How Chris Elliott made over $1 million from expireds with long-term follow-up

Chris Elliott00:00

The work in this business is having real estate conversations with people. And specifically, if you want to get listings, you have to have real estate conversations with homeowners. If you are not doing that every single day, you are faking yourself out.

Aaron Wittenstein00:23

Hey, what’s going on, everybody? It’s me, it’s Aaron Wittenstein, and I’d like to welcome you to Vulcan7 Roadmap. This is where we interview agents across the country in regards to how to take two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, just a lot of listings a week is the best way to put it. And today we have all the way from Richmond, Virginia, all the way from Richmond, Virginia, ’cause super far away, I guess, Chris Elliott.

00:46How are you, Chris?

Chris Elliott00:47

I am well. How are you doing, my friend?

Aaron Wittenstein00:48

I’m doing well. I’m doing a heck of a lot better because his coin phrase term here is this man has made how many monies from expired listings?

Chris Elliott01:00

North of $1 million throughout my career from expired listings.

Aaron Wittenstein01:03

North of 1 mil… That’s not like 100,000 or two.

01:07North of $1 million. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty good, don’t you think? You can almost buy an NFL football team. No, not even close to an NFL football team. But okay. So tell me. When it comes to doing that much business in one area, what is the one thing that you attribute to your success?

Chris Elliott01:33

So as you probably know, there really is no one thing, right? There’s no silver… I love the quote, “There’s no silver bullet, there’s just a bunch of golden BBs.” So I’ll give Vulcan a plug. It starts with good data. If you don’t have good data, if you don’t have good phone numbers, it’s very hard to get ahold of people if you don’t have their phone number.

01:57But I think if I had to boil it down to one thing, it’s getting around people, through podcasts, through videos, through whatever, masterminds. Find out what people that are getting the results that you wanna get are doing, and then kinda take a piece and add it to your playbook, and then just standardize it.

02:17And you do that over and over and over and over again, and then you look up 12, 24, 36 months later, and your business is just 180 degrees different, right? So just that continual improvement over time, I think, is the secret.

Aaron Wittenstein02:35

So what you’re saying is, be the dumbest person in the room and learn from people that are a lot smarter than you.

Chris Elliott02:42

Yeah. Aaron, I’ll give you a shout-out. I don’t even know if you’re doing it anymore, but I took your course back in the day, few years ago. I don’t even remember what I got from it. I was already doing expires at a fairly high level at that point, but I took your course and I can’t even remember what it was, but I remember I got one nugget and I was like, “You know what?”

03:01“That was worth the price of admission. That is now going in the toolbox,” and I probably still use it to this day.

Aaron Wittenstein03:11

Okay. Well, now I feel special. Now you flattered me. I’m turning a little bit red here. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Chris Elliott03:16

Yeah, there you go.

Aaron Wittenstein03:16

Thank you.

Chris Elliott03:16

It’s not just a quarter front.

Aaron Wittenstein03:17

No, there you go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, seriously. So how many trainings are you doing on a yearly basis, would you say?

Chris Elliott03:28

I mean, we’re always… I’m always listening to podcasts, I’m always going to conferences, I’m always jumping into stuff.

03:34I couldn’t put a number to it. I don’t know how many I’m doing for expireds anymore.

03:40But you just stay in a constant state of learning, in my opinion, right?

Aaron Wittenstein03:44

Exactly. Exactly, because, like they say, the more you know, is the best way to put it.

03:49So I would assume you’re still calling expireds on a daily basis, correct?

Chris Elliott03:53

Correct.

Aaron Wittenstein03:54

Okay. So can you tell me a little bit about… We all know you pick up the phone, you dial for two to four hours a day. That’s what you do, okay? Because it’s just the time on task over time is what it comes down to.

04:06So what systems and processes do you have in place that are replicatable that you can share with people, is the best way to put it, ’cause you definitely have some. You seem to have it down.

Chris Elliott04:18

Yeah, absolutely. So once again, you gotta start with data, right?

04:23So that’s kinda like A, number one. Number two, I like to start calling at 8:00 in the morning, right? I talk to a lot of people and they’re like, “Oh, everybody’s angry when I call them.” And then I ask them, “Okay. Well, what time do you start calling?” And they’re like, “Oh, I start at 9:30 when I get in the office.”

