Mike Pallin on the 5 things your real estate coach should cover every week

Mike Pallin00:00

Every day that you work, talk to people. And talk to people with love, with service, with caring, with an open mind. Just talk to people. There’s nothing more basic than that. And even if they’re not gonna do business with you, they know people. And if you show them that you care, you show them that you know what you’re doing, that you’re competent.

00:23If you’ve got 200 people who know 200 people, that’s 40,000 people. You can build a good business on that.

Loida Velasquez00:35

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, a show 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. If you haven’t caught up on our previous episodes, make sure to check it out.

00:50You can watch them on YouTube or listen to them on your favorite streaming platforms. Now, with that being said, today we have a great guest that’s gonna share with us five things that you need to be doing every single week and that your coach needs to be coaching you on. So with that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and bring on Mike Pallin.

01:08Welcome, Mike.

Mike Pallin01:10

Hi, Loida. Thanks for having me.

Loida Velasquez01:12

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

Mike Pallin01:20

Well, since the beginning of time, I’ve been following Floyd Wickman, and he was originally my mentor, and then became my partner and friend, and we did a lot of good work together.

01:32He’s now retired, and he turned the company over to me. So it’s my goal in life to preserve and protect and promote the legacy of his work, and that’s what I’ve been doing virtually my adult working life.

Loida Velasquez01:46

That’s awesome. And for everyone that’s watching, where is it that you’re located?

Mike Pallin01:51

Well, during the summers, my wife and I are located in Minnesota, and it’s the best two weeks of the year.

01:58And the rest of the year we spend in Naples, Florida.

Loida Velasquez02:00

I’m really excited about the topic that we’re gonna be talking about today. But before we get to that, you are also an author, and you have a book called Rethink Everything You Know About Selling Real Estate. So tell us more about that.

02:15How did that all come about?

Mike Pallin02:17

Well, it’s on Amazon. It came about because of a quote I heard from, I believe, a French philosopher, and the quote was, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but nobody was listening, so it needs to be said again.” I’ve been training and coaching real estate agents for a long time, and I thought, “Well, I’ve done my work.”

02:41But no, I needed to put it in book form, and there it is. It’s a guide by your side, how to do everything you need to do. We’re in an industry that’s lived through the worst of times. I mean, how much worse could real estate be when they lock down the whole country for a couple of years?

02:59And then interest rates climb, and we’ve lived through ’em. We’ve come out the other side. But there’s still this lopsidedness in production. Very few people do most of the business, and most of the rest of the people do very little. I just read that last year, over half of the agents did one transaction or fewer.

03:23So instead of buying leads, which for some people is a good strategy, I put into this book how to have success in this business without buying leads. I think there’s a great opportunity out there, and whatever’s happening in the economy doesn’t have to determine your economy.

03:50And our training has been proven that for this entire century, we’ve taken people who are almost like the Statue of Liberty, give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, and we’ve turned them into salespeople by instituting some basic systems. The best thing is you don’t have to memorize a lot of scripts.

04:13They’re just tracks you can follow and develop your own selling style. So if you want a guide by your side, check out Rethink Everything You Know About Selling Real Estate.

Loida Velasquez04:24

Yeah. And I love the title. I think as an agent, anyone that’s listening to this might be thinking, “What is it that I have to rethink?

04:32Have I been doing something wrong, or what can I be doing better?” So we’ll definitely make sure to put a link in the description box so that they can go ahead and check out that book. Now, with that being said, there’s five things that everyone should be getting coached on by their coach every single week.

04:50So let’s go ahead and get started with that. What would be the first starting point?

Mike Pallin04:55

The word week, because that’s how we live. That’s how we plan. It goes Monday through Sunday and then starts over again. So I think every week you’ve gotta check in with your coach or check in with your mentor or whoever your partner is or wherever you’re getting direction and supervision and guidance and training and mentoring.

05:18And there’s such a failure of leadership out there for so many new people who are not getting any of that. So if you don’t have that at your company, find a coach who can do it for you, and do it every week, because that’s how we live, and that’s how we think, and that’s how we produce, going one week at a time.

05:40So I believe the first thing that every coach needs to work on with every person they’re working with is the numbers. You gotta know your numbers because numbers help you do three things that are critical in the business, and that’s anticipate, direct, and correct. First of all, if you know your numbers and your ratios, if I make so many calls, I get so many leads to get so many appointments to get the listings and sales that support my lifestyle.

06:10Once you know all those ratios, you can begin to anticipate what your income is gonna be. You can anticipate what your pipeline is going to be full of. Without the numbers, you’re shooting in the dark, and what you don’t know can really hurt you. Whoever said ignorance is bliss was lying to you. Ignorance is poverty.

06:30When you know your numbers, you can anticipate things that you need to know. The second thing is it allows you to direct your activities so you know what’s working and what isn’t working, what to do more of and what to do less of, and it allows you to correct course. If I’m on a flight from Minneapolis to Fort Myers, Florida, the pilot’s off track almost all the time.

