How to Make MORE Money and Do MORE Business In the Post-NAR World

by Steve Shull

Let’s keep talking about the big elephant in the room, {{ first_name }}.

I know, I’ve been harping on this subject for weeks now. You’re probably starting to tune me out… 

DON’T!!

Change is coming. It’s inevitable. No one is immune.

The way you get paid, your representation agreements…everything is subject to change in the coming weeks. 

The question isn’t what the change will be—we won’t know until it happens.

The question is, how are you going to respond?

From what I’ve seen over the past few months, a lot of agents have responded by worrying. Some have responded by getting angry. Virtually everybody is resisting these changes in some way.

And if you’re being brutally honest with yourself, the reason is because they put more pressure on you to be BETTER at what you do. Whatever impact these changes have, the less-skilled agents are going to feel it more than anyone else.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record…

For highly skilled agents, this will be an opportunity to get a pay raise and do more business. 

For everyone else, it will be an opportunity to panic, discount their fee, and quite possibly end their real estate career.

Remember, you have no say in what this change will be.

Right now, there’s no consensus on what this new environment will look like. Every state, every company, every MLS will have its own plans and rules. Agents are hearing a million different things right now. Consumers are responding in wildly different ways.

NO ONE KNOWS what the landscape will look like in a month, three months, or a year.

What we do know is this…

People are not going to stop selling homes.

People are not going to stop buying homes.

The best agents will adapt to whatever happens next.

So, you have to make a decision about how you’re going to move forward.

It comes down to 2 things: your standards and your process.

What’s your standard for working with a seller? What terms are you willing to work under? What do you require of the client? What are you unwilling to accept? 

What about for a buyer?

And once you have that client, what’s your process? What do you do to make the entire experience go as smoothly as possible for everyone involved?

As human beings, we adjust to the standards we set.

When we raise our standards, we raise our game.

When we lower them, everything falls down.

In this new real estate landscape, a select group of agents will raise their standards. They will have the courage to charge a full fee (or more), and they will have the skill to back it up so that clients are willing to pay that fee.

Everyone else will do the opposite.

If you take a step back, what’s amazing about all of this is HOW LONG the entire industry bought into a system that limited commissions to 5 - 6%.

But what other professional service restricts pricing that way? Lawyers don’t. Accountants don’t. Architects don’t. You can go down the list…nobody else does this. 

All that’s happening now is that the 5 - 6% limitation is being removed.

You are finally FREE to charge whatever you want—you just have to be able to back up whatever number you choose.

The only limitation is the story in your own head.

Every single negative thought you have right now about what’s going to happen…it’s all in your head. It’s how you choose to interpret and respond to these events.

If you tell yourself the story that buyers are going to refuse to sign your exclusive representation agreement and pay your fee, it will only make you tighten up and get defensive.

That is NOT going to serve you moving forward.

You probably don’t feel this way or believe this way, but you are truly free to charge whatever you want to charge as long as you provide that value.

To get buyers to pay, you don’t need to explain that value—you need to demonstrate it…

And the one thing people are willing to pay the most for is TRUST.

When you are their trusted real estate advisor, they will pay whatever your number is, period.

Last week, one of my clients showed me a great example of this.

In their brokerage—a large, franchise-owned company—everyone is REQUIRED to charge a full fee of 6% on listings, and they MUST offer a minimum of 2.5% to the buyer’s broker.

Otherwise, they can’t take the listing. Simple as that.

That broker is making a stand. He’s putting his thumb in the back of every single one of his agents and saying, “If you want to do business here, you’ve got to get better.”

Most of his agents probably kick and scream about it, but he’s doing them a big favor—he’s forcing them to raise their standards.

Chris Voss and I wrote The Full Fee Agent almost two years ago, and that concept is still very much alive.

You CAN still be a full fee agent. That means you’re charging a premium fee because you provide a premium service.

But you can ONLY do that by being a trusted advisor.

This is what all our programs at Performance Coaching are designed around: being a trusted advisor so you can charge a full fee and build a repeat and referral business.

And starting in the next few weeks, we have 3 NEW programs specifically focused on the ONE skill that builds trust faster than anything else: Tactical Empathy.

Why 3 instead of just one? Because different people need different things depending on where they’re starting from.

Which one is for you? Let’s see…

Tactical Empathy Bootcamp with Laurie Gilmore is a 10-week comprehensive course in the fundamental concepts and tools of Tactical Empathy.

Role Play with Sean McGlynn and Lorin Ruttenberg provides structured practice and feedback 4x a week in an interactive, small group setting.

Role Play with David Lewis also provides structured practice and feedback in a small group, but just once a week.

CLICK HERE to learn more about all three of these programs and take your next steps towards becoming a trusted real estate advisor.