How Will and Vero Vaquerano Grew to 85 Agents With a 9 to 11:30 Daily Call Block

Vero Vaquerano00:00

And we only work exclusively with listings, so we don’t really take buyers around. Our focus… I mean, we have team members in our group that take our buyers. So from 9:00 to 11:30, religiously every single day, we’re making calls. We’re in Vulcan7, we’re making expires, for sale by owners, circle prospecting, just lead generation.

00:18Because if we don’t have that lead generation piece of it in our business, then our business is gonna suffer in two months. So we know two months from now, we’re not gonna have a business. Everything we have under agreement right now is closing in June, so what is our July or August looking like?

00:35So if we’re not prospecting every day, then it’s not predictable. It’s so crazy and so mind-blowing because before I became a listing agent, I used to be like, “Let me go to this appraisal. Let me go to this. Let me go to this closing.” And all these non-income producing activities… When you have them under agreement, then it’s done.

00:54It’s over. You’re not making more money than you already did. So it’s like, how do you get out of those activities and really focus back into creating more leads, filling up your pipeline? So we’ve been able to have that consistency that has led us to just being so predictable in our business.

01:13So it’s nice to be able to do that and still have a family time. Have the perfect work and family balance, because that’s ultimately our priority, our kids, you know?

01:29Business is second, third to that.

Will Vaquerano02:11

Vaquerano.

Vero Vaquerano02:32

We’ve been married for three years.

02:34But we’ve been together for seven.

Will Vaquerano02:38

At an open house. I listed a house, and then the very next day, on the same street, another house goes on the market, and I go pop in there and I see her.

Vero Vaquerano02:51

So it was real estate-

Will Vaquerano02:53

Heaven-

Vero Vaquerano02:53

Heaven. Match in heaven.

Will Vaquerano02:55

And then I prospected her, and that’s how I know.

Will Vaquerano03:01

All those great vibes.

Vero Vaquerano03:02

He literally called me three times in a row right after leaving that open house, and then he texted me. And I’m like, “Who is this person who won’t stop calling me?” Just like a-

Will Vaquerano03:09

FSBO and an expired, right? Yeah. You gotta call ’em till you get them on the phone.

Vero Vaquerano03:36

That’s right.

Will Vaquerano03:37

In the same office, just different rooms.

Vero Vaquerano03:47

It’s funny. We call the same leads, because he might call an expire, and then I might call the expire, and then he…

03:54The conversations could go very different. I handle a lot of the Spanish-speaking clients. So if it’s somebody who speaks Spanish, I would connect with them much easier. But if it’s somebody who, let’s say, maybe an elderly person, he’ll connect with them really well.

04:11So it’s like, they might hang up on me, but they might stay on the phone for him. So it’s actually really good, we complement each other when it comes to some of these different backgrounds.

Will Vaquerano04:22

And we take notes, obviously, right? And then she would say, “Call this person because, you know,

04:29this reason.” And I would say, “Here, this is an expire that you need to hit up right now.”

04:35So yeah, it helps.

Vero Vaquerano04:42

Oh, yeah. No, he does. He does.

Will Vaquerano04:44

Baby. Yeah.

Vero Vaquerano04:45

He’s like, “Baby, call this one right now.”

04:47And then I’m like-

04:48And then I go in there, in Vulcan7, the software that we use where we take the notes. And then I’ll read whatever he wrote, so I could start off the conversation with that, and I already have background on that person, so it’s almost like I have a little bit of an advantage.

05:05So I would say not so much friendly competition, more like he helps me and I help him when we’re not able to connect with somebody.

Will Vaquerano05:29

That way, I mean… So the reason why we’re able to work together is ’cause we complement each other well.

05:35We’re wired kind of the same thing. We love growth, so we’re always focused on growing.

05:41It’s not like, “Hey, I got a listing. You didn’t get a listing.” It’s more of like, “Man, I need to produce to be a part of…” You know, one way or the other. We help each other, but not so much like, “Hey, I signed a listing. Hey, what’s up with you?” Right? But I know that that’s not…

05:57That drives some people, but I think we’re just always focused on the growth part of it and helping pull up or push up.

Vero Vaquerano06:03

Yeah. And it’s interesting because we work very close with each other. Obviously, we talk about real estate every single day, all the time. The kids, I think, are sick at this point of hearing us talk about real estate, because up until the time we go to bed, we’re talking about stuff.

06:18But we run very different businesses. We are both working with completely different prospects. He does a lot of expires, for sale by owners. I also make those calls, but I also work a lot with my sphere of influence.

