How Justin Ford sold 100 homes in his first year prospecting up to 8 hours a day

Justin Ford00:00

For those that are watching right now, whether you’re currently prospecting or you’re looking to get into prospecting, if you focus on sharpening your sales skills and getting really, really good at your sales skills and working on your mindset, once you work on those two things and you overcome those limiting beliefs around picking up the phone, man, you’ll be unstoppable.

Loida Velasquez00:33

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the top agents who share with you their tips and strategies so that you can be a successful agent in this business. Now, today I have an awesome guest. I’m gonna have him introduce himself, so get your pen and your paper ready because you’re definitely gonna be taking a lot of notes.

00:55So Justin Ford, welcome to the show.

Justin Ford00:58

Super excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Loida Velasquez01:01

Yes. Yes. So for everyone that’s watching that maybe is not familiar with you, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Justin Ford01:08

Yep. So I’ve been in the industry for the last 18 years, so I got my license when I was 12.

01:14I’m just kidding.

Loida Velasquez01:15

I know, right? It looks like it.

Justin Ford01:17

Yeah. But I actually got into the mortgage business back when I was 22 years old. I’m 40 now, so for the last 18 years, this industry is all I know. Did the mortgage business until about ’08, ’09 when the market crashed, and had to go do something else.

01:33And so rather than leaving the industry, I started helping people with short sales and loan modifications. Did that for a few years, and then in 2013, when the market started to change, I actually went and got my real estate license. And so I’ve been selling real estate here in the Detroit, Michigan area for the last 10 years.

01:52And I’m also a real estate coach helping people prospect and set more appointments. I’m married, four kids, and yeah, just crushing it here in real estate. Absolutely love it.

Loida Velasquez02:04

That’s awesome. That’s awesome that you’ve been in the business this long, that you’re now also teaching agents.

02:09Something that we love to talk about, I specifically have done it a lot, we were talking about this earlier, is prospecting…

02:18And setting appointments.

02:19So I feel that a lot of agents now, maybe they’re working with buyers, they wanna get out of working with buyers that are wasting their time…

02:28And focus on listings. So let’s begin with an agent that’s ready to make that transition. What would be the first step that they need to take? Maybe it’s mindset, maybe it’s schedule. What would you say?

Justin Ford02:39

Well, I appreciate you asking that question, ’cause what I’ve found is… I was fortunate enough to come into the industry back 10 years ago on Jeff Glover’s team.

02:47I know he’s been a guest on the show, and that was my first introduction to real estate. I didn’t know any other way how real estate was done, and so from day one, the foundation of Jeff’s team is prospecting. And so I was introduced to picking up the phone and making calls to expireds and for sale by owners right away.

03:05And so when I left his team, I was there for three years, back in 2016, I thought, “Hey, this is just how everybody does real estate.” But then I realized most agents start off doing buyers. And so I think it’s the easy way to get out there and get your feet wet right away is, hey, go show some houses, work with some buyers, work some buyer leads.

03:25But I remember Jeff posed a question to me when I first started in the industry. He said, “Do you wanna be the employer or the employee?” The employer is the one who puts the listings on the market, and the employee is the one who goes out and shows those listings. And it really made me think because, even though prospecting and picking up the phone and making phone calls, there are limiting beliefs around that, fear of rejection, all of those things.

03:54But when you look at the time that you spend on a buyer deal versus a seller transaction, it’s a lot less time on the seller transaction. And because of that, you can obviously go out and do more transactions, where with a buyer, if you’re running around showing 5, 10 houses a day, 15 houses a day, you can only be with that one buyer.

04:14And so for those that are currently working with buyers and you wanna move over to the selling side, for one, I would say that’s a great decision, and I applaud you for that because that’s definitely where you wanna be. But the way that you get started is you have to find a system that you can follow, that you can plug into in order to make it happen.

04:34Because so many agents just try to wing it, right? They think, “Well, I could just go on Zillow and call for sale by owners,” or, “I can just pick up the phone and make calls.” And if you don’t follow scripts, if you don’t follow a system, you’re gonna get frustrated very easily, and you’re gonna wanna quit.

