How Kelly Rossow holds a 21-contact daily minimum with an accountability partner

Aaron Wittenstein00:00

Well, that’s great because a lot of people are not role-playing, number one. And number two, having that accountability partner on the back end to be able to have someone to hold you accountable to something.

Kelly Rossow00:13

So it’s not letting the other off the hook, but it’s sometimes maybe trying to help out with not just the scripts, but again, accountability.

00:24So it works for us. We were terrible at the beginning. We would stumble through it because we didn’t have it internalized. But you internalize the script, you’re able to not be stumped. You’re able to respond and listen instead of focusing on the words on the script because you know it.

Aaron Wittenstein00:50

What’s going on everybody? It’s me, it’s Aaron Wittenstein, and I’d like to welcome you to Vulcan 7 Roadmap. This is where we teach you how to take an additional two, three, four, 563 million point 17 listings a week. All right? And we have her all the way from Palm Beach Gardens, Kelly Rossow.

01:19Kelly, how are you doing today?

Kelly Rossow01:21

I’m excellent, Aaron, thank you.

Aaron Wittenstein01:23

Oh, you’re very, very welcome. So Kelly here, we were chatting it up here a little bit before, she’s been doing this for a long time, okay? Put it this way, I think I had hair back when she started making phone calls, okay? How long have you been making phone calls for?

Kelly Rossow01:41

At least 10 or 15 years.

Aaron Wittenstein01:45

Okay. If you had to guess, is it closer to 10 or closer to 15, what do you think?

Kelly Rossow01:50

Using Vulcan, at least 10.

Aaron Wittenstein01:51

Oh, wow. Okay. Got it. Yeah. That’s a whole decade of making phone calls right there, right?

Kelly Rossow01:57

It is.

Aaron Wittenstein01:58

So, all right. So I know a lot of agents are new. A lot of people that watch this in general are newer.

02:05They’ve called for three months, six months, nine months, a year or two. How do you possibly maintain… I mean, are you an everyday caller, or how does that work?

Kelly Rossow02:18

I am. First of all, I time block my calendar. I actually… I’m old school, so I have a little paper calendar.

02:26I go through and I decide, okay, so on Monday I’m gonna go to Aaron’s class at 1:00. On Tuesday and Thursday I go to Jim’s class at 2:00. And even if you’re just listening and you get one or two little pieces or nuggets from those, it kind of keeps you going, it gives you different ideas. But I’m time blocked so that my scripts partner, I call her around 7:30.

02:50So it’s not exactly 7:30 every day, it just depends. We generally don’t skip. I do have one scripts partner. I know sometimes people will say have four or five. I tried that, it didn’t work well for me, so I stuck with one, and she’s pretty honest with me. If we sound snippy or if we sound tired, we will tell the other, and we screw up in the morning and we laugh about it.

03:17During the day we will actually… I have an iPad that’s next to my regular computer where I dial, and I’ll just text her and say, “Okay, this is what I just got. What could I have said differently?” And she’ll do the same. Or if I’m at four, I’ll just say, “Hey, here’s my number,” and then she’ll text me back where she is.

03:35So if she’s at 12 and I’m at 4, I keep dialing, and vice versa. So it’s an accountability partner along with a scripts partner. So I know in the morning I don’t get to sleep in, I’m on the phone. And I’ve got four kids, so they’re seeing what I do and they know, okay, mom is working. Just because they don’t see me outside the house doesn’t mean that I’m not working.

03:56Right. And I make them respect that. If they’re gonna walk through my area, you’re walking through my office. And then I dial until either I hit my number or I have the right amount of appointments, or some days you’re just done and you have hit your number or maybe not a lot of people answered, but you just keep going and you don’t get tied to the outcome.

04:17I don’t take it personally. My first call today, they were not real kind. You get to decide who you’re gonna work with. So if they’re gonna double F-bomb me, then I cross them off the list and I put them in a little folder that says terrorist, and I just don’t call them back. Because sometimes they’ll maybe have a bad day, and then sometimes that’s really them telling you who they are.

