S3 E10: WELL RUN BUSINESS BUILT WITH PRACTICE

Ren Jones:
Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. And I hope you’re ready for more. Each week, we interview a great agent who’s consistently taking 2, 3, 4 listings a week and we have an exciting guest today.
We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principal. If you’re watching on Vulcan7 or on the Lead Gen Facebook group, you’ll have an opportunity to ask some questions during the broadcast.
Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway. That’s carleyhathaway.com. Hi Carley. How’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway:
Hi, Ren. Real estate’s great as always. I can never complain. Definitely a great time to be a listing agent.

Ren Jones:
Wonderful, wonderful. So folks, before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone, we’re simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook. They have over 50,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. So we’ll be pausing for a commercial message during the show, as a thank you to Lead Gen folks. So let’s welcome our guest today from beautiful Chicago, Illinois and surrounds. Sohail Salahuddin, if I got that right. Sohail Salahuddin.

Sohail Salahuddin:
It’s close enough. Yes.

Carley Hathaway:
Sohail, thank you so much for being here.

Ren Jones:
Yes, Sohail. Great. Glad to have you here. And let’s see if we can have some folks send a nice referral to you, listing or buyer, how’s the best way for them to reach you?

Sohail Salahuddin:
So email is primary. It’s my first name spelled S-O-H-A-I-L. That’s sohail@sohailrealestate.com.

Ren Jones:
Perfect.

Sohail Salahuddin:
And my cell phone is (312) 437-7799.

Ren Jones:
Perfect. And they could go to sohailrealestate.com and learn more about you too.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, sohailrealestate.com and sohailrealestateteam.com.

Ren Jones:
Perfect.

Carley Hathaway:
Nice.

Ren Jones:
Wonderful. You’re in a great city.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Good deal.

Carley Hathaway:
So can I ask, let’s start out with, what’s your goal this year?

Sohail Salahuddin:
120 to 150 closed sales.

Carley Hathaway:
Nice. Nice.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
And are you on track?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Perfect.

Carley Hathaway:
Okay.

Sohail Salahuddin:
I think last month we did about between 20 and 30 closings. This month we should have another 20, 30 closings. So just looking year over year, from past years, you start to see the trends within your own business. And you could define when is the best time to take listings or when most of your closings are occurring. So when you really tailor in with the numbers and the tracking, you can fine tune your business with your personal life as well. As realtors, if you’re really heavy in listings, you have to have the staff and there’s a lot of loose arms and loose legs.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah, definitely. And you say, “We are going to take 20 to 30.”. You have a team obviously. Can you tell us what your team is made up of?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. It’s a small team. I have a listings and transactions manager relationship and a marketing manager. I have a few different buyers agents. I have one who’s been with me for a long time. Fantastic. And his name is Don Beard and he’s been with me, working… We’ve been working together since 2010 at least.

Carley Hathaway:
Wow.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Okay.

Sohail Salahuddin:
And then I have a few other people on my team that help with the buyers and showings as well, because we try to show our own properties instead of lock boxing them.

Carley Hathaway:
Oh, that’s good. I’m sure sellers appreciate that.

Sohail Salahuddin:
They do. Yeah.

Ren Jones:
So it’d be a fairly strong market there. You double signing a lot?

Sohail Salahuddin:
I am actually. I think this year more than ever. It seems, and I heard this from somebody else, I didn’t notice it and it hasn’t happened until just recently, where I’m having buyers reach out to me directly on my listings. I think that they believe that there’s going to be an advantage to that.

Ren Jones:
Let them think that.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
They think they’re saving money somehow. I don’t know how, but.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, so it sounds like you have, obviously a lot of clients. You’re very, very busy. Where do majority of your clientele come from?

Sohail Salahuddin:
So I built up my business from canceled expireds.

Carley Hathaway:
Okay, great.

Sohail Salahuddin:
That’s really how I built it up. Once I built up enough, I started following a specific training system.

Ren Jones:
Oh.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Anything in particular?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Mike Ferry.

Ren Jones:
Oh, okay.

Sohail Salahuddin:
And my coach is Steve Powers, who’s helped me tremendously. And I learned… I was so heavily focused on canceled expireds that I let everything else that I could be doing just fall to the wayside. So now I’m starting to realize that you can use a dialer for your past clients. There’s so many, the just listed, just sold calls, your sphere of influence. There’s a number of ways to prospect and I would say that there is a hierarchy of where the lowest hanging fruit starts from and then where it ends up.

