The Livian Podcast is a show that helps real estate teams accelerate their growth and impact. Vice President of Industry - Eric Forney discusses the concept of urgency and pressure and how it applies to successful real estate agents. He uses Joe Montana's story of leading the San Francisco 49ers to victory in Super Bowl 23 as an example, emphasizing his ability to focus on what was urgent and important despite immense pressure. Agents should use this same mindset when dealing with prospects by bringing a calm, confident tone while asking SPI (situation, problem, impact) questions and listening with curiosity. They should also be aware of where prospects are in the customer journey—the consideration phase requires being a resource without pushing for engagement; the research phase requires demonstrating expert knowledge; decision phase involves guiding customers through logistics; pending phase still requires strategic guidance and urgency building all the way through the closing to ensure best outcome for the customer.
When it comes to sales and creating urgency with a customer, the key is to focus on now, sooner, or next steps. It's important to ask prospects questions that unveil the life events that are causing them to take action and make a moving decision. Additionally, agents should also ask what the prospect's plan for failure is, in case they don't find what they're looking for -- in order to sort your pipeline appropriately and prepare yourself as an agent. Lastly, always make sure you are selling what they are buying. If they want faster, sell faster. If they want better, sell better. You're not locked in to your value proposition and services.
Welcome to the Livian Podcast, a show that helps successful real estate teams accelerate their growth and impact. Livian love how you live in all aspects of life.
Realtors struggle to make sense of confusing economic data. And as the Vice President of Industry for Livian, I make the most important information simple so that agents have the confidence to sell more.
What I want to talk about today is the information and the simplicity of building urgency. And when I thought about the topic of urgency, what I thought of was in 1988, Joe Montana was a quarterback for the San Francisco 40 Niners, and he was at a crossroads in his career. He was in his 10th season with the Niners and he was showing signs of wear and injury.
He had just suffered a ruptured disk in his back and he had to miss six regular season games. And his coach, Bill Walsh, at the time had binged him for Steve Young. And the team had gone on to lose when he was replaced by Steve Young in the playoffs to the Minnesota Vikings. At the time and going into the 88 season, everyone speculated that Montana was going to be phased out or traded away from the Niners. And so at the beginning of the 88 season, the Niner offense was really out of sync from the quarterback controversy. The team was six and five and they were barely in the hunt to make the playoffs. And at the time, Walsh opted to give Joe Montana the nod.
He told the team that he was committed to rallying behind Joe Montana and that they needed to do the same thing. And what ended up happening was the Niners went on to win four of the next five regular season games to just squeak into the playoffs. And then they went on to beat Minnesota and Chicago in a big way during the playoffs and they earned a trip to the Super Bowl, what would have been Super Bowl 23 at the time, where they met the Cincinnati Bengals. And during that game, the Montana's Niners, they looked up at the clock. It was a tie game. There was about 3 seconds left, or sorry, about three minutes left in the Super Bowl. It's a tie ball game. And the Niners would need to go 92 yards if they were going to be the Super Bowl champions.
And so here's Joe Montana in the 49 ers with the pressure of winning a Super Bowl and 70,000 screaming fans, Montana could sense and his team that there was tension. And when they got in the huddle with a Super Bowl on the line, Joe Montana brought his players together and he calmly remarked, hey, look over there. That's John Candy. And the players turned around, they looked up into the stands, and sure enough, John Candy was in the crowd eating popcorn. And then Joe Montana turned back to his teammates in the huddle. And he said, when you were a kid, did you ever dream about taking your team down the field at the last minute and scoring a touchdown to win the Super Bowl? And at that time, everybody kind of smiled and the tension and the huddle broke.