06:56They’re off course almost all the time, but only a little bit. They’re making those minuscule corrections all the way down. But if you get this far off track, it only takes this much extra time and effort to catch up. But if you get this far off track, that’s when people give up. So know your numbers, and it allows you to correct your course and do the things that allow you to see progress toward a goal.

07:29Measurable progress. One of the things I hear from so many people I coach and train is, “How do I stay motivated?” Well, the easiest way to stay motivated is to see progress, ’cause you know you’re headed somewhere, and you’re getting there gradually. It doesn’t happen overnight. So that’s the first thing I would require anyone who I coach to do, is to track and report their numbers every single week.

08:00Know where you’re at in relation to your goals. Second thing that your coach should be coaching you on is your close personal relationships with your clients and your prospects. Now, we call that a book of business. In literally every industry where you’ve got a service provider who has a client base, they develop relationships, and you wanna develop about 200 close relationships with people who do repeat business with you and refer you to their friends and family and neighbors and coworkers.

08:42When you can do that… and 200 is about the maximum number you can control at any one time. It’s okay to have big mailing lists, but you also wanna have a relationship list. How do you gauge success in a business? Well, one way is the profit it makes, but the other way is, does it last? Have you seen people leave real estate and all of a sudden their clients get abandoned?

09:08It’s like, “Hey, where’d my realtor go?” Right?

Loida Velasquez09:10

All the time.

Mike Pallin09:11

Well, they deserve to be taken care of. But if you build a business that has some value to it, you might even be able to derive passive income after you decide not to work anymore.

Mike Pallin09:23

So build that business that’s based on close personal relationships, so you don’t have to buy the leads and buy the business.

09:32You buy it with your relationship skills, and you know how you do that. Well, you send them something on a monthly basis, and you call them two, three times a year, and you go see them once a year, and you interact and engage with them on social media. And all of that can be done with very little expense, just a lot of caring effort.

Mike Pallin09:55

And that’s the second thing your coach should be coaching you on. What are you sending? What are you saying when you call them? How do you go out and see them face to face? And how are you engaging with them on social media? The third thing is dialogue. And if our founder, Floyd Wickman, is known for anything, he’s called the Duke of Dialogue.

10:18Meaning, if you know your selling techniques, you’re never gonna be at a loss for words. You’re never gonna be in a situation where you don’t know how to handle it and move it forward. Some trainers and coaches out there will want you to memorize scripts. And I don’t know, have you ever been called by a telemarketer, Loida?

Loida Velasquez10:41

Yep.

Mike Pallin10:41

And they’re obviously reading a script. You can tell, and it’s really awful, right? And some people don’t have good memories. It’s hard to remember some stuff, especially when you’re under pressure. And it’s hard to sound natural when you’re reading words somebody else wrote or something else wrote.

11:05Some of those AI scripts are really awkward. So we teach instead dialogue selling based on tracks, meaning do things one step at a time. It’s not the words you use, it’s what you accomplish one step at a time, and that allows you to develop your own selling style as opposed to sounding like somebody else.

11:27Learn to develop your own style and learn what is the technique to handle a hesitation, for instance. What’s the track you follow when you go on a listing presentation? What’s the track you follow when you sit down with a buyer for the first time? Are you going over the rules?

11:46Are you going over the home buying process? Are you establishing a relationship that’s a client for life? And you do that with dialogue selling skills. And I believe for at least one hour a week when I talk with the people I coach, we spend most of the time on, “What do I say in this situation? How do I handle this situation?”

12:10It’s dialogue selling that makes the difference. The fourth area that your coach should be coaching you on every week is your finances. Now, I know real estate agents are notoriously awkward about finances. I don’t know what the word is. That’s not their skill set, by and large.

12:37We’re really good at person-to-person interaction. But again, how do you gauge the success of a business? I believe one of the ways is, does it make a profit?

Mike Pallin12:53

Or do you have a P&L statement? I’ve been able to save the people I coach literally thousands of dollars by just getting them to look at their monthly statement and eliminate subscriptions that they’re no longer using.

13:10Now, keep your subscription to Vulcan7, because one of the things that you’ve got new is that neighborhood search. Boy, is that ever cool. I love that thing. It helps you discover people who have lots of equity, people who might be thinking of selling. That can really direct your prospecting in a very positive way.

13:35So I love that about you. But we didn’t get into real estate, for the most part, to become millionaires. If money is your motivator, eventually you’re probably gonna do something that you don’t wanna do. Money can’t be your primary motivator. It’s a good thing it’s involved, because it’s right up there with oxygen as a necessity.

14:02But I think most of us got into the people business to make a difference for people, to make a difference in their lives, to help them fulfill the American dream, to help them build generational wealth through real estate. ‘Cause most great fortunes came about through real estate. So make a difference, but if you don’t make a profit, you can’t make as much of a difference.

14:31So we help our coaching students keep an eye on their profit and loss. What are you spending money on? Is it getting you results?

