How Brad Brewer has taken no listing under 3% since March with a commission menu

Brad Brewer00:00

Two things are communication with your clients and leads. If you’ve got that transaction program in place, database, database, database. That’s your sphere and your past clients. Not just direct business, but the referral piece. Connect with your database 24 to 30 times a year in various methods. If you call people four times a year, they will remember you.

00:18Stay front of mind with your database. Your database will yield you the most business. It has…

Loida Velasquez00:30

Hey everyone. Welcome back to a brand new episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the best in the industry to share with you their tips and strategies so that you can implement them in your business and thrive immediately. On today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about delegating.

00:46We’re gonna be talking about listings, you making more money. So with that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and bring on today’s guest, Brad Brewer. Welcome, Brad.

Brad Brewer00:56

Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Loida Velasquez00:58

Absolutely. For everyone that’s listening that maybe they’re not familiar with you, just go ahead and give us a little bit about your background.

Brad Brewer01:05

Sure. I’ve been in the real estate business for over 10 years now. I started out as a solo agent back in 2014. I’ve joined a team, been part of a team, been a… I’ve changed brokerages a few times. But the last several years, I have been running a team, Eagle Homes Team is what we’re called. We’re out of Burlington, Wisconsin, and I run that with my business partner, Vince Duvall.

01:30And we are now 10 agents and one admin. Actually we have a couple admins ’cause we have some virtual assistants, which we may get into today with some delegation conversations. So that’s pretty much a quick background of our team and myself.

Loida Velasquez01:51

Awesome. So yeah, I know we’re gonna be talking about delegation, but before we get into that, can you just share with the audience maybe how your real estate journey started and what that looked like initially when it was just you?

Brad Brewer02:03

Sure, absolutely. I was in corporate America, worked for Verizon Wireless, corporate sales. I managed a small sales team throughout the Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula of Michigan area. And so in the tech world, I’ve always been in sales or sales management throughout my career. I’ve got family that’s definitely entrepreneurial spirit, self-employed, my wife’s self-employed.

02:31So I started dabbling in investing real estate around 2011, flipping some homes, wholesaling some homes. I was really enjoying it, loved the industry, and had several people going, “Man, why don’t you just get licensed and get into the industry and sell some houses for other people too?” And I said, “Nah, I’ll just do it for myself.”

02:53Got licensed thinking I would just continue to flip houses, but actually just developed this great passion for helping others find their dream home. I actually have a number of investor clients too, helping them with their investment opportunities, whether it be flipping or buy and hold.

03:13And it really started as kind of like a I’ll do it for myself, and the part I always loved about sales management was that helping people and helping my employees grow, and that’s, I think, drove me to where I wanted to start that team. I get way more thrill out of when my team closes a deal versus when I close a deal, so I’m like, “Yeah, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

03:38So that really shifted my career quickly. I’ve worked for several small brokerages. I’ve always been either on a team, co-managed a team, or started my own team. So I think I’ve started four different teams in my career.

Loida Velasquez03:52

Wow. Yeah. You mentioned quite a few things that I think

03:56kinda leads us to our conversation that I wanna have regarding delegating. Because I know there’s probably many agents out there, and I know I have felt this way, where I’m like, “You know what? I can do everything. I’m the best at every single thing.” So let’s get started with delegating.

04:10What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes agents are making?

Brad Brewer04:15

I think one of the biggest mistakes is, first of all, not understanding. So I’ll be the first to admit, before real estate, in my corporate career, especially when you’re the leader, the leader typically is, “Well, I can do this the best.”

04:30So not having the patience to develop somebody and train something in a role, and then allowing them to take over and really own it. I think owning it is huge. ‘Cause of me, I’ve always… Everything I’ve ever done, I’m 100% in or I’m 100% out. There’s no middle ground with me. And I think for me, it was like, all right, so I’m gonna hire this assistant, and you’re gonna handle marketing.

05:01Okay. Well, first of all, how do you train that? So that was just learning how to train that, and then relinquishing that control to let them take it over. And I think there’s two things you have to do. One, you have to look for someone that kind of has that in their blood, or they have an attitude like, “I wanna own this.”