And that was how the legend of Joe Cool was cemented, with a Super Bowl winning touchdown pass with 34 seconds left to win Super Bowl 23. And so what I think about is what separates the great ones like Joe Montana is that when the stakes are high, the best ignore the pressure and they focus on what's urgent and important. And so with 70,000 screaming fans and the pressure of his legacy on the line, Joe Montana was able to turn down the noise and focus himself and his teammates on what was most important and what was urgent in the moment. And so what does that story have to do with you? What does that mean to you as a real estate agent? But what I would tell you is it's no different.
And what I mean by that is your job at hand is to focus on what's urgent and most important for you. And simultaneously, your job is to help focus your clients on what's urgent and most important to them. And so as we think about defining urgency and then building urgency, I want to level set with you so that we can really get an understanding of what urgency is. Because there's a lot of people right now who are thinking to themselves, you're probably going, yeah, Eric, I don't know about this whole urgency thing. I don't like the idea of building urgency for someone because what I don't want to do is be a salesperson. You know, I talked to an agent last night on the Livian podcast, which hopefully you're subscribed to.
But on the Livian podcast last night, I talked to an agent who said, you know what? I made $12,000 in 2009. I made $12,000 in 2009. Now, this agent today made nearly a million dollars after selling $27 million in real estate. And the difference was, she said, in 2009, I didn't want to be a salesperson. I never wanted to pressure anyone to buy a home. And now what I realized is my job is not pressuring people to buy homes or pressuring people to make decisions they don't want to make. My job is to help people have the urgency to take the actions that they want and need to take that are in their best interest. And so what I would tell you is the difference between urgency and pressure is where it comes from.
Where does the emotion come from if the pressure comes from the outside as a salesperson, by using fear or threats, however, urgency is something that we all have inside of us. We know this to be true. If you've ever been to a primary care physician, what you know is typically you can wait when your primary care doctor is booked up for a week or two, whatever the Ailment is that you're going to see your physician on, you can wait. But urgent care is something where you've decided that the concern is more pressing and time is sensitive. And so time is sensitive internally for someone who has urgency to buy or sell.
And so when we think about building urgency, what our job is as a real estate agent is to tap into someone else's timeline, is to tap into someone else's sensitivity to help motivate them to act and to act in their best interest. And so we're going to use language and we're going to use processes in order to do that most effectively. So let's walk through that and somehow we got one slide ahead. I want to unpack a little bit of where I've given up already. I'm trying to run slides here. Let me try this generally. Okay, never mind what that slide did say was - Customer Journey. And so I want to talk a little bit about the Customer Journey because I think it's important that we understand where the customer is in the life cycle.
And can we, just, for the sake of it, put the definitions, the Webster on the shelf and client and customer prospect, I'm going to call them all the same for the sake of simplicity. Okay? So in this Customer journey, it's some of the experiences that the customer has with your company. It's the entire lifecycle of working with your business, not just one stage. And I want to level-set on this because I think it's important that we understand that our job is to always build urgency based on where someone is in their journey. Because what happens is we all start in the phase of being unaware and then we move into awareness. And awareness then leads to typically consideration, which then leads to research, decision making, servicing and into advocacy. Right? Because our job does not end when we go to closing.
Our job actually continues as we build advocates for our business, as we build loyalty within our own real estate team. And so when we think about that, we'll dive into each section. So you can better understand and really audit where your people are in your pipeline right now. But what we need to do is understand how do we tactically build urgency? Well, I like to think through this framework of the acronym talker. And the way I think of it is that I always have to bring a calm and confident tone to the conversations. Can you imagine you're on a plane and you're flying on vacation with your family and you hit a little bit of turbulence and the pilot comes over the loudspeaker and they're freaking out. They have this level of total panic.
You're going to feel drastically differently about that turbulence instead, what always happens, right, is the pilots muffled and you can't exactly hear what he says, but they're always calm. You want to be the same way with your database. You want to be the same way. When you talk to consumers, it's always projecting calm, confidence. And then you want to ask what I call SBI questions and those are situation, problem, and impact. We'll impact those further as we progress. But you always are asking questions. He who asks the most questions wins. Your job is not to answer questions. Your job is to ask questions because you need to listen, to be curious.
