How Carolyn Young added $1 million in income by calling expireds every morning

Carolyn Young00:00

The first year that I went all in and stayed committed to it, I would call every morning from 9:00 to 12:00, and then I would tag people for a PM call. The money’s in the follow-up, right? Some people I will call 20 or 30 times. The first year I listed, I think it was 75 expireds, and I sold 60 of them.

00:20The last year I was doing it, I listed, it was 140 of them.

Melissa Zurin00:30

Welcome. Good afternoon, everyone. Hey, thank you for joining us today. My name is Melissa Zurin. I am with Vulcan7. And you guys, we’re here today for one reason, which is to give you the competitive edge in this market. We do have a very special guest with us today, Carolyn Young, who comes with an incredible, extensive career in real estate.

00:57She is the founder of the Carolyn Young Team at Samson Properties, and one of the top producing real estate leaders in the country. With over 30 years in the business and more than 3 billion in sales volume, she’s built a reputation for results, leadership, and consistency at a high level. But what truly sets Carolyn apart is how she built it.

01:21Carolyn is gonna show you how to scale your business and to dominate your market through listings. Today, you’re going to learn from one of the best in the profession, so get ready to take notes.

Carolyn Young01:32

Hey, Melissa. Thank you so much for having me.

Melissa Zurin01:34

Oh my goodness, Carolyn. Thank you for being here. We really appreciate it.

Carolyn Young01:39

Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, I’ve been in the industry for a while. After 30 years, I don’t think we need to count anymore. But so now I’m a team leader. We have about 45 agents on the team. When I decided to really scale and launch, I started it by doing expireds. So that’s how I went all in with them.

02:04And for anybody that really, not even wants to scale, but wants to do business, which we know there’s a lot of lead generation systems that you can buy, that you can invest in to get seller leads, to get business. But with Vulcan7, it’s really just a lot of grit work, and so it’s low money in, so very high ROI, and there’s a lot of gold sitting out there, that’s for sure.

02:35So to give you a little bit of sense of scale on it, what happened is I went to a conference and they were talking about lead pillars and building out. At that time, I was doing about 40 transactions a year. So when somebody on the panel, this was at a Tom Ferry conference, said that they did expireds, I thought, “Oh, that could be awesome because it’s instant results.”

02:57“You’re calling people that just came off the market, right? So you know they probably still wanna sell. Most of them do.” And so I thought, “Well, for me, I want instant results. I don’t wanna start a geographic farm, and then I’ve gotta wait three years to reap the benefits of it.” I wanted something instantly.

03:15So to give you a little bit of perspective, when I started it, I did it for about five months, and that’s where a lot of people would say, “It’s just so hard, and I’m just gonna give up.” I wasn’t getting the results I want, but you have to keep working on what you’re saying and what you’re doing to improve your conversion at it.

03:35And so it took me a little bit to get going. Maybe about three months I started getting some good appointments, and about six months I had it down on how I’m gonna do it. And I ended up, the first year that I went all in and stayed committed to it, I would call every morning from 9:00 to 12:00, and then I would tag people for a PM call.

03:59If it’s somebody that doesn’t answer during the day, then they could be an evening person to call. But I ended up the first year, I listed, I think it was 75 expireds and I sold 60 of them. ‘Cause some of them, if you’re listing them at the end of the year, they’re going into the first of the year.

04:22And then my next year, all in with it, I listed 140 of them.

Melissa Zurin04:28

Wow. That is phenomenal.

Carolyn Young04:30

It was a lot, yeah. Going from doing 40 transactions to that, I added a million dollars to my income that year.

Melissa Zurin04:41

Yeah. So what type of commitment, in order to get those numbers, what kind of a commitment did you make to prospecting?

04:46How many hours a day were you prospecting, and can you give us sort of what that looked like?

Carolyn Young04:52

Yeah, so that is the thing that I see. ‘Cause now I train agents on my team to do it, and I have some agents that are just very successful with it right out of the gate.

05:03I think that for the commitment, it needs to be a regular basis, because it’s not something you can do one day and say, “Oh, it didn’t work, and I’m gonna do it next week.” You have to stay consistent. So the agents on my team that do it, I say, “Look, you need to make sure that you do this at least four days a week for an hour.”

