How Devin Tryan converted 1 in 3 expired appointments by front-loading follow-up

Devin Tryan00:04

I learned after maybe three or four years, all the money is in the follow-up. All of it. And I tell this story, and I want to explain how important this is, ’cause I kind of batch agents into, you have hunters and farmers. And hunters are the agents that all day, they’re just taking shots, they’re lines in the water, they’re going after hundreds of different leads at a time.

00:32And then you have the farmers, and they’ll plant a little seed, and they’ll water it, and they’ll fertilize it, and it’ll grow, and it’ll become something. And I will tell you, I’ve now coached quite a few different agents through my team, and the ones that were most successful were the ones that grabbed a couple good leads, good price points, motivated, and then they nurtured them until they were ready.

00:59And so if I was to give any follow-up advice to any agent, I would really say you’re going after too many leads. You’re going after way too many people. What you should do is every morning you should make maybe about 45 minutes worth of outbound lead generation. You’re just lead generating, and all you’re looking for is a lead.

01:23Somebody that says, “Hey, I’m motivated.” That’s what you’re looking for, motivation. And then when they say, “I’m motivated,” that’s when, okay, that goes from the hunting side to the farmer, and then you have to water that plant multiple times a day every single day for the first week.

Loida Velasquez01:56

Welcome to a brand new episode of Vulcan 7 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 in your business immediately. Now, on today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about a topic that a lot of agents sometimes forget, and that is follow-up.

02:16So you’ve probably been in a position before where you call a lead or a prospect. They tell you they relisted, and if you would’ve called sooner, you probably would’ve gotten that deal. So with that being said, I’m gonna bring on today’s guest that’s gonna share with us more. So Devin, welcome to the show.

Devin Tryan02:35

Loida, thank you. I appreciate it.

Loida Velasquez02:37

So for everyone that’s watching, go ahead and give us a little intro so they know exactly who you are.

Devin Tryan02:42

Sure. Hello. Hi, everybody. My name is Devin Tryan. I’m a real estate broker here in Hawaii. Run a team of 25 agents, own this little kind of team brokerage. Own a couple other businesses, a software company and a rock climbing gym.

02:55Sold about a quarter of a billion dollars worth of real estate in my 10-year career, so a couple homes, nice ones here and there. Not too bad. And I like to think I’ve mastered expired listings, Loida. I’ve gotten pretty darn good at it. I don’t go after them anymore ’cause I’m out of production, but I still

03:18have a bunch of agents I coach that do.

Loida Velasquez03:20

Oh, that’s awesome. So you’ve been in the business for quite some time. So before we get into the follow-up, can you kind of just share what your journey was like in the beginning, and then when you started to add team members and grow?

Devin Tryan03:32

Yeah. Loida, I was broke. I was so broke.

03:36Okay, check this out. I was 19. I had no money, I had no car, and I had no friends or people ’cause I’d just moved to the island. I did have a moped, however. And so I got my real estate license and I thought, “Well, I don’t have a car so I can’t work with buyers at all. That’s out of the question.” And then I went to Google and I was like, “Where can I find sellers?”

04:01And they say go after expireds and FSBOs. Never heard of such a thing. And eventually I was like, “Okay, I guess I could do that.” So I started every day I would look up the properties and I would get ahold of the owners. I’d call them. And when I first started calling I was really nervous. My very first call actually went like this.

04:20We’re gonna role play real quick.

Loida Velasquez04:23

Okay.

Devin Tryan04:23

Ring, ring. “Hello, Loida?”

Loida Velasquez04:26

Yeah, who is this?

Devin Tryan04:28

You have a house on Banana Street?

Loida Velasquez04:31

Yeah. Who are you?

Devin Tryan04:32

Click. That was it. That was my first call. It was terrible. I had no idea what I was doing. And so I realized, okay, I don’t have a car. I have a moped.

04:44But I was also too embarrassed to show up to people’s houses on my moped. So what I would do is my whole business strategy was I would go after expireds, I’d call them, I’d set an appointment, and then I would park my moped down the street and lock it up to a stop sign or something. And then I would walk up and they’d be like, “Oh, why didn’t you park in the driveway?”

