How Danny Griffin moved his business from entry-level to luxury in 48 months

Danny Griffin00:03

I would tell a brand new agent this, and I do. You must think about how to get listings from the minute you get into this business. You must. You must. Otherwise, you fall to the trap of thinking, “I’m only a buyer’s agent.” No, you’re not. You just don’t know what to do yet on the listing side. And without the listing control, you don’t have any control.

00:24You get a good listing price right, you put it in MLS, a lot of people go to work for you, no matter how old you are or what your experience is. That’s leverage.

Loida Velasquez00:42

What’s going on everyone? Welcome back to a brand new episode of Vulcan7’s Coaches and Mentors, a series where we bring you some of the best tips and strategies so that you can implement in your real estate business. As always, remember to check out all of our previous episodes here on YouTube, or listen to the podcast on any of your favorite streaming platforms.

01:05Now with that being said, today we have another amazing coach that is going to share with us some great tips, so make sure to have your pen and your paper ready, because ladies and gentlemen, today we have Danny Griffin.

Danny Griffin01:20

I like that. Get that paper and pencil ready. Yes. It’s right next to me.

01:25I’m always ready to take notes myself, so that’s the best advice that you gave already. I like it, so yeah.

Loida Velasquez01:32

Perfect. Yes.

Danny Griffin01:33

You know why I say that? It’s interesting about the learning process. I learned long ago, before we start talking about this, if you hear something, it’s best to try to capture that firefly.

01:43So you hear that little light lighting up in your head, you pull it through your arm, and you put it down into the jar, AKA a piece of paper. And I like it a lot better than typing it. There’s just something magical about learning that way, so I like that.

Loida Velasquez01:56

That was a good start. Absolutely. Good. So for anyone that’s watching that maybe is not familiar with you, can you give us a little bit of your background so that we know exactly who Danny Griffin is?

Danny Griffin02:06

Yeah. Are you gonna make me date myself now? Listen, I was in the finance business many moons ago and realized it wasn’t for me, and was looking for an entrepreneurial type of business. And so I got into real estate first by flipping houses and doing some commercial development. But then I was drawn, in 1999, to get my real estate license, because I saw it as a way to help people with one of the biggest emotional and financial transactions that they’d ever make in a lifetime.

02:36And that was the draw for me, to really help people. I had learned long ago the principle of being a person for others in my college Jesuit education. They imprint that one on you pretty strongly. And so I felt like this was the perfect business for that. So in 1999, I got licensed. I went to Realty Executives, where they largely left you alone, because I was entrepreneurial.

02:56And when they said to me, “What’s your business plan?” I said, “Well, you give me 2,000 business cards, a lamp, a desk, and I’ll bring the army helmet and the work ethic.” And when I look back, it sounds ridiculous, because I’ve learned so much about being more strategic in my approach and leveraging time.

03:13But it was all muscle in the beginning. So I love doing these types of things, because you get a chance to give back and say, “Oh, please don’t do what I did.” So here we are, many years later. I got into coaching because I was coached. I realized that there wasn’t an easy way to find a system.

03:32So I was coached and got into that early on, and then very quickly became a coach. So I go back probably informally as a coach in 2003. So very quickly, I was coaching the system that I was being taught, and then by 2006, it was a formal basis. And then in, let’s see, 2012 I started my own much smaller intimate coaching brand called the Realty Classroom, and that’s what I still run today.

03:54So I coach anywhere from about 35 to 40 people one-on-one every single week, where we really dive in deep and try to continuously build a system. What I think makes my positioning unique is I am still a very active agent, and I have transformed my business from entry-level type of stuff to luxury, and I did that probably mostly in the last 48 months.

04:15So happy to share all that today, and have moved my clients to a much more profitable agent plan, as we call it, these days. So still very active as a broker owner, an agent myself, and a coach. So there you go.

Loida Velasquez04:28

That’s amazing. And where is it that you’re located?

