How Aaron Wittenstein takes seven listings a month in a four-and-a-half-month closing market by dialing 8 to 11 every day

Ren Jones00:12

Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a powerful agent taking lots of listings each month, and we have an exciting guest today. Today’s show is in front of a live audience, casting from Keller Williams in West Chester, Ohio. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone that we are also simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook — Lead Gen has 49,692 members, so we have a large audience there today as well, and we’ll be pausing for a commercial message during the show as a thank you to the Lead Gen folks. So let’s welcome our guest today, also from West Chester, but not in Ohio — West Chester, New York. Please welcome back Aaron Wittenstein.

Aaron Wittenstein01:20

Hello everybody, how’s everybody doing? What’s going on?

Ren Jones01:32

So we’ve got West Chester Ohio and West Chester County New York — I love the irony. But the problem is the same: it starts in May. How do you not leave money on the table, how do you get through September and still talk to people? It’s a contact sport. How do you do it, when you’re juggling three different things?

Aaron Wittenstein01:58

What it comes down to is just the flat-out consistency of everything. Every single day I’m coming in and doing my job. My job is lead generation, my career is real estate, and my job is lead generation. I have a team of five of us now, three of us agents are on the phone every morning at eight o’clock, we dial from 8:00 to 11:00 every single day. Because at the end of the day you’ve got to have the consistency — what will happen is people start doing this, then they go, “I’ve got to negotiate this deal, I’ve got to enter this listing, I’ve got to do that.” Everything can wait until after 11 o’clock. So I’m curious, out of everybody sitting there — I can only see nine or ten of you — how many of you are actually lead generating on a regular basis, raise your hand, be honest. That’s none of you.

Ren Jones02:44

There’s four or five total, because you only see the middle of the room.

Aaron Wittenstein02:52

When it comes to it, it’s consistency, consistency, consistency. People call it a contact sport — I call it a consistency sport, because you don’t have to be the best at anything, you just have to be the most consistent. Where I’m better than most is that come hell or high water, five days a week — maybe every now and then, like Monday, I was six — I’m in here doing my phone calls eight to eleven every day. That, in my opinion, is what’s most important.

Ren Jones03:23

But you’re in crunch time now too, so it gets harder and harder. The more you talk to people, the more you list, the harder it is to keep doing it, because the pendings pile up, the closings pile up. What then?

Aaron Wittenstein03:39

I’ve got a team in place. About two years ago — last year — I hired Priscilla, she’s an operations manager, assistant, whatever you want to call her, and she takes over absolutely everything for me. She’s an absolute machine, she takes all my phone calls, all my voicemails, all my emails. Keep in mind, when I first hired her I could only afford her for three months — that’s all I had, enough money to cover three months — and she made me her money back tenfold within the first year. I doubled my income the year I actually had her in place, and I have a virtual assistant in place as well. So it’s all about leverage, having people help you do what you need to do. When you’re ready is when you wind up getting too busy, so there’s never a good time to spend money you don’t think you have, yet you’ve got to do it eventually.

Ren Jones04:27

And part of that hesitation is, well, it’s going to cost me money to do that. A bigger part is it’s not as gratifying — running over to the house to look because of the inspection, or fiddling around with a folder, is more gratifying than calling strangers or calling your database.

Aaron Wittenstein04:50

I’m not looking for the gratification anymore, I’m looking for the paycheck. I’ll tell you, I’m at a point in my business where if I never had to make another phone call again I would be absolutely ecstatic, yet I’m not in that position — I’m probably 18 months away at minimum from not making these phone calls. People don’t even start doing it, but for me, last month I took seven listings, five of them were expired listings, and three of those five expired listings were people I was in touch with for upwards of six months to three years. So it’s about doing the work — I’m going to keep going back to it, it’s about the consistency.

Ren Jones05:33

And to be fair, in your market seven listings taken is the equivalent of about eighteen here, because of the price point out there.

