S3 E7: Skill Building
Meet Mega Agent Spring Cutsforth. How to take more listings by mastering these specific dialogues. Spring has honed her sales skills and that makes business come to her very easily. Write down these strategies.
Ren Jones (00:00):
It’s that time, welcome to Roadmap. How to take three Listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week, we interview a great agent who has a strong listing business, 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 that copycat principle. If you’re watching on Vulcan7 or the Lead Gen Facebook group, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions during the broadcast. Type those in early, folks. Type those questions in early. 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 (00:42):
Hi, Ren. Real estate is great. Properties are moving super, super quickly, so it’s a really good time to be a listing agent for sure.
Ren Jones (00:50):
Wonderful. And I like your price point there.
Carley Hathaway (00:52):
Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
Ren Jones (00:54):
Yes. Great. Well, let’s welcome our guest today from beautiful Portland, Oregon, and she probably sells all over the state, Spring Cutsforth. Welcome, Spring. Welcome to the show.
Spring Cutsforth (01:08):
Oh, thank you, Ren. Good morning, Ren. Good morning, Carley.
Carley Hathaway (01:11):
Good morning, Spring. We’re so excited to have you on today.
Spring Cutsforth (01:14):
Well, and thank you. It’s great to be here with you. Thanks for having me. It’s a real opportunity. Appreciate it.
Carley Hathaway (01:18):
Yeah, we’re excited.
Spring Cutsforth (01:20):
Great.
Ren Jones (01:20):
So if somebody wants to send you some business Spring, maybe they want to buy a nice home in Paradise or they know somebody that wants to sell or buy in your market, what’s the best way for them to reach you?
Spring Cutsforth (01:32):
No, they should certainly pick up the phone. Give us a call, 503-245-9000 or of course, they can email spring@springsteam.com.
Ren Jones (01:48):
Okay, or they could go to springsteam.com and see what you’re doing. Right?
Spring Cutsforth (01:51):
Of course. Absolutely. Can always visit the website and reach us that way.
Ren Jones (01:54):
Good, good, good. All right, so there’s three great ways to reach Spring and send her some business. So send her some business. That’d be good.
Carley Hathaway (02:01):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (02:01):
Good.
Spring Cutsforth (02:01):
We absolute, we love referrals.
Ren Jones (02:03):
Good. I know, I know. And you’ve been doing this a while.
Spring Cutsforth (02:06):
Oh gosh.
Ren Jones (02:06):
Don’t ask that question. Okay. You’ve been doing this a while.
Spring Cutsforth (02:13):
Yeah. So you’re not going to ask me how old I am. I was licensed ’91. You guys, it’s been 27 years. I can’t believe I-
Ren Jones (02:19):
27 years.
Carley Hathaway (02:20):
You were licensed at 13 years old, huh?
Spring Cutsforth (02:23):
Yeah. I love you, Carley. Absolutely.
Ren Jones (02:25):
It was.
Carley Hathaway (02:27):
That’s great. That’s a long run.
Spring Cutsforth (02:29):
It is a long run. I’ve seen good times. I’ve seen really, really rough times when the market turned down in 2007, 8, 9, 10. Really, it was exciting times to be in real estate. But yeah, we’ve seen a little bit of everything.
Carley Hathaway (02:41):
Yeah, definitely.
Spring Cutsforth (02:43):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (02:44):
Fantastic. So where’s your business coming from these days? Or is it…
Spring Cutsforth (02:49):
Yeah, that’s a great question, Ren. I think we’re in the middle of the markets shifting. The economy is shifting as a whole, I think, and so is the real estate industry. So we obviously do for sale by owners, we do expireds. Most of my business was built on expired listings, but we also do Just listed, Just Sold. Our past clients. We’re actually… We’re working retirement homes now. We’ve got a program where we’re going in there. So we’re really spreading out. And it’s all about trying to get your customer first before somebody else does.
Carley Hathaway (03:25):
Yeah, definitely.
Spring Cutsforth (03:27):
Yeah.
Carley Hathaway (03:28):
So-
Ren Jones (03:28):
Several good sources of business. We have somebody in our studio audience who’s watching a show on Facebook, so you’re going to have to turn the audio off and just listen to this audio. Thank you.
Carley Hathaway (03:38):
So what’s your goal-
Ren Jones (03:41):
I heard this echo over in the gallery and I’m like, “Oh my God.”
Carley Hathaway (03:43):
So what’s your goal this year?
Spring Cutsforth (03:44):
So Carley, here’s the thing, we’re kind of just getting back into it. Our goal this year is 75 close transactions.
