We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
Guaranteed Events, Planned Success
Send a message directly to Lee ( Include your details )
Lee Woodward map's out 2026 around guaranteed events, build a practical learning menu, and share a simple reach‑out call that makes you top of mind when sellers act after the holidays. Preparation becomes profit through price improvement, documentation, and a team‑based system.
• locking guaranteed events first to shape the year
• running short sprints between milestones to keep momentum
• setting a focused 2026 learning menu for real gains
• building a listed‑to‑settled checklist with clear ownership
• why finished product outperforms rushed listings
• using sales funder to remove prep friction
• writing buyer‑ready information memorandums and surveys
• the psychology and wording of the reach‑out call
• using “next property” to open real conversations
• preparation time as the driver of price and confidence
Book in your event, and I look forward to seeing you there
Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems
Brought to you by The Complete Salesperson Course & Super Coaching Program
🎓 The Complete Salesperson Course – Australia’s premier real estate training, delivered nationally throughout the year. Build the skills, systems, and mindset to perform at the highest level. Learn more →
📚 The Super Coaching Program – An exclusive membership providing ongoing coaching, resources, and strategies to support sustained growth in real estate. Join today →
Discover more:
Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Salesperson course and claiming doors. Christmas is over. We now approach New Year's Eve and then launching into 2026. Today's program, I want to do some light planning with you and also prepare you for your first reach out call of 2026. And in the light planning, because you don't want to go over the top and do anything too full on at this time of year, it's a sensitive time. And a time to relax, think, reflect, look at last year, and then just get your own thoughts, nobody else's thoughts, about what you want out of your 2026. And this is where last week we had the yearly planner with Charles Tarby. And there's nothing more powerful than the dedicated days to the week, month and year laid out where you are pre-planning what you want out of the year. And that could be your holiday time, some small getaways, certain birthdays, milestones, but locking those into the calendar gives you the framework about you first. And let me give this some context for you. When you lock in the trip overseas, the getaway, the weekend of it's a milestone birthday of somebody else, and you're gonna be at that particular event. And I know many people do their milestone birthdays in Europe. This is what you call guaranteed events. So everyone knew where they were gonna be on the 25th of December because it's a guaranteed event. And you know next year you've already got your thoughts in mind of where you're gonna be or back at home or do it away, go for travel, but it's a guaranteed event. And our life revolves around and should revolve around these guaranteed events. The ones that are important to you. I'm not talking about bookings and appraisals and the open houses. That's gonna happen anyway, but that's gotta happen in between the guaranteed events. So, what are your guaranteed events for 2026? Lock them into the calendar now rather than having them sneak up and you go, I forgot to mention we need to be away for two weeks at that time. Lock it in and you'll find that the guaranteed events determine your year. That these are what I'd like to see as guaranteed events for 2026. But if you don't protect them, nobody else will. And I know in the world of Lee and Robin, we have to set out all the complete salesperson course dates for the year, the complete leader conference. We're speaking in the UK in June and having a break in July. So those guaranteed events have already shaped the year, and then everything else will be in between. So podcast coachable moment number one, what are your guaranteed events for 2026? And use this time and opportunity to pre-plan what is required to make that happen. So it's okay to say I want to be there, but what does that mean? Could you book those flights? Can you confirm your accommodation and let the guaranteed event actually have some foundations to it? And remember, it's okay to ease back into work mode before the actual year kicks off and we're chasing it. And a great stimulator to working in this fashion is these short sprints in between the milestones. So we just got to get to here and then we're there. And then we just got to get through to here and we're gonna be there. And I think compartmentalizing the year, not just in months or quarters, but in between these milestones, is actually a driver. It keeps you inspired and keeps that momentum towards reaching the next guaranteed event that you planned that you wanted. And you can have such an effective life by working in these short sprints. So many people waste time instead of investing their time into what they want out of it. Stop watching, start doing. Coachable moment number two in the podcast today is what's going to be on your learning menu, your progressive learning for 2026. What is the item listed that if you got this right, would make you a far better option in the marketplace? And in the very famous words of Charles Tarby, when you reach a certain level of professionalism, the