I go and teach estate agents to be great estate agents, but some of them will not pick up the phone and do the basics – the basics – really, really well.

They want to be out there in the lounge. They want to be accepting the offers and putting the deals forward, giving the keys over. But the most foundational principle you need to learn as an agent is how to shift your mindset from prospecting to get and actually prospecting to give.

Your clients need you more than ever – that's the mindset that I have. I don't think I'm an inconvenience. I don't pick up the phone thinking I'm going to try and get something here, I'm going to try and get an evaluation, I'm going to close this person, Why? Because then I wouldn’t want to pick up the bloody phone.

If that's my intention my motivation isn't happening. Instead, I'm here to help people. That's why I love estate agency. It gives us the best opportunity to help people in their hour of need. Moving home can be a stressful enough experience without having some idiot ring you up trying to book an appointment because it suits their flowcharts, their spreadsheets, their goals, their KPIs – that's not what you need to be doing.

I liken this approach to training, and I'm going to tell you a story about when I was a 17-stone, unhealthy, fresh-to-my-own-business owner and I literally needed to get a grip because I was eating takeaways and drinking far too much beer. I needed to get fit.

20 years before that, I was a fit man, playing football, and loving life. I had all of the energy in the world, and you need energy to be a great estate agent. I knew what I needed to do, so on 20 January 2014 I made the decision to start running.

Imagine you’ve got this guy who’s unhealthy, not really looking after himself, mentally drained, fatigued, and he’s going for a run. I remember the first run – it was freezing cold, and I'd arranged with two pals of mine to go at 6:00 in the morning. Remember, back then I was usually sound asleep at 6:00 in the morning and there was no way in hell I was getting up at that hour. But I wanted to change, so I did.

I used to fear. I used to feel anxious about going out to run, so I had to close down that anxiety and push myself into a moment of progression. I was looking to form a new habit, a new routine, which is what I'm going to link you back to in a second.

I didn't necessarily want to go and run. I didn't really want to go out there in the freezing cold minus temperature – why would I want to do that? Well, I knew why I needed to do it:

- I had to get healthy.

- I had to get fit.

- I had children that needed me.

- My wife needed someone with energy.

- My business ultimately needed it

- My clients needed it.

In short, I knew that I was the heartbeat making things happen, so I needed to get fit. I needed to go out there and start.

I didn't need to be great to get started, but I had to get started to be great. That's the principle that I'm going to talk to you about today.

I knew that I didn't want to go and do this, but I did. I’ll tell you what I focused on: I focused on the outcome. I focused on how I was going to feel at the end of the run.

By the way, you never go out running going ‘I can't wait to go and do this!’ No, no, no. When you get back, you get that feeling, those endorphins are flowing, and you're thinking to yourself ‘Oh my God! I'm so glad I’ve done that. It's got me off to a great start today.’ And then I'd make my tea and be ready to take on the day. Prospecting is no different.

When people don't want to prospect, it’s because they're not focused on the outcome. What they're focused on is the fact that they're going to be barging in on someone and being a complete inconvenience. If that's your mindset, that's how it comes across. Your energy transfers that negativity around doing it to your prospect.

So if you're talking to people about going on the market when they're simply not ready or they are hearing from you when they don't want to hear from you, you're going to get it all wrong.

What I want to share with you right now is how to reframe your thought process, just like I did around running. That way, the outcome you’re focused on will be good for you and your client.

When you prospect, you’ve got to know that you're there to give value. You're not there to get – that's not what this is about. It's not about you, it's about the client. Focus on your client.

Your client is the person that's come into your business at some point, whether it's a lead or a valuation that you've been to in the past, they have approached your business for a reason. That reason is that they need value. They need advice.

Right now, I want you to take one simple step: write down what your clients need. Answer these questions:

- What do they actually want?

- What do they actually need?

- What sort of information can you share that will help them to make decisions moving forward?

That's what you’ve got to be focused on. You've got things that you can share with people – lots of different things that they don't even know about. There's loads, and your job is to have all of those insights on hand.