Carley Hathaway (03:50):
I think that’s an amazing goal. You kidding me? Anyone would be happy with that?
Spring Cutsforth (03:53):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (03:54):
Absolutely.
Carley Hathaway (03:55):
Are you on track right now?
Spring Cutsforth (03:57):
Yes, we are.
Carley Hathaway (03:58):
Oh, good.
Spring Cutsforth (03:58):
Yeah. Yes.
Carley Hathaway (04:00):
Good.
Ren Jones (04:01):
So what’s the morning look like where you are?
Spring Cutsforth (04:03):
Oh, so morning, each week-
Ren Jones (04:05):
Not the weather now.
Spring Cutsforth (04:07):
Hey, it is God’s country here, I’ll tell you.
Ren Jones (04:09):
Good.
Spring Cutsforth (04:10):
So morning schedule, get up, do a little bit of meditation, that type of thing. I have certain days that I work out, not every day. And then what I do is I turn on some highly motivational, inspirational material while I jump in the shower and get ready. Really energizes me, gets my mind focused in the right place.
Ren Jones (04:33):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (04:34):
I then get to the office. I do affirmations. Sometimes I write, sometimes I say them out loud. For me, it’s a great mix to do a little bit of both. I’m not role-playing now. I normally role-play. I’m not doing that currently and I need to get back into that. I will a couple days a week, read the script just so I’m familiar. And then at 8 o’clock on the phone dialing, ready to roll.
Ren Jones (04:57):
Okay.
Carley Hathaway (04:57):
Nice. Perfect. What time do you get to the office?
Spring Cutsforth (05:01):
So we have a home office. So I’m normally in the office somewhere between 7:00, 7:30ish. Some mornings early, earlier.
Carley Hathaway (05:09):
And you’re on the phones by 8:00, every morning?
Spring Cutsforth (05:11):
8:00 AM.
Carley Hathaway (05:11):
Why do you think it’s so important to be on the phones by 8:00?
Spring Cutsforth (05:14):
Wow. So has our market ever changed, expired listings. If you’re not on there at 8:00 AM you’re just… By the time… If it’s 9:30, 10:00, they’ve had so many calls, they’re just done.
Carley Hathaway (05:29):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (05:29):
You got it.
Ren Jones (05:31):
There are people on this… Watching this show right now that have never been on the phone in the morning, ever, and their business comes in a little more randomly. What would your life be like if you weren’t on the phone at 8:00 AM. If you just put some advertising out there and waited for people to call, what would it look like?
Spring Cutsforth (05:50):
Ren, yeah. That’s a really great question. So I was trained by Mike Ferry, the national real estate trainer-
Ren Jones (05:57):
Oh, okay.
Spring Cutsforth (05:59):
You know Mike, Ren.
Ren Jones (06:01):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (06:01):
He taught us really early on that we had to actually be out there generating business. You can’t just sit around and wait for business to come. So if I am not on the phones, there’s a huge amount of now business, but I’m not going to get.
Ren Jones (06:14):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay.
Spring Cutsforth (06:15):
Right. So it creates almost like a void. If you’re not… You’re not dialing. And here’s the thing, our job, unfortunately as a realtor, we’re glorified telemarketers.
Carley Hathaway (06:28):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (06:30):
And one of the first things I say is, “You’ve got to learn this town. You’ve got to learn to become a good salesperson.” And that’s regardless of what you want to do in life. If you don’t know how to sell, if you can’t be with people and be enrolling, you don’t have a lot of influence in the world.
Carley Hathaway (06:43):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Agree.
Spring Cutsforth (06:46):
Makes sense.
Carley Hathaway (06:47):
So when you’re on the phones at 8:00 AM you’re calling the new expireds right away. That’s number one?
Spring Cutsforth (06:52):
Yes. Start right off with those expireds.
Carley Hathaway (06:54):
Okay. All right. And then you mentioned you do a lot of prospecting with Just Listed, Just Sold. Can you kind of walk us through how you do that in your process?
Spring Cutsforth (07:02):
Sure. I love Just listed, Just sold. So expireds and for sale by owners, those are a little tougher to call. Expireds are beat up, they’re pretty rough. It’s like going into a boxing match. You better have some gloves on, right?
Carley Hathaway (07:16):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (07:17):
But just listed, just sold. What’s great is you’ll have to make more of those calls to get high quality leads-
Carley Hathaway (07:24):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (07:24):
But they’re really easy calls for the most part because there’s nobody else calling them. And it’s actually a warm call. I just simply… It’s funny, Ren and Carley, I just got on Vulcan. I had been using the competitor RedX-
Ren Jones (07:39):
Ah.