04:37And so when they do that, you have to believe them. There are other people to work with. There are plenty, so I don’t get worried about that.

Aaron Wittenstein04:44

Okay, I have so many questions right now for you. Okay. You just threw a bunch of stuff at me in a good way, in a good way. All right, number one.

04:53So when people role play in the morning, I personally think they all do it wrong, okay? I’m not gonna tell you why. You do it regularly. So can you just share how a proper role play should… And we wouldn’t have to, we can role play if you want, but how should a proper, what’s the word, setup for role play go when you’re doing it with somebody?

Kelly Rossow05:13

Okay. So we do greet each other in the morning. I know some people will get on the phone and then they’ll just jump into it. 7:30 is early for me, and so we ease into it. I’ve got my scripts in plastic. I’ve got expireds on one side. I have for sale by owner on the other side. Lately, we’ve been sometimes taking your scripts that you have created and we’ve heard in your 2:00 class on Monday, and we’ve implemented.

05:39And then it’s funny because we go, “Wow, that’s a lot shorter than the other one,” and it got to the point really quickly and you just got the appointment. So we don’t always try and stump each other, but we’re using Mike Ferry. I don’t know, sometimes she has a different script for FSBO.

05:56And it sounds very conversational.

05:59So we just… she’ll run through expired, I run through expired. We give feedback after one does it, and then we’ll jump to for sale by owner. And that’s it. We get off the phone. I’ll ask or she’ll ask, “What do you have going on today? How much are you gonna do?” So this year we’ve kind of implemented I have to hit my number, and we know what the other’s number is.

06:23And so if at this time of day I’m not hearing her or seeing her come through my text, “Hey, I hit…” I think her number’s 15. I didn’t hit 15, I’m like, well, the next morning I’m gonna ask her what happened. And it may be, “I got distracted. I had too many showings. I had an office meeting.” So it’s not letting the other off the hook, but it’s sometimes maybe trying to help out with not just the scripts, but again, accountability.

06:50So it works for us.

Aaron Wittenstein06:52

No, that’s great because I don’t think, I know. I mean, a lot of people are not role-playing, number one. And number two, having that accountability partner on the back end to be able to have someone to hold you accountable to something. So it sounds like that relationship kind of morphed into that over time.

07:10Is that right?

Kelly Rossow07:12

It did, and I can tell you probably in the past, I think we’ve been doing this for about a year.

07:19And we were terrible at the beginning. We would stumble through it because we didn’t have it internalized. After you do it every single day, and we rarely skip. She might have been sick one day and skipped.

07:31And that’s usually the only time that one of us will skip is if we’re sick. And we’ve role played when we’re barely talking because our voice is lost, that kind of thing. But you internalize the script. You’re able to not be stumped. You’re able to respond and listen instead of focusing on the words on the script because you know it.

07:57And then sometimes the way she says things or the way I say things, I notice it gets morphed into the other script, and it works because maybe the way you’re saying something is not being received well with somebody at the other end of the phone. So it helps you become more conversational, I think is what I’m trying to say.

Aaron Wittenstein08:16

Well, it’s great. I mean, it’s just repetition, right? Because the more you do something, the better you become. And what I love about it is, and I don’t care if you’re working with one person or five people, you don’t wanna practice on your clients, right?

Kelly Rossow08:30

100%.

Aaron Wittenstein08:31

You wanna practice with somebody else. So all right. So then I gotta ask, what’s your accountability numbers for the day? What’s Kelly’s goal for the day? Or I shouldn’t say goal, what minimum standard, if you will?

Kelly Rossow08:43

21. So I know if I start just a little bit after 8:00 in the morning, usually by 9:00, I should be at five-ish

08:52on a bad day. If I start late, I’m behind. So between 8:00 and 9:00, I should be able to get three rounds in if I’m dialing somewhere between 10 and 15 in each round. I just keep track on a piece of paper. I kinda write it as a fraction, like here’s two over 20 minutes. And I don’t so much worry about the time part of that or how many dials I do, it is the amount of people that I talk to.