04:41So I’m like, “Yes, of course they are upset.” They’ve already talked to 20… I’ll give you credit for a line. I remember you said, “Hey, if a roofer called you and said you had a shingle missing on your roof and offered to fix it,” the first call you’d be like, “Oh, that’s kinda cool.”

04:56When the 20th roofer called, you’d probably be a little pissed off, right? So you gotta get in touch with these people early in the day. At 8:00 in the morning I will call three times in a row, right? ‘Cause if they’re getting pelted with a bunch of phone calls, you might as well be three of those.

05:14So I try to give myself as many opportunities as I can. So I’ll call three times at 8:00 in the morning. I leave a voicemail on the third call. I’ll call again around 11 or 12, and then if I’m not in an appointment, I will call again around 5:00 or 6:00, right? So I’m just trying people throughout the day.

05:35I found there’s a lot of people that you’ll get in touch with in the evening because the morning calls are done, and then they finally pick up, right? So I just wanna give myself more opportunities. So I’ll do that three calls a day, at three different times throughout the day, for the first seven days.

05:50So I’m really aggressively trying to get in touch with people for the first seven days. If I can’t get in touch with them then, I’m calling them on day 21. If I can’t get in touch with them day 21, I’m calling them day 60. If I don’t get in touch with them day 60, I’m calling them every 30 days for the first year that they’re expired.

06:10And if I don’t get in touch with them then, I’m calling them every single 90 days until the end of time.

Aaron Wittenstein06:18

That’s a system.

06:20That is a system right there, my friend. I need that. Or you need to email it over to me. That is a system you got right there. Okay. So from your experience, okay? Since you’re calling, I mean, I don’t know how many expireds you have, all that stuff.

06:35And I’m assuming you’re tracking everything, right? Are you a tracker or no?

Chris Elliott06:40

Yeah. No, absolutely.

Aaron Wittenstein06:41

Okay. So at what point are you seeing the most success through that process? When do you see… Is it the first day? Is it the seventh day? Is it the 21st day? When are you seeing the most success?

Chris Elliott06:51

So that’s the one thing I don’t track, right? Everybody wants to ask that, but Aaron, here’s the thing. Everybody asks that question because I think they wanna shortcut the process, right? They wanna just, “Oh, well, tell me the secret so I don’t have to do all the work,” right? The reality is there’s a certain percentage that you’re gonna get in touch with those first seven days.

07:12It’s kinda like the wham bam thank you ma’am, they’re ready to list. I would say a larger percentage are probably in that 21 days plus, where they’re just kinda taking a break. They don’t want to be bothered. There’s a lot of times I’ll get listings that are 6 to 18 months after they’ve expired.

07:33You’ve just gotta constantly stay in touch with these people and build rapport and build relationships. But if I had to answer a question, I think the larger percentage come after the first seven days.

Aaron Wittenstein07:46

Interesting. And it just goes to show you that it’s doing the activity, you know what I mean?

07:52It’s doing the activity and you get the success. All right. So here’s what I know everybody wants to hear right now, and I do this a lot with people that pop on Roadmap. Would you be open to giving me a call?

Chris Elliott08:03

Sure. Yeah, what do you wanna talk about?

Aaron Wittenstein08:05

Let’s talk about the weather.

08:06No, let’s do a role play. Let’s do a role play.

Chris Elliott08:10

Yeah. Ring, ring.

Aaron Wittenstein08:12

Hello.

Chris Elliott08:13

Hey, good morning, sir. My name is Chris Elliott. I was calling looking for the owner of the property at 123 Fake Street. Is that you by chance?

Aaron Wittenstein08:18

You got him. And are you a realtor?

Chris Elliott08:22

I sure am.

08:22You’ve probably been getting a few phone calls this morning.

Aaron Wittenstein08:25

You’re like number 39.

Chris Elliott08:27

Yeah. No. Hey, I can appreciate it. You’re probably sick of these calls by this point, I would imagine.

Aaron Wittenstein08:31

You have no idea. But how can I help you?

Chris Elliott08:34

Yeah, so hey, just curious, I know your home’s off the market.

08:38If we happen to stumble across a buyer the next week, next month, three months down the road, and your home would be a fit for what they’re looking for, would you want me to call you, or you’re just not selling at all anymore?

Aaron Wittenstein08:49

Well, do you have a buyer for my home?

Chris Elliott08:52

No, full disclosure, I don’t right now, but we like to keep a list of off-market inventory, we call it, where we know homeowners would consider selling if an offer showed up.