Danny Griffin04:31

Located primarily on Cape Cod. I’m from Boston, Massachusetts originally.

04:34And I moved to Cape Cod where I had summered as a child, so my business was built there, and five kids later. A lot of reasons that I stuck there. But now, as all my kids are either post-college or college, I have gone back and spent a lot of time building my book of business in Boston, and my brand in Boston as well.

04:55So I split my time between Cape Cod and Boston, Massachusetts. And now we’ve just gotten licensed in multiple states, from Seattle to Kentucky to Arizona to Florida. So I’ve teamed up with a lot of my coaching members to try to do a virtual agency and bring a lot of these teachings and coachings that we have for our agents in the coaching program to agents in the field.

Loida Velasquez05:16

That’s awesome. I’m so excited to have you on today’s show, because just from what you just mentioned, it seems like there’s so much experience and so many different things that we can talk about, from someone that’s maybe barely starting to even transitioning to luxury, which I know a lot of agents want to do later on.

Danny Griffin05:34

Right. Sure. You bet. And also entry-level. I mean, look, what I’ll do is not intimidate anybody. I will tell you this, that in my experience over time doing this, and especially coaching it, I have the philosophy of simplifying. And I’m a big fan of Einstein’s philosophy that everything should be made simpler but not too simple, meaning you don’t wanna leave out something.

05:56And that’s the way it’s gone. And one of the things that really helped me get into luxury was simplifying my message to people that owned that type of a property. But I’ve been able to teach agents at the Griffin, AKA Griffin Realty Group, that are brand new. I mean, literally we’ve had people start in their teens straight out of high school learn a very simplistic system and walk in in their first year.

06:20So it’s not someday in my mind’s eye. It’s today. You just have to know what to do today to be successful. It’s not going to require you to be successful in this business to accumulate massive experience if you can be taught the appropriate systems on how to serve somebody from day one. People are really looking for genuine help out there, and if you have a good systematic way to do that, they’ll reward you with that business.

06:45So there’s a lot of misperceptions about what it takes to be successful, so I’m always excited to share, from the beginner to the veteran. So I wanna be encouraging to everybody. When you know something strategically, it should be fundamentally good for the beginning agent as well as the agent who has a mega team or even a corporation spreading into multiple areas.

Loida Velasquez07:06

Awesome. So let’s get started with that beginning agent. Maybe they’re watching this, they’re maybe transitioning from being part-time to full-time. Maybe they were working with buyers before, now they wanna work with listings. What should those systems look like so that they set

07:23themselves up for success?

Danny Griffin07:24

Yeah, it’s an excellent question. I think there are some very core principles to marketing. Why should I do business with you above and beyond all other options, including doing nothing at all? Because this is a service business. We always think we’re in the selling business, but we’re in the service business, and we’re in the guidance business.

07:42I would tell a brand-new agent this, and I do. You must think about how to get listings from the minute you get into this business. You must. You must. Otherwise, you fall to the trap of thinking, “I’m only a buyer’s agent.” No you’re not, you just don’t know what to do yet on the listing side. And without the listing control, you don’t have any control.

08:04You get a good listing price, right? You put it in MLS, a lot of people go to work for you no matter how old you are or what your experience is. That’s leverage. You get one buyer, you go to work with them for them, and that’s it. So there’s no leverage in that like there is listings. In an extremely short period of time, by thinking about this and doing it right, we were able to transform.

08:27And by the way, thank you to Vulcan7. I mean, no pitch other than a real, “Hey.” It was Vulcan7’s data and service to accumulate those expireds that were expiring in the geography within which I really wanted to do business. So there you go. Sorry, it’s a lot of talking.

Loida Velasquez08:47

Yeah, no, all of that was amazing information.

08:51For those of you that are watching this, I feel that a lot of agents, especially as they’re starting out, they see, like, a million, two million, or if it has a million next to it, they think, “Oh, I’m not good enough.” Or they start to freak out when they see it. So for you, what advice would you give them?