09:17So not every conversation is perfect. I stopped counting leads. I was doing that for a little bit last year, and then putting them in a folder and following up, and then it’s like false hope is what it felt like. So I’ve stopped doing that so much as just focusing on, okay, so I need to have at least one appointment per this many days.

09:41So even if you go on the appointment and you decide not to take it or maybe it was not a good property, you have done the work and eventually when you do enough of that, you get the outcome that you want.

Aaron Wittenstein09:56

So you said 21 contacts, so I’m gonna venture to guess the intention is three-hour shift, seven contacts an hour, right?

Kelly Rossow10:03

That’s about average. I think last week it was somewhere between seven and 10 I could get in an hour, if I’m not messing around and taking breaks, that kind of thing. It helped when we did the Monday just prospecting day. That was phenomenal.

10:22I just tried to keep up with you. So I went beyond my number that day. And then if I have a day that I know I didn’t hit my number, guess what? Now I’ve gotta add more the next day or by the end of the week. So Vulcan has the little tool that you can go and you can put your numbers in. I don’t, again, pay too much attention to the amount of time because I know I’m spending a lot of time on the dialer and

10:45that’s okay because that is helping me to get to where I need to be. Last Monday when we did the prospecting day, I think it was at like 200 and something dials. So I would make myself crazy if I looked at how many dials it was versus, I hit like 24 contacts. That’s a good day. So yeah, that was decent, and when you try and just be consistent with that, your results come a little faster, so that helps.

Aaron Wittenstein11:13

Now, do you know enough into your numbers as to how many contacts you typically get per an appointment? Are you…

Kelly Rossow11:19

Yeah, you were gonna ask me that and I should have figured that out. Some days, okay, so I could go through 24 and not get an appointment, and the next day, the first person who answers, then I have an appointment.

11:32So I think that day specifically I was on dial three or conversation three. And then that one actually came through my phone while I was dialing and it was sphere of influence. I probably shouldn’t count that. But the previous month, I think I went on one appointment per week.

11:49You know what? Just because we go on appointments doesn’t mean that we love all of them and we take any of them. So I’m probably gonna have to go and change my numbers as far as, okay, how many appointments I go on to how many that I actually choose to take.

Aaron Wittenstein12:03

See, that’s a good statement right there.

12:05How many do I choose to take? Because especially when we deal with expireds and for sale by owners, there’s many reasons expireds, number one, did not sell, and there’s many reasons that for sale by owners are for sale by owners, right? So what would be a reason that you would choose to not take a listing?

Kelly Rossow12:28

There was one I can think of that I went on and I walked into the courtyard of it. It was a town home, and I didn’t even have to go in, and I thought, “Holy cow, these people are hoarders.” So it was listed, and the other agent prior didn’t have the decency to say, “We need to present ourselves in the best possible light.”

12:51So I know in my market, people expect me to have properties that are clean and look like model homes. And not every home can look like a model home, but we as agents need to be really upfront with our sellers and let them know, “Here’s what it’s gonna take to get top dollar for your property.”

13:09Right. There are investors who will go and make offers on things if they don’t choose to do repairs, but no agent wants to go into a dirty property. The other thing that I saw, especially last month, was, when you start to really drill down, they don’t need to sell. They aren’t a motivated seller.

13:29There’s a little bit of that out in this market, so I think we have to ask really deep questions so that we don’t waste our time, and we can keep dialing and find people who are actually motivated and do need to move.

Aaron Wittenstein13:41

Now when you say, can you give me a couple, when you say deep questions, you know what I’m gonna ask on that one.

13:48What questions would you consider… We’re talking about motivation-based questions, right? And it’s the who, the what, the where, and the why. Okay? And what are some of your go-tos to figure out, all right, do I have a viable seller?

Kelly Rossow14:01

Right. Today I had one on the phone and I asked him, because they sometimes will contradict themselves, so you really truly have to listen.