05:22And two, I made a ton of mistakes in trying to train too much. I mentioned my team, my co-team leader, Vince, he does a great job. It’s, “We’re gonna show you this today. I want you to get really good at this. I want you then to own this to where I don’t even have to talk to you about it. You’re just gonna come to me if you have a question.

05:48All right. Our goal this week is to market to our database. Here’s some ways I would like you to do it or some suggestions. Go.” And then have them come back and say, “Well, I have a question here, a question here,” or, “I’d like your input on something. Maybe final review.” But it was a very tough transition for me.

06:09It really was.

06:11And I find that’s the biggest mistake with everybody is the training process, and overcomplicating it and then not giving your person enough time to learn it.

Loida Velasquez06:22

So where would someone get started if, let’s say, they’re a solo agent and they’re scaling?

06:26What are some of the first things that they need to start delegating?

Brad Brewer06:32

I’ve gone back and forth on this. When I first started to dabble in team, we hired agents first and it was like, okay, well, that’s great, but they’re just doing the same exact things I’m doing. What…

06:44So we started to look at it as, what’s my time killer? What’s killing my time? Transactions. I always call it the rollercoaster effect. I think a lot of agents go through this, is I remember I’d build up to a point where all of a sudden I’d have, in the month of April and May, I’d have 10 plus closings ready to roll.

07:04I’d have 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 contracts pending and then all of a sudden I’m having to work those ’cause I don’t have a transaction coordinator and then what do I stop doing? ‘Cause I’m working on those deals, following up on inspections, all that good stuff. I stop lead generation, right? Which is an agent’s probably most important job is lead generating.

07:25So I stop doing that and then all of a sudden, well, great, those 10 to 15 closings go and then, but then I wasn’t building so then I’d go three months with no income. So I just made a lot of money, but then I wasn’t refilling the funnel. So I learned a while back that support first. So next time, there was the two of us this last go around and our first hire was not an agent.

07:52Our first hire was we had a virtual assistant and then we had a virtual assistant plus, we were lucky enough to find a good local in-house assistant who happened to be also licensed, which is a whole nother level there, right? Of things they can do. And we started them with transaction coordination because if I don’t have to worry about scheduling inspections, following up on the inspections, doing the amendments, and checking on the title and appraisals and all that kind of stuff, right?

08:22Closing gifts, blah, blah, blah, all that. We have a massive checklist, and I can let those four, five, six deals ride. Well, instead of them running out, I’m spending most of my day then trying to generate more leads, which is where an agent needs to be. So I would say to me, transaction coordinator would be top priority.

08:44And you can do that. There’s a number of different ways you can do it. We’ve used in-house, like I said, or virtual assistant. We’ve also used Transactly, which is a really good company out there. So they’re one of the third-party companies that you can just hire that company. That’s all they do for you.

08:58So that’s my recommendation.

Loida Velasquez09:00

And I assume as you started to do this and recommend this, that gives you more time to focus on the income-producing activities, going on more appointments, listings. I wanna talk a little bit more when it comes to listings and meeting with sellers because

09:16I think ever since the NAR settlement and commissions and all of that, there’s probably agents that are like, “Well, now I have to have these conversations. How do I

09:26demonstrate my value without not giving everything away?” So where can we get started with that?

Brad Brewer09:32

Well, I’ll answer it this way.

09:34I know a lot of agents last year when the new laws came into place, they got really, really frustrated. And I quickly… I started doing this back in March before all the laws took place. I think our brokerage did a great job as a team. We did a good job of saying, “All right, how is this going to change?

09:55How do we need to now communicate differently to our client?” We actually gained more control, I believe, in the way we handle it on the listing side. ‘Cause it used to be, especially the last several years, we used to get, four, five, six years ago, we could get 6% commission all day long.

10:15Three and a half maybe to our listing side. We give two and a half to the buyer side. I think the laws enabled us to then say, “All right, let’s just focus with our… Who is our client? Our client’s the seller, so let’s work on what we’re gonna do for them first,” which is the listing, right?