05:29Now, personally me, when I was doing it, my whole goal was to prospect in the morning, so I would prospect from 9:00 until about 11:30, and then I would take my listing appointments after, the afternoon or early evening. And I tried to keep my evening appointments so that my schedule wasn’t crazy on Tuesday and Thursdays, ’cause I mean, I would sometimes on Saturday morning go out on five listing appointments.

05:52It was a lot.

05:55But yeah. So I think it was just a commitment to that, and I think you’ve gotta develop your processes. So if you wanna start calling, I would say the new ones first, right? And I don’t know that I completely agree that it matters if you’re the first one to call or not.

06:18It doesn’t matter to me. When I call, I know which angle I have to go to get in to get an appointment, so it doesn’t really matter. You get about five or six objections on every one that you call. They’re about the same objections, so it’s just the way that you’re gonna spend what you need to do in order to get the appointment.

Melissa Zurin06:37

Yeah, and that consistency’s gonna help you to kind of learn what’s working, what to say that’s gonna really work, and so then it just becomes a ritual almost at that point.

Carolyn Young06:49

So if you call somebody and you get them, and they say, “I can’t talk,” or whatever, you’ve gotta make sure that they’re on a high priority that you’re gonna call back again the next day if they don’t call you back.

07:01And then if they don’t call, you’re gonna call. Some people I will call 20 or 30 times. I’m very, very persistent, and you’ve gotta be persistent with them. But a lot of them are so easy that you just call. Most of them are frustrated, and most of them don’t like agents. That’s why a lot of people think expireds are scary.

07:19But I think when you call, if you’re coming from a place of, “I wanna help,” rather than what most agents, I think, Melissa, do that I hear that make the mistake, is they call and wanna brag about how good they are. Like, “I’m number one,” and they don’t wanna hear that. They could care less.

07:43All they wanna know is what can you do for them. And if you come from a place of help, then people know that you care.

Melissa Zurin07:52

Oh, that is so true. And yeah, anytime you say I in the conversation when you’re prospecting, you’re just showing that you’re not paying attention to them and what’s important to them.

08:05You’re just thinking about yourself, so that makes complete sense.

Carolyn Young08:09

Yeah. Exactly. So a lot of times when you call, people will say, “Oh, I’ve had 20 agents call me. I don’t wanna be bothered anymore.” But if you just say, “Look, I’m sorry you’re getting so many phone calls.”

08:22“I’m just calling ’cause I wanted to see if you need any help ’cause you’re in my market.” People will stop and talk to you. They’ll stop and talk.

Melissa Zurin08:28

Yes, ’cause you’re coming from contribution. What do you think are the top skills that agents need to learn right out the gate as quickly as they can to just start getting quicker results?

Carolyn Young08:44

So I think in order to get quicker results, for one, you might wanna learn objections. And I think you guys have a lot of teaching tools on your website as well, but you’ve gotta learn the main objections. You can’t call and you don’t know what to say. That’s the worst thing in the world.

09:03You’ve gotta make sure everybody you call, you leave a message. I hear that, too. A lot of people say, “Oh, if they don’t answer, I hang up.” Well, I would never waste a phone call. I don’t even care if it’s them or not. I’ve gotten a lot of listing appointments on people that weren’t even associated with the listing.

09:23Yeah, so if you’re gonna make a phone call, leave a message. So you should always leave a message. I know some people use other systems. I do love Vulcan7 ’cause I think the data’s correct. I think using those double, triple dialers, it’s just not effective.

09:43I could list way more properties by leaving a message and calling.

Melissa Zurin09:47

I love that. Yeah, ’cause I do hear a lot of people say, “Oh, don’t leave a message,” because they’re just trying to get to the next call as quickly as they can.

09:54But it makes complete sense. Why wouldn’t you just leave a message, that you might have that opportunity that they do contact you back?

Carolyn Young10:02

It is so much lost business. A lot of the business I get is from… I don’t do it as much now, but now my team does it and I train them with it. But if I would call for two or three hours in the morning, I would always get five or six return calls in the evening.

Melissa Zurin10:21

Wow, that’s great.

10:23That’s incredible. Is there anything… Tell me, what do you normally say, just out of curiosity? What type of message do you leave?