Mike Pallin14:43

I coached a guy, when he came to me, he was spending $12,000 a month on Zillow leads.

14:52Now, that’s $144,000 a year. You gotta turn over a lot of business to afford that.

15:02Who doesn’t have that in their ad budget, right? By the time we were done, he was spending zero on buying leads and generating his own through his book of business and through some of the other traditional sources, especially expireds and for sale by owners, and targeting those neighborhoods and those homeowners who are likely to be selling.

Mike Pallin15:32

Being smart about it. And so the first thing is your numbers, second thing is your book of business, third your dialogue, fourth your finances, but it might be the fifth thing that’s most important of all. I had a mentor once, real early on in my sales career, who said, “It’s usually only a handful of things that make the major difference.”

16:03And that’s where the five things came from. It’s a handful. The fifth thing we call train the brain. Now, it’s almost a misnomer because you’re really training the mind. Of all the organs in the body, of all the parts of the body, modern medicine and science is pretty familiar with the mechanics of almost all the parts of our body except the brain.

16:30The brain’s still a big unexplored territory, but we do know certain things about the brain, and one of them is when it gets muddled and crowded, it’s difficult to pay attention and focus on your tasks. I don’t know if you’ve ever had one of those days where you just can’t seem to focus on anything.

16:55It’s usually because you’ve used up all your attention. You’ve left too many things unresolved or incomplete or unfinished. I think if psychiatrists could diagram what causes nervous breakdowns, it would be too many incomplete circles. You start something, and you don’t finish it, and when you get back to it, you don’t start where you left off.

17:21You have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over.

Mike Pallin17:25

So it’s maintaining your ability to focus on tasks, to devote attention to what’s important, to your priorities every day. And the second way to train the brain is to protect your attitude. ‘Cause I don’t know if you believe this, but I sure do, that your attitude going into something usually determines the outcome.

17:52Real estate is a business that can shatter your confidence quickly. Now, it’s also a business where you can regain your confidence quickly, which is the good part about it. But if you don’t maintain a positive outlook, a positive attitude, if you don’t protect that attitude, it’s difficult to stay motivated and on track and working on your priorities.

18:23So one of the best ways to do that is to get centered first thing in the day. So all the people I work with, we develop a routine first thing in their day before they start working, and the routine could involve things like meditation or visualization or inspiration or silence or journaling, but it doesn’t start with your phone.

18:52Your day can’t start with your phone or with a screen, with the world grabbing your attention away from you. If your day starts with you seeking out that small voice that you can hear that guides you… Yes, there’s a spiritual connection to it. I studied comparative religions in college, and I noticed that all the religions of the world have the same prescription, and that’s a daily period of quiet meditation.

19:27Now, you can call it what you like. You can call it the silence or call it prayer. But a daily period of quiet meditation allows you to listen for guidance and get centered and start your day by thinking about what your priorities are, getting out that to-do list and what’s my top five things to do today, and writing them down.

19:50But until you get that inspiration and guidance and direction from the inner voice, it’s difficult to have a productive rest of the day. So I’ve kinda rattled off those five things pretty fast, but if you can find a coach who will hold you accountable to doing those five things daily and weekly…

20:14And when I say accountable, what I mean by that is there’s really two kinds of accountability. One is the internal kind, and that’s your habits and your conscience and your ethics and your willingness to work. But there’s another kind of accountability, and that’s the external kind, where you have a partner or coach or mentor who provides that for you and with you, and works in partnership with you to make sure you stay on track with those things.

20:48If you like what you’ve heard today, I would ask you to do a couple of things. First is if you wanna DIY, do it yourself, go to Amazon, pick up a copy of Rethink Everything You Know About Selling Real Estate, or come to our website, floydwickman.com, and check out all the things that we offer.

21:13Live training, online training, coaching, one-on-one coaching in teams. There’s a big menu of things, and we have an event coming up in November. So that’s what I would say.

21:27Check out our website, check out my book. Thank you.

Loida Velasquez21:29

And the last question I’m gonna ask you, if there’s one thing that an agent that’s watching this needs to do right now, what would that be?

Mike Pallin21:40

Every day that you work, talk to people. And talk to people with love, with service, with caring, with an open mind. Just talk to people. There’s nothing more basic than that. And even if they’re not gonna do business with you, they know people.

22:07And if you show them that you care, you show them that you know what you’re doing, that you’re competent.

22:15If you’ve got 200 people who know 200 people, that’s 40,000 people. You can build a good business on that, right?

Loida Velasquez22:23

Absolutely, yes, yes.

Mike Pallin22:25

Yeah. Talk to people.

Loida Velasquez22:26

There you go.

Mike Pallin22:27

No substitute for that.

Loida Velasquez22:29

Exactly. Awesome. Well, Mike, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing all of these tips. I know that agents will be able to implement them immediately.

22:38We’re gonna make sure to put the links to your book and the websites below so you guys can check it out. And with that being said, we’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

Mike Pallin22:48

Loida, thank you, and thank Vulcan7.