 So, Yvan, let's talk about the property industry and why you believe one would be a great fit to be a real estate agent before we get to making more sales. Absolutely. Well, Tumi, the thing is the property market in South Africa is... Good evening. Welcome to the Private Property Podcast right here on our Facebook page. My name is Tumi and welcome. It is a beautiful day for us to join and speak about what else but property. This is your trusted podcast where we talk anything and everything property. If you're joining us for the first time, right here we speak about anything and everything property related from buying, selling, investing and really growing your property portfolio to our regulars. Thank you so much for coming through. Mark the register by giving us that green heart and we know that you are here. So in today's conversation, we are talking about something really, really lucrative. I will say lucrative because we are talking about how to make more sales as a real estate agent. So if you're somebody who's already in the field or somebody who's looking to transition careers and get into the property space by selling, being a real estate agent, do stick around. The conversation is going to be quite, quite insightful. So Yavin Roka is joining us who is a business strategist and he's going to be talking to us about how to make sales. Yavin, good evening. Good evening to me. Are you well? I am good. How are you doing? I'm excited. We're going to talk about sales. Yes, you're going to be talking about sales, going to be talking about money. I'm sure a lot of our Facebook family is as excited to talk about this topic and we've got a couple of people also joining us. Shout out to our Twitter family. People are joining us also on the Twitter Spaces. So if you are on the Twitter Spaces, it's time to share that space right now and let your people know that we are talking sales. So Yavin, let's talk about the property industry and why you believe one would be a great fit to be a real estate agent before we get to making more sales. Absolutely. Well, to me, the thing is the property market in South Africa is, can I say, stimulated in such a way that there's a lot of growth and not only growth potential but there's so much, if they always say history repeats itself, right? So if you can go and look at South Africa's property history, how those graphs look like and what these graphs actually represent. I mean, in the last 50 years, property prices only went down three of the last 50 years. So it means property prices are always going up. There's obviously a ton of reasons and I mean, that's a seminar on its own why property is a great investment. But when you have something that is a great investment, like in South Africa where we've got a population growth, which is quite staggering. I mean, we almost 50% higher in population than we were 25 years ago. So all these people need places to stay, right? It's a basic need. So if you look at all these stimulating factors that causes property to grow, now you have something that you can sell that's always high in demand, right? People don't want to sleep outside in the rain. So it's the same like oxygen. People will pay anything for oxygen. So with housing, you want to make sure that if you want an industry to go into, that's stable. And yes, maybe growth wasn't what you expected the last year, right? Look, yes, it still went up. So if you want to sell something that's always in demand, the property industry is a great place to do that. Sure, definitely. And I mean, what kind of qualities and skills would you say someone who wants to be a real estate agent or someone who is a real estate agent already should possess? And if maybe this person doesn't have them currently, they could even look into maybe upskilling themselves. Absolutely, yes. That's a great question to me. A lot of people believe salespeople need to be a certain personality that you have certain characteristics, right? And this qualifies a lot of people out of the race when it comes to sales. So when they're selling houses, when they're selling cars, when they're selling bulls from door to door, this qualifies a lot of people when we start putting people in boxes to say, they have to be high, high personality or they have to have this much charisma. I've seen in my history of sales, I've been doing sales most of my life. And the first time I was in a position that wasn't sales, it was more a service component, I learned so much about myself and understood, but actually I took myself out of a lot of sales prior to the service position because I knew my product great. I was upselling everything and then the customer wanted the product that I had on the floor, but I still needed to tell them more about the specific product and they didn't want a year more. They said, listen, I want this thing and I decided, but I haven't told this guy enough, right? So I was too charismatic. So what you need to understand is there's no specific traits, no specific attributes. However, you need to want to be able to sell. So let me put it this way. You must know that there are certain barriers in your personal life that you will have to overcome when it comes to sales. One of the most realistic things people get smacked with when they're going to sales is a thing called rejection, right? So people don't like being rejected. So most of the times you're going to have a lot of people say, no, before you have someone that says yes, especially in a product that's a bit higher price like property. It's a different