Aaron Wittenstein05:45

Keep in mind though, are you guys in an attorney state? No. We use attorneys here, which makes everything so much worse — my average closing time is about four and a half months to close a property. I was an agent in Illinois for twelve years before I moved to New York, and the amount of time, effort and everything you have to put in is the equivalent of two deals in Illinois. So yes, the price point is higher, yet the work is almost double.

Ren Jones06:14

So you’ve got a morning schedule, you’re juggling your kids, you’re juggling coaching. Chat about the time management — how do you make it all fit, because things blow up. What are you doing when things blow up?

Aaron Wittenstein06:26

That’s the beauty of having a team in place. Today it was pretty much eight to 10:30 lead generation, 10:30 to 11:00 I’m calling my clients, then eleven o’clock I’ve got you guys for 45 minutes, and I’ve got to get back to calling my feedback calls again — I talk to my sellers every week, which I hope you guys do as well. Then I’ve got a listing consultation via Zoom webinar, then I’m ducking out of here at 3 o’clock to get a massage, and I’ve got to be home by 5:00 to help take care of the kids, and I just rinse and repeat. Everything’s got to be time-managed to make sure you can fit everything in. No matter what, that early morning is when my time is protected. Part of it is I don’t work with buyers anymore, I’m a hundred percent listing based, and because I like to be home, I’m home every day by 5:00. I don’t work Sundays, I work Saturdays by appointment only, so I really maintain my schedule very well.

Ren Jones07:26

Who’s doing your buyers?

Aaron Wittenstein07:40

I have two buyer specialists now. For a period of about two years I had nobody, I was referring my buyers out to the top agent in the office for a slightly higher referral fee than you’d normally get. But I brought on Jimmy two months ago, and another about a week and a half ago.

Ren Jones07:58

Let’s talk about that, because here’s where agents get stuck. They’ll sell a nice house to somebody who’s going to buy a very expensive house — say eight hundred thousand, which would be a $24,000 commission check — and they think, “I’m not referring that out and only making 25%.” What do you do in a case like that? If you work the buyer, you stop looking for listings. You make this big check after a couple months of screwing around with the buyer, but you lost all this other money. How do you make that work?

Aaron Wittenstein08:40

I’d rather have a taste of something than something of nothing, because I wasn’t going to commit the time to work with a buyer. How many hours, Ren, do you think it takes to work an average buyer? Ten, fifteen, twenty. Let’s say it takes twenty hours to work a buyer — that would be seven days of lead generation, which should equal at least two appointments off of that. Let’s say I average a half a million — 500 plus 500, that’s a million dollars, which is 25,000 in commission right there. So I’m making 25,000 in commission plus the referral fee off the 24,000, which comes out to be more money than I would have had in the first place, and it’s a little less stressful.

Ren Jones09:24

And when you’re talking about an $800,000 house, there are a lot of high-quality agents that will do it for 50, 60. Or you reverse it — so you make $6,000, there are only four homes to show them, you’re making six grand, I’m making 18,000. You flip the referral fee.

Aaron Wittenstein09:44

It’s all a question of how you play it. If you get a new agent, you can have someone show the properties for you — you pick them out, they show it. I just didn’t like doing it, I hated working with buyers, so it’s my opinion that I’d rather refer it out and do something I don’t like doing. It’s a better quality of life as well.

Ren Jones10:00

What should they be thinking about for May, June, July?

Aaron Wittenstein10:09

They need to not be thinking about vacations, I can tell you that much — I’m taking my first vacation in a year, I can’t wait to get the heck out of here. But people get into vacation mode starting like May, June, July and August, and you can’t have that mindset. You need to consistently be doing everything day in and day out, and I’m just going to keep repeating myself until I’m blue in the face. The underwhelming thing of everything I’m going to say is you’ve got to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how you’re doing it, and continue to do it. There’s nothing sexy about it, nothing super entertaining about it. It’s not like I’m going to come here and give you a magic pill — that’s not how it works. You’ve got to consistently wake up every morning and do the work, and if anybody has issues with that, you may very well be in the wrong business.

Ren Jones11:17

So you’re purpose-driven — you have a strong why.