Ren Jones:
Is that how you run it? Lowest hanging fruit on through the morning.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Okay, good.

Carley Hathaway:
I mean, obviously when you started a few years ago to build your business with the expireds, you must have been on the phones all the time. Can you kind of walk through your routine?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Are we going to be scared?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Well, when I first started, I was coached. I didn’t know how to prospect. This was 2012, I think, or 2013. It took me a long time. I mean, literally the coach I had, he beat into my head that I should stay focused on taking listings. And it took me months to realize that when I took my focus off of that and I started working with buyers, or let’s say, I don’t know, someone wanted to rent a property, that I would lose the opportunity to focus on the listings. And then the magic happened. Someone introduced me to Vulcan7 and a dialer. I was dialing by hand before.

Carley Hathaway:
Oh, no.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. And it was a different data provider. I don’t think they had cell phones, so I would just call. And then when I talked to somebody I didn’t know how to close. So I would try and get their email address and then I’d follow up with a video from BombBomb sending it to them.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
It was just a crazy system that I used and it wasn’t the most efficient way and probably not the most effective, but at the same time, it was a work in progress.

Ren Jones:
Got to start somewhere.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Gotcha.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Absolutely. Yeah. And then-

Carley Hathaway:
So once you discovered Vulcan, the dialer, and you’re using the Mike Ferry scripts, it all came together for you?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. Well back then I guess I was using the Mike Ferry scripts because I think everybody really uses them. But yeah, the dialer just, it just totally changed my business. It wasn’t me hand dialing. And I think also from a mental standpoint, Ren, we spoke about this just a second ago. With the dialer, it became such fast-paced that it didn’t give me time to look to see how much the property’s listed for, look to see who the last agent was. Because these things are like, you start to psych yourself out of trying to go after the listing. Oh it’s a couple million dollars. And then you say, why are they going to want to list with me? Right. Or the last listing agent-

Ren Jones:
They paid too much three years ago. Oh yeah. Let me look at this one. Yeah, the dollar forces you to just-

Sohail Salahuddin:
It forced you.

Ren Jones:
… Into the game.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yes.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
It forces you, so you can’t think, which is good. Don’t think, just do.

Ren Jones:
We have people that-

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah

Ren Jones:
… our dialer, they use it, they dial them by hand. They have our system. And I mean not that many, but there are people that do that. And once they start on the dialer, they never let it go.

Sohail Salahuddin:
No, it’s impossible.

Carley Hathaway:
Can’t go back after.

Ren Jones:
Like cutting down a tree with a chainsaw, without pulling on it.

Sohail Salahuddin:
There you go. Right. That’s a good analogy.

Ren Jones:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It that’s a real good one. Good deal. And so how many people are you talking to every day?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Oh gosh. I’d say probably an average about 50, at least

Ren Jones:
50 conversations.

Sohail Salahuddin:
50. I don’t stopped counting the contacts because I’m trying not to get into focus on contacts.

Ren Jones:
What do you count? What do you count?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Appointments.

Ren Jones:
Okay. You count appointments.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, I just focus on, cause when you get somebody on the phone, it’s like do everything you can to get the appointment. Otherwise, it’s rare. Especially now with so many agents calling, it’s rare that they’re… after you get them on the phone, chances to get them on the phone again with so many other agents calling them is-

Ren Jones:
Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
You start to lose so much.

Ren Jones:
You get one shot on expireds.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. You get one shot.

Ren Jones:
On fresh expireds.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yes, exactly.

Ren Jones:
Fresh expireds, one shot deal. Yeah. Yeah. For sale by owners, old expireds

Carley Hathaway:
Okay. So what time you-

Ren Jones:
Go for it, Carley?

Carley Hathaway:
What time do you normally get on the phones and what’s your daily routine? What time do you get up in the morning? Tell us all.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. I get up very early. It’s kind of extreme for I think a lot of people. But it works for me. Now, I wake up at 2:15 in the morning.

Ren Jones:
It’s late in the day.

Carley Hathaway:
Oh my.

Sohail Salahuddin:
I wake up at-

Ren Jones:
I know a lot of realtors do that, but I didn’t know you were one of them.

Sohail Salahuddin:
I wake up at 2:15.

Ren Jones:
AM.

Sohail Salahuddin:
I do some meditation, get my mind right. I read, I get through my emails in the morning. And then if I have to put together, prepare for listing appointments, CMAs, all that stuff will be done before 4:00 AM And then at 4:00 AM I go to the gym for, I’m usually there from 4:30 to 6:00 I would say, by the time I get there.