05:05And I’d be like, “Oh, I found great parking over there. It’s totally fine.” And my second year I sold a house for maybe 1.4 million on a moped. And it was great. It was an expired listing and I showed up and they did hire me the same day. But the whole ride there I was listening to Mike Ferry, The Listing Presentation, and it’s like, “If you wanna get the most money for your home, you better hire me because I’m gonna do these things.”

05:34And I had no idea what I was saying. I was just mimicking. Yeah, and it went up from there. It slightly got a little bit better every year.

Loida Velasquez05:43

That’s awesome. That’s a great story. Your moped. No excuses.

Devin Tryan05:49

It wasn’t a great experience.

Loida Velasquez05:51

But you made things happen no matter what.

Devin Tryan05:55

Yeah, yeah. Maybe.

Loida Velasquez05:57

So then at what point did you start getting so much business that you grew?

Devin Tryan06:03

Sure. So let’s see here, 2018, I was doing around 40 units, maybe 40 something units a year independent. Had a great team alongside me of just transaction manager, personal assistant. It was really cool. I was making a lot of good money.

06:22And it got to the point where I was getting so much business that I couldn’t keep up, and there was this agent in my office and I was like, “Hey, Jake, do you wanna just take this client and go around and do the thing for me?” And he’s like, “Yeah, sure, I’d love to.” He was brand new. And then he got him under contract and I was like, “Well, if you’re gonna use my client, you may as well use my transaction manager.”

06:46And then it was like, “Well, if I’m gonna give you a bunch of clients, you may as well use my CRM.” And then there was a listing. I was like, “Well, if you’re gonna use my CRM, you may as well use my stager,” because everything kind of works together. And then I was like, “Well, if we’re gonna be emailing these clients on our behalf, there should be a name for what this organization is.”

07:08And I never liked it when team leaders named the company after themselves. It’s my biggest gripe ever. It’s just how egotistical can you be about it? And I always give every team leader such a hard time. And I was like, “All right. Well, I don’t wanna name it after me because I don’t wanna work for someone that’s all about them.

07:28That’s just lame. I wanna work for an organization.” And so I named it Pineapple Homes because pineapple is a symbol of hospitality. I live in Hawaii. It didn’t exist, so I felt like it fit.

Loida Velasquez07:40

That’s awesome. And you said right now you have 20 agents?

Devin Tryan07:45

Yeah. We’re usually floating around 20, and then we have another five staff, something like that.

Loida Velasquez07:53

Oh, okay. Nice. So we wanna talk about follow-up.

07:58Let’s first, what does your follow-up system currently look like?

Devin Tryan08:03

Sure. So I’m not in production anymore, so there is not a follow-up system for me. But let me tell you what it was and what the agents do.

08:16A lot of agents love to call new leads. They love it. Every time a new expired or Zillow or whatever comes in the mail or whatever, that’s all they wanna do. They wanna call them one time and that was it. And I learned after maybe three or four years, all the money is in the follow-up.

08:37All of it. And I tell this story, and I want to explain how important this is, ’cause I kind of batch agents into, you have hunters and farmers. And hunters are the agents that all day, they’re just taking shots, they’re lines in the water, they’re going after hundreds of different leads at a time.

08:58And then you have the farmers, and they’ll plant a little seed, and they’ll water it, and they’ll fertilize it, and it’ll grow, and it’ll become something. And I will tell you, I’ve now coached quite a few different agents through my team, and the ones that were most successful were the ones that grabbed a couple good leads, good price points, motivated, and then they nurtured them until they were ready.

09:26And so if I was to give any follow-up advice to any agent, I would really say you’re going after too many leads. You’re going after way too many people. What you should do, and if you’re watching this, you should write this down, is every morning you should make maybe about 45 minutes worth of outbound lead generation.

09:47You’re just lead generating, and all you’re looking for is a lead. Somebody that says, “Hey, I’m motivated.” That’s what you’re looking for, motivation. Like, “I’ve gotta sell, I’ve gotta buy, I’ve gotta do this thing.” Whatever the reason is. And then when they say, “I’m motivated,” that’s when, okay, that goes from the hunting side to the farmer, and then you have to water that plant multiple times a day every single day for the first week.