Aaron Wittenstein11:20

I do. I’ve got three children, a six-year-old and three-year-old twins, and everything I do, I do for those guys. I don’t want to get too in depth with it, otherwise I’ll start crying in front of everybody here. I’ve got a wife, a six-year-old, three-year-old twins, and a team that’s looking up to me, so I’ve got a ton of people depending on me to do what I need to do. When you have that level of responsibility, you don’t have the luxury of quitting, of stopping, of not doing what you should be doing, because these people are solely dependent on you. You’ve got to figure out what your why is, because when you figure out whatever that is, that’s what’s going to drive you to do the things you don’t want to do — “I don’t feel like waking up this morning, I’m not in the mood.” That’s going to push you past your comfort zone, like, “I don’t want to call expireds because they’re scary.” Your why will push you past that comfort zone.

Ren Jones12:23

And yet you surround yourself with an even higher level of accountability. Tell them about that.

Aaron Wittenstein12:31

I run my Facebook group, Lead Gen Scripts and Objections — if you’re not a member, just Facebook “Lead Gen Scripts and Objections,” we’ve got 50,000 people on that group. I pretty much put myself out there. I used to do a lot of live lead generation, which I’ve shied away from — I’d actually go in the group and do my expired phone calls and for sale by owner calls live, but it became a distraction. Hang on one second, I’m getting a Google Voice phone call, sorry.

Ren Jones13:04

Because you were prospecting live on your website and people — you lured people, they’re just sitting hanging out in front of their computers watching you make calls.

Aaron Wittenstein13:15

Yeah, so I’ve gotten away from that just because it became a distraction — I was putting on more of a show than actually making my phone calls. I may get back to it eventually, I kind of miss it. And then I also run a group coaching program called Trajectory, where we’ve got about a hundred and ten people, and we have to submit our numbers every week, so I’m putting myself in front of people that way — if anybody’s interested, trajectorynow.com, seventy-five bucks a month. It’s disgusting how much information we get for that. And I’ve got an expired lead program which is on hold for the next couple months. It’s just holding yourself accountable at a higher level, which for you guys may be getting an accountability partner, getting role play partners — I’m assuming all of you on the phone have five accountability or five role play partners. I would hope so.

Aaron Wittenstein14:29

One thing you want, guys, is five role play partners, because it keeps you at a high level. What I always suggest is you have three that are better than you, so you can be the student, and two that are worse than you, so you can be the teacher. And you’ve got to recycle through, restock your role play partners about once a quarter, because those are the people that keep you on point with your scripting and your dialogues. And you’ve got to go very, very hard with your role play.

Aaron Wittenstein15:04

What questions do you guys have? Maybe you only like working with buyers, wherever you are — if you have a question or a thought you want to bounce off, we’ve got a microphone right here. Don’t be shy, we can talk about anything: scripting, lead gen, time management, dialogues, whatever you’ve got. We’ve only been here for 26 minutes, we’ll end it early if you want — but if you want to take one extra listing or one extra sale this month, ask a question. What’s in the way?

Audience member15:51

How did you get from being a solo agent to having support and having leverage? What was that transition like — how do you go from being a solo agent with no assistance, doing everything yourself, taking your own pictures, putting your own signs out, to creating that leverage a piece at a time?

Aaron Wittenstein16:27

First of all, you need to find the right people — that’s the most important thing. Everybody I have with me right now is the right person for my team, I really put them through the wringer. How do you figure out it’s the time? When you become busy. When you start, you’ve got either time or money — usually you have time but no money. So you put in the time, and eventually you start making some money, and you’re kind of even. But then what winds up happening is you get a bunch of money but you have no time. The moment the money outweighs the time is when you need to start heavily looking into bringing someone onto your team. The first hire, if you’ve read The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, should be an assistant — that’s the scariest hire, because that’s going to cost you money. I pay Priscilla fifty-two thousand five hundred dollars a year plus revenue share and a bonus. When you start looking weekly, if you’re paying thirty-six versus fifty, it’s really not that big a difference over a year. So when your money outweighs your time is when you’ve got to start. Then she got too busy, so we brought on a virtual assistant. Then I looked for a buyer specialist for over a year until I found the right person, and I was lucky enough to find Jimmy. It’s really important to find the right person — within the first month he put three in contract and took two listings. We just brought on Ben behind us, he’s a newer agent but he’s crushing it with circle prospecting. So you’ve got to go need-based, know where you are need-wise. The worst thing you could do is make a bad hire, so I’ve committed to not hiring anybody until they’re the right role for the team.