Ren Jones:
Is the sun still up when you go to bed?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Actually… Well. It might be. I go to bed-

Ren Jones:
At this time of year… Yeah, maybe so.

Sohail Salahuddin:
I try to get to bed about 9:00.

Ren Jones:
Okay.

Sohail Salahuddin:
So yeah, it might be just going down. And then I get on the phones. I try to make it by 7:45. But I would say it’s in that window of 7:45 and 8:00 AM

Carley Hathaway:
Do you role play?

Sohail Salahuddin:
I do five days a week.

Carley Hathaway:
Okay.

Ren Jones:
Different role playing partners?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, I have different partners. It’s going good. Role playing is, it’s a phenomenal advantage if you have the right partners. And I think everybody’s going to be at a different stage. And then you progress and you got to find partners who are at the same level or better than you on the phones. Going back to improving your skills. And the only way to do that is to learn from somebody else. So I have one partner, I do Mondays and Thursdays on because he and I are, I think have the same approach to communicating.

Ren Jones:
And they’re all in different, I assume they’re in different markets?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Not your market. Because you-

Sohail Salahuddin:
I have two here in the Chicagoland area. The rest are in, I have one in Florida, one in Arizona, one on the East coast.

Carley Hathaway:
And so obviously when you’re doing the role playing, you’re working on skills and you emphasize skills a few times. Can you expand on that? How important is it to really know your scripts and really have the skills and knowledge down?

Sohail Salahuddin:
It’s very important because again, it goes back to the effective communication. It’s not just knowing what to say, it’s knowing how to navigate through the conversation when to know close. Because sometimes closing is a natural occurrence based on what the person on the other end is telling you. So I know that a lot of people feel like you got to follow the script all the way to the end. Sometimes you got to close right away because the person on their end, they’re not paying attention to what you’re saying. So you can talk for 10 minutes and you’re just losing their attention span more and more. Depending the personality type, you have to quickly gauge who the person is on the other end, their personality type, and then use that to be able to close.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah. Good. I like it. And then so how many listing appointments are you going on a day or a week?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Three to five a week.

Carley Hathaway:
Okay, good. Okay. And are you closing? What percentage?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. I’d say probably about 70%.

Carley Hathaway:
That’s great.

Sohail Salahuddin:
70. Yeah, 75.

Carley Hathaway:
And so you’re closing at 75, so I’m guessing you do a strong pre-qual before you even-

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yes, I do.

Carley Hathaway:
… are making an appointment or going to the house.

Sohail Salahuddin:
The most successful-

Carley Hathaway:
Did that take you a while to learn? You learn the hard way?

Sohail Salahuddin:
It does. Yeah. Because you have to, again, it goes back to listening very carefully. And then if you have to get in depth more than just, let’s say a script, if you’re getting vague answers, you have to dig deeper. And I found that the best appointments I have is when I send them something ahead of time and I pre-qual heavy. And when I go there, they’re ready to go. It’s not even where I have to fight from there on and they’re ready to list with me. But all that, everything’s done beforehand before I get there. So I send them what they can research on their own that they can read. I try to minimize what I’m sending them because you send them too much, they’re not going to read through it. So I really could, if I could send them just literally one sheet of paper. But I think it might actually be more effective.

Ren Jones:
I know sometimes people send a book full of kaka.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
You sound like one of those people and occasionally I meet somebody like that where your pre-qual is so in depth, the material, you send them everything that by the time you get there, they know they want to list with you. Is that the case for you? In a lot of cases?

Sohail Salahuddin:
That’s what I try to aim for.

Ren Jones:
Okay.

Sohail Salahuddin:
It’s not the case as always. I mean, my goal is to do everything before I get there. So they’re ramped up and it’s a short presentation and I’m a driver personality, so I’d like to get straight to the point. It helps me. I don’t like to waste time at the appointment where conversation goes off track about their family and all that’s important but as a professional, I just want to keep it straight to the presentation and make sure that they understand what I’m there for.

Ren Jones:
Okay. So there are a lot of people watching right now that they get to a listing presentation and that happens to them. And there’s a technique or two to get that back onto on track. They end up their mind, I’m going to go in for 30, 40 minutes and two hours later they’re finally leaving because the seller controls the conversation. Can you give them a couple pointers on that?

Sohail Salahuddin:
So you’re not going in there to be their friend. You’re going in there to be their professional. You don’t want to be their friend who’s also a real estate broker. You want to be their professional real estate broker who’s friendly. So you can be friendly and if you get out a pattern, you can do a pattern interrupt and pull them back.