04:50So I would say find a proven system, find some proven scripts, and get going.

Loida Velasquez04:56

Yes, absolutely. Now, something that I love to talk about, and I have this saying, and you probably have heard it. I like to say, “Skills pay the bills.” Because agents want listings, but then we’re not working on those skills to be able to objection handle and convert…

05:10And all that. So what are your tips when it comes to building your skills?

Justin Ford05:15

Yeah. So there’s two things that I believe every real estate agent should be focused on more than anything else. Number one, like you said, is your skills. You might call yourself a real estate concierge, a real estate specialist, a real estate professional, but at the end of the day, we’re all salespeople.

05:35And in order to be a great salesperson, you have to be great at those sales skills. And so if you’re not sharpening your skills, scripts, role-playing, writing out the scripts, knowing what to say, how to say it, being able to overcome objections confidently, then you’re gonna have a very tough time in the business, and that’s any aspect of the business.

05:55And then number two is mindset, because anybody can pick up a phone, anybody can call the leads, follow the script, but the reason why I find that so many people do not do this and/or struggle doing this is because of their mindset. And so when you can make a commitment to work on what are your limiting beliefs, why are you afraid to pick up the phone?

06:17Because one of the things I ask, I was just coaching a group of agents yesterday in our prospecting boot camp, and I asked them, “What’s the main reason why most people don’t call expireds or FSBOs?” And pretty much everybody said fear of rejection. And then my question was, “Well, why are you afraid?”

06:32“What are you afraid of?” And you know what they say? “I don’t know.” Because we’ve never really dug deep enough to figure out what is the root cause of our fear to pick up the phone and talk to a stranger and be told no by someone who we’ll probably never meet. Why does that scare us so much?

06:50And I think once you can identify what your limiting beliefs are, trace those back to an occurrence, and what it usually is, is maybe you were rejected as a kid. Maybe you had a rough childhood. Maybe you were bullied. Maybe you were told no. There was something in your childhood or in your life that caused this limiting belief to be afraid to be told no, to be afraid to be rejected, and when we become adults, we never really dealt with that, but it is attached to our subconscious mind.

07:16So when we dread the thought of picking up the phone and calling a stranger and being told no or go to hell or F off, ’cause you know how they say all that stuff, it causes people to literally be in fear. So I think for those that are watching right now, whether you’re currently prospecting or you’re looking to get into prospecting, if you focus on sharpening your sales skills and getting really…

07:40Really good at your sales skills and working on your mindset, once you work on those two things and you overcome those limiting beliefs around picking up the phone, man, you’ll be unstoppable.

Loida Velasquez07:51

Yeah, absolutely. I remember even when I started making cold calls to expires and for sale by owners, I was like those agents that you just described.

07:59I was scared. I’m like, “Oh, my God, they’re gonna yell at me. They’re gonna be rude. How am I gonna handle objections?” And just like you mentioned, the switch for me was like, well, you know what? That phone call can lead me to a $10,000 paycheck. Why am I not making more of these calls?

08:14And that’s when I said, “You know what?”

08:16“If I mess up, I’m probably never gonna see that person in my life.” They don’t know what I look like, so I’ll just hang up and go to the next call, ’cause that person needs me.

Justin Ford08:25

Yeah. And we have a saying at Glover U, and I don’t know if Jeff mentioned it when he was on.

08:29The more rejection I get, the more money I make, right? Jim Rohn calls it the law of averages, and what that means is, if you just show up and do something long enough, a ratio appears. And the good news with prospecting is, sooner or later somebody’s gonna say yes.

08:46You might get 100 nos, but number 101 could be a yes, and like you said, it could be a $10,000 commission check.

08:53But the question I always ask when I’m either speaking in a room or coaching a group of agents is, “Raise your hand if you either believe you’re a great agent or you desire to be one.” And everybody raises their hand. And I say, “Well, what do you think an expired listing needs? A great agent.”

09:08And so rather than looking at, “Oh my gosh, I’m afraid to pick up the phone,” or, “Oh my gosh, this is scary,” why don’t you go be the great agent that they need? Because unfortunately the last agent didn’t get the job done for whatever reason. And then another thing that I say, ’cause it goes back to mindset, is expect the no.