09:06It could just be like, “You know what? Just call.” If it was 200,000 or 20 million, it’s the same human that’s answering the phone.

Danny Griffin09:14

That’s right. Yeah. So mind steering systems was a big thing for me too, because acting as if you are already successful at luxury or whatever you decide, because your brain doesn’t know the difference, doesn’t know the difference at all.

09:28If you wanna see it in action, the next time there are the Olympics or some professional game you go to, watch the professionals warm up and act as if they’re doing some basic drills, but especially divers. If you look at Olympic divers, the way they’re acting as if, or ski jumpers, mogul jumpers and those types of people that have real acrobatic moments, they’ll mentally rehearse before they go through it.

09:54Well, we don’t do that enough as business people. So at night when things are calming down and your brain is calm and all this noise, and you’re off of the crazy phone, and you’re not caught up in all the agitations, you allow your brain a chance to relax, and you begin to act as if, in the theater of your mind, you’re already a luxury agent, and you’re already successful. And that begins to put the wiring together, because quite frankly, you never had it before, and so you’re biased by your self-image.

10:26So you see yourself a certain way, so that’s why you think you can’t do luxury. It’s not because you can’t do luxury. I mean, it’s simple. “Hey, listen, I don’t know about Sally. I hear she’s really good. She’s at Sotheby’s. I know they’re a great luxury brand. I can’t speak to them, but what I can speak to is this plan I’d like to give you.

10:45And so in here there are seven steps for you to be successful with, no matter who you choose to do business with, and I think what that will do is empower you. Now, to enhance that, what I’ve also included is a one-page statistical market update, shows you the exact direction of what’s happening in the market.

11:00And then I took the liberty to print out, out of MLS just like any realtor would do, five or six properties that are around what you are hoping to get. So you wanted that $2 million? Okay, so I showed you in here by printing it where they are and what they were for the money. So I went a little bit above the two, up to about 2.75, and I went a little below to 1.5, and there are about six properties in there.

11:24So you can see what the buyer is looking to buy. And so I just wanna empower you with this.” Now, of course, that’s going to at least open up what I refer to as a competitionless lane. If you leave yourself in the same lane to compete against all these resume people that have been doing it a long time, or you try to pick a fight with a Goliath brand, you will lose, because that’s your strategy, is to go in there and fight Goliath.

11:50And we know that unless you’re really adept with a stone, you’re gonna lose that fight every day. So don’t compete that way. It’s simple. Compete by giving away a plan of action to somebody, which is nothing more than mastering the obvious. And it’s stunning how many doctors, lawyers, business owners, professional athletes appreciate this, because they’ve been used to doing things their whole life with a plan.

12:16So ironically, an intellectual approach like that, even though it’s fifth grade level writing, fifth or seventh grade level, and that’s the way you keep it, it’s amazing how that lands with people, and then they lean in. Now, of course, I can’t give you a whole coaching session in the middle of this, but what I would say is then you just need to have some guidance from a local mentor who’s good at selling properties on how to organize things and the basics of marketing.

12:45But I will tell you, you get a good digital footprint, you get a good photographer, you do maybe a Matterport 3D tour. You do a walk and talk mic’d up, so you’re doing a showing, and you get that somewhere on the web. You put it out there, and it’s there. Now at least you’ve hit the basics of modern-day marketing.

13:03But then just work. It’s amazing to me how many agents just don’t work. You and I talked about scripting too, right? So if you wanna segue into that, I can tell you how that was incorporated too, right?

Loida Velasquez13:13

Yeah, definitely. Let’s talk about that.

Danny Griffin13:15

Yeah. So scripting is a very specific skill set. I think a lot of people that believe that they are great telemarketers have never really understood it and don’t understand it.

13:25It is marketing, right? So you have to understand that when you’re outbound calling to people… I just can’t stand the term cold calling, ’cause that’s all we do. Yeah, of course it’s cold. But I mean, if you go out and you’re trying to meet somebody or trying to get a date, it’s all cold. Every beginning of every relationship is cold, right?