Now I'm going to teach you my framework. Following this is how you’re going to get focused and disciplined like I had to do when I started running.

Then, I knew that I had to have my shorts, socks, top, jumper, glass of water, trainers. It was all there so I could be up and out – bang, done! I gave myself no more than 5 seconds so I wouldn’t talk myself out of going for that run. I made it easy.

Let’s make prospecting easy. How many hours a day do you spend scrolling on your phone? You’re endlessly scrolling for a good few hours a day, right? I only want you to give one of those hours back to your clients. It’s easy to give up one unproductive hour a day, right?

I want you to take one of those hours and block it in your diary. I want you to go ‘that is a must’. That time is a must because that's a giving-value time. Whether you decide to put it at 10:00 in the morning or 5:00 in the evening, doesn’t matter. You know what the flow of your business looks like.

The deal is guys, you’ve got to do it every day. This is a five-day-a-week commitment. That's five hours that you're going to invest in:

- giving value,

- giving insights,

- giving advice,

- helping people understand,

- teaching people that they don't actually know what they don't know about the market.

For me just that perception and that shift from going and having to make phone calls to get something, to making calls to give 10 pieces of value 10 insights. That is the focus that we're looking at – that’s what will motivate you to prospect every day.

The first deal with this framework is that you've got to make 10 calls.

I’ll say that again, you’ve got to make 10 calls – not texts, calls. Out of those 10 calls, I reckon you're going to leave messages for five different clients. I've done the averages with people that I've worked with and it works out that about half the people you ring from your mobile will answer. For those, it's all about how you introduce yourself.

What about the half who don't answer? What kind of messages are you going to leave? That’s a really crucial question. If you ring somebody up and barge into their day, if that's what you think you’re doing, they're not going to ring you back. Before you start, you need to know what value they need from you and tell them about that in your message.

Most people will be interested in their house price. They want to know what equity they’ve got in their property, and what the market’s actually doing that affects them, their needs, their outcome.

Knowing this makes crafting your message really, really simple. You can say something like this:

I've got something for you that I think you'll find really interesting, and it relates to the value and the equity in your property. So just give me a ring when you're ready, and I'll give you that information for you to use going forward.

If you say something like that, people might just ring you back. But if you do the classic, “Hi, it's Matt here from Giggs and Co. I was just ringing to check In. To see if you're okay and to catch up.” Uhuh. Do people really want to catch up with an estate agent that they haven't phoned? No. Do they really want to know about the market and their needs? Yes. And that's what you're going to give them.

Let’s look at how that works: I’ve found that when you share a comparable property with them and drop a little screenshot of a property very similar to theirs, you can get them to engage by asking what they think about the price of that house. Then say, “I've got my thoughts. Give me a shout. Let's have a chat.”

For clients that you actually speak to, for me, it is all about what I've just described:

- What do they need to know about the market right now?

- What's going to be really important for them that's going to help them in their decision making process?

You need to be prepared to answer these questions because most clients are in a market right now that’s gone from a literally red hot sellers’ market into a buyers’ market. They’re worried because of what they hear in the news every day.

Think about what the news says – it talks about the averages across the country, it tells you that house prices are going down, the war, … it gives you every bit of doom and gloom. After hearing that, they think it's not worth even thinking about selling, buying, or getting their needs met. They’re thinking, ‘Why would I? Mortgage rates are sky high.’

This is where you can help. People don't know what they don't know, and you've probably got the information which is going to give them the solutions that are going to get them to their desired outcome.

In these conversations you need to ask:

- What are your moving goals?

- What were your goals when we met?

- Do you see how this market can help you to get those goals?

The key here is asking the right questions, because questions are the answers. You are looking to establish what it is they're looking to achieve and why they contacted you in the first place.

So in the five killer conversations you’ll have each time you prospect, people will want to see the detail. They'll want to see the information, the data, the logic, the emotion. They want you to show them more.