Carolyn Young10:31

I’m not calling saying, “I saw your house come off the market and I’m wondering if you’re gonna sell and go back on.” I don’t get into leaving… Some people leave long, windy messages.

10:42I’m just basically calling saying, “I saw your house come off the market and I need to talk to you. Give me a call.” That’s it.

Melissa Zurin10:48

Oh, nice. Short and sweet. That’s it. It leaves them curious. Yes.

Carolyn Young10:52

Yeah. It’s a little bit more curiosity as to what’s going on. And if I know I have the right phone number, ’cause they answer the phone and they say, “This is Mary Smith,” and Mary Smith is the owner of the house, then I’m probably gonna call her several times.

11:05Until I do get her. And then, of course, depending upon how you upload your data, you can send texts and stuff to them too. A lot of people will respond by text that they won’t respond by a phone call.

11:21But it’s a way to really blow up your listing inventory.

11:30And I tell you, when you do list the expireds, because most of them didn’t have the best experience, they are your biggest cheerleaders when you list them and put them on the market.

11:45We get more referrals from my expired listings than I do anybody, ’cause they can’t believe how things turned around.

Melissa Zurin11:53

Yeah, exactly, because they had such a bad experience before.

11:56They were frustrated. They didn’t even think it was maybe possible that they could get their house sold, and especially for the price that they were trying to get.

Carolyn Young12:05

But Melissa, I hear a lot of people too will say, “Oh, well, you call them, they didn’t sell, probably ’cause the house is overpriced or maybe…”

12:14And it’s just not even true. There’s so many expireds I took over at the same price, and some I even raised the price.

12:22It doesn’t mean that that’s why they didn’t sell. Sometimes you just don’t understand all the problems that happened with how the listing was handled or maybe the seller’s expectations of showings.

12:37All kinds of things it can be. So it’s not like just because they expired and they didn’t sell, that that means they’re overpriced or it’s a problem listing, ’cause 99% of the time it’s not.

Melissa Zurin12:49

Yeah. That’s a great way to look at it, because when you look at it that way, I think it makes your calls a lot more exciting and positive, because not everybody is extremely overpriced.

13:04I mean, you’re right. That’s a fact. I mean, now, as far as follow-up goes, because you’ve mentioned a few times that follow-up is important, what are your tips? What kind of gold nuggets can you give everybody today as far as the best methodology of doing that?

Carolyn Young13:24

So they always say, Melissa, the money’s in the follow-up, right?

13:28So if you want to service clients and service people, you have got to be persistent with the follow-up. And that can go from trying to get someone to pick up the phone… We’ve tracked so many of them when I’ve listed them. Some of them I would call 20 and 30 times. But you don’t leave a message every time saying, “This is Carolyn Young, give me a call.”

13:56It’s always like, “Hey, I just was driving by. I noticed, wanted to let you know I was thinking about you. House down the street just went under contract. If you wanna know how that affects you, let me know.” “Hey, were you aware the interest rates just come down, the buyer activity’s picked up. I was thinking about you.”

14:12“Give me a call.” And I’ve had people, I bet you the last year I was doing it, I listed, it was 140 of them. I bet you at least 40 of them listed with me. They just called and said, “Would you just come list my house? I’ve never seen anyone so persistent.”

Melissa Zurin14:29

Yeah. Because that’s what they’re looking for. They want somebody who’s gonna communicate with them, which is what you’re obviously doing.

14:34You’re making all this effort to reach out to them and talk with them, and that’s what they want from an agent, and sometimes that’s maybe one of their frustrations with their last agent.

Carolyn Young14:47

Yeah. Sometimes it is just a matter of getting a system. You call your new ones, you’ve got your people that are hot that are kinda talking to you, and then you got people that won’t answer.

14:59So you gotta go through your rotation of them every morning, and if you put it in a system, pretty much you could get out about 20 calls an hour, and when I was doing it towards the end, every hour on the phone I would have one or two listing appointments.

Melissa Zurin15:20

Interesting. That’s really good. And so now you follow up, follow up, follow up, and you finally reach somebody, and I know I hear this all the time from agents. They’re challenged getting into quick rapport with an expired, because the expired just really wants to get them off the phone very quickly.

15:41What would you recommend they do? How can they build quick rapport, and what are your tricks?