09:26Don’t be afraid when somebody tells you no. Expect it, because the majority of people are gonna tell you no. All you’re looking for is one to two people per day to say yes. And if you get really good at it, you’re gonna find yeses. They’re gonna pop up.

Loida Velasquez09:40

Yeah. Expect no, but be ready for yes.

09:43Absolutely. Because so many times agents are like, “I got a yes, and I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t set an appointment.” You gotta be ready.

Justin Ford09:50

You gotta be ready, and that goes back to your skills, right?

Loida Velasquez09:53

Exactly, yeah.

09:54Yeah. Yeah, skills. And something else that I say is, there’s probably agents out there that have half the skills that you have, but they’re consistent and they’re making…

10:04Calls day and night, and they’re setting appointments and they’re getting deals together.

Justin Ford10:07

Yep. ‘Cause again, it goes back to the law of averages. You could be an average salesperson and outwork a really good salesperson. I’ve got a group of guys here at the office in the other room right now, and they just show up every day and consistently make calls, and they’ve been in the business less than a year, and they’re setting appointments.

10:24Why? Because they’re dialed into how many contacts they need to make, how many people they need to talk to, and they’re willing to plug away on the phones. And so I love that you brought that up because when I first started in the business, I was a brand new real estate agent and I sold 100 homes my first year in the business.

10:4280% of that was from prospecting, and the reason why was not because I was more skilled than the other agents in the office. I wasn’t more skilled than other agents in the industry. I just had a work ethic that I was gonna prospect sometimes up to eight hours a day to set appointments. And so I got those numbers in because it’s a ratio, that if you know your ratio, let’s say it takes, for me, 10 people that I need to talk to before I set an appointment.

11:07So if I wanna set five appointments today, I need to at least talk to 50 people. Now, it doesn’t always work out where you set an appointment every time that you talk to 10 people. But if you’re willing to put in the work and you’re willing to show up, sooner or later, those appointments are definitely gonna pop up.

Loida Velasquez11:23

Yeah. Yeah. I remember at one point in the beginning when I wasn’t even good at objection handling, but I knew just like you, it’s like, oh, we have to make calls to expires and for sale by owners to get listings. I’m gonna do this. There was one day, and I’m very competitive, I said, “You know what? I’m gonna make 100 contacts.”

11:40“I’m gonna have 100 conversations in one day.” I was testing myself.

11:44And I started at 8:00 with expires and for sale by owners. I think I ended almost at 8:45 in the evening. I was going hard, and it was almost towards the end. After 8:30, I set an appointment with a listing, with a seller.

11:58And it was just so satisfying ’cause at that point I knew, I’m newer.

12:01I may not know all the answers, but I’m here putting in the work. And I think that’s also real important for agents to understand that you have to see yourself as that best agent and as a business owner. ‘Cause if you’re not putting in the work, you’re not gonna be getting a paycheck.

Justin Ford12:15

Yeah. And I think a lot of times, and I think again, it goes back to human nature, is…

12:20We wanna take the path of least resistance to get a transaction. We all do.

12:24Right? We all do, but the reality is there’s only one way to really get the results that you want, and that’s doing the hard work. I mean, there’s no shortcutting it. Especially with prospecting, I teach people, 90% of agents are out of the business in their first two years.

12:39Why? Because I think we’ve been sold this bill of goods. You watch HGTV. You have this idea that real estate is all glamorous, and it’s all fancy, and oh, it’s gonna be easy, and I’m gonna just post a few things on social media, and I’m gonna be a rock star. Well, it doesn’t work that way. It all comes down to conversations, and obviously there’s a lot of different ways you can have conversations about real estate.

13:02You can door knock, you can network, you can do circle prospecting, you can do a lot of different things, but it all comes down to conversations. And that’s not just in real estate, that’s in any type of sales, that if you’re not having conversations about what you do, then you’re never gonna get those sales.

13:18And so I always just say the person that talks to the most people is gonna get the most results, period.