thing when you're selling newspapers or well, 10 years ago, newspapers are relevant more, but when it's something higher price, obviously the frequency of the sales isn't that high. So you aren't necessarily going to go through that many notes, but they're still going to be percentage wise, let's say 80% notes to 20% guesses. And you have to be able to accept the fact that people are going to say no, but you want to obviously not say closing ratio. That's one of the reasons why we are talking about this tonight. So one thing that I'll definitely recommend is you have to be a lifelong student, right? You have to read as many books as you can regarding sales, and here's one of the most important ones for any person in sales, social psychology. Anything regarding social psychology, there are great books on it, books like Influence by Dr. Joe Galdini, Dave Ariali or Dan Ariali's, was it predictably irrational books about social psychology that explains to you how we as human beings think and not just how we think, but how we actually behave. Not how we think we behave, how we actually behave. So you want to make sure that when you bring a customer, a prospective customer into a shellel, you want to know what emotions are they going through? What kind of emotions are they experiencing when they go through living room, right? What picture do they have in their mind? Those themes are crucially important because if you understand how human beings operate, how they think, how their emotions work, you will then know what to say and when to say it. People don't walk in and say, oh, this is a three bedroom, two bathroom house, great. That's perfectly what we were looking for. We're going to buy it, right? Human beings are emotional creatures. And we know that people buy houses based on emotion. Yes, you can buy investments based on the numbers, but how is this where they're going to stay at? They want to turn into home the emotional thing. So if you're a real estate agent listening tonight, it is critically important that you start self-studying and understand how human beings think, how they behave, and how they feel, and what you say, how it makes them feel. Sure. You spoke about rejection, right? And speaking about accepting it is a little bit better because when you're setting something so immovable like a house and property, there's only so much that you can do with it. So I just want us to touch a little bit more on that before we head on to our next question in terms of how would one accept it and if I'm a real estate agent and I'm with this person or I'm with a prospective client, rather we are standing in the middle of a house and I'm getting rejected. How do I handle those emotions that are now welling up inside of me and remembering that at the end of the day I've got a duty to perform and I am on duty? Yes, absolutely. I love, I can't remember who said it, but someone says it's not necessarily that they reject you, right? When they say no, it's just that you haven't convinced me yet. So if you're standing in the living room of a house that you thought they're just going to absolutely love, there's something that you don't know yet. You as a sales agent, you don't know maybe exactly what is motivating them to buy. So maybe the place that you are standing in currently is not the place that they really want. Maybe you thought it was, but it's maybe not that place. You know, sometimes when you walk through places you get this feeling, right? My friend Yaku always jokes about that a husband just loves the kitchen and the wife loves the bright area, right? And so what happens is if that stimulation of that emotion and that feeling is not organic, the people might say, yes, this is not the place for us, but that's fine. I mean, if you're a real estate agent listening tonight, you know there are some customers you've shown or clients you've shown so many places and then suddenly this one place clicks, right? You walk into this place and they say this is the place. So first of all, to make sure that you don't waste your own time as an agent. You want to make sure that you qualify your prospective buyers as soon as possible. And what I mean with that, qualifying a buyer is understanding exactly what it is that they are looking for. Are they emotional buyers? Are they buying for themselves? Are they buying for an investment? Do they want to flip the place? Do they want to buy, spend a few bucks? And then stay there for two years and sell it off, right? You have to ask better questions. So when you qualify your clients, when you spend that time understanding, doing a discovery call, understanding what is it that you're looking for, make sure that you ask very specific questions because the answers to those questions are going to help you later during the show or during a visit to pinpoint and say, I remember you guys said you wanted a 15 square swimming pool heated, right? And you touch on that thing and you can work as one of the points that's going to be emotional stimulant for the close later. So yes, you must understand that you can reject, be rejected. But if you do a poor job of your sales processes, you're going to be rejected a way lot more than you would have wanted to be. So you want to make sure that you become better at closing a sale. But before you get to a close of a sale, you have to understand what information you need to close the sale, right? So you want to make sure that you really get to know your client, your prospective client. And then obviously as they go through this