06:32So sometimes when I list a property, for example, from a SOI, a sphere of influence, I might use, let’s say, Vulcan7 to help me prospect and farm that certain area

06:43to get some leads from that. Some of the leads that I’m able to pull. So that could be my focus on this business, and he might be more focused on for sale by owners, and then door-knocking them, and then expires, right? So it’s really cool how we both have our strengths in certain different parts of our business.

Vero Vaquerano07:28

Yeah. Yeah.

Vero Vaquerano07:35

I think the biggest thing is I’m more of like, when it comes to, like, OCD, more controlling in the sense of, I tend to do more of the back-end stuff, like managing our admin, our marketing, our back-end stuff. He’s more of the sales. Let’s say he’s

07:56the stronger on the side of negotiating. When we have a tough situation or we’re working with a client and it’s a little bit tough, he’ll be the one who kind of comes forward and has that tough conversation. So we really complement in that sense, and the strengths really come up when it comes to doing that.

08:17And he knows he’s not supposed to step into my world, which is the marketing world. I’m like, “I handle that. You handle the other side.”

Will Vaquerano08:25

And it’s not easy. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, but one of our coaches helped us with this, is you have to define what roles

08:34that you’re gonna take on within the business, right?

08:37So I do handle the newsletter. That’s my… And I have a passion for it. So even, it doesn’t have to be a husband and wife team. It’s just if you have two people managing the team, let’s say.

08:51Just define it. “Okay, I’m gonna handle this, and I’m gonna handle this.”

08:55Great, and then I’ll have your input, and that’s it. When it comes to staging and marketing or design… Like you see behind. If it wasn’t for her, this would be all white, and it would be completely fine for me, but people love it. They compliment the whole office every time they come in here, right?

09:13So we separate that, and we respect those boundaries.

Vero Vaquerano09:43

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Will Vaquerano09:45

And we never fight.

Vero Vaquerano09:50

But we’ve come to agree to disagree, you know?

09:53And sometimes it’s like we’re just in the middle of something, and we both know we’re hitting a wall. We’re like, “Okay, let’s just take a break, think it over, and then come back and reunite and decide what’s the best outcome for this.” So we’ve come to understand that.

10:09You know?

Vero Vaquerano10:23

Yeah. Yes, yes.

Will Vaquerano10:39

When people can copy and paste what we’ve been doing, when they follow the recipe, right? I always say it’s pretty predictable if you have a set schedule and you have…

10:49Veronica says this all the time. She says, “Consistency will always beat talent every time.” So if you’re consistent and you copy and paste what other people are doing… So for me, it’s satisfying to see a brand new agent come in here or a seasoned agent that’s not doing well in their business, and they

11:09see what we’re doing, and they do it. And then you see the results.

Vero Vaquerano11:13

It works. Yeah.

Will Vaquerano11:14

Man, I feel like I signed a listing or I sold a property through them.

11:20And I think she agrees with that too, right? So I know she does. But that’s for real.

Vero Vaquerano11:25

I’m gonna say yes. No, it’s nice to see people growing.

11:29I think after so many years in the industry, we’ve been doing this for 10, 11 years, and we know how to sell homes. We know how to take a listing. We know how to convert the lead. But what he’s saying is right. When you have other people realizing, “Okay, all I have to do is follow the steps and actually become a successful agent,” and they actually do it, and they’re successful, that actually brings more…

11:53It makes us more proud than having a million dollar listing, honestly. ‘Cause that we know how to do now, and it’s easy. But having the group, we have 85 agents now, and having it just actually click in their mind and be like, “Okay, we get it. This is all we have to do. Just show up.

12:08And just call it a time block, and just make the calls and prospect, and use the softwares and do what you guys do,” and that’s more rewarding.

Will Vaquerano12:27

People tell me all the time, “Will, show emotion when you sign a listing.” And I’m like, “Yeah, this is my happy…” But when another agent signs a listing, I’ll be the loudest one in the room, right? It’s just a different level, right?

12:38But yeah.

Will Vaquerano13:07

It’s like four or five hours a day.

13:10And we work Monday through Friday. Veronica, the nice thing is that if you marry the process of controlling your time with time blocking,

13:20you could really control your business, right? We always say that this industry will chew you up and throw you out, doesn’t even care about you, your divorce or your problems, nothing, right?

13:30But if you control your time, you really start to manage it, and it creates this freedom. So Veronica, she clocks out at 3:30 and picks up our daughter, and she’s been doing that consistently for years, right?

13:44So she does about three hours, four hours maybe sometimes. I do it three, four hours and that’s it.