money finds you. Now I passionately, and I know in my own little world, the more I learn about something, the better my skills are in that area, the more opportunity that comes to me. And I have a brilliant example of this that I just did in the last two weeks. This person's listening to the audio right now, so I'm gonna put him on notice that we'd love him to come on and share his story. And that was Brent Osborne of PRD Kingscliffe. Brent has just bought the company in the last few months. He's going through that rebuild of all systems, infrastructure, to freshing up a business and a marketplace that he is not from. And to do that, there's many things we need to do in claiming doors. But one of the projects that was on the learning menu for Brent Osborne was to master the brand new listed to settled process. So we did an entire checklist inclusive of conversations, requests that the agents would make to have essential services assist them in the tasks that are required. So you got front end and back end of a business. And as we went through this, we were able to fix the tools of trade. So we did a brand new listing leave behind. We're now reviewing all the letters and emails and text messages that will go out to the marketplace. We then set it out on a huge two and a half meter by 1200 board, which has been beautifully graphically designed, and it's got prospect nurture, right through to listed, right through to settled. All the train stops of a listed to settled checklist. And then we divided the checklist to above the line is what the agents do, their tasks, their calls, their moments. Below the line is what the company does. And when you see it on this big wall, bigger than a big wide whiteboard, everyone can gain visibility of this is what we do. And the focus that it brings to a business is incredible. That's what I mean by what's on your learning menu, what's on your progressive learning, and the listed to settle process is such an important topic and a podcast of the future. And Brent, if you're listening, I hope you're accepting the wonderful invitation to come on this program and share that story. And a big shout out to the entire team at PRD Kingscliffe. You've just come through a custom super coaching program in-house. The implementation was phenomenal, but just how many doors you've claimed, got them on a price update, did the public event where we did a how to run a small business evening, and 72 local business owners turned up to that night. Just a beautiful, impactful four months of time with you. Seeing the results is outstanding. My third coachable moment for today's podcast is the reach out call of when you return, start hitting the phones and ringing your future sellers. And with this phone call, it's not just the scripts and dialogue words and concepts that's important. What's important is your psychology in how you approach making these phone calls. And to set the scene, I want you to think about this. Everyone over the Christmas and New Year break has time to reflect on their life. And it's that time of year where people change jobs, change locations, accelerate their plans. Whereas towards the end of last year, no, we're good, we're not doing anything, we're gonna stay where we are. This is the time that people do make that snap decision to make a move. And you've got to make sure you're in the groove of that and not just come back to the January, February part of the marketplace where you think it's gonna be slow and it may not take off as quick as you think. Wrong thinking. They've had time to think over December, January, and now they want to put action into place. But the question is, are you top of mind for that phone call? Are you top of mind that you are the person they would reach out to? Have they been receiving those regular price updates, those weekly emails, the video explainers about should you move, should you renovate that they would think I'm gonna reach out to you. Now, the approach to the phone call that I'd like to recommend for you is the lessons we learnt from 2025 in the marketplace. And what we learnt from the 2025 Marketplace is finished product sells well. Detailed information about the home packaged up into a buyer booklet, a web book, some sort of multimedia and paper-based version of the information memorandum of the home is what gets great results. I know myself I'm not selling for a few years, but I've just had a full detailed survey of the property done because I believe that's an asset in the sale of the property. When someone's coming to invest that amount of money and it's on a big space with lots of parts to the home, you'd want to be able to gain visibility and having that brilliant detailed survey when a lawyer looks at it becomes important. So the future belongs to the prepared, needs to be the psychology in your phone call. And this phone call doesn't have to be over the top. If anything, in communication right now, strip it back, allow the message to connect, back it up with a proof point, and then allow them to ask you questions about the possibility of what you're presenting and the facts and evidence you've provided. And that phone call may go something like this. Hello Helen, it's Lee calling from Podcast Realty. How are you? Excellent. The purpose of my call is just to reach out. It's a brand new year. The marketplace has come back very, very strong with people considering their options for moving and what they can do to really get