10:18And so I call it the value trifecta. This is what I give to all the agents that are looking to grow. You want to give every lead in the first three days three pieces of valuable content. So for example, let’s say you are an expired listing, you came off of the market, and I got on the phone with you and you’re interested in selling, but you’re not ready yet because you had just spent the last 12 months of having people parade through your house.

10:52Sound familiar?

Loida Velasquez10:53

Yeah.

Devin Tryan10:53

So what I would do after this call, let’s say I did not set an appointment. The first thing I would do is I would download an MLS sheet, and I’ll print it off and I’ll mark it up with a red Sharpie, and I’ll look for all of the reasons that I think it could not have sold.

11:13And it could be… I’ll circle days on market and be like, “We don’t wanna be letting this sit too long.” I’ll circle the photos and be like, “This is not the best first photo.” I’ll add a bunch of comments to the remarks and be like, “I saw you had a VA assumable loan at 2.25. We should put this in the remarks. I saw that they left off the square footage of the porch and the lanai and the garage, so your square footage is lower than it is.”

11:34All these reasons. And I’ll take a picture of that and I’ll text it to them. And I’ll say, “Hey, Loida, I know you’re not ready now, but when you go back to market, these are some changes I would make on your listing. These are big red flags.” And they might respond, they might not. And then if you can have a good conversation and find out, let’s say they say, “Devin, I’m thinking about renting it out instead.”

11:57So then what I do is I’ll do the MLS sheet. I’ll send them the red Sharpie. Then I’ll pull up a rental calculator. I’ll fill it all out. And most people aren’t gonna make as much money as a rental as they expect. So then I’ll fill out their mortgage payment, their insurance, their taxes, their HOA, any other costs that are associated with the property, excise taxes, property management fee, vacancy loss, and I’ll calculate all of that.

12:25And then I’ll say, “Okay, Loida, your property rents for three thousand. Your mortgage is two thousand. Your HOA is five hundred. After all of these expenses are paid, you’re in debt every month by $300.” And so it’s a really… And now you’re adding value to them. And so instead of just saying, “Oh, can I list your house?”

12:49Or, “Look what I can do.” It’s not look what I can do, it’s here’s what I’m doing. And you’re actually doing it rather than talking about doing it.

Loida Velasquez12:59

Exactly. It’s just way better. You’re already kind of showing them what you’re doing in terms of work, just by doing your research, giving some feedback, and showing them what can be done differently next time.

13:14So I think that definitely helps you stand out versus other agents that are just like, “Hey, well, I can sell your house for this,” and the other agent, blah, blah, blah.

Devin Tryan13:24

Yeah. And the hard thing though… Like, that does take time. And so that’s why I say you can’t go after 100 leads, and you have to choose the right ones.

13:38Because if you do this with people that aren’t motivated, you are wasting your time.

Loida Velasquez13:44

Yeah. So you’re sending these through text message if you have their cell phone. What else are you doing? Are you doing any email, direct mail?

Devin Tryan13:54

Yeah. So I think we spoke about it before, but I have a system that will send out CMAs on behalf of the agent.

14:03And so typically you don’t wanna send postcards or just listed, just sold, because that’s all about you. And I want to imagine, what area do you live in? What neighborhood or what state?

Loida Velasquez14:20

Miami.

Devin Tryan14:20

Miami. Perfect. I want you to imagine, Loida, pretend you didn’t know about the world of real estate and somebody sends you a postcard saying, “Look at all the great work I’ve done.”

14:32It’s like, “Oh, cool. Okay, good work.” It’s almost like if a car salesman sends you a letter in the mail saying, “Hey, look at all the cars I sold. Do you wanna buy a car?”

Loida Velasquez14:44

Yeah.

Devin Tryan14:44

Eh, not really. Even if it’s the same kind of car I own and he’s like, “Hey, look how much I sold this car for.” It’s like, yeah, it’s all right.

14:54I don’t really care about you. And that’s why I think a lot of people, agents get confused about their role, because I always say, most people aren’t looking to hire a realtor, they’re looking to buy a house. When you go to the car lot, you’re not looking to hire a car salesman, you’re looking to buy a car.