Ren Jones19:03

In a lot of ways you can do this as a transition — you can get two or three agents and hire a part-time assistant, say four hours a day, that three people share, and your obligation is what, $600 a month? But I wouldn’t hire the agent first — I’d hire the assistant first, the three agents share. For $600 a month you have your own assistant five days a week, that’s not bad, and then you grow into it. Even if you hire a virtual assistant in the beginning, train them, get whatever you can off your plate.

Aaron Wittenstein19:44

I don’t even write the remarks on my listings anymore, I don’t touch the listings. All I do is prospect, coach my team, coach other agents, and train. That’s all I do — she does a better job than I do.

Ren Jones20:06

There are vendors — how many people are doing this and this — there are people that for $50 a transaction, $100 a transaction, do that piece for you. But running back and forth to houses, putting signs out, taking pictures at the same time, that’s a lot.

Aaron Wittenstein20:26

We’re in a growth period. I started with a kid who was an assistant working 20 hours a week, then he left, then I had a transaction coordinator until Priscilla came on. I’ve had my fair share of growing pains, it’s never perfect, but you figure it out as you keep going along, if that becomes a priority.

Ren Jones20:47

What you can’t do is just kick back. If you’re going to pay somebody $20 an hour, you’ve got to make the $200 an hour and talk to more people.

Aaron Wittenstein20:55

Exactly, find more contracts.

Aaron Wittenstein21:01

Keep in mind, guys, I’m a killer at scripts, my scripts are second to none, so if anybody wants to hear a script, let me know.

Jenny Lajoie21:20

Hi, I’m Jenny Lajoie, I would like to hear an expired script.

Aaron Wittenstein21:27

Okay, who wants to role play with me? Who wants to be an expired?

Greg22:03

My name is Greg Heiners — sorry, they put the heater on me, one area’s so hot.

Aaron Wittenstein22:08

Greg — I’m going to call. Ring ring.

Greg22:14

Hello? This is Greg.

Aaron Wittenstein22:18

Hi, my name is Aaron, I’m a local realtor. Do you mind if I’m relatively straightforward with you?

Greg22:25

Yeah, that’s fine, I’m on my way out the door, how can I help you?

Aaron Wittenstein22:27

I was calling about one two three Smith Street — how in the heck did that place not sell?

Greg22:34

I don’t know, but we’re pretty frustrated with it not selling, and we’re thinking about maybe waiting until the spring to put it back.

Aaron Wittenstein22:38

Gotcha. Let me ask you this — I’m looking at it, it looks like a decent 4-bed, 2-and-a-half bath, 2,500 square foot home. How in the world did that place not sell?

Greg22:46

I’m not sure. We thought we had it priced right, but everybody came in and low-balled us.

Aaron Wittenstein22:54

Okay, so you did get offers?

Greg22:56

Yeah, but they were so low I couldn’t accept any of them — like 30,000 under the asking price.

Aaron Wittenstein23:03

Okay, so let me ask you this. What my team actually does is we specialize in selling properties that are on the market for extended periods of time without selling — I’ve taken listings on the market for a thousand thirty-nine days and flipped them around in 29. How can I help you?

Greg23:15

Well, I’d like to get my house sold.

Aaron Wittenstein23:18

I’d love to stop by and have a conversation. What works better, late morning, early afternoon, or Saturday?

Greg23:24

Probably Saturday would work.