Spring Cutsforth (07:39):
And I would say it and I would dial hundreds of calls on the dialer, right?
Ren Jones (07:43):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (07:43):
What’s interesting is I got on Vulcan and I said, “Okay, give me a round,” because I’ve got the neighborhood, that you have the neighborhood search. I got on there and it said, “You only need to do 25. You only need to download 25” because you’ll get plenty. And I’m like, “I don’t think so. I need a couple hundred.” But then finally I thought, “Okay, I’ll just try it”. So it gave me 25. I called 25 and they were around a listing that I had two pendings in the area. I actually got two hot leads off of that.
Carley Hathaway (08:11):
Oh, that’s great.
Spring Cutsforth (08:13):
And here’s what was so beautiful about it, you guys, is that I only got 25 count, 25 records, right. And it got two leads. So your data, I got to tell you, you guys are a lightweight ahead of everybody else. So-
Ren Jones (08:26):
Yeah, just that’s a new service for us. Vulcan7 neighborhood search has only been out for six weeks and-
Spring Cutsforth (08:31):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (08:32):
People are telling us, they’re like, everybody answers the phone. It takes me a long time just to get through 30 or 40-
Carley Hathaway (08:39):
Contexts.
Ren Jones (08:40):
… because everybody keeps answering. So-
Spring Cutsforth (08:42):
Right, exactly. I was so surprise to get two hot leads
Ren Jones (08:44):
Oh, good. I’m glad to hear that and thank you for that.
Spring Cutsforth (08:46):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Carley Hathaway (08:47):
So-
Spring Cutsforth (08:49):
So that’s kind of what that looks like. And it’s a real fruitful way.
Carley Hathaway (08:53):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (08:55):
In a way if you don’t have a ton of skills that you can get in and actually make, start making some calls.
Carley Hathaway (08:59):
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And do you follows-
Ren Jones (09:01):
You must have it down pretty tight about what you’re saying to those people to get those leads at one. Now, do you have a very exact script or is it…
Spring Cutsforth (09:08):
So it’s so great, Ren. The one thing I would say is I have spent my life learning how to become a really great salesperson. Between… Do you remember Matthew’s old NLP six month programs? To writing sentences every day and being held accountable and happening, people cashing checks If I didn’t-
Ren Jones (09:29):
Wow.
Spring Cutsforth (09:29):
So I do follow the scripts religiously, and here’s the thing. I’ve made hundreds and thousands of prospecting calls and so… I’ll go up against it and you’re not going to sidetrack me. You’re not going to give me an objection that’s going to throw me, you’re not going to say something to me that I can’t figure out a comeback. So yes, I am religious about the scripts and once you get to know the scripts, I think the beautiful thing is that you don’t necessarily have to follow 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. What happens is… And I mentioned this earlier, you’ve got to learn how to be with people.
(10:02):
So I get an expired and they’re upset. I’ve got to actually recreate what they’re upset about so that they can feel heard and then I can start walking through my script with them. Well, gosh, curious, if your home had sold, where did you want to move to? Right. With great empathy, because I’m actually able to just be with them. And I’ve had expireds for sale by owners, all of them upstate. Oh my gosh, they’re so different. And I attribute that to my sales skills.
Carley Hathaway (10:31):
Yeah. Because it comes more naturally. Because you’ve practiced so much.
Spring Cutsforth (10:33):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Carley Hathaway (10:35):
Nice. Good for you. Good for you.
Spring Cutsforth (10:37):
Thank you.
Carley Hathaway (10:38):
So when you’re calling, say just listed, when do you call that neighborhood? Do you call it the day you’re listing it the day before, three days later? What’s exactly your routine?
Spring Cutsforth (10:48):
It’s really great. So it’s more the just listed, just sold are more random. Our business has been built on expired listings. So as you guys know, there’s times in the year where we have a lot of expired listings and there’s times in the year that we have less. So during times that we have less, we’ll make more just listed, just sold calls, right. Because they’re not as hot of a lead as say maybe an expired or for sale by owner versus in the months where we have huge amounts of expireds, we’ll be focused on getting through every one of those first before we move to the just listed and just sold.
Carley Hathaway (11:22):
Okay, got it. That makes sense. And it’s working for you guys obviously.
Spring Cutsforth (11:26):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Carley Hathaway (11:27):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (11:28):
You want to go where they want to sell, they’re actually marketing, they want to sell their home and-
Carley Hathaway (11:33):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (11:33):
Who better to help them, right?