Loida Velasquez13:24

Yes. So I’m sure that there are agents that are watching that are doing this part-time. And maybe they’re like, “Once I get that first or second deal, I’m going to transition into full-time.”

13:34What would you recommend a good schedule would be for them to follow as a part-time agent?

Justin Ford13:39

So yeah, if you’re a part-time agent and you work a day job, let’s say you work 8:00 to 4:00, and I always tell part-time people that if you really wanna transition from your day job to doing real estate, you’re gonna have to sacrifice for a period of time, and it’s not gonna be easy.

13:56You’re going to have to sacrifice doing things that you would normally do in order to put in the work to get the results. And so if you’re working, let’s say, 8:00 to 4:00, then you should get home or get to the office and prospect from 5:00 to 8:00, 5:00 to 9:00, right? You can legally make calls up until 9:00 o’clock.

14:13And so it’s gonna take time for you to put in the work. Let’s say you work an afternoon shift, you should be on the phones from 8:00 AM to at least 12:00 PM if you’re able, because that’s the best time to call. And it’s not just getting on the phone and calling. It’s setting a goal for how many people you should talk to every day.

14:33And if your goal is to talk to 25 people a day, you need to look at what time you have available during the day, and you need to commit to prospecting and making phone calls during that time. And eventually what you’ll see is you’ll start to set appointments, you’ll start to go on appointments, and you’ll start to take listings.

14:51And once your pipeline is at a place and once you’ve closed some deals and you’re at a place where you know that you’re gonna do this consistently, then you can consider going full time.

Loida Velasquez15:00

Yes. So for a full-time agent…

15:03What should that schedule look like?

Justin Ford15:05

Yep. I think one of the things that we teach at Glover U is you gotta own your morning to win your day.

15:10And so you should have your entire morning planned out from the time you wake up till what you do until you walk in the door of either your home office or your brokerage or wherever you do your work, and you have to have a non-negotiable start time. What time do you start your day every day? My team and I, we get to the office every day at 7:30 AM.

15:29We do role playing from 7:40 to 8:00, and we’re on the phones by 8:00 AM. So we’re making calls from 8:00 AM typically till 11:00 AM, and then from there we’re doing lead follow-up. Take your lunch, you gotta make time for yourself, and then do your work in the afternoon. Go on your appointments in your afternoon.

15:46I would never go on a listing appointment or do a closing or meet with a buyer in the morning because that prospecting time that you have in the morning is the most important time on your schedule, because the day that you decide not to prospect, you might not feel it today, but you’re gonna feel it down the road.

16:04So you gotta guard your morning, get on your appointments in the afternoon or early evening. But if you have family and/or even if you’re single, you have to put times on your calendar of what we call non-negotiables. What are your non-negotiables? For me, I don’t work Sundays. We go to church in the morning and it’s family day.

16:23That’s on my schedule. I’ll never set a listing on Sunday. I’ll never do an open house on Sunday. I’ll never meet with a buyer on Sunday because that’s a non-negotiable time. My kids’ games on my calendar, non-negotiable. So build in your non-negotiables before you build in your real estate day, and then what you do is you work your real estate business around those days and times that are most important to you.

Loida Velasquez16:48

Awesome.

16:48I love everything you’re saying. I feel that at the end of the day, whether it’s Justin or anyone that you’re watching, if you’re watching this video, it’s like we have a military type of schedule where we follow it, and we don’t let any distractions throw us off. Because just like you mentioned, there might be times where a buyer comes through or a seller comes through at 10 o’clock in the morning, “Hey, come and show me this property,” you have to be disciplined enough to say, “You know what?”

17:13“Right now I’m not available, but we can meet at 2:00.”

Justin Ford17:17

And when you do that, you’ll be surprised that they’ll usually agree with you. I was prospecting this morning, and this guy kept trying, when I was setting an appointment with him, to meet with me in the morning.

17:27And here’s what I tell him, ’cause they don’t know our terminology like, “Hey, I’m prospecting.” I just say, like I’m talking to you right now, I said, “Every morning from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM I’m on floor time. I’m required to be on floor time, and so I can’t meet with you in the morning, but I can meet in the afternoon.”