13:51Monday through Friday. We don’t work weekends. Very rare that we ever do work weekends. Sometimes you can’t control that and you have to, like, a seller wants to meet there, but.

Vero Vaquerano13:59

And we only work exclusively with listings, so we don’t really take buyers around. Our focus, I mean, we have team members in our group that take our buyers, so it’s not that we don’t take buyers, but we have a specialist that focuses on the buyers.

14:14So what our weekly schedule looks like is we arrive to the office, I drop off my daughter, he drops off the older kids. We are at the office 8:30, 8:45, and then we jump on the phone around 9:00 AM. So from 9:00 to 11:30, religiously every single day, we’re making calls. We’re in Vulcan7, we’re making expires, for sale by owners, circle prospecting, just lead generation.

14:35Because if we don’t have that lead generation piece of it in our business, then our business is gonna suffer in two months. So we know two months from now we’re not gonna have a business. Everything we have under agreement right now is closing in June, so what is our July or August looking like?

14:51So if we’re not prospecting every day, then it’s not predictable, right? So that’s how we’re able to keep things moving, just really laser focusing on the lead generation in the morning, and then afternoon comes in, and then it’s appointments, follow-ups, emails, and all that stuff that is happening.

15:09We have an amazing team. We have an admin that takes care of a lot of our stuff and a transaction coordinator that takes a lot off of our plate. So we’re able just to do agent relationships. That’s what we… And agents, just with our customers, our clients, and then our agents, and it keeps us very slim.

Will Vaquerano15:50

Well, I wake up at… No, I’m just kidding. So like she said, I get in here before her ’cause she drops off my daughter. So I hit the phones, fresh expireds, fresh for sale by owners.

16:02You text them if you can’t get them on the phone, and then after that, you decide what you wanna do. Older expireds, circle prospect, whatever you decide to do. I do older expireds at that point after the fresh, and then I lead back into the for sale by owners. I call them again, ’cause those are highly motivated, right?

16:21Ready to go. And then right from there, I go to my lead follow-up to see who’s the freshest ones. Usually on Monday or Tuesday, I call the older for sale by owners after they had their open house. I wanna see if they get an offer Monday, Tuesday. And if not, then we book them as an appointment.

16:40And then 11:30… You wanna jump in? 11:30, we-

Vero Vaquerano16:43

So 11:30 comes in, and then we do role play. We have a group in California. People from all over the country jump in there, role play for 30 minutes. It’s so predictable, honestly. And then 12 o’clock on the dot, we eat lunch. He gets up at 11:59, makes the lunch, and then from 12:00 to 12:30, we either jump in on our training while eating lunch, or we’re eating lunch and following up with people.

17:11And then back at 1:00, 1:30, we’ll jump back, and we do more calls, for either those expireds that didn’t pick up in the morning or for sale by owners. So anything that is fresh in the list, usually for another hour. And then back at 2:30 for me, it’s either confirming appointments, following up with sellers, buyers, and then I head out at 3:30.

Will Vaquerano17:35

She was saying that yesterday. She was saying, “Isn’t it awesome that we’ve been able to do what we’re doing?” Sell all these homes, only listings, and not have to run around with buyers, and grow this to 85 agents. All this that we’re doing… We’re expanding up into another level over here at our office, all from here, the office.

Vero Vaquerano17:56

From sitting at our desk.

Will Vaquerano17:58

It’s very rare that we go out, unless it’s just to hit appointments. And sometimes you can’t control… Sometimes we’re even doing Zooms on listing appointments too now. But all from those chairs. That’s it.

Vero Vaquerano18:13

It’s so crazy and so mind-blowing because before I became a listing agent, I used to be like, “Let me go to this appraisal.

18:22Let me go to this. Let me go to this closing.” And all these non-income producing activities… When you have them under agreement, then it’s done. It’s over. You’re not making more money than you already did. So it’s like, how do you get out of those activities and really focus back into creating more leads, filling up your pipeline?

18:40So we’ve been able to have that consistency that has led us to just being so predictable in our business. We have, I don’t know, like six, nine under agreement right now, and they’re closing in four weeks. So it’s nice to be able to do that and still have a family time.

19:00Have the perfect work and family balance. ‘Cause that’s ultimately our priority, our kids, you know?

19:08Business is second, third to that, so.

Will Vaquerano19:32

Lucky guy.

Will Vaquerano19:57

Yeah. Yes. We have an awesome, we call it tribe. The 85 people that are here. They’re our family.

20:05So I always say to them, in real estate, in business, and in this environment that we’re in, we get to choose who we work with.

