We spent about 3 hours with Tom Ferry yesterday. Have you heard of him? Perhaps not, but I think that his is a name that many people will know. His father is well known as a long-time real estate trainer and Tom has followed in his footsteps with a vengeance.
The Florida region of RE/MAX sponsored a presentation by Tom to area RE/MAX agents. As usual, many of the agents were too busy to come and some were just too tired or depressed or something. There are always people who don't seem to want to get a boost in their career. Perhaps some of the non-attendees think they've already seen it all and know everything they should. I can only speculate on their reasons for not exercising a free opportunity to boost their business.
Anyway, Tom has a great deal of energy and an off-the-wall sense of humor and we really enjoyed his presentation. After 20+ years in real estate, my wife and I have seen many trainers and coaches. We usually learn at least something from every presentation we attend although we don't often purchase the ubiquitous optional "Today Only" special package.
We walked out of the meeting yesterday with an embarrassing wealth of ideas. If we can only implement 10% of the things that we learned, we'll end up with a large production increase. That's what it's all about: increasing your production. When you spend every day working in your business, it's easy to wake up one day and find that your systems and lead generating methods are out-dated.
This is even more likely considering the speed at which technology is increasing in capability. The concept of Moore's Law which basically states that computer technology will double in capacity every 18 months while simultaneously halving in price fits well with the actual track of events. Now, most people don't stop to think what that means, but here's an example of the math involved: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576,...double 10 more times and you get 1,073,741,824. You can see that the curve goes exponential. Just double that last number a few times and you'll exceed our national debt!
That's interesting, but what's it mean? Practically speaking, it means that in the last 18 months while I was working at selling houses, a large number of very usable, real estate related websites and/or apps have been introduced. Have you heard of Klout.com, Turbo Scan, Expensify, Get abstracts, Raven, taskrabbit.com, nimble.com, highlight.com, home snap, dragon, bombbomb.com, sun seeker, dropbox.com, docusign.com, evernote, etc., etc.? Take some time and Google them. You'll probably find some useful applications.
The online competition for leads has intensified and it's reached the point where non-technologically-oriented Realtors are selecting themselves for retirement. Even agents who think they're technically adept may be caught by surprise at the rapid rate of change, both in helpful software and in the way consumers search for houses and agents.
I don't often recommend specific trainers or brands or services, but I'm going to make an exception in this post: If Tom is speaking anywhere near your city, do yourself a favor and go and see him.
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