15:17And so when you look at it from this angle of what can I do for you rather than look what I’m doing, look at me, I think it builds a lot more trust. I hope. That’s what it seems like. And it’s a lot easier to convert. So when I was really fully cranking on expired listings, I was converting usually about one out of three appointments to be a signed listing, and it’s because I was following this.

15:46But also keep in mind, I could only sell 40 or 50 of those a year because you can’t follow up with people effectively if you’re doing a million calls.

Loida Velasquez15:56

Yeah. And does it get to a certain point with a lead where you’re like, “Okay, this is not gonna go anywhere”? Or maybe things change and they don’t have to sell anymore, so do you put them on a different, I don’t know, system where then now they’re just

16:11getting something?

Devin Tryan16:12

Yeah, so what you wanna do is you wanna front load all of that follow-up. And so in the first three days, you wanna do the value trifecta. Find three really great points of value that add value to them in some way. So it could be the rental analysis. It could be marking up an MLS sheet.

16:29If it’s buyers, it could be schools or HOAs or off markets or rates. Like, you really wanna dig into these things for them. And what will end up happening is since you’re doing so much work for them, if they’re not motivated, they’ll typically be like, “Loida, I love what you’re doing, but I’m gonna be honest, we’re just not ready yet.

16:51Give me six months.” “Cool, got it.” And so that’s when every month you’ll send them a CMA in the mail letting them know how much their home is worth, ’cause you can kind of automate that a little bit easier. And so now direct mail does the follow-up. And then if you have their email, you’ll probably put them on your email weekly newsletter as well.

17:12And so you got both those things rolling. You do your six-month follow-up call. And you do that for a year, you should be able to sell 40, 50 homes in most markets.

Loida Velasquez17:24

So as you’ve been following up, doing this system, when it gets to the point of meeting with the seller, have you found yourself,

17:32you know, that they interview other agents, or is it usually just you that they end up talking to? Or what does that typically look like?

Devin Tryan17:44

Sure. I mean, it all depends. The number one objection you’re going to get is, “I’m gonna work with the same agent.” That’s the number one. The number two is, “I’m not selling anymore.”

17:57And then you’ll get a mix of a bunch of random things like, “I’m gonna rent it out,” or, “I don’t know you. Who are you? Don’t call me ever again. You’re a scammer. Get out of my house.” Things like that. So usually you’ll go against other agents, though, almost always. I’d be surprised if you didn’t.

18:15And that’s okay. I mean, the only difference is you just have to be better. You have to stand out. And the way you do that is you add value, you put in the time. Like, you clearly put in the time. And if I show up to your house and I have a list of every single home that sold, and then I can tell you, “Loida, I spoke to every one of these property managers or listing agents, and this one received three offers.

18:42This is where the buyer came from. This is the financing. These are the troubles they had,” and I show you that I’ve done my homework, usually you’re… I mean, right there, none of that takes any skill. It just takes prep work.

18:55And so you can usually get at least 60% to 70% of listings just by spending a day or two researching the property and comps ahead of time.

Loida Velasquez19:08

So it’s like being a step ahead pretty much. Yeah. So anyone listening, being a step ahead, doing your homework, be prepared so that you can stand out.

Devin Tryan19:17

Yeah. I mean, it really is same thing. Don’t hunt, just go deep. I mean, you really have to treat it like if this is your only listing appointment all year, what would you do?

19:26And think of every possible thing you can do. And when you do it, it makes it easy. And then eventually you get an assistant and they do most of it for you, and so you don’t even think about it. You just print it off. You’re like, “Is my prep sheet ready?” And they’re like, “Yeah, here you go.”

19:41And then away you go.

Loida Velasquez19:42

Yeah. That’s awesome. So now I kinda wanna shift, because obviously you have been training the agents. You’ve been in the business for quite some time. So what are you teaching, or how are you guys changing things now versus maybe back 2020? You know, buyers, sellers, it was much different than now.

20:04What are the conversations sounding like?

Devin Tryan20:07

Let me think about that. What are we doing differently than we were in 2020? Well, 2020 was pretty easy. Like, interest rates were low. You didn’t have to do buyer consults or listing presentations. You just show up. There was more sellers and buyers than there ever were.