Aaron Wittenstein23:26

You’re way too easy on me, but that’s fine. That’s the bones of the script I use. I actually flipped the script today too — that “may I be straightforward with you” — and everybody who spoke to me, it was absolutely amazing. That unlocks the door, that phrase gets people to respond. What are they going to say, “No, don’t be straightforward with me”? Ren, can I be straightforward with you? No, why would I want that?

Aubrey Ballinger24:15

My name is Aubrey Ballinger. I’m looking to get into getting listings from expireds, and when I talk about scripts they do get frustrated — what’s your script for when they say, “Well, we were just thinking of selling it ourselves, because the realtors can’t seem to do anything”?

Aaron Wittenstein24:39

So you’re talking about the for sale by owner script? This is kind of a long one. Are you a for sale by owner, or an expired that wants to go back to it?

Aubrey Ballinger24:49

Let’s say an expired that wants to go to a for sale by owner.

Aaron Wittenstein24:55

So let me ask, why do you want to go for sale by owner?

Aubrey Ballinger24:59

Well, the market’s going really good and I see that homes are selling really quickly, and the realtor we had couldn’t do that, so I just assume keep some of the money and get it sold.

Aaron Wittenstein25:15

I see, they’re going quickly. Let me ask you this — what if I could show you within the next 30 seconds how I could net you the same amount of money you could get on your own? Would you allow me to come by and have a conversation with you? How can you say no to that? Sorry, I’m having a hard time hearing you.

Aubrey Ballinger25:36

How can you do anything differently? It’s been on the market a couple times and I’ve talked to a couple different agents.

Aaron Wittenstein25:45

That’s a very fair question. So here’s the way it works — I assume you’d be paying out a co-op commission to whomever brings in a buyer, correct?

Aubrey Ballinger25:51

I’d be open to that.

Aaron Wittenstein25:54

How much would you be paying out?

Aubrey Ballinger25:55

Two and a half, three percent, I guess.

Aaron Wittenstein25:58

Very nice. So let’s say hypothetically we’re working off a five percent commission spread. Right off the bat you’re going to pay me two and a half percent, which means all I need to do is justify an additional two and a half percent. I’d assume you’re going to be paying out at least a half a point in marketing, correct?

Aubrey Ballinger26:14

Well, I was just going to stick a sign out.

Aaron Wittenstein26:21

You should be paying out at least a half a point, which now means I only need to justify 2%. So here’s the thing — nothing against you, but I do this professionally for a living, and I guarantee I’ll get you at least 1% more than you can on your own, and I’ll write that down on the contract. So now all I need to do is justify one percent. Do you have a full-time job?

Aubrey Ballinger26:43

Yes.

Aaron Wittenstein26:44

Do you want another one? No. Are you comfortable having strangers walk through your property on a regular basis that you don’t know?

Aubrey Ballinger26:52

Not necessarily.

Aaron Wittenstein26:55

So basically what we’re looking at is a 1% difference for your sanity, safety and time. I’d love to stop by and have a conversation — what works better, late morning, early afternoon, or Saturday?

Aubrey Ballinger27:05

I’d be open to Saturday.

Aaron Wittenstein27:09

You kind of see where I went with that? It’s a hard one to grasp because it’s a little long, but it works. I call it my FSBO crushing objection handler.

Aaron Wittenstein27:44

Can I be frankly honest with you guys? I suck at working past clients. It is not my thing that I’m comfortable with, and I’ll be fully transparent — everybody talks about rejection, being rejected by expireds or for sale by owners, and gets really concerned about that. The truest form of rejection is speaking to people you already know, which for me is my past clients. So it’s something I’m really working on, reconnecting with my past clients right now, because honestly I’ve left them abandoned, more or less. When it comes to past clients I don’t want to BS you and tell you I’m the best person to be working on that — I am not, I can send you to 20 people that are better than I am.

Ren Jones28:34

So you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.

Aaron Wittenstein28:37

I have no idea how much.

Ren Jones28:39

We need to move to Westchester New York and pick up your orphans.

Aaron Wittenstein28:43

My coach is beating me up over it, my team is beating me up over it, and I’ve finally wrapped my head around that I need to get back into it. It’s just making those initial phone calls.