process, be tuned in for the nuances that you might hear that say something or whisper to the wife. Oh, yes, I really don't maybe like this area, right? So you want to make sure that if they, if you can get into a no quicker as well, you want to push that process to get into the, to the no and say listen, yes, this is not ours for us or this is not the area for us. Then where do we move towards? And then you take them to the next place. Sure. Thank you so much for that insight. Our Facebook family is really enjoying the conversation. I'm Lindy C. Chabela says couldn't agree more, pre-qualify, pre-qualify, pre-qualify. If you just joined us, we are talking how to make more sales as a real estate agent. And we are being joined by Evan Roka, who is a business strategist and giving us so much information on how to make sure that you nip that sale in the butt. So we are going to talk a little bit more about this, but before we continue the conversation, we asked a poll on Facebook as we normally do. So if you see one of those polls, make sure that you participate on our Facebook page. So we asked everybody, pretend you're a real estate agent. How many houses would you sell in a month? We gave you three options and we asked you, would you sell one every week, two houses a month or three? I don't think I would make a real estate agent. And actually, nobody said that they would make, they wouldn't make a good real estate agent. And I mean, why wouldn't you make a good real estate agent if we give you such great tips on how to become one? Man Landaba says, it depends on the market and the commission, but two a month would be a great job. Dear Gull says, it's not easy, but I'll target at least two a month. I'll throw the question to you, Evan, and say if you are a real estate agent, how many houses would you sell a month? You're really putting on the spot to me. It depends on which month. And what I mean with that is when I say which month, I don't mean April, June or December. I mean, how long would I have been selling houses? So it depends on what your experience is, right? So don't be too hard on yourself. I know it was maybe a pretend poll, but maybe there's some of the real estate agents maybe not doing two deals a month. And you feel like, yes, but what if people pretend they can do two deals a month? Why am I not making two? And you shouldn't be too hard on yourself as well, right? You want to make sure to look at yourself, let's say you put your career on a timeline, right? On an X and a Y axis, and you look at your career as a timeline somewhere, you're going to start growing a lot more and a lot faster. You're going to close deals quicker. And all of you probably know a real estate deal takes weeks. You don't close a real estate deal in three days. You maybe close it, right? From the viewing to the offer to purchase and the seller says, yes, let's go. But now there's financial approval. There's a lot of moving parts. Some deals take even longer. I mean, if you look at estate duty, the real estate transaction that comes out of the estate, right? So don't be too hard on yourself. Look at your process. How long have you been in this? If you've been in it three years plus and you may be not doing what you want to do currently, right? You have to self-educate. You're going to have to become better if you want to up those numbers. And this is the most important part for any real estate agent. You have to understand a sales process. If you've looked at any of your previous deals and you know exactly what worked well for you because I can give you a million ideas. But if you know what works really well for you and you put that in a process like a sales pipeline, this is my step one. It's a new opportunity. Now I'm trying to get leads. Obviously that lead comes in. It's now a new opportunity. They want to do a viewing. So we do the viewing. We talk about the numbers. We negotiate. They're offered to purchase. They sign off at the purchase. And then it's closed one on last. If you understand the steps of your sales process and where you can better it. And you have a nice grid. It's nice software for it as well. But you can start on Excel tonight. Write down all of the transactions or prospective transactions that you pursue it and ask yourself in which step of each of these of these steps is each of these perspectives of clients. Yeah. So this one is that offered to purchase. This one is showing off. We've got an appointment for next week. And you will see obviously at your negotiation level or bank approval level, you can start predicting how many you will be closing in that month, right? Because you know these things have a timeline. So sometimes because we don't manage this information, we don't write it down. It's the same as eating, right? We don't write down what we eat. We don't write down what to spend our money on. But I dare you, don't write that down for weeks. Write down for weeks what you eat, exactly what you eat, right? And write down exactly what you spend your money on. You will be shocked after a week to see where all your money and your time and your meals went. The same with your work management. We can only manage what we can measure. So all your input work, put it on a graph, look at each step where they are at and then ask yourself, great, if I follow the same process, if normal time goes by, I will close this week. And then for every step moving forward, you have a closing ratio. And you want to bear each of those closing ratios from the first one to the second one to the one after