14:09So he said, “Well, I don’t really need to sell.” And so then I asked him, “Well, you know what? While you were on the market, you obviously had a place that you were thinking of moving to, so what did that look like?” And they said, “Well, I don’t really need to be in this area because I may homeschool my kids now.”

14:26And he didn’t give me a straight answer. But I’m trying to figure out, are you thinking of moving into a specific neighborhood, a specific town? You have to transfer out of town, or are you just trying this out? Because if they’re just trying it out, we’re just sometimes wasting our marketing dollars and our time.

14:47And when I’m wasting my time, I’m not being able to feed my kids. And so that’s an important piece of this is, as agents, we have to make money. This is what we do.

Aaron Wittenstein14:59

That was very, very true. And it’s digging in because, I mean, it’s getting the right proper listings that are going to sell.

15:08Because if you don’t have a motivated seller, you may as well not have a seller at all, right? And just going in properly pre-qualifying, I think is super important with that. And just getting those right people. And then it was funny, I wanna kick back something else you said, is you said that you got a listing as an SOI call, right?

15:27That’s what I like to call prospecting karma, all right? Because it’s like, you put in hours after hours after hours, nothing pops out of it, but then suddenly something comes from somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where the business comes from. And the thing is with that particular one, in my opinion, that should be counted as a contact and an appointment for the day, right?

Kelly Rossow15:46

I did.

Aaron Wittenstein15:47

You better have done that. You better have done that. You better have done that. So you’re working and you have four kids that are there as well? ‘Cause I know a lot of people are working from home nowadays.

Kelly Rossow15:58

I do. One is supposed to technically be here.

16:00The other two moved back. I have one that just graduated from Rollins in Winter Park and was accepted into the number one veterinary school in the world. So I’m prospecting to make dollars to pay for her to go to the UK. So it’s a pretty big thing. So I have a big why.

16:20I think as an agent you have to know what your why is, and it needs to be big.

16:26So yeah, mine got bigger here recently.

Aaron Wittenstein16:29

Well, congratulations. That’s amazing. That’s absolutely awesome. All right. So I’m curious, since you’re role-playing so much, would you do me the honor of doing a role play with me?

16:40Is that something you’d be open to? All right. Sweet. Yeah. What are you… Dealer’s choice, expired, FSBO, whatever you wanna do. I’ll be moderate to severely difficult.

Kelly Rossow16:51

Okay. So I’m gonna do expired. Do you wanna be the seller?

Aaron Wittenstein16:55

Sure.

Kelly Rossow16:55

Okay. Go easy on me.

Aaron Wittenstein16:57

Moderate. I’ll be moderate, I’ll be moderate, I’ll be moderate.

Kelly Rossow17:01

Okay. Ring, ring.

Aaron Wittenstein17:02

Hello?

Kelly Rossow17:03

Good morning, I’m looking for Aaron.

Aaron Wittenstein17:05

This is. Who’s calling?

Kelly Rossow17:06

Hi, Aaron. This is Kelly. I’m a local agent, and I’m sure you figured out by now that your home has come up as being off the market. So I was calling to see, when do you plan to interview the right agent for the job of selling your home?

Aaron Wittenstein17:18

You know, I gotta tell you, I think we’re just gonna re-list with the same agent that had the house before. I mean, they had it up for a while, but I’m pretty committed to them right now.

Kelly Rossow17:29

Okay. I do respect the loyalty, but Aaron, if you sold this home, where did you plan to go next?

Aaron Wittenstein17:33

We were going to go to San Jose, California.

Kelly Rossow17:40

California, that’s exciting. And what was your timeframe of needing to be there?

Aaron Wittenstein17:45

You know, we’re thinking about getting there sometime within the next three months, I wanna say, give or take. But like I said, I think we’re committed to Sally Mae, relist with her.

17:56But if it doesn’t work out, I’ve got your number, I can call you back.

Kelly Rossow18:00

Well, Aaron, I can truly appreciate that. So Sally Mae had you on the market for six months. So tell me, what do you think stopped the home from selling during that time?