10:34So we came up with a menu actually, and our menu option for our listing commissions range between 3% and 4%. And the differences are simply what do we offer. And a lot of it’s marketing, right? If I need to do this much marketing, this much marketing. We got a couple at the higher commission levels where we do pre-listing inspections.

10:55Well, we recommend pre-listing inspections. At the 4%, we’ve got a great contracted rate with an inspector. We’ll pay for those for the clients. We’ll take on the expense because we’ve got that built into our fee. Ever since then, ’cause I was struggling, our team was struggling the last several years when instead of getting 6%, we were struggling getting 5% for listings, sometimes 4.8, four and a half.

11:24I’ve not taken a listing since March under that 3%, because I’m talking to my clients, the seller, about this is what you’re hiring me for. Once you’ve picked your commission structure based on the services that we’re gonna provide to you, now let’s talk about the benefits of offering a co-broke or commission to the buyer’s agent, and what does that look like?

11:51And we have tiers for that too. We recommend at least 2%, but here’s the benefits of offering 2.5% or even 3%. And there’s marketing on that side too, because that’s a form of marketing, and we explain that to them, or we just leave it negotiable. So I think it was perceived throughout the industry as such a negative, which we just took the attitude, “No, no, this is a positive.”

12:18‘Cause now it enables us to break this down into, “All right. This is what I’m doing for you. Now, here’s where the other side comes in.” And it’s worked out really well.

Loida Velasquez12:29

And it also sounds like now there’s more communication where you’re educating the seller. Because maybe they just thought, “I’m just gonna pay this amount,” but they don’t know exactly what goes into it.

12:41And then once you demonstrate what you’re actually gonna do and the benefits of the other agent.

Brad Brewer12:47

Well, it’s done a couple things. It’s enhanced the communication level on a number of different areas. I don’t think a lot of agents, and I know I didn’t really talk about all the things I was gonna do

12:58is I just basically kept it brief. “Well, we’re gonna market, and we’re gonna manage your transaction process, and we’re gonna do this.” And our TC fee too. It’s like if we go below a certain standard, you don’t get the TC. I have to do it, and I don’t wanna do that. So we talk about all those benefits too, right?

13:14So it’s one of those things where it enhanced the communication of explaining what we do and validating what we do. Not that we should need to, but unfortunately you do with certain clients, right? So it opened up lines of communication in that regard. It also let them choose. I think my clients appreciate, you think if you’re offering 3, 3.5 or 4% on the listing side, what would most agents wanna do?

13:424%. You’re gonna make more money. I really gauge it and I explain to my client, “Well, you’re in a standard neighborhood with a bunch of three-bedroom, two and a half bath ranches. It’s a very popular neighborhood. Do I really need to spend a ton of marketing on your property? Probably not. So do I think we need to go three and a half or 4%?

14:02No, let’s go three. I think we can get the job done.” And they love that because they know right away I’m not just trying to make the big dollars. I very rarely in fact recommend the 4%. I probably recommend the 3% most of the time because of the types of properties.

14:21Now, have I? Yeah. I’ve told people, “Wow, this is gonna be tough. We need all the marketing we can get. Your house has some issues. I think we need to disclose some inspection things before the buyer even gets their inspection. So yeah, I think we need to do that.” It’s that full transparency and explanation, and then we back it up because then they can see the stuff throughout the process too.

14:47‘Cause I do that in my weekly updates. “Hey, this week we did your just listed, just solds out to your neighborhood, and then I canvassed the neighborhood with phone calls for any phone numbers I could find for your neighbors, tell them about your listing,” blah, blah, blah. Whatever. So we back it up with weekly communication.

15:04Again, the whole communication piece

15:06of, “Hey, remember I said I was gonna do this? This is done. This is done. This is done.” So they can see it throughout. It also, by the way, makes it a whole lot easier when a home’s not selling to say, “You know what? Hey, I’ve done all these things. I’ve reached this many people in an audience.

15:25We need to talk price.” ‘Cause we’re at a price point. So it just makes… Open communication’s just huge and it’s really been a massive benefit for our team.