Ren Jones:
Tell them what that is. If you would, that would be helpful.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. So if you’re talking to somebody in the conversation gets off course where the perspective seller starts to control a conversation. You can say something or do something or maybe pretend like you got an important phone call to make to interrupt that pattern. When you come back, you take control of the conversation again.

Ren Jones:
And a lot of times it’s just the next question on the script.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s just questions.

Ren Jones:
Yeah. It’s a question that gets it off onto where you take control again. Perfect. Right. And it works like a charm and you can go be in and out. How long is the presentation typically from the time you get there?

Sohail Salahuddin:
I try to keep it within a half hour. I mean, sometimes it gets to an hour. If they want to show me the house and then they want to point all these things they’ve done, I try to see it myself. But sometimes-

Ren Jones:
Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. Because they don’t know you and it’s like this stranger wants to go through my house and how come he doesn’t want me to walk through with him?

Ren Jones:
Yeah. And some of those houses, they have… Yeah. But you could conceivably go on two or three in an evening if you had to.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. I mean sometimes it’s like it’s fish when the fish are biting. Right. Sometimes I’ll have set up so many appointments where I’m double booking them on the same time. And that’s when the pre-qual comes in handy is to pre-qual both and really hard and decide which one I want to go on.

Carley Hathaway:
Oh, that’s a good idea. I think that’s a pretty good problem to have. Don’t you think?

Ren Jones:
That’s a great problem to-

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. Again, it’s not always. And you like that’s going back to where you can really understand how all of our markets react to certain market conditions the best times of the year to really get on the phones the best times of the year to follow up with your past clients, you can really dial into. But it takes time. It’s not like you’re going to figure it out right away. I would say get a coach who understands these things. They can help you dial it in. My coach made… I mean, just the littlest of things have changed my business completely. And it goes back to communication.

Ren Jones:
And so why, it’s interesting, we have a lot of people on here that are involved with one coaching organization or another. Yours is very common one. And everybody’s like, I have a coach. And I’m just wondering, if you didn’t have a coach, would you be selling anywhere near what you were selling? We’re not promoting coaching on here, but it seems to be the people that sell a lot have one.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Well, here I don’t think I would be, because at one time, as I said, I was focused on canceled and expireds… because my coach is the one who got me off of just the canceled expired tunnel vision that I had. I mean, that’s all I was doing. And some days I’m on the phone for 6 to 8 hours and I don’t get anything. But that’s because I didn’t have that level of efficiency within my business where I’m like, okay, canceled, expireds are going to be good only in the morning or in the evening.
I got to hit my past clients because they know me, they work with me. I should be following up with everybody that I’m working with currently to stay in communication with them. Let those people know what we’re doing to get their property sold. And then also see who else they know that needs a great agent to help them. And then all of our pendings, which once a property goes under pending, that’s when I think the sellers are really excited because okay, it’s done. They’re like that first step that they’ve been waiting for is accomplished. And then you can follow up with them after the inspection. You can follow up with them after attorney review. You can follow up with them after the appraisal. Each time you can ask them, who do you know which that needs to get their property sold?

Carley Hathaway:
That’s a great idea.

Ren Jones:
That’s such a great source of business. It is the most neglected category. Real estate agents, typically, you’re not one of them. But they won’t ask their pendings for business. Yet, it’s the most likely time they would get a referral is while it’s under contract, before closing. And if you ask, there you go.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. And sometimes it’s hard to ask, but you have to, that goes back to getting past that mindset and any negative mental barriers. I used to have a hard time calling my past clients because in the back of my mind, I knew why I was calling them was to see how they’re… Well was to really get business. But I also wanted to see how they were doing to reinvigorate that relationship conversation. But my coach is the one who taught me how to do it, how to be effective with that conversation, really how to be effective with every conversation and just hone in my skills that I have with being on the appointment in front of them on the phones, past clients, current clients, so on and so forth.

Carley Hathaway:
And how often are you reaching out to past clients now? Do you have a routine or a schedule or?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, I call them every quarter and we reach out to them every quarter. I have a database, a video that goes out to my database as well. And then I have one client appreciation party.

Carley Hathaway:
Oh, nice.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. I do it with a lender who I work with. So it’s good because we both.

Ren Jones:
The lender pays for it, right? There you go.

Sohail Salahuddin:
We work together.

