Shift Your Thinking - Christian Bartley

We tackle the reality of a changed property market and how we keep momentum when buyers hesitate and vendors feel the pressure. We share practical scripts, prospecting plays, and the mindset shift that helps us trade on facts instead of fear. 

• Separating vendor conversations from buyer conversations 
• Using comparable sales, days on market, and enquiry to reset vendor expectations 
• Handling procrastinating buyers with calm, positive framing 
• Testing investor motivation beyond negative gearing 
• Explaining SMSF property investing as a long-term wealth pathway 
• Cutting through uncertainty with “what else will you do with your money?” 
• Prospecting “historical buyers” and seasoned database records 
• Asking simple qualifying questions that create commitment 

Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems

Brought to you by The Agency Portal 

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Transcript

Welcome And Platform Sponsor

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name is Lee Woodwood, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Styles Person course. Today's program is brought to you by the Agency Portal, Australia's first listed to settled execution platform. This incredible digital platform allows us to use agency sign, agency AML, the style funding process, commission funder, agency supplier pay, and agency settlement. Agency settlement is the Pixar partner that allows the real estate digital transaction to exist. Let's get started with today's podcast. Joining us back on the program is one of our resident coaches, Mr. Christian Bartley. Christian Bartley, welcome aboard. Thank you, Lee. Good to be back.

Facing The Changed Market Head On

SPEAKER_00 0:55

We are responding to the changed market. And now we've just got to look at the facts and the positive actions that we can take within the marketplace. And Christian, as you know, as someone who's been in the industry a long time, people that haven't been in the industry a long time haven't seen the road ahead. And it could be one of the most exciting times to really learn your craft correctly because as the market goes through its ups and downs and corrections, the question is: do we have the tools? Do we have the skills? And do you come in each day and make that defined decision? And the two decisions every day in real estate is I'm either winging or winning. So we want to win. Christian, what's your view on the change market and what's some of the things our listeners can be doing to further improve and progress through this change time?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Okay, now the agents have got to remember that they are dealing purely with uh a vendor and a buyer. There's two different types of conversations that need to be had with each. Obviously, both have got to be honest conversations with each of them. Vendors have got to have the reality of them hit home. And so there are there may be some parts of the marketplace where investors and holiday home buyers may start removing themselves from the market because they actually don't know whether the benefits of buying are existing as they were only a month ago. The conversations that need to be had with vendors uh need to be factual and statistical, and they just need to be reminded about the volume of interest that there is. And if they are realistic about wanting to be selling their property, they need to accept where the market is. And I don't think the market's necessarily going to be changing in the immediate future. It's going to take some time for it to change around. But a direct conversation with the vendor and advising them what your direction needs to be is probably the is the best way for them to go through. Agents need to have comparable sales, days on market, buyer inquiry. And the agents that I've spoken to around the country, uh, things have started to shift, and their words are they've seen a shift in the market, especially in the last three weeks, and the investors are coming out. And that's all fine. Markets change all the time, strategies change, markets shift and move. It's just down to the agent having to adapt how their conversations are going to be had with the people who are selling the properties, what their motivation as to why they are selling, what's their objective, where are they moving to, and deliver the truth from the marketplace. And sometimes a lot of agents, when the market's great, an easy delivery is uh in their pocket. But when the market's tough, it's when great agents become even better. And uh, this is where a marketplace where a lot of agents can end up leaving the industry. And why we're doing this podcast, Lee, is to not have those agents lead the industry, is to get better at their art, um, have better discussions with their vendors and guiding them right from the day one.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Christian, couldn't agree more. And in the famous words of Mr. Charles Tarvey, when you reach a certain level of professionalism, the money finds you. And what I'd like to say on this podcast today is make today the day you you shift, you change in the marketplace. What I mean by that is I I get cranky at the agents sometimes that they get caught up in what everyone's saying, the wash, the news, and so forth. How many weeks can you do that before you say, right, I've had enough of all that. I'm now gonna have different conversations.