And I like to take the approach of thinking about it like my five year old son does – I need to listen with just the utmost curiosity, as though I've never heard anything about the topic at hand that we're discussing. I have to always be curious because I need to know what's causing someone to think that way, feel that way, or act that way. So I want to listen, to be curious. I want to keep notes so that I can retain the important information. I'm always going to empathize to empower because nothing makes people feel more connected and empowered than when they feel heard and understood. And then I'm going to repeat what someone says back to them so that I can confirm my understanding. And I project confidence that they know that I'm listening and that I understand what we've discussed. Okay?
And so as we think about following that model through the buyer journey, one of the early stages we get to is the consideration phase. And so when you think about you get into your CRM, you sit down, you pull up your CRM and you have however many leads in your database, contacts, whatever you want to call them, you're going to look at it and ideally sort people out where they are on a timeline of making the decision. And one of the very first places where someone is likely to enter your CRM is in the consideration phase. These are leads who are thinking about moving. They're talking with their friends, they're talking with their family, but they're not interested in hiring you. They're paying attention to real estate headlines. They're gathering information. They're starting to become aware of their living situation.
But what they're not looking to do is commit to you. So what you should do then, if you have people in the consideration phase inside of your database, is you should be communicating with them but not selling them. You should communicate with them to be a resource. But what you shouldn't be doing is selling yourself because you want to use technology and relevant information for them in order to help make them move faster through the consideration phase. But what you're not doing is you're not rushing to engagement. I always say you're not going to go on the first date and name your children.
Can you imagine you show up on a first date and things go well, and you ask the person sitting across the table from you what they want to name their first child and then what they want to name their second child. We're not doing that on the first date. Right? Consider people in this consideration phase similar to somebody you might be in a first date type relationship and rapport with. You're only going to be a resource. You're not rushing for engagement as you move them through. They're going to go to the research phase. And when they get to research, they're looking online at homes, they're looking at calculating their mortgage payment. And what they're looking for is expertise, but they're still not looking for an agent. This can show up multiple ways.
This might mean that someone who walked into your open house is in the research phase. It's possible that someone will actually ask you to show them a house, but they're only in the research phase. They're not yet ready to make a decision. Your ability to differentiate where someone is in their buyer journey is going to change how you approach creating urgency for them. So you need to be where they are, and then you need to communicate on their terms in order to help them move forward with the information. That's most important when you audit your pipeline to understand where everyone is on their buyer journey. Okay, so as we progress through that research phase, typically we think about real estate agents is the decision phase. This is what we like as agents, is, now you're ready to do something.
I'm getting closer to helping you and getting paid. Right? And so at this stage, anyone in this stage is ready to buy. They're curious about the process. They want to know if they can get a good deal. And then now we're starting to think about the timelines and the logistics. Remember, the very first slide we talked about was urgency and time sensitivity. And so when we get to the decision phase, this is when people start to think about the timeline and start to think about the logistics of the process. So we want to start to craft our messaging around time sensitivity when we think about their timeline. And so what you should do then, as an agent, when you have someone who's in this decision phase, is that you should demonstrate confident expertise. Now is your time to be the local economist of choice.
It is your time to wow the consumer and dazzle them with everything that you know about the real estate market or about why now is a good time for them to buy, or about what you believe. The best strategy is for them to approach buying or to approach selling. And you've heard from the previous speakers, so I won't get into how to do that because I certainly won't do nearly the job that Vanessa and Jessica did talking through that. So your job then is to guide them through the process by providing relevant resources and referrals. Remember, if you think back to what Vanessa said, one of the things she said that you should do when thinking about how to get a home ready for market is to create FOMO for buyers, right?