20:16So we’re very careful on who comes in because that could affect everybody. And our relationship too, right? We don’t hang out with everybody. We just can’t. We don’t want to, right? So we get to choose who comes into our life, and it’s pretty cool.

Vero Vaquerano20:32

And people might look at this and say, “Well, but my husband is not in real estate.

20:36My wife is not in real estate. I don’t have a partner. They have it easy because they figured it out.” I would say to people like that that it’s who you surround yourself with. I mean, we don’t have a ton of friends. We’re almost, like, homebodies.

20:53We spend a lot of time with the kids, so it’s almost like you might see us and it’s like, “Oh, these guys are always out and about and having a bunch of friends.” We don’t, because we try to be very careful who the important people are in our lives. Because what tends to happen, if somebody’s struggling in their business or their mindset is negative, they tend to pour into you and it affects you, right?

21:14So one of the things is, we love going to the gym, right? And it has to be at 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM that we go because otherwise we can’t. Time doesn’t allow it, kids, everything, right? So it’s funny because sometimes he’ll get up and I’m like, “Ah, I don’t really wanna go to the gym.” But then I know he’s going, so the friendly competition comes in, in that sense.

21:32I’m like, “If he’s going-“

Will Vaquerano21:34

Oh, she’s super good, better.

Vero Vaquerano21:34

We both get… I’m like, “If he’s going, I have to go.

21:37He’s not gonna get all good for summer and I’m not.”

21:37So it’s like, I’m like, “I’m going. I’m gonna go. I’m gonna drag myself out of bed and do it.” So I mean, find somebody like that, a friend or a business partner,

21:49another agent, somebody who’s gonna keep you accountable. A coach also could help you keep accountable. So it doesn’t have to be your spouse, it could just be somebody else in your life.

Vero Vaquerano22:26

No, it’s like when he goes to leave the office, it’s like 30 minutes later, he’s like, “Hey baby, what you doing?” It’s so crazy because

22:32if we’re not together for more than two hours, he’s either calling me or I’m calling him like, “Hey, what are you doing? Hey, did you hear about this deal that just happened?” You can’t keep us away from each other for too long either. It’s crazy.

Vero Vaquerano23:10

I think we could say it at the same time.

23:13Time blocking. One, two, three, time blocking.

Will Vaquerano23:14

Time blocking.

Vero Vaquerano23:15

Time blocking.

Will Vaquerano23:15

That’s one thing. And it’s-

23:17But it also is with the coaching too, right? Get a mentor, get a coach, get somebody that could help you with it, because time blocking is gonna impact it right away.

23:26But then you need the skills, right? If you’re trying to figure it out yourself, it’s gonna take you a lot longer, you’re gonna make a lot of mistakes, it’s gonna cost you a lot of money. But the coaching might cost you some money up front, but it’s gonna pay dividends, right?

23:41Really quick.

Will Vaquerano24:17

So, balance. I’m reading a book right now. She read it before me, and I’m reading it now. It’s called Die With Zero. Some of you guys probably are reading it now or have read it before, but there’s gotta be a balance, right?

24:29Again, this industry will chew you up and spit you out. Put in the work, obviously, right? The consistency. But at the same time, have balance because this industry could cause relationships to suffer, and you only have that one life in this world, so your kids are important.

24:51Time block even your family and all that stuff, and your personal self, right? Find some time for yourself. We go to the gym, and that’s our personal time, individually, but that’s what I would leave you with.

Vero Vaquerano25:02

I agree. I think prioritizing, having your whys, it’s important. Every year, beginning of the year, we do what our business is gonna look like, so those goals, but also our family and our personal, and everything goes in there.

25:15Because you could get lost in, “Okay, I’m just gonna do prospecting, prospecting, prospecting.” And it could burn you out. But if you have a nice balance in your life and your mindset and yourself, taking care of your body, your mind, your family, and then implementing the business, then it’s like you marry the process, divorce the outcome, and then things will start going into place, so.

Vero Vaquerano25:55

Of course. So our office is in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, but we do all the greater Boston area.

26:01So anything you could do… Massachusetts is a small state, so anything in Massachusetts, we have our hands on. So Massachusetts. We also have agents in Block Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. Our main focus is Massachusetts.

Vero Vaquerano26:23

So they could either give us a call, 617-842-2088, or we have a joint email. It’s williamandvero@gmail.com.

Will Vaquerano26:29

The word and, A-N-D.

Vero Vaquerano26:31

A-N-D.

Will Vaquerano26:32

William and Vero.