Buyer Role Play To Create Action

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So, Christian, I'm gonna make you the purchaser. I'm gonna give you a call, and you've been looking for a couple of weeks, and now you've hit the procrastination moments. So I'm ringing through, ring ring. Hello, is that Christian? It is. Christian Lee Woodward from LP Real Estate. Have I caught you at a good time? Yeah, it's fine, Lee. How are you? I'm very well. How's your hunt for a property going?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

It's good. We are still browsing. We've probably our level of enthusiasm's just started to drop away a little bit. Um, and we just thought we'd wait and see how the market changes.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, a lot of people saying that. And a way to cut through right now is there's never been a better time to purchase. It's just converted over to that moment, and it hasn't been that way for many, many years. It's been the opposite, as we saw the climbs in the market and everyone missing out. But you said you lost your your enthusiasm. Take me into that. Well, what's happened?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Um, the reason why is look, we've got the enthusiasm to still want to buy, but we've just got a feeling that the prices may might drop back a bit because the investors have been affected in the marketplace and they may come into the market. And if there's some desperate sellers out there, we may be able to pick up the property at a lower price.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Well, that's today. There is lots of people who've decided now's the time to sell their property due to the changes. And are you buying for investment or are you going to move in? Um, we're going to move in. Excellent. So you're not affected by any of those things going on in the news. But for those other people that are, this is that moment and opportunity. Christian, right now in the marketplace, I don't think you could afford not to buy. This is that chance. You know, I've been doing this for 30 years, and the next thing I hear is I should have done something four weeks ago. Look what's happened now. The only next signal you're going to have that the market's changed again is when it goes up. And then suddenly you're paying $70,000 more than you could have paid today, because that's how fast the movement is in the marketplace. So, Christian, I've got two things that I want to show you. When are you available to have a look? Christian, what did you pick up in the style of conversation we were having?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah, I think you were pretty positive about the market. You gave me some examples that being a permanent resident purchaser wasn't going to be affected by it. You gave me the confidence that if I was to buy it, I'm going to be unaffected. And uh there is a number of buyers out there that are sitting and waiting to see.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Investor Concerns And SMSF Angles

SPEAKER_00 6:48

If it's an investor that you're making the phone call to, and they say, Oh, you know, the negative gearing's gone, and this and say, Well, was that your reason for buying? Were you buying this for a tax saving, or were you looking for the long-term growth that one day when you cash it in, you bought well and you sold well? Because people don't buy property for just negative gearing. There's a lot of people buy investment property because they're positively geared. And Christian, one thing that's happened that didn't really come out in all the podcasting and announcements out there is self-managed super funds weren't affected. They can still negative gear.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Especially if you're 50 years of age and you've you can hold one for the next 10 years, you're going to see growth in there and still also get the tax benefits along the way.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Christian, I don't even have to ask you this, but you would have a self-managed super fund. I do. So do I. I can't believe how many real estate agents don't know about self-managed super funds. It is the pathway to wealth, and we should be communicating that through to the consumers and also as agents, and there's been some great changes in self-managed super fund. One of those being you're now allowed to have six members of your own fund. So, how many family members are out there could all come together and purchase real estate, yet they don't even know where their super is? And it just they leave it 20 years and think, I wish I knew that. I was very fortunate. I was 23 years of age when my principal said, Lee, you're going to see my accountant and you're opening a self-managed super fund. And I had no idea what all that was, and it was the greatest thing that ever happened, and people leave it far too late. And that's just another conversation that we can have in these markets.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

You're spot on. And that's a extremely strong positive uh perspective on it. If people who are dependent on what the age they are, is their if their aim is to accumulate wealth and they haven't got a self-managed fund, then they need to be advised to think go and get one. Maybe to, which is what we all know, bricks and mortar is the intention of buying, you're never buying a piece of real estate to go, okay, I'm going to buy that today and I'm going to sell it in 12 months' time. Why would you do that? Because it's it's you're probably, when you look at the cost and step duty and selling cost, you're not going to make money. So most people are buying real estate for the long period of time. As we all know, if someone wants to build wealth, they've got opportunities to do it either in the share market, to buy real estate, to own and run a business, or put it into crypto or wherever it is, if you know that. Now, a lot of people don't understand the share market and they're not confident to invest in it because they don't have that confidence. But most people have the confidence around real estate, and that's the angle where most people should be heading to. Now, most agents like what I just answered to you on that phone call was that they're just sort of waiting for something, but they actually don't know what they're waiting for. They're waiting for certainty, but certainty doesn't really arrive. When interest rates were at 2% during COVID, people waited, still didn't buy. And when rates went up, people waited. When prices were rising, people still waited. And when prices softened, people waited. The objectives haven't changed, but the environment may have changed and the strategy hasn't. So to buy bricks and mortar and to have a long-term growth on buying real estate is still the intention. And it's just for agents to be providing their buyers in the marketplace, and especially the investors or holiday home buyers, to provide them a solution. Allude to them the fact that are they buying, like what you said before, are you buying for negative gear in tax benefits or are you buying for capital growth? Because the closer you are to hospitals, shops, beaches, lifestyle, parklands, they all still are going to be a limited amount of stock. The aim for everyone is to be as close to as everything is they possibly can for convenience. Convenience isn't not going to evaporate and disappear. So it's convenient to be near a train station, to be near an airport, um, or to be near that lifestyle that's on offer for them. But the greatest opportunity is people in the marketplace who are buying principal place of residences, they're completely unaffected. And there are great opportunities out there in the marketplace at the moment. And that's the noise that agents could be seeing, because if if there is a part of the market that's going to be disappeared because that's just the nation that we are in, and most people like to sit on their hands and follow you know what everyone else is doing and just waiting and seeing, but they actually don't know what they're waiting and seeing, then they should be promoting the opportunities that are existing in their marketplace. And uh, when opportunities emerge, like in the time right now, investors pause, agents can lose motivation, and the best opportunities are rarely obvious at the time. So um it's just a mindset shift for agents that they're working in a market that a lot of agents, if they've come into the industry in the last three to four years, they haven't they are unaware of how to operate in this market. And it just comes down to the confidence of their delivery and their script and dialogue.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Couldn't agree