Carolyn Young15:50

I think the main thing is you just gotta ask them, “Is the home still for sale?”

15:57And they’re either gonna tell you, “I’m not selling. I already have an agent. The market stinks, I took it off the market.”

16:06“How much is your commission? We already hired a new agent.” All of those things. You just gotta be able to have something to come back with, to engage them. If they say, “I’m not selling anymore,” well, what changed? They might say, “It’s none of your business.”

16:30And I say, “Well, that’s true, but I am curious what changed. Because you were on the market, and it’s a beautiful home, and it didn’t sell. What changed?” I have people hang up on me, and they say, “Oh my God, it’s another agent,” hang up on me, and we call right back. “I think I got disconnected.”

16:49And I had a guy one time, he said, “No, I hung up on you.” I said, “Well, that’s really rude. I’m calling trying to help, and you just hung up on me.”

16:56And anyway, I ended up getting an appointment with him and went over and listed his house.

Melissa Zurin17:02

Well, what I hear you saying is you keep the focus on them, and you’re asking them questions that are important to them versus I think sometimes agents are trying to make friends.

17:13They think rapport is more of that become a friend type of thing.

Carolyn Young17:18

It’s like if you’re gonna go hire an attorney to help you do something on a case, you want someone who’s good at what they do. You’re not looking for a friend.

17:28Right? So they’re really not looking for a friend. They’re looking for someone who knows what they’re doing.

17:34And sometimes they think all agents are the same. And some people don’t have the best opinion of real estate agents, especially when they had a bad experience.

17:44So you gotta let them know how you’re different.

Melissa Zurin17:46

Yeah, that makes complete sense, and that’s what they’re looking for.

17:50They want somebody different, and they wanna hear that coming from you, what they can expect. What about closing? I mean, you listed so many properties. On average, how many times would you try to close on a call? And do you have any advice how you can close multiple times and not make it seem like you’re being salesy or pushy?

Carolyn Young18:21

So I will pretty much go through four or five nos before… If they say no, I just say, “Well, what if I just stop by? I’m gonna be in your area on Saturday. Could I come by?”

18:35If they say, “No, no, no, we’re not listing,” that’s fine. I just wanna see the house. I might have a buyer.

18:41I just wanna get in front of them. That’s my goal.

Melissa Zurin18:44

Yeah. And you kinda pique their curiosity, ’cause you might have a buyer. And they should be very excited about that, right?

Carolyn Young18:52

We have about 30,000 of them in our database from all the lead generation we do, so I always tell them, “I’m someone who you want to come in your house.”

19:03That I may have a buyer for your house.

Melissa Zurin19:05

Exactly.

19:07Because you are proactively making these calls, and obviously that should excite them because you’re gonna be doing the same thing for them, and that is something that a lot of sellers don’t get from agents. That proactive approach.

Carolyn Young19:21

And honestly, when you follow up, even if they’re not responding, and we all know, if you don’t do it with every buyer and seller that you come in touch with, most agents stop at the second phone call, where the highest level of success is at the seventh or eighth call.

19:42So you can’t-

Melissa Zurin19:42

So do you call every day, or how do you do that?

19:45Do you space it out and you make your calls every other day, or what do you do?

Carolyn Young19:50

It depends on the property, but some of them, yeah, we’ll call every day. And then some of them we might call every day for five days one week, and then maybe the next week call a couple more times.

20:04And some people just are going through something. Maybe they decide to get a divorce and they don’t wanna talk to anybody right now, and they’re, “Okay, we decided what to do. You’ve called so many times. I want you to come list the property.” So you gotta be the person that’s the top of mind when they’re ready to do something.

Melissa Zurin20:21

Thank you, Carolyn. This was fantastic information, and it’s very inspiring. I think just go do it. You have that just do it kinda attitude. I love it.

Carolyn Young20:31

You have nothing to lose, Melissa, only to gain.

Melissa Zurin20:37

Yes, absolutely. Guys, listen to Carolyn. Contact her if you’re interested in talking to her about her team.

20:44She’s here for you. You’ve got all this social media you can reach out to her on, and thank you again for being here, everybody. We appreciate you very much.

Carolyn Young20:54

Thank you, Melissa, for having me.

Melissa Zurin20:54

Bye-bye.