Audience member29:16

What percentage would you say of your clients are repeat or referrals versus all brand-new business?

Aaron Wittenstein29:24

I’ve only been here for four years, so I don’t have a huge repeat network, but I would say I’m probably about 25% referral right now. Keep in mind, I started prospecting November of 2014 — I called November, December and January of ’14 and ’15 and didn’t take a listing, then February of ’15 I took eight listings. So it just takes time, it takes 90 days minimum to get things rocking.

Audience member30:16

Do I call a farm area?

Ren Jones30:22

There’s an agent I was mentioning the other day who’s extremely successful doing that. She works geographic areas, calling them 12 to 15 times a year for a variety of things she says, and she’s just crushing it. There’s an agent down in Nashville going in and copying that system, because it seems to be working — she’s dominating. But she’s talking to them, not dropping off frisbees at the front door or mailing postcards, she’s talking. It’s working. You can call them every month, but you want to get creative as to what you say — you can’t just call and go, “Hi, great day, good, everything good every month.” You’ve got to bring some value to the call.

Aaron Wittenstein31:24

Exactly. Any other questions, guys? Should we do our commercial?

Ren Jones31:38

Speaking of that — if you want to get involved with his Lead Gen group and watch him prospect, forty-nine thousand six hundred, are you at fifty thousand now?

Aaron Wittenstein31:44

We’re damn close. I just want to hit 50 and then I’m going to quit.

Ren Jones31:53

There are a lot of people networking there, and it’s all about lead generation — it’s facebook.com/groups/gotobjections, and you can watch this show there live on Tuesday at one o’clock next week, or go to vulcan7.com/roadmap and watch it there, or we’ll send you a copy, and you watch other shows there. And then you’ve got trajectorynow.com for $75 a month.

Aaron Wittenstein32:24

I highly suggest checking it out — there’s a $1 14-day trial, just to see if you like it, but it’s awesome. My retention rate is like eighty-five percent right now, that’s how much people like it.

Audience member32:50

How do you find, hire and train your staff?

Aaron Wittenstein32:57

There’s somebody I use, her name is Lindsay Soprano, S-O-P-R-A-N-O. She’s all over Keller Williams and she’s amazing — she does all my hiring for me, the administrative end, and she trained all my admins. Then I go ahead and train all my agents, so I let her do what she’s really good at, but she’s been an integral part of every hire I’ve made.

Ren Jones33:30

She has a huge track record around Keller Williams for finding you the right persons. Lindsay Soprano — you’ll like her, first class.

Ren Jones34:39

The biggest thing I watch is a lot of you leaving money on the table, because nobody’s talking to the public, and the public is finally ready to do something with their house but nobody’s talking to them. If you can find a way to get somebody to help you — I really like the idea of three or four people sharing. Hire somebody that comes in five days a week, not just Tuesdays and Thursdays, five days a week, four hours a day — that’s 20 hours a week, about 1,800 a month. Get three of you to pay 600 each and have this person handle all your stuff. Everybody’s like, “I can’t pay somebody 3,000 a month,” and maybe you can’t.

Aaron Wittenstein35:26

Why did you say bring someone in five days a week versus two?

Ren Jones35:31

Because Monday they’re here, Tuesday you’re the assistant, Wednesday they’re here, Thursday you’re the assistant — it breaks the chain of consistency. You’ve got to have them come in from 9:00 to 1:00 every day, or 10:00 to 2:00, and between three of you sharing, you’re probably not at that level of business anyway, so it’s perfect, and it’s 600 bucks, fifty bucks a week. Find a way to do it and get started, and then eventually that person is working full-time and it goes up from there. But what you can’t do is just kick back — you have to be willing to delegate, and put in checks and balances. Don’t have a once-a-week meeting with them, have a morning huddle, ten, twelve minutes to go over stuff, because a once-a-week meeting is very inefficient.

Ren Jones36:57

It comes right off the bottom line — your 1099 minus your expenses is the tax you pay. Does everybody have an LLC? Everybody should get an LLC. I went to ain’tfile.com, I love those folks, because in like two minutes you’ve got your LLC, very efficient.