Cut Through Fear With One Question

SPEAKER_00 11:33

more. So this is the shift in thinking right now, today. When you are speaking to someone and they want to bring up the negative gearing and the we won't have the capital gains tax, all that stuff, just say to just cut through the conversation and say, big pause. What else are you going to do with your money? If you've got money to invest, where are you going to put it in? Do you like shares? No. Do you like crypto? No. Well, there's only property left, so which one will we buy? And it just cuts through. They've got to do something with it. The money's got to go somewhere, otherwise, they they don't have an investment plan for the future. And as we've just got to keep driving home, you didn't do this for negative gearing. You were buying the property for its long-term growth. You can cash it in one day. But really, today's podcast is shift your thinking. Don't get, you know, sometimes I I have to say to agents, Christian, I go, Oh, they've got you. They go, What do you mean? The consumers, they've got you. That they've convinced you. And now you're coming for me. You want me to get in on this. Well, I'm not. You're not getting me in there. Uh, you can have all that. I have no interest in that conversation whatsoever. And when someone starts whinging to me or releasing, I shouldn't be so calm. I go, okay, get all that. So what are you gonna do? Do you want to go and get a job at Harvey Norman? Or do you want to stick it out here? What do you want to do? And what are you gonna do today?

Using Historical Buyers To Create Sales

SPEAKER_00 12:54

And in this final part of this podcast, Christian, I want to talk about historical buyers. So for me, there was a very famous audio once called Making Sales in a Tough Market. And I wasn't uh a real estate trainer, I was a real estate salesperson. But I was featured on the actual program because the phones are stopped, no one was at the opens, the inquiry was down, which is what you call your active market, but I was still doing 10 sales a month. So the big training organization of that time reached out and said, What are you doing? I said, helping people move. And they go, but all the inquiries down. I said, Yeah, I wasn't working on that. I've gone backwards in time. I'm ringing buyers I I was speaking to three years ago, and I'll ring them up and say, Hi, Christian. Last time we spoke, you were living at 20 Prescott Avenue. I did an assessment on that property, you're still in that property. And they go, Yes, we are. And can I just ask, what made you not move? Oh, we just, it was too hard. They were all selling so fast, couldn't get hold of me. We just gave up. Wow, time flies, doesn't it? So back then you're looking for a two-story brick and tile home, double garage, had to have a pool, and you needed some additional storage due to the family business. Is that still what you would need for today? They go, yep, I've got one, I've got to show you. And they go, Where? It's up in Coloro Plateau. I've only just got it. Great time to see it. Would you give me the opportunity to show you what a future property could look like? And they go, uh yeah, couldn't hurt. So I get them out and then they go, Ali, we love it, but we're gonna have to sell our one. I can look after you there. I'll get the terms that pull this all together. But they would go ahead. And everyone in the office would go, how come they went ahead? Because they're not looking at all the other properties. That's why. When someone's looking at a normal market, they go and see 20, 30 houses and try and pick one. What if you just showed them one, they go, This looks good. And last time we got sick of it, so can we have this one? You can have this one. And I'd say to the owner, We need some terms, but I've got someone who's ready to move versus nobody else has got anyone ready to move at the moment. And going back to those old records of what I call seasoned data, this happened to me. The very incredible Brad Rogers rings me up one day and I had my business in King Cumber. We'd done the fit out two, three years before. He said, Leah, I've got a great property for you. I said, You must have me wrong. I'm not looking for a property. He goes, No, no, you've got to come and see this property. I said, Brad, why would I need to see this property? He goes, your internet's too slow in Kincumber, and Web Street's gonna be the first street on the NBN. And with your service center and all those girls, you're gonna need faster internet. I said, All right, I owned Web Street for 15 years, but I wasn't looking to buy. But it was he was right, it was the first one on the NBN. It gave us faster internet. We did a big fit out there, bought it with our self-managed super fund and only sold it two years ago. Best thing that ever happened to me. But I wasn't looking to buy.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Great point here, Leon. You've just brought it down to the buyer's ability to read the play and read the situation and provide the offer and suggestions to the to the buyer, no matter who they are. Most powerful question a buyer could be asking, sorry, an agent could be asking a buyer in this current market if the perfect property that met every requirement that you require came available tomorrow, would you buy it? And that's all they need to ask, because then they're not waiting for the market, they're not waiting to see and change. What they're waiting for is confidence, and then it's down to the agent's role to support them with that confidence and remind them that property is not a six-month investment. Property there's still a population growth in Australia, there's still a housing shortage in Australia, um, land is scarce, construction costs are rising. So you buy already existing with a labeled price on it. And if it meets the requirement, then it's just down to the solution of having to find that property for them. So tap into that.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