Aaron Wittenstein18:09

I have no idea. I mean, I don’t think we did enough open houses.

18:14I think like 13 or 15 more open houses would’ve gotten the job done.

Kelly Rossow18:18

Okay. So sounds like you needed more activity through seeing her more doing open houses. So how did you happen to pick her when you listed initially?

Aaron Wittenstein18:28

Oh, she was referred to me by my cousin Stan.

Kelly Rossow18:33

A referral.

18:33That’s great. And what did she do that you liked best?

Aaron Wittenstein18:36

Oh, she’s just such a nice person.

Kelly Rossow18:39

Nice person. That’s a great start. So what do you feel she should have done other than more open houses?

Aaron Wittenstein18:44

Just more open houses, ’cause more open houses sell property, so…

Kelly Rossow18:48

Okay. And what will you expect from the next agent that you choose, Aaron?

Aaron Wittenstein18:52

Oh, well, I mean, like I said, she’s coming over in two days to sit down and have a conversation with us, so.

Kelly Rossow19:01

Well, Aaron, I would love to be able to give you a second opinion, really give you a good solid plan. I would love to meet with you face-to-face. When would be best for you, today at 5:00 or tomorrow at noon?

Aaron Wittenstein19:12

I mean, what would you do differently that she wouldn’t do?

Kelly Rossow19:14

That’s a really great question. I would love to have that conversation with you face-to-face. So would today at noon or tomorrow at 5:00 work best for you?

Aaron Wittenstein19:22

All right, so let me ask, how much do you charge?

Kelly Rossow19:27

Also a great question.

19:28That can be one of the first things that we talk about when we meet. So will all decision makers be there tomorrow at 5:00?

Aaron Wittenstein19:34

Oh, that was good. That was slick right there. Yes, my wife will be around.

Kelly Rossow19:40

Perfect. I look forward to meeting you and seeing you then.

Aaron Wittenstein19:43

You’re so pleasant. I could listen to you talk all day long.

19:47You know? It’s like you’re… me, who’s got this gruff Illinois, New York, Florida accent.

Kelly Rossow19:53

Oh, no, I think you’re very effective.

Aaron Wittenstein19:54

Well, that was great, ’cause as you know, I’m a big believer in it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. And you were so pleasant to speak to, and I don’t mean that just to be nice.

20:06I don’t say that often. And you had your script and no matter which way I went, you just brought it right back to baseline. I came here, you bring there, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you didn’t really answer any of the questions, which wasn’t bad. You more or less kind of bypassed them. And what I loved seeing was when you’re like, what did I say?

20:24What are you gonna do differently? And you didn’t be like, “Well, we do aerial photos and open houses,” because there’s no value in that. And you just came out and said, “That’s the first thing we’ll discuss tomorrow.” And then what I loved was, I said something about the commission and you’re like, “Will all the decision makers be with everyone when I come by tomorrow at 5:00?”

20:44You’re just like, there’s just nothing else going on here whatsoever. So no, that was great. And like I said, I could listen to you talk all day long, so thank you for that.

Kelly Rossow20:57

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know what? One of the things that I’ve learned from all the Vulcan people, stay on script.

21:05We know more than they do, and we should be better at keeping them on task. And you’re gonna sell yourself better in person than you do on the phone. You just can use not only the verbal cues, but being able to see someone is a really big deal. So I would all day long rather sit in front of someone and have a conversation with them.

21:28You’re either gonna know you want that listing or you don’t, and you’re gonna know whether you can communicate effectively with that seller or sellers, versus answering all these things on the phone, and then they try and line us up together and see how we’re different. They’re only gonna let so many people into the house.

21:48So you have a better chance if you can just get in the door. And I made little hash marks every time I asked for the close and you didn’t go there, and I hit three. So it might have been more, I don’t know. I was just kind of counting, like, “Golly.”

Aaron Wittenstein22:03

And that was me going easy on you. That was me going easy on you right there.