Audience member37:41

Where can you put the assistant?

Ren Jones38:00

We didn’t have the technology we have now — you can log on to Google Hangouts or Zoom and see them, they can be working from home, you’re working from home. You almost don’t have to be in the same physical space. It is handy, though, if they’re there physically, because you can say, “Here, take these three things.” It’s a little harder when they’re across town, so if you can do it in the same space, whatever’s cheap.

Ren Jones38:40

It’s real inexpensive and high-value — it’s like 25 bucks a month, LionDesk. It’s L-I-O-N desk, LionDesk, very inexpensive, and you can add on to it. It’s real estate gear.

Audience member39:09

I started calling around my hometown of Milford in an attempt to get more listings, and I was surprised that in one day I had two different random people I called say, “Oh, you’re the second realtor today.”

Ren Jones39:24

People are calling around to listings a lot more now, because it’s inexpensive. We have an expensive dialer — have you tried it yet? We just came out with the one that holds the pose. It’s like our regular dialer, only on steroids — everybody’s answering.

Aaron Wittenstein39:53

Are you using Vulcan7 neighborhood search?

Ren Jones39:55

We have that, and that’s one hundred ninety-nine a month. It holds the office — when you don’t get a number, you’re just there answering the phone, so it’s very efficient. If you’re working specific neighborhoods, you’ll have almost everybody’s number.

Audience member40:25

Listings are tight right now — what are your recommendations for finding them?

Aaron Wittenstein40:33

Obviously there’s expireds — you just heard one. For sale by owners, because FSBOs increase now that we know the challenge, calling around a listing or sale, and probate.

Ren Jones40:52

Ken Jordan, Jordan Realty, and his son Mike — when Dan’s father was in business doing probate and estates, and family law firms, if somebody passes away and there’s real property to sell, they build a relationship. Ken Jordan walked over to Lou Hendrix’s office in Norwood and developed a relationship, and for twenty, thirty years every time an estate was settled, Ken listed it, and now Mike does. So you just call the probate attorneys — Matthews and Matthews up in Montgomery, all those people that do estates — and find out who they’re using: “I’d like to be the understudy if they’re not available, or you try me out.” Meet them face to face and build relationships. One thing that really gets the probate attorneys, because they’re always looking to give value when they’re doing an estate, is you offer to do a free 24-hour turnaround, and all you ask is for them to recommend you.

Ren Jones42:06

If you go to his Lead Gen group — we interviewed a probate guy yesterday. Go to facebook.com/groups/gotobjections and watch our show from yesterday, he told all the scripts, all the procedures, all the extras, and what he says when he calls probate attorneys. So you’ve got your database, and then have some areas of emphasis where you’re working constantly, so people see your signs in certain parts of town. Sometimes if you’re too strict on the boundary of a farm, and you live and die by that, they get, “We never get your name because you only work such-and-such neighborhood,” and that can work against you. So have areas of emphasis and just work those areas.

Ren Jones43:10

But think about it — if you went out to Zillow and looked at all the for sale by owners, and just went to the door all day long, would you get two to three sales a month? If you comb your hair and dress nicely and introduce yourself, how many people would show you the house? Probably one out of four, depends on what you look like.

Ren Jones43:39

There’s a guy I coached, a very large man, and that’s what he did — he made a lot of money doing it, but he had to go to a lot more doors, because they looked at the peephole. Versus when you come to the door, they feel safety, because you’re not going to tackle somebody. So it’s a safety thing. But if you got around all those for sale by owners, you’d have to work, you’d have to go for five hours — but you’d make a good six-digit income. People want the help. They can’t even pick out a shirt at the store without asking somebody, “Does this look good?” They want the help, they don’t think they want to do it all themselves — they know they want the help.

Ren Jones44:40

Any other questions? Aaron, you’ve coached a ton of people in a lot of markets, a lot of fun, lists a lot of property — any parting words of advice? I think we’re good. That’s the fun.