Carley Hathaway (11:35):
Yeah, definitely. And then what’s your follow-up process?
Spring Cutsforth (11:39):
Follow-up. So really great Carley, that is my weak link. So what’s interesting… And what’s important I think in business is to understand what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are.
Carley Hathaway (11:49):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (11:50):
So I kind of laugh because I love… Give me a big stack of hay and I will consistently go pull out the needles in the stack of hay.
Carley Hathaway (12:00):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (12:01):
What’s interesting, that’s fun for me, I love to do that. I’d love to get on the phone and box with the sellers-
Carley Hathaway (12:06):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (12:07):
But then once I get the hot ones, the ones are like, “Yes, come lets meet this afternoon or let’s meet on Friday.” Once I get those, I have all this stack of hot stuff that, “Oh I got to talk to my husband and stuff.” I totally dropped the ball. And what we’re doing is we’re putting measures in place so that Courtney is now going to actually help start doing some of the follow-up for me calling back through saying, “Yeah, I wanted to go ahead and set an appointment where you could get together whispering, we can help you get your homes sold.” So it’s funny, we just went through a stack of leads and we checked status on them and I think there was something, I don’t know, there was like $400,000 worth of business sitting there-
Carley Hathaway (12:45):
Wow.
Spring Cutsforth (12:47):
That we literally, didn’t follow-up on.
Carley Hathaway (12:49):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (12:51):
I have a big sign, if you could see, it says 70% of business comes from lead follow-up. So I recognize it’s not the thing that I enjoy doing. I love getting program in place, so we’ll have that taken care of.
Carley Hathaway (13:06):
Yeah. Well good. At least sounds like you have a plan though, so that’s most important.
Spring Cutsforth (13:10):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Carley Hathaway (13:11):
Yeah. Good.
Spring Cutsforth (13:13):
Yeah, for sure. It’s fine.
Carley Hathaway (13:15):
Should we-
Ren Jones (13:15):
We, so simple system, so if you guys get some really simple systems that you adhere to, you’re going to pick up a lot of money. Is that the challenge?
Spring Cutsforth (13:27):
I think Ren, this business can be so complicated if you make it.
Ren Jones (13:33):
Yeah, I know.
Spring Cutsforth (13:34):
You’ve got to keep the ego out of it and you’ve got to just keep it super simple and super streamlined. It’s not complicated. The more simple… I mean our lead follow-up is as simple as… We have a notebook and we have one through 30 and January through December we get a lead. They go in that notebook and every day we just go through and we pull those out.
Ren Jones (13:57):
Okay.
Spring Cutsforth (13:58):
Super simple. It’s not complicated. We can take them on the road with us, we can take them if we’re driving to expireds and we’ve got three or four appointments today, we can still do our leads on the road. So-
Carley Hathaway (14:07):
Oh, that’s smart.
Ren Jones (14:08):
That sounds like in a funny way, it sounds like that’s where all your growth is going to come from over the next two years. Just lead follow-up.
Carley Hathaway (14:14):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (14:14):
Absolutely.
Carley Hathaway (14:15):
I like how you take them on the road with you and just call as you’re driving or if you get to a house a little early or something like that, that’s smart.
Spring Cutsforth (14:22):
But what’s great Carley, if we get to a house a little bit early and we actually try to do that, we try and give enough time in between appointments, what we actually do is I’ve started going and talking to the neighbors in the immediate area of where my appointment is and just saying, “Hey, I’m talking to your neighbor about listing their home. I was just wondering, do you happen to know of any buyers? I mean here’s your chance to pick your neighbors.” “Do you know any family members or friends that want to move into the area?” Actually it’s a way to help differentiate myself against all the other realtors because a seller’s like, “What in the world is she doing?” She’s dressed in a suit, she’s all dressed up, it’s hot and she’s out talking to my neighbors. So in this day it really is about differentiating ourselves.
Carley Hathaway (15:05):
Yeah, sounds like it. That’s a great, great idea.
Spring Cutsforth (15:08):
Yeah.
Carley Hathaway (15:08):
And let me ask you, how long is your typical listing presentation?
Spring Cutsforth (15:12):
It really varies. It’s not long Again, I was trained by Mike Ferry. A lot of times you walk in, you ask the three simple questions and if they say yes, great, let’s get right to it. When I pre-qualify a listing, before I go on an appointment, once it’s set, we’ll go do all of the work, we’ll do the pricing and then we call back and we pre-qualify them and we use Mike Ferry’s scripts and for all of you out there, if you don’t have scripts, go to Mike Ferry, the scripts are free, got them all on his website, start role-playing, practicing, get to know those scripts. So we pre-qualify. So we are already in our mind, are really probing them for price. We’re trying to figure out what their objections are. So we pretty much know that going in.