20:31And so 2020 isn’t really… Everybody got a freebie that year and got to do a bunch of deals. And I laugh when agents say, “Oh, I know I’m a great agent ’cause in 2021 I had such a great year.” Like, yeah, everybody had a great year. So this is a normal market. This is what it feels like. It’s not supposed to be easy to take a ton of listings and a ton of sales unless you’re really good.

20:59And so I would probably say we really… The only thing we’ve done differently is just stuck to the fundamentals more, and we do the buyer consults, we do the listing presentations, we add value to the consumers, we do the homework and prep and stay ahead of it. There’s no real difference other than do the hard things well and stay in front of people.

21:29Everybody’s looking for the secret bullet, and there isn’t one. Make your calls, add value. That’s it.

Loida Velasquez21:35

Exactly. Yeah. And we have seen a lot of agents just kind of be scared or leave the business, especially with the lawsuits happening. So that’s great that you’re saying, you know, just stick to the fundamentals and do what you’re supposed to be doing.

21:51Because sometimes agents think that… They switch things all the time. “Oh, maybe this script’s not working. These numbers don’t work.” And they don’t stick to something consistently over time, or they don’t have a system, just like you mentioned, for follow-up, and then they think it doesn’t work.

Devin Tryan22:07

No, it’s true. Yeah, exactly. And when we farm a neighborhood or farm expireds, we don’t plan to make any money on that area for three to six months.

22:18Because it takes time to build a brand.

Loida Velasquez22:21

Exactly. Yes. So as we wrap this up, first I want you to talk to that agent that, you know, they feel like they’ve been putting in the work, but they’re kind of losing motivation, or they’re getting discouraged.

22:34What would you say are maybe three things that they need to do right now?

Devin Tryan22:40

Yeah, that’s a great question. Number one is, it’s so cliche, Loida. It’s so cliche, but it’s your environment. Who are the people you’re around? Are you around top producing agents? Because when you’re in a room and you show up and everybody is doing the work and making their calls and doing the thing, you want to be around that more and you’re gonna do it.

23:05But you show up to a dead office or it’s you in your closet, you don’t have that same motivation. So put yourself around top producing agents. If that means find a team, if that means find coworkers and accountability partners. But no matter what you do, just be around people that are doing the thing. And even if it’s…

23:26I have this friend who is an agent in Arizona, and we would get on Zoom every day. We’d listen to each other’s calls, and we would just make our calls together for a couple hours a day every day. And it worked really, really well. So environment, accountability. And really stop trying to call every lead, and every day focus on your top five or top 10, depending on what your goals are, and really focus on adding value to them in any way possible.

24:00And trust me, you’ll be pretty amazed at how fast that works.

Loida Velasquez24:06

Awesome. So staying consistent and just implementing everything that you just mentioned. Right. There’s no crazy, you know, secret sauce type of thing. It’s just doing the work.

Devin Tryan24:19

Yeah. I mean, but when your environment’s better it’s easier.

24:21Yeah. Most agents try and call too many people. I will say that. Call the good ones, or call until you find a couple good ones and then go deep.

24:31And it’s so much more effective.

Loida Velasquez24:34

Yes, absolutely. So where can people find you if they want maybe coaching, mentorship, anything that you offer, go ahead and share with us all your links.

Devin Tryan24:44

Sure. Yeah. I run a software company called CMA Every Day, and what it does is you choose either expireds, FSBOs, your past clients, or a farm area. And you say, “Okay, I wanna target these 400 people and I wanna get as many listings as I can from them.” You grab their names and addresses, and then you upload it to the system, and then every month it will send them a CMA in the mail branded as you, telling them how much their house is worth and what renovations see the most equity gain.

Loida Velasquez25:14

Oh, okay. Awesome.

Devin Tryan25:15

That’s CMA Every Day. But I don’t coach or anything like that unless you’re on my team. But if you find me on Instagram or Facebook, you can send me a DM and I might respond.

Loida Velasquez25:24

Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Well, Devin, thank you so much, you know, for hopping on the past couple minutes. I know that you gave a lot of great value

25:32that agents can now go and implement. It’s not just listening to these interviews, but now you gotta put in the action so you can start seeing results. So Devin, thank you

25:43once again. Yes. All right, everyone. We’ll see you on the next one. Bye.