22:06Moderate, moderate. I was going moderate, moderate, moderate. Okay. So when it comes to your production or whatever, what are you most proud of right now? I mean, what’s the one thing you’re like, this I’m proud of?

Kelly Rossow22:20

I think if you just never stop and you’re consistent, then you will get the results that you need.

22:27So I’m proud of the fact that when I’m scheduled, I know when I’m off. I know that you tried to do this last Friday and I said, “It’s my birthday and I’m not gonna work on my birthday.” And so I took it off and I chose not to answer my phone that day. So I know when I’m working, I have a boundary in that sense and I know what my numbers should be.

22:48And if I don’t start to hit my numbers effectively, then I’m gonna add days. But I think if you’re consistent, you should be proud of what you do. I think there’s always something new that we can learn from other people, whether they’re new people on the Vulcan calls, whether they’re people like you who are throwing some extra scripts out there saying, “Try this.”

23:13You can get really great ideas, but you have to personalize, make it your own, make it work for your business.

Aaron Wittenstein23:18

100%, 100%. So let me ask you this. A brand new agent comes, knocks on your door and is like, “Kelly, give me some advice.” What’s one piece of advice you’re gonna give this brand new, fresh off the exam agent?

Kelly Rossow23:33

Okay. So I actually have 16 mentees, so I get this all the time. And I tell them, “Take your phone, it’s already your database, and start to just communicate with five of those people a day.” How many people actually do that? I don’t know. They call me with a 911, “Hey, I need to write a contract.” So I know pretty quickly who’s actually talking about real estate.

23:57If they’re not willing to go and actually have a conversation, then they’re not gonna make it, and they will be out of the business. So I mean, with the dialer, we’re able to create more conversations and more opportunities. You can actually take who’s in your phone and who is every place else that you have just people randomly written down in a notebook or in a Gmail, that kind of thing, and stick them in Vulcan and dial that way, and hit your sphere of influence maybe once or twice a month with very little effort.

24:32So there are a number of things you can do, but I would say start with who you know.

24:37But you have to practice because you don’t also wanna…

Aaron Wittenstein24:41

I was waiting for that.

Kelly Rossow24:42

…want to know what to say to your own friends.

Aaron Wittenstein24:43

I was waiting, like I said, you don’t wanna practice on your potential clients.

24:49That’s the last place you wanna practice. So all right. This was awesome. This was awesome. Like I said, your phone voice is just second to none. I don’t know if everybody’s gonna call you. It’s amazing. It’s an absolutely amazing voice you have.

25:01What is your final last words here for everybody in Vulcan 7 Nation here, if you will?

Kelly Rossow25:08

I think be consistent. So if you’re gonna dial five days, actually dial five days. If you’ve set it as a goal to dial for an hour, then actually do it. Don’t be so concerned right off the bat, “I’ve been doing this for a day, I haven’t seen results.”

25:22You haven’t put the time in. So it takes time to get to where you need to be, but you have to be consistent with it. You can’t just dial one day a month and then think, “Well, I didn’t get anything from that system,” because that’s not a good way to approach it. So with anything, you have to put in effort.

25:41I work out every day. I don’t get to be stronger if I don’t show up at the gym. So that’s a discipline. So I think we really have to be disciplined with our business, just like with everything else.

Aaron Wittenstein25:54

There we go. Well, Kelly, I wanna say thank you so much for hanging out with me for a little bit.

25:59This was great. You really, really gave some great information here. And Kelly, when someone has a referral in Palm Beach Gardens, what is the best way to get in touch with you?

Kelly Rossow26:11

Call me on the phone. Or if it’s during prospecting hours, I would say text me. It’s 561-389-4107.

Aaron Wittenstein26:20

Got it. All right. Well, like I said, if you need anybody in Palm Beach Gardens… She’s got plenty of role play partners. If you want another one, message her. By the way, she’s amazing. And I just wanna say thank you so much for being here, and have an amazing rest of the day, okay?

Kelly Rossow26:30

Thank you so much.

Aaron Wittenstein26:31

You’re welcome. Take care.