that. Does that make sense? No, it definitely does make sense. And the process seems so tight. It seems watertight in terms of you learning what the process looks like for your particular case and just really understanding that process and how you can tighten it further to ensure that you really scoop those sales. And I like that we're really talking about this because my next question was, what are the three key things that you would advise someone who's already in the space? You've already given us one. So what are the other maybe two that you could say? Try and zoom in a little bit on this and maybe level up your career in this way, in this regard. People talk a lot about the difference between selling houses and letting houses. So is there a major difference in terms of the way the consumer market looks when people are letting instead of buying? And what are some of those myths that we can knock out the pub tonight? Awesome. I love the fact, the thing that I love about business, there's a thing called a hybrid business. So it means you sell to consumers directly. So business consumer and business to business. So if you have a hybrid business during different times and revelations in any industry, you can sell to different markets. Doesn't matter which one of the two markets are suffering. So with property, the same thing. It's a hybrid concept. So you've got tenants and you've got buyers. You've got investors. You've got people who want to make a home. So you've got such a variety of in-consumer that you can sell to and rent to. So I wouldn't really say the one is better than the other one. What I will say is you as a real estate agent or prospective real estate agent want to make sure that you are tuned to what are the different concepts between both of them. So and this is one thing we see in the market that I really would love real estate agents to do is if you can get to a place where you understand how property investments work on a higher grade. So let's call it property investment 202. So when an investor walks into an apartment, right, that you are showing him, if he asks anything regarding capital gains or yields or increases or maybe is out of eye, these are concepts that user real estate agent needs to understand because the best thing about sales in any industry is you write your own check, right? We write our own checks when it comes to commission and we have to understand doesn't matter what the market says. Last year, a year after COVID, our market or the property industry, the value of property still grew by 4.6%. I mean, that's great. It's better than money market. I mean, it's a year after one of the worst financial years the world has ever seen. So it tells you something. That's a fruit of a specific tree, right? So you want to make sure that you become so good that when you stand in the front door of an apartment that is a good investment and you are speaking to a prospective client, you want to explain to them, sir? So this is the ROI or this is the yield that you'll get on this specific property. Let's quickly pop your information for the supportment into this software and let's have a look how much money you'll be making in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years from now. This is a long-term game. So we should stop selling a 200 grand cash flow, positive cash flow to an investor. Everybody has really reached that good end, but that's not what property is about. That's not the only thing, right? So how about telling the prospective client, listen, over the next 5 years, this is what you'll be made. But you have to have understanding for that. So that means you're going to have to go through personal development, attend seminars, go to courses. I mean, private property has a brilliant property investment. And they promote it. You guys have to be there. If you're a real estate agent, you have to utilize social media a lot better, a lot better. I mean, during the fan team, when people couldn't leave their houses, how many real estate agents, and be honest, answer this question for yourself. Don't shout it over the microphone, but how many of you actually went and took videos of the places that were in the market? Of your listings, how many of you took videos to promote them on social media for a prospective buyer to look at and experience a walkthrough? One thing that I still can't really understand why shell houses normally only is on Sunday afternoons. I mean, that's a trend that you can actually change. I know there's a couple of guys now doing brilliant videos of properties that they've listed. So I really want to encourage you to make use of social media, build your own personal brand by promoting your listings, your own listings. You don't have to do your colleagues' listings, right? Do your own listings, nice video, nice background of yourself, and promote yourself as an actual professional. You don't have to do things the traditional way. And then here's the kicker. If you're really good at understanding what property investment is and you understand the market and you start teaching prospective buyers, imagine you do a three-minute or five-minute video on social media in the week to come, explaining to your followers, the people who have bought from you, listen, here are the three steps you can take to buy another investment property without having a bigger salary. You will have people phoning you. Your phone will ring off the hook, right? There isn't a hook for the phone anymore. But imagine you can start educating your current, just