Carley Hathaway (15:56):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (15:56):
So then we just simply… It’s like great, let’s get the contract signed. A lot of times we’re actually just DocuSigning paperwork. I never actually go meet with a seller, a lot of times don’t even see the home.
Carley Hathaway (16:08):
Nice.
Ren Jones (16:08):
You pre-qualify so well that many times you’re going in and you’re asking what you said something about asking him three questions and then-
Spring Cutsforth (16:16):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ren Jones (16:16):
They move forward?
(16:18):
What are those three questions?
Carley Hathaway (16:20):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (16:20):
So they’re right out of Mike Ferry-
Ren Jones (16:22):
Oh, okay.
Spring Cutsforth (16:22):
Right. Yes. So the three questions on his… he’s got a three… What is it, a one-minute listing presentation.
Ren Jones (16:27):
Okay.
Spring Cutsforth (16:28):
So when do you absolutely have to sell your home?
Ren Jones (16:32):
Yes.
Spring Cutsforth (16:33):
Fantastic. Are you willing to price your home to get it sold?
Ren Jones (16:38):
Well within reasons.
Spring Cutsforth (16:39):
Fantastic. So you’ll price it within reason. Let me ask you a question, Ren, do you feel comfortable with me handling the sale for you?
Ren Jones (16:47):
Well, I think so.
Spring Cutsforth (16:50):
You think so? Great. So you didn’t answer. Yes, yes, yes. Normally when I get there I’ve pre-qualified my sellers so well that it’s yes, yes, yes. Not all the time-
Ren Jones (16:58):
Okay.
Spring Cutsforth (16:58):
But I would say probably a third, say yes, yes, yes. And then I just go right for the close. I pull the paperwork out, let’s do this. So now in your case you were like, “Well you to price it accordingly.” Now that tells me we need to pull some comparables out and we need to talk about price.
Ren Jones (17:15):
I mean very few agents watching this do that. It’s a long hour and a half long show.
Carley Hathaway (17:20):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (17:23):
Well I learned something really early on. If the sellers could do business without us, they would. If they could take a pill and just have us go away and get their home sold, they absolutely would.
Carley Hathaway (17:32):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (17:33):
People anymore tend to stay to themselves. They don’t really like, “Oh now there’s somebody else to deal with more stuff. Literally, if they could… They want it to be simple. They don’t care if you’ve got dogs or cats. They really don’t. They just want their home sold. And then what ends up happening, they do business with you because you’re a professional. And then what happens is then they found out that you do have goats. Right? And they like, “Oh that’s so cute.” You build the relationship once you’ve got the business, you don’t go in, going list with me because I’ve got dogs and cats. So-
Carley Hathaway (18:04):
Yeah, agree.
Spring Cutsforth (18:05):
Absolutely.
Carley Hathaway (18:06):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (18:06):
For sure.
Carley Hathaway (18:07):
And-
Ren Jones (18:09):
You have a well honed listing business. I mean, well honed your presentation, your pre-qualify, everything is just… It’s a process.
Spring Cutsforth (18:16):
Absolutely, it is.
Ren Jones (18:18):
And it doesn’t sound like it takes a whole lot of time. You have a lot of agents that will go to the house, meet with them, look around, come back, go to the house again, make a presentation, come back, go back again to discuss it a little further. Maybe sign something, maybe not.
Spring Cutsforth (18:32):
Yeah. And the more… Here’s the real truth, the more time you spend talking to or at a seller, the less chance you have of getting the transaction, the less you say. And it really is about when you can distinguish and recognize that what people do is they talk at people. People don’t want to be talked at. The whole presentation is just a series of questions. It’s almost like I take myself out of the equation. So with you, Ren, let’s say you wanted to sell your home. This has nothing to do with me. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. So it’s all about you. I am curiously engaged about you, what your goals are, what your plans are, what your timelines are, and whether or not I have the skills and the ability to help you make that happen.
Ren Jones (19:26):
How refreshing. Yeah. A lot of those people go in and pitch and leave.
Carley Hathaway (19:31):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (19:32):
They have no idea who they’re talking to.
Spring Cutsforth (19:32):
Exactly.
Ren Jones (19:32):
That’s exciting.