So our shift of conversations are really good. And if you look at anyone who progresses forward, they've got great questions. So you could ring people now and say, Hi, it's Lee. I'm just following up. We spoke four weeks ago, and your interest was on a property of. We now have two of these coming available. They haven't been photographered yet. We haven't done the floor plans, but there's a wind of opportunity I can get you through. Is there a chance I could get you through before it goes to the open portals? So, in that beautiful Lisa Novak style, the coming soon, get excited part of the property. If the perfect property came to the market tomorrow, would you buy it? Yeah, would you buy it? And it's a yes or no. And then suddenly you've got buyers thinking positively again because we have the opportunity to actually get them engaged. And as we're now in this world of real estate, it's about attract, engage, commit. One of those great things about the historical data. Prior to the wonderful databases and digital world, Mr. Bartley, we all used to work out of a paper diary. I used to love the colour coding of the diaries. So my sales manager gave me an REI diary, which had all the fees in the front because all the fees used to be the same and you had a schedule of fees. And it'd say, Lee, each week when you get a listing appointment, just highlight that in green. Buyer appointments are yellow, price reductions are red, and personal are blue. So we had all our little highlighters, and you go through, and each week they would count your stripes, and that's how they check your numbers. But then some weeks you'd come in and they'd say, Lee, change your market, go to the diary room, grab a diary from five years ago, and start ringing all the yellows to see if they actually did buy, and then ring all the greens to see if they actually moved. And your hit rate was phenomenal, and just that one historical moment to go back through, and the call would go like this. Hi, Christian, it's Lee Woodward from Rod Jones First National. We did an assessment on your property on the 6th of September 2002. During that time, you were looking to move for these reasons. Did you end up moving or are you still at 20 Prescott Avenue? Out of dialogue, bang, we've got a future seller here, and then we go into the just all we have to do is take the conversation into the why didn't you move? What if I had something? Tell me about your next property. I love that word. Tell me about your next property. Next doesn't mean timeline. Both of us are in house at the moment, but we would both know our next property. Anyone listening to this thinks about their next property, and next becomes such a powerful conversation to keep this progressive phone calls rather than you've got the choice, you can whinge, go along with the budget, go along with all the taxes, and and throw the war in there as well. Good luck with that. Or get on the phone and find out about their next properties.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Great dialogue, Lee. And nothing's changed. We've all got the power of using great powerful words. It's down to the delivery.

Two Qualifying Questions To Finish

SPEAKER_01 19:46

There's one question that I'd always ask sellers, and there's one question I would always ask buyers. And the the question with the buyers, if you're ringing back open for inspection purchases or buyers for the first time, if you saw the right property tomorrow, are you in a position to buy it? So you then qualify in a hot buy list. And then when you're talking to a seller, you're actually saying, Would you sell your home tomorrow? Would you consider moving tomorrow if you've got the right price?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Yeah, if we got a number you couldn't refuse, where would you go to?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Yeah, and and most people are probably going to go, yes, and but we haven't talked about price. So then they are a potential seller. It's just down to where the value is.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Well, Christian Bartley, we've definitely hit upon these words shift your thinking. That's what we wanted to achieve in this podcast. I want to thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you speak at the complete leader conference this year. Thank you, Lee. Good to speak again. Thank you.