17:43And we ended up setting an appointment in the afternoon. So it’s okay to say no and give another option because, again, the minute that you compromise your schedule, you’re willing to compromise it the second time.

Loida Velasquez17:55

Yes, yes. So let’s talk about lead generation.

17:59I hear that all the time from agents.

18:01“How do I get leads? What sources should I go after?” So what would you recommend to get started or how to get your first listing fast?

Justin Ford18:11

Yep, yep. Again, I feel leads are good, right? There’s a lot of lead sources that are out here, and what I find is everybody’s looking for leads. And rather than looking for leads that can be given to you,

18:24I say create your own leads. If you’re a brand-new agent or if you’re a seasoned agent and you’re looking for more opportunities, create them. There’s so many ways that you can create your own opportunities. Expires and for sale by owners is a great way. Just listed, just sold, a great way.

18:41Circle prospect, hybrid farming. Pick a neighborhood and go own that neighborhood for 12 months. Be the face of that neighborhood. Get in front of people. You can also network with people. You can build relationships with a great lender that you can trade business with. There’s a lot of different ways to get business.

18:59But always, no matter what other lead sources you go after and get, let the core of your business be your efforts because if all the lead sources at the end of the day are taken away, nobody can take your work ethic from you. And so be the foundation of having conversations with people every day.

Loida Velasquez19:18

And also make sure that you are putting all of those people into some type of system,

19:23Not just having conversations looking for that next yes.

Justin Ford19:26

Yes. Have a great CRM…

Loida Velasquez19:28

Tell us about your prospecting boot camp and all of the coaching that you have just in case anyone wants to join you.

Justin Ford19:34

Yep, yep. So I lead the prospecting boot camp over at Glover U. It’s a 16-week course where I teach everything that I’ve learned from Jeff Glover himself on how to sell on average 100 homes a year.

19:46Everything from expireds, for sale by owners, circle prospecting, door knocking, social media, how to build your database, how to leverage understanding the different personality styles. When you look at the DISC test, all of us fall within a personality profile. Most people don’t know that when you go out and you meet with people, they might not be the same personality style as you.

20:08So we teach you how to identify what their personality style is and how to communicate in a way that they can relate to you, which causes your conversion ratio to go up. One of the things too that we teach is Jeff and his team’s top 25 sources of business on how they sell 1,000 homes a year. And so it’s a whole 16-week class.

20:27It’s on Mondays from 2:00 to 3:00 PM Eastern on Zoom. It’s a $299 investment per month for four months, so it’s a $1,200 investment. What I always say is how many listings would you need to take in order to recoup $1,200? A portion of a listing. We talk about mindset. We do role playing together. We have a private Facebook group that we put you in with about 1,000 other agents who have gone through the class.

20:54We actually had a guy go through our class two sessions ago that took 18 listings over the 16-week course. And so if anybody’s interested, you can reach out to me directly. I’m on Facebook. I’m on Instagram at the official Justin Ford, or you can email me justin@justinfordteam.com. We just started yesterday, but the good news is we still leave the registration open through this week.

21:17We’ll email you the recording from yesterday just so that you can get caught up. We do homework every week, and it’s definitely a program that will help you take your business to the next level.

Loida Velasquez21:29

That’s awesome. So there you go. You still have time to sign up if you’re watching this video.

21:34But only sign up if you’re willing to put in the work and if you’re ready to get more business.

Justin Ford21:39

Absolutely.

Loida Velasquez21:39

‘Cause Justin, I mean you sold me. I’m ready to sign up too for this boot camp.

Justin Ford21:43

Yep. It’s a great program, and it’s led by me, so you get yours truly.

Loida Velasquez21:47

There you go. It doesn’t get better than that.

21:49Awesome, Justin. Well, thank you so much for coming on here, dropping some gems. We’re gonna make sure that all of the information is in the description box below. So once again, make sure to sign up to the prospecting boot camp with Justin. Get ready to take your business to the next level. And yeah.

22:05Thank you, Justin, once again.

Justin Ford22:07

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.