Spring Cutsforth (19:35):
And what happens is you’re talking at someone and then they just… There’s nothing… That’s, that whole thing of being able to be with people and be curious to engage. And it doesn’t start the appointment, it starts way back when we’re on the phone dialing. You’ve got to be curious, engaged and put yourself aside.
Carley Hathaway (19:53):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (19:53):
So-
Ren Jones (19:55):
Let’s go do a little Q and A. Andrew Faria, seven networks asking… Well, it’s kind of like a three-part question and I think he probably got some of the answers to this. Watching this show says, “How do you compete with agents who are fed listings from the broker?” “How do you maintain momentum in a slow market?” “What is it you find causing your success to constantly cause you to list and sell?” I think it’s your morning routine, isn’t it?
Spring Cutsforth (20:21):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And here’s the thing… So it’s… For some people it’s all about ego. It’s about having their name on the big billboards and being on the radio shows and all of that. For me, it’s about, at the end of the day, making a difference for buyers and sellers and actually helping them like have their real estate dreams come true, whatever that looks like. And for me, at the end of the day, I’m running a business, I’m a business owner and it’s about the bottom line and making a profit. So these people that are spending thousands of dollars buying all these leads and then everybody’s got the… I mean, it’s all ego driven. So that’s a piece of one of the three part questions that he had.
Ren Jones (21:03):
Or it’s fear. Most of them don’t want to actually have to call somebody, they’re embarrassed. They’d rather have that person call them.
Spring Cutsforth (21:11):
Ren, it’s really great you brought that up because the reason they’re embarrassed is they just don’t know what to say.
Carley Hathaway (21:16):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (21:17):
They haven’t learned how to become a great salesperson. And I don’t care what you do in the world. If you want to get married, if you’re going to have…. you better be a good salesperson, right?
Carley Hathaway (21:26):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (21:27):
If you want to get married, you better start prospecting. I know.
Spring Cutsforth (21:32):
I found mine. I got a good one.
Ren Jones (21:34):
There you go. Are you doing any door knocking at all?
Spring Cutsforth (21:38):
I don’t. Other than when I’m just around a listing, a listing appointment just because it’s not for me. I look at what I make per hour and so I can make so many more contacts on the phone that it really just doesn’t make sense for me to door knock. Besides that, I don’t like to get all sweaty.
Ren Jones (21:57):
I get that. So we have a question about in the circle area of circle prospecting. Some people call and say here’s an opportunity to pick your neighbors. He said, he’s aware of that script, but he goes,”How do you stand out?” Because a lot of people use that script. When you’re doing circle prospecting, how do you stand out? What’s your approach with circle prospecting?
Spring Cutsforth (22:18):
So great question, and here’s the thing that I’d like to say to that person is that even though… Let’s say you’re using the script and I’m using the identical script, when both you and I call that particular seller or that customer, we are both… They’re not going to be able to distinguish for the most part that we’re actually using the same script because we’ve each internalized that and we’re going to go with it. When you get to know the script, like I said, you don’t go A, B, C, you can actually dance in the conversation. So the seller can say, “Well I’m never going to sell.” And I go, “Oh my gosh, that’s fantastic. You’re going to stay here forever. Is that what I’m hearing you say?” And they’re going to be like, “Yeah.” So I’m going to say, “Great. So I’m just curious, have you ever had a dream, if you were to go move somewhere, tell me where would that be?” So I can dance in the conversation. So it might be the same script, the consumer’s never going to recognize it.
Carley Hathaway (23:13):
Mm-hmm (affirmative)And you speak-
Ren Jones (23:16):
And that’ll work well.
Carley Hathaway (23:17):
Yeah. And you seem to speak with more empathy towards them rather than, like you said, speaking at them. So I think they’re going to open up to you quicker.
Spring Cutsforth (23:25):
Yeah. You just got to actually listen if you can get… If people get that you actually care. And how you do that is when they say something, you actually want to recreate their conversation. Like, “Oh my goodness, I got you are so upset this morning. Your phone, it sounds like it’s been ringing off the hook since 7:30 this morning with realtors. It sounds like you’ve just been absolutely bombarded how frustrating. I really get how upset you are.” And they’re like, “Wow, somebody actually heard what I said” versus just bombarding with the next question.
Carley Hathaway (23:59):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (24:00):
That will soften it nicely. That will.
Spring Cutsforth (24:02):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (24:02):
Art Mcgivern wants to know… Are you working seven days a week, or what’s it looked like for you?
Spring Cutsforth (24:10):
No-
Ren Jones (24:10):
Holidays? midnight?