13:43So you just have to have some sort of a good context, or understanding of their context, so that you can be good at it. So when you call an expired, for example, we know the context. You tried and you failed. We don’t know why yet, but you tried and you failed. So you might not be prospectable when I finally get there, but I’m gonna be prepared to give you my best what-to-do information for free, so in the case that you’re still interested in selling it, I can leave you better than I found you or leave you better than you started, because most likely in here, you ignored…

14:18And it’s not a bad agent before us that expired it. They couldn’t get to you. You wouldn’t listen about pricing, or you just wouldn’t clean the house up or something, and you wouldn’t make the adjustments needed. That might be the only difference, but I’m gonna give you that information so that you get educated.

14:36And so how do you interfere in somebody’s life by making this outbound call? And so what we basically did was we thought, okay, the law of reciprocity. If we can get that across very quickly, that we’re not here to take, we’re here to give. Very simple principle, but you got about seven to 10 seconds to get that across.

14:55And of course, not everybody’s gonna listen anyway. You should hear some outbound calls into New Jersey. No matter what you say, right? I mean, you gotta wear a helmet when you’re calling into New Jersey, right? So it’s pretty funny, right? But the point was tone.

15:13And so, “Sally? Sally, this is Danny Griffin calling from Griffin Realty Group.” Right? So quick context, but not, “Sally? Hi, Sally.” That’s not it. That’s what happens at Disney, right? “Hi, Sally.” And everybody’s voice goes up a few pitches. You want to inflect downwards, because you’re the authority.

15:31Law of authority, right? It’s a big deal. You are the one with the information. You’re the authority. So we’re not talking about being rough with people. We’re just saying don’t get nervous to the extent there’s a lot of question marks and there’s a lot of fear. Just know you have the information that they need and want.

15:51So you have to really believe that, and that invokes that law of authority. Then the next thing is, “I saw your beautiful home online.” Well, the minute I call something beautiful that’s attached to you, the law of likability gets kicked in, okay? And it’s not patronizing. I believe that. I have a tear down.

16:09It’s ugly. What are you talking about? Yeah, and it’s a beautiful opportunity for an investor, right? So I don’t have to sell myself on real estate. I love it. “So I saw your beautiful home online, and I noticed it didn’t sell.” So I know your context, right? “So I’d like to send you something that will help you sell it the next time.”

16:29And then you go to permission marketing. “May I do that?” So there’s no pressure, it’s all easy, and it’s a yes or a no. Now, some people will emote all over you. “You’re the 15th person.” “Okay. Well, I’m not calling to take anything. I was actually calling to just simply give you…” And then we’ll actually tell them at that moment what’s in the package.

16:49So we realize that a double opt-in matters, because… It’s like going to the doctor and they chop you with that little rubber hammer and your knee just goes up and you have no choice. You really will get a lot of rhetorical yeses if somebody subconsciously really has that wherewithal or that interest to sell again.

17:09“Sure, go ahead and send it.” Wonderful. So we take the time to customize the package, and it will include five or six properties that sold around yours, straight from MLS, just like realtors, a one-page statistical market update that will show you the exact direction of current market pricing, and as a bonus, we’d like to include our seven-step plan, the one that we customize for our clients.

17:30May I send that? Twice now, double opt-in. Because we don’t wanna just give information to somebody that’s not going to appreciate it, use it, and have the context to need it, right? We want that real prospectable person. I’m not interested, big pet peeve as a coach, I’m not interested in bloated database syndrome, okay?

17:47I want definitive conclusions. Don’t forget, I do this with two of my own telemarketers. I want a definitive conclusion. So usually when somebody’s serious and a good prospect, they’ll go, “Oh. Oh, great.” Their voice will go up, right? They’ll have their Disney moment for me, right? Wonderful. May I confirm the mailing address?