Loida Velasquez15:35

Yeah. So let’s say a newer agent is watching this and they’re like, “You know what, Brad? I wanna come up with all of these choices.

15:44I haven’t really sold a home. I’m solo.” How can they get started with trying to figure out what they can offer?

Brad Brewer15:52

Well, obviously ’cause not everybody can call me, my recommendation is, first of all, who’s your mentor? What do they do? Or go to your broker and ask them, “Hey, what type of services do you typically provide?

16:11Do you have a menu?” Right? So I can give a couple examples. Like at 3%, I’m not putting up 40-some photos. I’m putting up maybe 20, right? So that’s one thing. Higher levels we do, like I mentioned, postcards. Lower levels we don’t, ’cause again, it’s where that spend is at.

16:35Various types of paid media, like YouTube paid advertising, Facebook paid advertising, stuff like that. Or is it just, are we posting or are we paying for advertising? So that’s where you can kind of break down your different services. As a newer agent though, go to your senior people that are in your brokerage.

16:56Hopefully you all have a mentor. I think everybody should have a mentor. No matter whether they’re officially on a team or not, it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t on a team at first. I had a broker and I had a mentor. They were two different people, and they did things different, and it was great ’cause I got to see from two sides who does what.

17:13I also had really close friends that were in the industry, didn’t even work at my brokerage back then, that I’d have lunch with occasionally and I’d pick their brain like, “Well, what are you doing here? What are you doing there?” And top agents are not afraid. They know that there’s plenty of business to go around.

17:29So really good top agents are not gonna be afraid to share, even if they’re in your same market, because they know what they’re doing is working, it’s gonna continue to work. So them giving you little nuggets of stuff, it’s not gonna impact their business.

Loida Velasquez17:45

Exactly. So as we wrap this up, what would you say are two things that agents need to start doing right now to be successful this year?

Brad Brewer17:58

Two things are communication with your clients. Touch any… And leads. We talked about leads and being able to go after leads if you’ve got that transaction coordinator in place. Database, database, database. That’s your sphere and your past clients. Not just direct business, but the referral piece.

18:19Connect with your database 24 to 30 times a year in various methods. Me personally, I can be exact with this. I’m at least 12 emails. I’m at least two to three text messages. I’m four phone calls. And I’m not calling just to talk real estate. I’m just engaging.

18:38There’s a lot of times I’ll call my sphere, my past clients.

18:40We don’t even talk real estate. “How’s life? I remember your kid was doing this. I heard you were going on vacation. How the heck was that?” It’s just engagement. Find different ways to connect 24 to 30 times a year. At least two dozen. And the calls are huge. If you call people four times a year, they will remember you.

19:01And that’s… So stay front of mind with your database. Your database will yield you the most business. It has… I know a lot of newer agents say in their business, open houses, paying for leads, stuff like that. Since day one, year one of my business, my database has always been 50% to 70% of my business.

19:25The other one is, it is affordable. Virtual assistants can be very affordable. You can use them part-time. I would say get a transaction coordinator if you are struggling and getting bogged down when you start, especially when you start getting… If you’re closing a deal or two a month when you start with.

19:47But be ready to transition, hire a transaction coordinator very, very quickly. If you’re lucky, your brokerage may have one for you. Actually, we’re kind of blessed at Coldwell Banker, we have one built in. Our team uses them. But if your brokerage doesn’t provide one, get a transaction coordinator.

20:10They are worth their money 1,000 times over.

Loida Velasquez20:14

Awesome. So for anyone that’s watching that wants to connect with you, maybe learn a little bit more about, I don’t know, joining your team, how can they reach you?

Brad Brewer20:23

You can email me, that’s probably the best way to do it. It’s brad@fly, that’s F-L-Y, the number two, eaglehomes.com.

20:34Just shoot me an email. Bear with me if it’s requests like this, it could take me a couple days, but I will get back to you, I promise.

Loida Velasquez20:45

Awesome. Well, Brad, we really appreciate you coming on here. Thank you for everything that you just shared. I’ll make sure that we get all of your links in the description box below.

20:54Appreciate it. And with that being said, everyone, we’ll see you on the next one.