Spring Cutsforth (24:12):
Yeah, great question. So I absolutely love what I do and if it were up to me, I probably would work seven days a week. But no, I don’t work. I don’t seven days a week and I will scatter my days. I might take a Wednesday off and then come in on and prospect on a Saturday or a Sunday. I’ll do appointments on a Saturday, but I try and block my work. So if I’m going to do appointment, I’m going to do three or four of them to make it worth my time.
Carley Hathaway (24:34):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (24:35):
And it’s one of the things, I’ve also done is coming back to dialing one night a week. So normally Monday nights I will dial expireds, anybody I didn’t catch earlier-
Ren Jones (24:43):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (24:44):
And I’ll catch everybody from the weekend. The other thing is that I’ll come in Saturday morning and or Sunday morning and catch those expireds really early.
Carley Hathaway (24:53):
Oh, that’s smart. Because I bet a lot of agents are doing that. Less competition.
Spring Cutsforth (24:57):
Yes. Very effective.
Carley Hathaway (24:58):
Yeah. It sounds like you’re going on a lot of listing appointments. Are you setting out pre-listing packet?
Spring Cutsforth (25:06):
So what we create… We do have… So it’s so funny, this is what I was saying, the market’s changing. What we have, is we have a program… We have an online, not online, it’s a-
Carley Hathaway (25:17):
Digital?
Spring Cutsforth (25:17):
… PDF. Yeah. I’m not real technical. I’m really good at selling. We have PDFs that we actually email. We actually video… We send a short video along so they can just actually see who I am, what my mannerisms are, and get a sense of who I am and who would be showing up at their door and who they’d be working with. So we try to always get an email and then send the information that way. There are some people that just don’t do email and we do have written material that we will mail them.
Carley Hathaway (25:46):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (25:46):
Yeah.
Carley Hathaway (25:47):
And what is your video you’re sending? Is it just kind of introducing yourself and…
Spring Cutsforth (25:51):
Absolutely. So we’ve got an introduction video that just kind of says who we are, what we do, how long we’ve been doing it, our track record, what you can expect from working with us. And then we’ve got the day one in Vulcan, we have the day one expired video that we sent to all the expireds, day one of the expired. So yeah, we’re just having fun with it. Again, times are changing. You’ve got to be alive, you’ve got to be awake, you’ve got to be paying attention and looking for new ways to grab business.
Ren Jones (26:22):
Yeah. I guess video’s no longer an option. It’s kind of mandatory now, isn’t it?
Spring Cutsforth (26:26):
I think video reaction-
Ren Jones (26:27):
I think it’s really successful.
Spring Cutsforth (26:27):
I hate to say this because we started doing videos honestly about five, maybe seven years ago. I think videos are actually kind of a thing of the past.
Ren Jones (26:37):
Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (26:38):
I think that… I hate to say that-
Ren Jones (26:39):
So we’re going back to chalkboards now.
Spring Cutsforth (26:44):
No, I don’t think we’re going back to chalkboards, but I actually think that videos are kind of worn out.
Ren Jones (26:48):
Okay.
Spring Cutsforth (26:48):
But I did, I wanted to bring up a good point is that with our past client, for example, being in the business as long as I have, I’ve got a huge past client database. But what we’re finding is what we used to do to keep in touch with them is not enough. Because what’s happening is social media, all of these other avenues are… They’re stepping in and they’re getting our customers’ attention before we do. So one of the things that I’m really present that’s really changing is that you’ve got to be willing to get attention, so that person in your city such that anytime anybody thinks about doing real estate, they’ve got to think, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got to call Spring.”
Carley Hathaway (27:31):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (27:33):
Is that make sense?
Carley Hathaway (27:34):
Definitely. Yeah.
Spring Cutsforth (27:35):
Yeah. You’ve got to be the go-to. And so then your marketing becomes… Or your whole ploy is, how can I be the go-to in my city? What specific actions can I take? And that’s really going to define as we move forward in the next couple years, it’s really going to define and make a difference for those that are still in the market when it starts tightening up.
Carley Hathaway (27:57):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Spring Cutsforth (28:00):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (28:01):
Eric wants to know. Do you send comps, contract net sellers worksheet ahead to your clients? What do you send?
Spring Cutsforth (28:09):
Nope. Just a quick… So we’ll email, it’s just some information about us, our track record, how many homes we’ve sold, all of that. We don’t send any pricing ahead of time. We’ll have a dialogue about it in the pre-qualification script. Again, if you’re not familiar with that, go to Mike Ferry, grab the script.
Carley Hathaway (28:28):
Okay. Alan seems to be asking a lot. He’s really interested in your day one video, your day one expired video, what you sent to them. Do you use a script, or can you quickly just give us a little example?
