is the leader’s fault, regardless of who makes the blunder. If a leader takes ownership of everything that happens underneath them, they eventually iron out bumps in the road and become better at preventing mistakes from happening in the first place. When leaders shirk responsibility or place the blame on others, they reduce their ability to influence and impact their business and subordinates. Good leaders own everything.

Good leaders also run toward hard things. As a top-producing agent, you are setting yourself apart from your competitors. This means having higher standards and taking on challenges other agents would shy away from, like hiring and training staff. Some skills—such as leverage in negotiation—are easier in theory than in practice. For this reason, very few are successful at the most difficult aspects of the industry. This is why there is so much room to rise to the top! It is by running toward hard things and not avoiding them that you set yourself apart from the competition. You can have what few have if you are willing to do what few others do. Practicing extreme ownership as a leader means running toward what is hard.

Make it a habit to own the mistakes that occur in your business and let your clients know your plan to fix them. It is true that when a buyer’s loan falls through on your listing, it isn’t your fault. It is also true that you could have checked more thoroughly with the buyer’s lender before accepting their offer. When you own the mistake, you empower yourself to make changes in how you move forward, and you reduce the chances of the same mistake happening with the next client.

Similarly, you should see your weaknesses and vulnerabilities as opportunities for growth. Unfamiliar with the lending process? Learn more about how the lending side of our business works. This will make you a better agent and may even open up opportunities to help improve your lending partners’ business. These doors only open when we embrace that we can better influence outcomes when we commit to being leaders who do hard things.

The stronger you become as a leader, the more people will be drawn to you as someone who can serve their real estate needs. Your leadership skills therefore directly translate into an increased number of clients. This will also help you build a strong team—or, at a minimum, create a strong staff—working alongside you to scale your business.

Ways to Increase Your Leadership

Don’t just react to problems when they occur; work proactively to stop problems from occurring. This is a key part of creating systems and improving your clients’ overall experience.

Accept that it is your responsibility to train others to help you. It’s not enough to do the work well yourself. If you want to help more clients, you’ll also need to hire and train staff well.

Never blame anyone else when things go wrong. You can explain how the mistake happened, but always accept responsibility for not working to prevent the mistake.

Example: I’m sorry, but it looks like the buyer’s agent failed to schedule their appraisal and now they are running behind the contracted timelines. I should have been checking in with them to make sure they handled this. I’m going to call them every day to ensure the appraiser arrives as soon as possible.

Be Trustworthy

It’s sad this needs to be mentioned, but there is a glaring need for trustworthiness in real estate sales. If you want to be a top producer, you absolutely must excel at being a trustworthy agent known for always putting the interest of your clients before your own. Most importantly, always tell the truth. It’s never okay to lie to a client; however, that doesn’t mean that all ways of conveying information are the same. Trustworthy agents disclose everything their client should know about a property or a deal, and they practice how they will convey this information.

These agents develop a specific method of delivering vital information, especially if it’s a common issue in real estate. This is referred to as a script. Scripts are, simply put, a means of communicating information to clients in a manner that is easy to understand. Trustworthy agents often put the information in context to help the client weigh its importance and prevent them from overreacting or making a rash decision they’ll regret later. Your ability to communicate information effectively will allow you to maintain a high degree of trustworthiness without compromising your sales.

When conveying negative information, always do so by phone call as opposed to email or text. Practice how you will share the information in a way that is completely accurate but that includes a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Focus on the solution you have in mind and bring the client’s attention to that rather than letting it rest on the problem or the potential negative consequences.

Ways to Be Trustworthy

Focus on the solution.

Don’t wing the conversation. When you must convey upsetting news, jot down every important point that needs to be made, then practice until you’ve established a way of communicating this news that reduces the emotional blow for the client.

Resist the urge to hide bad news from your clients and hope they don’t find out. This will completely erode any trust you’ve built. Your clients will understand that not everything that goes wrong is your fault, and they often just need to vent. Be direct about conveying bad news and allow them to take their frustration out on you without taking it personally.

Example: It appears your home has appraised for $20,000 less than the contracted price. I’m sure this is a shock to you, and I’m very disappointed as well. The buyers have the ability to back out of this deal if we don’t reduce our price, and that would mean us putting the house back on the market where this could potentially happen again. I want to avoid that, and I’m going to be speaking with the other agent to see if there is a possibility we could meet somewhere in the middle.

Your Standards Determine Your Success

Many people operate under the assumption that we can have more success simply by working harder. In many ways this is true; it just isn’t the whole story. Hard work is not a guarantee of success. During my time in real estate sales, I’ve noticed there is something more than hard work that makes a top producer.

Top-producing agents are people of character. There is something about who they are as people that separates them from the other agents in their market.

Think about the people you trust the most in life. Are they always the hardest workers? Or are they the people who keep your secret and are always straight with you? When someone shows the strength of character to put your needs above their own on a consistent basis, you trust them and want to be around them. Trustworthiness breeds trust, and trust is the essential ingredient in all good relationships. Real estate is a relationship business. As such, your relationships with others will play a large role in determining your success.