09:00They’re just not actively on the market right now.

Aaron Wittenstein09:03

That’s fine. I mean, we’re not doing anything right now. I think if we do put it back on the market, we’re probably gonna re-list with my previous agent. So, but I have no problem if you want to keep us on your list there.

Chris Elliott09:16

Gotcha. Okay, so you would consider selling, but if you put it back on the market, you’d put it back on the market with your previous agent?

Aaron Wittenstein09:22

That is correct.

Chris Elliott09:23

Yeah, absolutely. And Aaron, just so I know, and we can notate the file here, let’s say we do bring you a buyer, do you already know where you’re going next?

09:31Are you staying in town? What does that look like?

Aaron Wittenstein09:35

Oh, we’re actually moving. We’re moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Chris Elliott09:41

Nice. Okay. What’s bringing you out that way?

Aaron Wittenstein09:43

Just family, we’re gonna go. But like I said, if you wanna give us a call back when you have a buyer, please call me.

09:49We can kinda take it from there.

Chris Elliott09:51

Yeah, no, absolutely. And Aaron, I’m just curious, what happened there? I was kinda surprised when the home didn’t sell. If you don’t mind me asking.

Aaron Wittenstein10:00

No, your guess is as good as mine. I mean, I have no clue. I have no clue whatsoever.

Chris Elliott10:04

Gotcha. Okay. So did you get any feedback from your previous agent?

Aaron Wittenstein10:08

Oh, she said that they didn’t like the pond behind the house. That was pretty much what people didn’t like.

Chris Elliott10:14

Okay. So they didn’t like the pond behind that house?

Aaron Wittenstein10:17

Yes.

Chris Elliott10:18

Gotcha. And I imagine we’re not gonna bring in dump trucks of dirt to fill that in.

Aaron Wittenstein10:23

No, no, no, no, no. Definitely not. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. So I mean, like I said, we’re gonna hold off on everything right now, probably for at least three to four months, and go from there.

Chris Elliott10:35

Yeah. No, totally. And Aaron, before I let you go, I know you guys seem like you’re pretty loyal to your previous agent.

10:42If a different agent with a different approach though could get you different results, would you guys be morally opposed to just considering what a different agent could do for you?

Aaron Wittenstein10:52

How so?

Chris Elliott10:55

Well, so the reason I’m calling is I actually specialize in working with folks like yourself that have been unsuccessful listing with another agent for one reason or another.

11:03I don’t say this to brag, but I’ve worked with over 100 families like yourself where they thought they couldn’t sell, we took the listing over, we turned around and we got it sold. So if that’s something that we could do for you, would that be a win?

Aaron Wittenstein11:15

I mean, I guess so.

Chris Elliott11:18

Yeah. Well, Aaron, if you wouldn’t be opposed to it, here’s what we can do.

11:21Here’s all I have to sell you: what if we got together and I just showed you kinda what I think went wrong with the previous listing, what I think would need to be done differently going forward? And I can just give you that information. Certainly no pressure. If you wanna work with us, awesome, that’d be great.

11:42But if you just wanna take that information and implement it with your previous agent, no harm, no foul as well.

Aaron Wittenstein11:48

What would you do differently than Sally Mae?

Chris Elliott11:51

Yeah. And Aaron, that’s a really good question, and I won’t really know until I take the time to kinda sit down and do my homework on your property, and part of it is also seeing it in person.

12:01So I’d love to get you that information. It just takes a little bit of analysis to put that together.

Aaron Wittenstein12:07

Hmm. Interesting.

Chris Elliott12:08

Yeah. Is that a meeting you would be opposed to?

Aaron Wittenstein12:11

No, you can come by. But we’re not selling. We’re not gonna sign anything.

Chris Elliott12:16

Aaron, you can hide your pens and you can check me at the door and make sure I don’t have any in my jacket.

12:22I’m looking at my calendar. I do early afternoons or late afternoons typically.

Aaron Wittenstein12:24

Well, let me ask you this, though, before you even come in there, and like I said, we’re not gonna do the… But what do you charge? We’re not looking to pay crazy numbers or anything like that, so.

Chris Elliott12:36

Yeah. We charge a 3% commission, and then you as the seller have to decide what you wanna offer out to a buyer’s agent.