the people who have already bought from you, and those are the best people to sell to. Which of you have phoned your previous clients that bought from you in the last five years for investment purposes, not for their own hours? How many of you phoned your previous investors or clients that bought for investment purposes? How many of you phoned them within the last three months? Because they are the people you can continuously sell to. You can't sell someone a home they want to stay every year, but you can sell to your investors every six months, even more, especially if they invest in the correct manner. So, phone your old customers, especially if they're investors. Educate your customers. Your clients aren't really educated. I mean this with all the respect I can say it, because they may have got the information regarding property from Uncle Friky at the Bray, right? Yes, zero knowledge about property, but actually they get the information. The industry, the market, they've got a bunch of excuses. So, learn more for yourself, and then you educate your people. Even if you are one-on-one with them in the living room, tell them, listen, imagine you break through this wall, you create a bit bigger space, and you bring in another room there, imagine what this property would look like. That's where you pick your customer or your client to think into a different direction. They don't see that with the other estate agents, and then suddenly they root to you, and they will buy property from you specifically for years to come. Sure. Even if there's one thing that we can definitely tell from the conversation we are having tonight, it's passion, and that's one of the things that I would really like to remind all our viewers tonight that if you are looking to become a real estate agent or you already are one, passion is one of the biggest things because from passion we build the different professional developments, we build the skills, we build those small things that really change or upscale and change the level of your sales and the level of your interaction with your clients and the rapport and the different engagements that you have with them. I'm really feeding the passion, and I hope that everyone else who's watching us is, and we are really getting to the tail end of our conversation. So in a minute, I would just like you to give one person who is watching this live tonight advice and say, this is where you start from tonight. As you get off this live tonight, this is where you start from on how you can increase your sales as a real estate agent. That's great. I'm going to definitely list the previous one that I said, following your previous clients, especially blind investors. So see if you can get another sale from them and it's not about just getting another sale, you want to see to assist them to educate them as well on property investment, right? So that's the preview that you're going for them and then you can show them more properties. That's the first one. Then obviously personal development, learn more about sales, how to sell, what sales processes look like or should look like, learn about social psychology, and then go through the numbers. Forget about the rejections. If someone says, no, that's okay. You will get to the yes, right? Have confidence in yourself, but here's the biggest thing. Stop making excuses. There's nothing wrong with the industry and there's nothing wrong with the market. You may be just looking at the wrong place, right? There are other real estate agents selling way more, maybe at the moment than you are currently doing. Find them and pursue them as mentors and understand what are they doing that's making them successful. I can guarantee you if you find a real estate agent in a different area than yours and you tell them, listen, yes, you guys are doing really great. Would you mind if I take you for lunch and just ask you a few questions? I'm getting started now. What can I do to increase myself in this area? Maybe you're in Durban tonight, right? I don't know the Durban that well. That real estate agent does. You can tell them, listen, just don't look at this area. This area is booming. They're developing their fine mentors, fine people who've done this before, right? It's not that you can't do it. You just maybe don't know how yet. So to increase your performance, find people who've done it before, read people's books, attend great seminars and believe in yourself and then go and do it. Thank you so much, Yavan. Thank you. Thank you. The love we're receiving on social media is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for taking out your time and giving us these insights. Everybody is really, really, really, really grateful for your time. Thank you so much. Thanks to me. Appreciate it. And if you are watching us from KZN and specifically Durban tonight, safe wishes to you and we hope everybody is keeping safe amongst the floods and all the tragedies that are happening in the area. We wish our private property family that is in Durban a safe time in these really trying times. Thank you so much for taking our time to watch the episode tonight. We really had a good time. And know now how to make sure that we make more sales as estate agents. If you're looking to transition, if you're really in the field, you can now level up your career and make sure that those sales keep coming in. Thank you for joining us one more time. My name is Dhumi and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, right here on the Private Property Page. Have a good night.