18:05Is this… Great. It should take about four days to get there. Now we need to know that, right? Take about four days, that puts us at Friday. What’s the best day after Friday where I could call you to make sure it arrives? Like I said, we do take the time to customize it, so it’s my job to make sure it arrives, okay?

18:25Okay, Saturday? Wonderful. Is there a time slot on Saturday? So what we have the telemarketers doing is actually trying to book a follow-up appointment, bare minimum, in beat one, and that’s because what we really want them to do is get that person back on the phone, because when this benevolent Trojan horse shows up, gets through the door, and gets opened up, and all these positive little soldiers pop out, now the relationship has really changed.

18:54Now they really see us as different. They’ve had the Amazon Fulfillment moment. They’re impressed 99% of the time that we actually took the time to fulfill on what we promised. Who would believe something that simple is unique? But it is. Now they’re more likely to pick up the phone, and not all the time.

19:13Some people are in distressed situations or they’re harried in their lives anyway, so we have to still pursue them to make sure it got there, but it does change the relationship with them. So you can hear in all that scripting. Then the second beat of the script is if we get that far and it’s confirmed, we’ve got a nice little bundle.

19:31If on that first call they give us time and we can go further, “Hey, by the way, while I have you, why were you thinking about selling it? Does look like a beautiful home.” Now we shut up. It’s really hard. You have to bite down on your tongue and let them get it out. Nobody ever really asks that question and allows somebody to tell why.

19:51And then we say, “Interesting.” So we have a nice neutral word, interesting. “On a scale of one to 10, how motivated would you say you are to sell it right now?” If you’ve ever seen it in a survey, how likely are you to recommend us? A nine to 10 is somebody who’s likely to recommend you. A seven to eight is kind of neutral, and a one to six, you better get on the phone and defuse that bomb, because that’s a detractor.

20:13So we use that same model. So if we don’t hear nine to 10, we say, “Why so low? Geez, I thought eight was high. Well, in our experience, our clients who are ready to go were nine to 10. Is there something that we could help with? We could give you some insight.” “Well, I can’t find a dang house to move to.” “Oh, okay.

20:28So if we could help you find something like that, would you be a nine to 10?” “I’d be an 11.” “Okay, wonderful. What I think we should do, because you’re so motivated and it’s something we could solve,” here’s the upsell, free upsell, I think what I should do is have Danny come over with the package himself.

20:45While he’s there, he’ll give you some of his insights about how the market affects your sale and your buy, and he can tell you what to do and what not to do to get prepared. So he’ll customize that seven steps for you. May I set that up? Sometimes they’ll blow us off and say, “No, just send that first. I’m not quite ready.

21:00Let me get to know who he is first.” Wonderful. Why don’t I book the follow-up call for him? So it’s just logical to upsell somebody at that point, because their context has come out of them. So we’re not taking it. It’s just a logical conclusion that, oh, you need insight too. You don’t need just information.

21:20You need insight based on your timing, and by the way, it’s still free. There’s no pushing you to do anything. And we always use this line: We just wanna leave you better than we found you. So that’s how all of this body of knowledge gets worked into these scripts, and by the way, we’re doing it with probates right now, so where somebody’s passed, and all we’re doing is changing the original part of the script to recognize context, right?

21:45“Hey, I noticed that you were the administrator of the estate of XYZ. So, assuming there’s real estate in the estate, I’d like to send you some information that will help you get through the process. May I do that?” So divorce, “I noticed that unfortunately you were on this divorce decree or whatever we have, so I’d like to send you some information that will help you get through the real estate part of that process.

22:09May I do that?” Right? So whatever. I mean, it’s just when you formulaically crack a code that works, all you’re doing is changing out the context at the top, because at the base is the gift, and that’s the law of reciprocity, and that’s what everything is founded on.

Loida Velasquez22:24

I love it. If you see, I have like the biggest smile on my face just listening to you speak about all this, because I think this is exactly what a lot of agents are looking for.