Aaron Wittenstein12:42

All right. Yeah, that’s fine. Come by, take a look and we’ll go from there.

Chris Elliott12:46

Yeah. And I’m looking in the calendar. Would Wednesday evening around 4:00 PM work?

Aaron Wittenstein12:52

No.

Chris Elliott12:53

Oh, okay. You tell me.

12:55What generally works better for you?

Aaron Wittenstein12:55

4:30 works better for me.

Chris Elliott12:58

I can make 4:30 work. Will both you and your wife be able to join?

Aaron Wittenstein13:02

Yes.

Chris Elliott13:02

Beautiful. Aaron, I’ll tell you what. I got you in my calendar. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna send you a calendar invite. What’s the best email for you?

Aaron Wittenstein13:09

aaron@aaron.com.

Chris Elliott13:12

Awesome. And then what I’m also gonna do, Aaron, is I’m gonna text you over some information on myself. So if you wanna do some background research on me and just make sure I’m not a serial killer, you’ll have that information at your disposal.

Aaron Wittenstein13:23

Sounds like a plan. See you tomorrow.

Chris Elliott13:24

Beautiful.

13:25Look forward to seeing you.

Aaron Wittenstein13:26

All right. Be well. There was one line, I tried writing it down, the morally opposed. Did you even know what you said or no?

Chris Elliott13:35

Yeah, yeah.

Aaron Wittenstein13:35

What was the line? Can you repeat that line? I thought that line was my favorite out of the whole thing.

Chris Elliott13:40

So this comes back to Chris Voss, who I’m sure you’ve heard of, FBI guy. He teaches asking no-based questions, which I love, right? Because it disarms people and it gives them the power. So when I ask you a question like, “Hey, Aaron, would you be morally opposed to us just sitting down and go over this?”

13:59It’s kinda like that outrageous… Like, well, no, I wouldn’t be morally opposed, but…

Aaron Wittenstein14:07

I like that. I like that. I like that.

14:08I’m stealing… I learned something from you today, by the way, now.

Chris Elliott14:10

There you go. There you go.

Aaron Wittenstein14:11

So now we’ve traded information back and forth.

Chris Elliott14:14

I’ll send you an invoice.

Aaron Wittenstein14:14

I’ll pay you $17, you’re a done deal. No, but I mean, what was nice was you were so even-keeled throughout the entire thing. There was no huge flux or downs or anything like that. And you were very smooth and very confident, and that was very nice to listen to.

14:36So thank you very much for that. I appreciate it.

Chris Elliott14:39

The one nugget I’ll give people, a switch that I’ve made probably in the last two years that has really created a lot better results for me. There’s a sales trainer out there called Phil Jones.

14:50And he’s phenomenal. And one of the things Phil Jones kind of beat into my head is, I think historically when we’ve trained sales, when we’ve trained expireds, when we’ve trained rebuttals, we kind of get into this thumb wrestling match with the prospect.

15:05And we’re trying to learn how do we pin them to the ground, and what’s the quick jab that we can make, and how can we do a comeback and everything like that. Where I’ve had a lot more success, slowing down, repeating back to people what they’ve told me, validating what they’ve told me.

15:23And it just… You need to get a little bit more conversational, I think, with people, because everybody else is doing the thumb wrestling thing. Whereas if you can just have a dialogue with people, you’re gonna get a whole lot further, or at least it’s worked for me.

Aaron Wittenstein15:38

So what you’re saying is, talk to people like they wanna be spoken to.

Chris Elliott15:43

Amen.

Aaron Wittenstein15:44

Preach unto that, my friend. Preach unto that. Now, are you practicing on a regular basis?

Chris Elliott15:49

As of late, no. I’ve been slack. I’ve gotten a little off the schedule over the summer, but I still to this day have two to three role play partners per week that I role play with.

Aaron Wittenstein16:02

Okay, good.

16:03Because we all know, you don’t get that good without practicing, right? You’ve gotta practice. You gotta start somewhere in the baseline, and then you get on the phone and you start really hitting it at a high level. So how many expireds typically do you get in your area on a daily basis, would you say?

Chris Elliott16:19

I would say right now we’re probably getting anywhere from three to five a day.

Aaron Wittenstein16:23

Okay. So because a lot of people complain that they’re only getting three to five a day, right?

16:31And the thing is, from what it sounds like to me, you’re making it work with three to five a day. Is that right?