Ren Jones:
Good deal. Perfect. What a wonderful deal. Good. And we’re starting to get a number of questions in here. If you could give a little thumbnail sketch here. They’re asking about Jordan Wilson and Gary Voorhees. They’re asking basically, what are some of the pre-qual questions that are so important and what are you sending them in that little pre-listing packet? What are the vital pieces there?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, great question. So in the pre-listing packet, I have some testimonials. I have my marketing plan. I highlight also the most important parts that the perspective person should read. My track record and a copy of the sales and marketing agreement. And then I also send them a CMA. I mean, the more stuff you send them, I think that the less focus that they’re going to be on what’s really important. When you send them too much, they’re going to lose focus and lose sight of what you’re going for.

Ren Jones:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean there’s a lot of things you can discuss with them later like how to organize the house and get it ready for showing. You can leave that out. Do that once you’ve listed it. Send the nuts and bolts. Like you say, the business pieces, you’re sending them sales and marketing agreement. Is that a contract? Listing contract?

Sohail Salahuddin:
What Yes, yes. Yeah. We call it a sales agreement.

Ren Jones:
Send them a listing contract. And I can tell you most agents, it never occurred to them to do that. Send that in advance. But it does speak volumes that you’re the professional and you’re feeling bold enough to go ahead and send them that.

Carley Hathaway:
Jordan’s asking, what are the pre-qual questions you ask?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Oh yeah. So I mean, you can get them from Mike Ferry they’re part of his free scripts.
But just to, you really want just find out what’s important to them. That’s kind of the questions. Are they prepared to list their home with you? How much do they plan to list for? What’s important to them? Where are they moving to? What’s the timeline? Have they ever thought about selling it themselves? Do they want to get all their cash out? Or would they do something creative for a buyer who may need it? And then during that pre-qual part of it is also to find out what their personality type is. So you’re more prepared when you’re going over there for the presentation.

Ren Jones:
Right. How they receive information. Perfect.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Good.

Carley Hathaway:
So for example, if they’re a driver like you, you’re just going to get right down to the point?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. And if they’re analytical, then obviously you’re going to have to come with more facts and data. Amiable, you may want to prepare to be there a little bit longer than expected.

Carley Hathaway:
Definitely.

Sohail Salahuddin:
And expressive, the same thing. They’re going to talk a lot. You need to listen. You probably have to use a couple different pattern interrupts.

Carley Hathaway:
Yes. A lot of phone calls.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Okay. We have more questions. What else?

Ren Jones:
Let’s see. Well, yeah, somebody was asking about, now this just depends on who you’re calling. It says you come across an interested client, but they’re not ready to meet on the first call. How do you follow up? If that’s an expired, you need to close then, but on say a for sale owner or someone else, that’s just that where you may have to do some follow-ups. Do you have any strategy with that?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Well, the canceled, expireds, I think that you do have to get them. And if you can’t get them in that one shot, try two or three more times at least. Even if they already told you no, it doesn’t hurt to try.

Ren Jones:
Just call back in the afternoon.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. Call back in the afternoon. Call back the next day. They may be frustrated-

Ren Jones:
They won’t even know that it’s you again.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. Yeah. Or they may be frustrated, they may be busy at work. You never know. Try, try, try again and deplete all your attempts. For sale by owners, you have to… that’s really just a follow-up thing. You do have to constantly follow up with you because you’re not going to get anywhere until they decide and entertain the idea of working with an agent.

Ren Jones:
Do you leave voicemails for people that don’t answer the phone?

Sohail Salahuddin:
I do. I’ll leave one or two.

Ren Jones:
Okay.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. I don’t want to leave too many because once they see my phone number and you start leaving too many, it can become a little bit of harassment. And if they’re not calling you back on the first one, they may not call you back on the 10th one either.

Ren Jones:
Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
But I think it’s important to leave at least one or two because I do get calls back from them.

Ren Jones:
Ryan Lowly saying, what is that hierarchy for you? I guess that means, is that where the lowest hanging fruit is on up, I guess? Is that what that means?

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
Okay. So what? What’s the lowest hanging fruit?

Sohail Salahuddin:
The new canceled, expireds for the day.

Ren Jones:
The new canceled and expires for the day. And what would be next after that?

Sohail Salahuddin:
The hot leads that you’ve been following up with?

Ren Jones:
Okay. Your hottest leads.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. Someone who’s ready to do something in the next couple weeks. Past clients.

Ren Jones:
Past clients, okay. People you know after that. Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah. And then the for sale by owners and then just listed, just solds. After that would be the old expireds. But I mean, I would say in the past year, I haven’t even called anybody that’s past a week. I don’t have time.