Spring Cutsforth (28:39):
Yeah, so I just say something like, oh my goodness. So “Spring Cutsforth for Spring Cutsforth Realty Group. By now you’ve realized your home has expired, you’ve been inundated with calls. I know they’re calling you, they’re over talking you.” So we kind of go through that and we talk about was your home on the market. It didn’t sell. You had a dream. And then we just talk about in Portland, it’s important to know your numbers. In Portland, we’ve got about 6,400 licensed realtors and-
Spring Cutsforth (29:07):
5,000 of those didn’t even close the deal last year. So we just kind of get them up to speed on the numbers and then we just talk about specifically what we do. We’d love the opportunity to earn their business, love the opportunity to meet with them, promise to be a hundred percent honest right up front with the price and what it’s going to take to actually get your home sold, what we’re going to do. So it’s short, sweet.
Carley Hathaway (29:29):
Great. And you send that after you’ve made the phone call and spoke to them, or you just send it to everyone?
Spring Cutsforth (29:35):
So if I talk to them, absolutely. Then I say, “Great, let me get your email. I’m going to send it that way.” It’s now a soft and I’ll say, “Hi Mark, great talking with you today. Right. Excited about the opportunity to potentially earn your business.” And if I don’t get them, and all I do is leave a voicemail and Vulcan is really great about giving me good emails, I’m noticing the emails I’m getting are actually great.
Ren Jones (29:55):
They are good ones.
Carley Hathaway (29:56):
Yeah. They’re good.
Spring Cutsforth (29:58):
They are the good ones. And so now I send that video to everyone if I didn’t get them as well.
Carley Hathaway (30:03):
And you send it the same day that it when expired?
Spring Cutsforth (30:05):
Absolutely.
Carley Hathaway (30:06):
Gotcha.
Spring Cutsforth (30:07):
The earlier, the better. Yes.
Ren Jones (30:09):
You did such an endorsement of Mike Ferry that Andrew goes, “You work for Mike Ferry?”
Spring Cutsforth (30:17):
You know what’s funny is I coached for Mike. I don’t-
Ren Jones (30:20):
Did you do that?
Spring Cutsforth (30:22):
I coached for Mike. I was one of his head coaches for about five years, Ren.
Ren Jones (30:25):
Oh, wow. I didn’t know that. Okay. That’s great.
Spring Cutsforth (30:28):
When he had the business planning and we were creating one-on-one and the whole dirty dozen.
Ren Jones (30:32):
There are a lot of people that are very loyal to whatever their coaching company is, and we have people from several that are watched this show and it’s-
(30:40):
An endorsement of the system that works very, very, very, very long. So-
Carley Hathaway (30:45):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (30:46):
This has been a great show, an exciting show, and I hope people will send Spring some business as a thank you and also to do some business with her would be a lot more fun.
Spring Cutsforth (30:54):
Let’s do it.
Ren Jones (30:56):
I think so. I’d need to do my spot here on, so if you’re watching on Vulcan7, you want to get involved with the people that air our show on Facebook. It’s called Lead Gen Scripts and Objections. What a great place. They’re at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections and want to thank Aaron Wittenstein who hosts that, he has a program called TrajectoryNow.com. And if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not involved with Vulcan7, imagine that, you can sign up at Vulcan7.com/leadgen for a very special deal. And finally, if like Spring, you are starting at 8:00 and talking to people and looking for business and signing listing contracts and making presentation and handling objections and it’s lunchtime and you’ve done your job, it’s time to relax, go to the freezer, get some delicious Greater’s mint chocolate chip, available to store near you all over North America. Just go to greaters.com and find that delicious mint chocolate chip. Only the mint chocolate chip helps you get listed. The other flavors might be for buyers, but with chocolate chips, if you bury it upside down in the front yard, the listing will sell.
Carley Hathaway (32:23):
That was a great show. I learned so much awesome information. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Spring Cutsforth (32:28):
Yeah, thank you, Carley. Really great. Thanks for having me. It’s been a real great opportunity.
Carley Hathaway (32:32):
Awesome.
Spring Cutsforth (32:33):
Thanks.
Carley Hathaway (32:34):
We’ll see you soon. Bye.
Spring Cutsforth (32:35):
Sounds good.
Ren Jones (32:37):
Bye-Bye everybody.
Spring Cutsforth (32:38):
Bye guys.
Ren Jones (32:41):
Your coffee looks good.
Spring Cutsforth (32:43):
Yeah, thank you. It is good.