I know the title was FOMO for Sellers, but what it really was, how do you create fear and urgency for buyers to take action? And one of the number one things she said to go do is build referrals and build resources with local connections. You're demonstrating that you have a concierge network to make the logistics better and easier and more simple for the consumer to move. They're hiring you to make their life easier. You're going to do that by providing them with relevant resources and relevant referrals so that when they're ready to make a decision what they want. Oddly enough, I think this is just hysterical, but for the last probably 15 years in AR, one of the best things that they do is they put out a report.
And every year the report has like 160 pages in it and I'm the only nerd who reads it every year. And what it says is that what buyers want is a personal shopper. Buyers want someone to help them find a home. And so when the buyers are in the decision phase, your job is helping them find a home that they want to meet their goals. And what they want is to have referrals for specialist vendors. They want technical support and then they want someone like Jessica who helps to negotiate the deal on their behalf. And then we often think about the fact that the buyer journey stops as an agent when we get through the pending or when we get to the pending process.
And what I will tell you is that our job is to create urgency throughout the entire duration of the transaction. And so what I thought about then was I was speaking with an agent on the Livian podcast and she shared this with me and I'm going to pass it along to you. And what she said was, the role of a midwife and the role of a real estate agent appear different at first. One focuses on providing medical care for pregnant women and the other provides care for buying and selling real estate. And so you think that at first they're a lot different. And yet both the midwife and the real estate agent play critical roles in guiding people through significant life events. They both require similar skills to manage the emotional and psychological impact of the event. Both roles guide and advise.
They provide information and they provide support. And it's all about a timeline in both cases. If, God forbid, the midwife or the agent, they stopped providing the support and the strategic guidance, guess what? The baby still shows up. If the midwife decides to quit in the 8th month, the baby is still showing up. But what's at risk is the emotional state of the customer and the potential for the customer to have the best outcome. And so if you stop providing the strategic urgency that your client needs during the inspection process, guess what? The client's psychological needs and their best interest and best outcome are at risk when you stop providing urgency throughout the entirety of the transaction. And so we're not going to stop with taking the approach of building urgency just because the home went pending. You heard Jessica talk about that, right?
You heard Travis talk about some of the questions that he likes and we've tried to package them into ways that help you create urgency around timelines. And one of the ones that Travis said that he loves, and myself as well, is asking the question of, hey, Michael, what's recently changed in your life that makes you want to move to Bananaville? The thing that I like about this is what I want to understand is I know throughout doing this a couple of thousand times over the past five years, is that people move because of life events. And so it's easy for someone to tell me why they want to move to a city, but it doesn't mean they will tell me about the life event that's causing them to move.
I want to know what is it in your day to day life that's triggering you to take action to move? So I'm going to ask what's recently changed in your life that makes you want to move to X? And then one of the action related questions I'm going to ask after a showing, after I show a house to the buyer, every single time, I'm going to assume that the buyer wants to buy the house. Unless they tell me otherwise. I'm going to ask them this question, which is, what would it take for you to make a decision to buy this home today? What would it take for you to buy this home today? No, I'm not going to pressure them, but what I want to know is what would it take to buy that house?
Would it have to be as good looking as everything that Vanessa just showed you for them to buy that house? Okay, maybe I need to call Vanessa and get her home design roadmap, right? So I want to know every time I walk out because I'm getting curious insights from the buyer, but I'm also pushing that timeline of urgency to ask them to make that decision today. And then I always love to know what someone's plan to fail is. So I'm going to ask this when I'm at the strategy session with the buyer, that initial session where you sit down across the table from the buyer and you do their needs analysis, you do discovery with them. I think you should also, at that strategy session, put together a plan to fail.
So I'm going to ask the question of Michael that says, hey, Michael, imagine 90 days from now you didn't buy a home. What got in your way? If you don't buy a home, what would be the reason that caused you not to buy? What I might find out is that they're also considering a transfer to a different market. I might find out that they have family planning. I might find out that they have a relative who is bedridden or has some health challenges that they may need to be a caregiver for. So what I want to know is what are some of those external things that may show up that I need to be mindful of? Because possibly there are things I need to be mindful of helping to accelerate the timeline that they're not thinking about.