Your sphere of influence won’t send you referrals if they don’t trust you’ll take good care of them.

Your clients won’t follow your advice if they don’t trust your motives.

Leads won’t trust your guidance if they don’t trust your honesty.

Other agents won’t accept your offer if they don’t trust you can bring your buyers to close.

Two of the first things to learn as a top producer are how to make tough decisions and how to have difficult conversations that maintain and even foster others’ trust in you. Your character will determine whether you can do this.

Character will also play a large role in your work ethic. Top producers keep their word. When they say they will make a certain number of contacts in a day, they do it. When they agree to read through a contract in its entirety, they do it. Top producers have high standards for themselves, and it shows. The standards you choose for yourself may be the most influential factor that determines your success in business and in life.

As a young agent, I heard Gary Keller (founder of Keller Williams Realty) say, Your clients are not loyal to you. They are loyal to your standards. This statement set off an avalanche of thoughts in my mind.

The more I grew in the business, the more I found Keller’s statement to be true. In fact, as I gained a deeper understanding of this concept, I realized the only thing that set me apart from other agents—and the sole reason clients chose to work with me over others—was the standard I set for how I conducted myself and my reputation with real estate.

Clients are not drawn to me solely because of my knowledge or track record. These things play a role, of course, but more important is that clients are drawn to what I represent. I have built my own portfolio of investment properties through my standards for earning, saving, and investing money. My properties perform well because of my standards for investment criteria.

My knowledge has been acquired through the standard I set for myself for learning, and my ability to articulate concepts and ideas come from the high standards I set for communication. Everything that causes my phone to ring and people to reach out to me can be traced back to the standards I initially created for myself, and these were higher than my competition’s standards.

It became clear to me that the path to more success was higher standards. By always raising my standards in business, and in my own character, I have increased my sales and the performance of my company. When my sales grew to the point where I could not keep doing the work alone, I hired people. But I was continually frustrated with their performance, and my company’s growth stagnated. Why? Because I hired people who had standards lower than my own.

When I started hiring people with higher standards and enforcing the standards of my company, growth exploded. In 2020, I sold almost four times as much real estate as in 2019 from this one small tweak. I cannot express strongly enough how important this concept is. If you want to be a top producer, the path is remarkably simple—raise the standards at which you do everything.

Top-Producer Standards

Your clients expect you to be the expert when it comes to real estate, so you should expect that of yourself too. Increasing your knowledge is a quick way to set yourself apart from the competition and showcase a higher standard. The following are simple ways to do just that.

Creating and Interpreting CMAs

A CMA (comparative market analysis) is a tool used by agents to determine what a property is worth based on comparable sales of similar properties in similar locations. Every agent should know how to create a CMA. Your clients will judge you based on your accuracy. Choosing the wrong properties as comparable sales—or missing properties that should be included—is a great way to lose credibility with a seller and find yourself out of a job. To start increasing your knowledge in real estate sales, learn how to look at a property through the eyes of an appraiser, and learn how to select the right properties for your CMA.

Creating a CMA is relatively simple but interpreting it for the client is definitely not. Accurate CMA interpretation is a way to stand apart from other agents. Chapter Nine of SOLD: Every Real Estate Agent’s Guide to Building a Profitable Business (the precursor to this book) provides an in-depth description of how to create a CMA. Your goal is to present this information in such a way as to help your clients see it from your expert perspective and feel good that they are pricing their home according to the market data.

Knowing how to showcase which homes have sat on the market without selling—and explaining why—will guide your clients to understand this information. You do this by showing the homes that have been on the market a long time and explaining how much stress this creates for the sellers. Bringing your clients’ attention to the pending properties will help them set realistic goals. Pricing your clients’ homes in alignment with properties that were successfully put in contract and getting them to improve their homes’ condition to meet pending sale prices are the best ways to ensure your clients’ homes sell well.

It is not enough to create a CMA, email it to a client, and expect them to interpret it by themselves. I see Realtors do this, and it conveys an extremely low standard of service. It’s not uncommon for your clients to think they know more about real estate than they really do. To help them understand what must be done to sell their home, start with interpreting the CMA information you created in a way they can comprehend and feel good that their home is priced appropriately.

Local Market Knowledge

It is safe to assume your clients will expect you to have a high level of local market knowledge. This includes knowing which types of properties sell the fastest and what price points different homes will sell for. It also includes knowing specifics, such as school districts, utility jurisdictions, and which parts of town have the highest property taxes. From a practical standpoint, this type of information will play a small role in your job as an agent. From a marketing standpoint, however, it will be huge. Being able to quickly share this information will separate you from your competitors.

My favorite way to gather this information is by talking with more experienced Realtors in the office. I’ve often found the best resource is the agent who sells a medium number of homes (twelve to twenty-four a year) and who has been in the business for a long time. These agents