Chris Elliott16:37

So Aaron, I’ll give you this factoid because

16:39I always challenge people to actually track and measure, because we can fool ourselves if we’re like, “Well, I’m not really getting that many.” And it’s kind of like, well, what does that mean? So I’m in a market where we are at a one month supply of inventory. So we’ve got a very, very hot market where things are still selling.

16:58We’re not seeing inventory sit for the most part. And that being said, since I’ve been tracking, year to date, we’re at 361 released listings, which might be canceled in your market.

17:10And we’re at 260 expireds for the market. So you don’t get to say you don’t have a lot of expireds unless you’ve actually tracked it and you know exactly how many

17:21have come up off of your market.

Aaron Wittenstein17:26

Exactly. Because like I said, I hear a lot of people complaining there’s no data, right? There’s always enough data because you can always go backwards too, right? So it’s like for you… So how long have you actually been calling expireds for now, would you say?

Chris Elliott17:39

It’s probably been six or seven years.

Aaron Wittenstein17:41

Oh, wow. So you got data to go backwards too, right?

17:45And then, if you had to guess, all right, if you had to guess,

17:50how many people are you calling per day?

Chris Elliott17:55

Collectively, I probably average about 250 phone calls per day.

Aaron Wittenstein18:02

Got it. Okay. And if you have one… Okay, let’s put it this way. Every day, you have one goal for the day. All right? I know what my goal is. What is your one goal for the day? When you hit this goal, it’s been a successful day.

Chris Elliott18:16

Book a listing appointment.

Aaron Wittenstein18:18

Okay. Got it, got it.

18:19And how many for the… So you’re looking at booking five listing appointments a week. That is the goal.

18:25Okay. And what I love about it is there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that whatsoever. One listing appointment a day, that’s the goal. That makes this a success. So all right, so let me ask you this.

18:36So you’ve got a brand new agent that’s walking across the hallway. He’s like, “This is the million-dollar listing guy. I gotta talk to him.” Knocks on your door. And he goes, “Chris, give me one piece of advice that you would have for me as a new agent.” What would that be?

Chris Elliott18:52

The work in this business is having real estate conversations with people. And specifically, if you wanna get listings, you have to have real estate conversations with homeowners. If you are not doing that every single day, you are faking yourself out. And there’s a lot of things that can be done in this business, especially in today’s day and age with social media and everything, to where you can fake yourself out that you’re, quote-unquote, “putting in the work.”

19:21But unless you… It all boils down to you’ve gotta have real estate conversations with homeowners if you wanna get listings. Now, you could do that via the phone, you could do that knocking doors. You can do it via social. You can fly paper airplanes off the top of your building, and if that somehow gets you into real estate conversations, God bless you.

19:42But at the end of the day, if you are not having real estate conversations, you’re not moving your business forward.

Aaron Wittenstein19:47

So talk to people, right?

19:50Just talk to people. That’s all he’s saying is talk to people, okay? All right, so I wanna wrap this up in a nice bow here, all right? So what are your final last words for the wonderful people in the Vulcan7 nation?

Chris Elliott20:04

Have more real estate conversations. It’s really that simple. I try to keep it simple. I graduated with a 2.8 GPA, I’m not like high frequency up here. So have more real estate conversations. The more people that you’re in conversation with and you are in dialogue with, the more contracts you’re gonna end up signing.

Aaron Wittenstein20:25

Man, that sounds good, man. And like I said, it’s a conversation game is what this whole thing’s coming down to. And like I said, I appreciate that you just kinda beat that, you gotta beat that into their heads nowadays. You gotta talk to a lot of people.

20:39And then eventually you make a million dollars in expired listings. All right, my friend. So let’s say we do have someone from Tulsa, Oklahoma that is deciding to make a move to Richmond, Virginia, let’s say. And they want an amazing real estate agent. How does one get in touch with you, Chris?

Chris Elliott20:54

Sure. So you can give me a call. My phone number is 804-980-1898. You can also look me up on Instagram, Chris Elliott, two Ls, two Ts, RE, short for real estate. Or Facebook at Chris Elliott. I’m pretty easy to find.

Aaron Wittenstein21:11

Okay, there we go. All right, my friend. I wanna say thank you very much for being here.

21:14This is absolutely amazing. Thank you for teaching us and learning from you. And don’t forget, do me all a favor, make some money, and also trust the process. Everybody take care of yourselves. Be well.