And then every time that I show a house, before I put the keys back into the lockbox, before I go back up and start the keys to my car, I'm going to ask the question with this embedded command, which is, if you're, like most people, we find that we should be able to find the home of your dreams. In the first five showings, if not, what we have is a communication problem. At that point, we're going to meet again to reevaluate your needs. Fair enough. There's two things that I did in there that I like to use in multiple situations. And one of those is if you are like most people, because when you go to that hipster restaurant for the first time in that city that you've never been to, typically when you look at the menu, you say, hey, what's good here?
What's the best thing on the menu? What do people like the most? What are your specials? What are you known for? What you're really saying is, I'm like most people, tell me what most people like. And so what we find is that people like the safety and comfort of a tribe. And so I'm going to embed that into how I asked that question. And then fair enough. Fair to me is the dirtiest four letter word in the vocabulary because no one says no to fair enough, right? And so if you're like most people, fair enough. And then lastly, I never defer my future to them taking action to call a lender or to call a referral or a resource.
So before I hand it off to a lender, it's always going to be this question: have you talked to your bank about getting a loan or will you be paying cash? I'm always asking the last part last, which is, will you be paying cash? Because I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they may be paying the cash. I'm not going to stereotype them. I'm not going to guess, I'm not going to project my beliefs. I'm going to ask if they'll be getting a loan or if they'll be paying cash, then regardless of what that answer is, of course, if they're going to be getting a loan, I'm going to ask, hey, most people in your situation prefer to work with my best lender. What would be the best time to have them call you today?
I'm not going to ask them to call the lender. I'm going to have the lender take action on their behalf because no one is hiring you to do more work. They're hiring you to make their life easier. Do that by having your referrals and resources take action on their behalf. Okay? And so the model that I think about following when I think about sales and doing it at a high level is I'm not a fan of scripts because I don't like to feel like a robotic salesperson either. I like sales systems or sales processes because I have a belief that 85% of failures in sales or failures in business are a result of the process.
W Demming, who's the godfather of process and systems management, had the quote that “the role of a leader is to optimize processes, not to badger their people to use processes that are antiquated.” When we design the best sales process to build urgency, what we get is people taking action sooner. In my mind, I'm always thinking about refocusing the prospect on now, sooner, or the logical next step. Every time I meet with a customer, I'm setting the appointment for now. Right? What would it take for you to write an offer today? If it's not today, then what would it take for you to write an offer sooner? So what would it take for you to write an offer tomorrow or this house doesn't work for you.
So would tomorrow be best for us to take a look at two other houses that meet the needs that we discussed at our strategy session? If that doesn't work, I'm going to move to the logical next step. My goal is to shorten the timeline with them in order to help them get what they want right. Urgency is about time sensitivity, and so I'm going to do that by following the model of now sooner or logical next step every time. And whenever I get any resistance to the timeline. You always have to make them right. You never mansplain, you never argue. You always make the prospect right. Because what they're doing is you hear them as saying no to you.
But what you really need to understand is what are they saying yes to when they say that they're going to hire their cousin to help them sell their home? They're saying yes to something. You hear that? They're saying no to you. What you need to figure out is what are they saying yes to? Because that's the actual objection that you need to resolve. They're always saying yes to something. Your goal is to follow that no in order to find their yes and then sell them what they're selling. If someone says that they want to hire the agent who will have the best communication with the most expertise and experience in the luxury market, don't sell them on the fact that you sell more homes than everyone else, that you have the largest team, and that you're great on social media.
That's not what they're buying. We're always going to sell them exactly what they're buying – which is the communication, the luxury, whatever the prospect told you. Always sell the prospect what they're buying and then sell more of it. Sell it better, sell it faster or sell it easier.