22:34And you just kind of laid it all out. Like, it doesn’t get any easier than this. The only thing that now agents have to do is actually do it, put in the work, make the calls, make the connections, and set themselves up for success. So with that being said, you’ve already given so much value in the past half an hour, that now I’m even wondering what else you offer for coaching.

22:56So tell us about that, in case anyone that’s listening is like, “I want more of Danny. Tell me more.”

Danny Griffin23:02

Yeah. Cool. So again, I’m like one of these weirdo nerds that went into… I’m literally in a basement of a building that I own, where the company used to be upstairs, mine. And so I’ve been for the last 10 years really refining and chunking this up with some top producers that really trust me, and so we go to work one-on-one.

23:22But I’m turning that corner where, when you have stuff like this, instead of having somebody go out and reinvent it, we’re trying to productize that as we speak. So in the meantime, we give away a free agent plan, and I actually just started doing them in the second rotation. If you’re new or want fundamentals, you can find me on Facebook at The Profitable Agent Plan on Facebook.

23:45The Profitable Agent Plan. You’ll see my smiling face there. 7:00 to 8:00 every Wednesday night, I’m there going through what I believe are the 12 major steps to build out the holistic process of your business. I gave you some components of this today, which are some of the tools. I think what we’ll do next is we will begin to chunk out and productize some of what we have inclusive in our elite mastermind.

24:13So on Fridays we train the buyer and seller plan over and over and over again. So I think what I’ll do is I’ll probably create a product within the latter part of this year, where you can just get a license to use this. Not that, I hate to say it like that, it’s like you could come up with something your own.

24:31But really, it’s the guidance, I think, ultimately, that you get from somebody like me to coach you back inside the guardrails. I can explain this to you. You could watch the recording of this multiple times, and you’ll know what I do. It’s just the guidance is really ultimately for sellers, buyers, and agents, where you end up in that business.

24:51So we’re trying to see if we can’t open up one of those, or two of those, ’cause there’s a telemarketing call right after it. So we go over the buyer and seller plan every other week, and then we open that up. I think I’ll productize that pretty soon as a membership, so I’m sure you spend a lot more on your gym membership than I would charge for it, because we just wanna get you going in the right direction.

25:10And a lot of you, I would implore you, don’t quit. Just don’t quit. Don’t look in the mirror and say to yourself, “It didn’t work for me.” I’m telling you, if you’re enthusiastic about this, you love helping people, you’re intrigued by real estate, it is a deliciously wonderful business. But don’t have the misperception simply because you didn’t have a good strategy and you weren’t taught one.

25:31And I know the hazard of this industry. Every major brokerage is offering training, coaching, mentoring, and I don’t even think half of them know what that means. I don’t. So I’m empathetic to your plight. It’s very difficult to decipher all the noise and find out what’s there. So the best thing you can do right now is if you want my general help, just go to that Profitable Agent Plan.

25:52I record each one of those things. It’s what I do. I give anecdotes like this. You saw today I came prepared where I could show and tell, so I’m not just talking at you. It’s hard because I’m enthusiastic, but there are very simple things anybody can do. If you’re a top producer and you’re floundering, and all of a sudden you’re feeling exhausted, you think the business has passed you by, you’re wrong.

26:13It hasn’t. You have all this accumulated knowledge. You just need better strategy, too. I know, I make a living coaching those people, and I know because I have a brokerage bringing all the new people. It’s the same conversation, folks. It’s just at what degree. So the Profitable Agent Plan, and then therealtyclassroom.com.

Loida Velasquez26:30

Just find you. Yes. Danny, you have been amazing. Thank you so much for everything that you talked about. All of the knowledge that you dropped. We’re gonna make sure to put all of Danny’s links in the description box below. Make sure to watch this replay, follow Danny everywhere. And with that being said, thank you once again, Danny, for being here, and we’ll see everyone on the next one.

26:52Bye. My pleasure.