the most out of the property they're in before considering the changeover. And I just thought I'd I'd ask you that question. How did you go over the break? Have you had any thoughts about your next property? Just coming out of phone call there. The words next property don't limit you to time, price, position, location. It's just next. And as you listen to me on this audio, what's your next property look like? I think about it all the time. I've been thinking about it for years as the dynamics of the family change and the kids have kids and they move on, and it's just Robin and I in a very large home that we've been using for so long, what's our next property look like? Is our next property two properties in two different locations? But this is what goes through people's mind. But the accelerator of the phone call is to strip back the call and use keywords with clarity that make people respond. And when we use the words next property, and you can use this all day, every day, it triggers something in someone's mind of what's next versus not now. That's the difference. The next part of this phone call, you want to get across the facts and evidence about finished products selling so well. To have that discussion, we bring in the facts of the price improvement program, and that may go something like this. Helen, just to share something with you. In the last part of 2025, we saw a very specific reason why good properties were getting greater results than normal properties on the marketplace. And what I want to share with you is we gave guidance to all our owners not to just whack it on the market and see what you can get. Unfortunately, a lot of agents rush things to the marketplace. They don't take the right time to prepare the property. It sells, but definitely money is left on the table. Whereas anything that we ran a price improvement program on, which is our commitment, we do all the work. You don't have to do anything. What we found with the purchasing community last year was I don't mind paying more for it, but I'm not going to be able to get additional funds to replace the kitchen, to fix up the bathroom, to repaint the entire outside of the house. So by bringing finished product to the marketplace, we saw a significant difference in the way the properties were valued and also how the mathematics and emotionals of a marketplace can kick in. And the greatest thing we brought to the marketplace last year was our sales funder process. Now, sales funder means once we got the authority signed, we can apply to sale funder and get up to$60,000 that we don't need to do any repairs, marketing, and so forth, and it comes off on settlement. But the project management and preparation is what's getting that great result. And then we put that all into what we call an information memorandum, an index of absolutely everything to do with your property that will justify someone paying the difference. And actually, at the end of this phone call, I'm going to text you a couple of those examples of how we detailed that. And when you read through it, it's very different to just close to school, shops, and transport price. This is every feature in your home is a dollar value and it's been showcased to get that result. But I want to send that to you because behind the scenes, it's an enormous amount of work from our team to get that right. And you can't do it in just a week. You want the time to do it properly, get the wording right. And Helen, although you've spoken to me this whole time, we're a team-based business, and should you decide to engage us as your agent and appoint us, there's about 12 sets of hands that will actually touch the property. Now I'm responsible for it and I price it and I sell it, but from our marketing team right down to our anti-money laundering people and also the trust account people, there's so much goes into selling a home. So whenever you are thinking that making that move, allow that preparation time because it's the preparation that leads to the profit. Just out of phone dialogue there. Get into that conversation that there is so much that goes into it on our behalf. You don't have to do it, but we need that time and preparation. Otherwise, it makes logical sense to go with the cheapest agent if all you do is put on the portals and wait at the opens. The difference between a great result and an average result is 10%. And that's why professional agents using price improvement programs have such impact in the marketplace. And those who don't, don't. And that's the reach out call and the conclusion of today's program. I want to thank everyone for a massive 2025. It's been absolutely wonderful delivering this weekly podcast. And yes, I'll be back next week. For all the teams that are about to do the complete salesperson course, I know Brisbane is our first public event. Our first private complete salesperson course is for Phil Harris, Harris Real Estate in South Australia. I'm looking forward to kickstarting your year. Woodards, we return back to you this year in Melbourne. Lang and Simmons in New South Wales have their own private complete salesperson course, as do Century 21. And also one agency, the Elite Property Group. I'm doing a whole year with you in 2026. Many projects, looking forward to that. And to everyone who's going to attend the Complete Salesperson course, the dates are in the show notes. Book in your event, and I look forward to seeing you there. I'm Lee Woodward. Speak to you next week.