Ren Jones:
Yeah. Well, and now if we’re looking at a lot of the people watching this though, one of the best things they can do is old expires because the skill level required on an old expired and the chance of getting the listing goes way up if you’re newer in this business or if you haven’t been calling expired much. An old expired is friendly and nobody else is calling them, and the odds of getting the listing going. It’s a great way to start at the shallow end of the pool and get one or two listings a month from it. And that’s not so bad.

Sohail Salahuddin:
No.

Ren Jones:
One or two listings a month is a good thing.

Sohail Salahuddin:
And trust me, if I had an ISA or if I had someone that was doing the calls, if I had more time, then I would be going to the old expireds. But in my marketplace, there’s so many canceled expireds that come out.

Ren Jones:
But your skill level’s higher here, so you can handle it. A lot of them are calling the same ones you are. And they’re getting a goose egg because the skill level’s so high. Somebody like you calls and it’s all over, they’re going to pick you.
Divjot Moore asked who’s your coach? That was Steve Powers with the Mike Ferry organization.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Steve Powers.

Ren Jones:
And Christian, we answered that one. What are you-

Carley Hathaway:
Bart, how do you go about circle prospecting? What do you say to just listed, just solds?

Sohail Salahuddin:
So circle prospecting for me is the same as just listed, just solds. And I just follow the Mike Ferry scripts. Nothing really the thing… the scripts work, but you have to follow them. And I think most people give up too much because they hear the first one or two nos. But the secret is you want them to say no at least two or three times because that then they feel like they’re in control. You want them to feel like they’re in control. And then the skill comes in where you’re able to turn that conversation around to yeses.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
So there’s part of communicating in an effective manner is learning how to ask the right questions. Might be the yes or no questions.
But again, it’s learning how to navigate and learning how to ask the questions. You can ask a yes or no question and structure it where you want them to say yes or no and they’re going to give you a no if you structure correctly and they’re going to give you a yes if you structure it correctly.

Carley Hathaway:
Very true.

Ren Jones:
The power is in the ability to ask good questions.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yes.

Ren Jones:
Yes. Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah. Definitely.

Ren Jones:
Did you want to set an appointment or should I just come over? Give them them one that you don’t care how they answer.

Carley Hathaway:
Yeah.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway:
Do you have any other questions?

Ren Jones:
Good. This has been a real treat. I learned a lot. I’ve got some, yeah. Good thoughts for strategy. So it’s been wonderful, Sohail. We really appreciate it a lot.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah, my pleasure.

Carley Hathaway:
My little, yeah, I think we all got some really good takeaways from this. I can’t wait to rewatch it a few times.

Ren Jones:
Me too. Let me do that little spot I need to do, if you’re watching on Vulcan7 and you want to get involved in the Lead Gen Facebook group, who simulcasts this show, they’re at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And then I want to thank Aaron Wittenstein, who rebroadcast this show live, and he’s a real giver. He runs a program called trajectorynow.com for people that are newer at this.
And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you are not involved with Vulcan7 for expireds, for sale owners, neighborhood search, circle prospecting and a dialer, go to vulcan7.com/leadgen for a very special deal.
And if you’ve done what Sohail did today, he made all his calls started in the 8:00 AM and he’s calling in, he’s setting two or three appointments today. Two, three. Amazing.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yeah.

Ren Jones:
You deserve to treat yourself. You know what motivates him? I have his secret. This is why he makes those calls. This is why he’s successful. He gets the delicious Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. Not only do they sell it in Chicago, they sell all over North America. So go to graeters.com to find the mint chocolate chip. It’s the only one for listing agents. And if the house isn’t selling, dig a hole in the front yard bury it upside down, it will cause the house to sell. So make sure you get it.

Sohail Salahuddin:
It’s like Popeye’s spinach.

Ren Jones:
That is it.

Carley Hathaway:
Yes. Exactly.

Ren Jones:
Yeah. But only the min chocolate chip.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Yes.

Ren Jones:
If you get any other flavor that’s, you’re going to end up with too many buyers and no sellers.

Carley Hathaway:
Thank you so much for tuning in everybody. We had such a good time.

Ren Jones:
Thanks everybody for joining us.
Good.

Sohail Salahuddin:
All right.

Ren Jones:
Thank you. Appreciate it.

Sohail Salahuddin:
Thanks. Thanks everybody.

Ren Jones:
Bye everybody.

Carley Hathaway:
Bye.

Ren Jones:
See you soon. See you next week.