Fourteen Roadmap guests on what actually fills a listing pipeline

Ren Jones00:02

Welcome to Roadmap. How to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a great agent, consistently taking 2, 3, 4 listings a week. And we have these season three highlights show.

Sarah Close00:15

All the good stuff.

Ren Jones00:16

That’s it, that’s true. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can. And then use the copycat principle. We have an exciting show folks. Before I introduce my co-host, I want to remind everybody we’re simulcasting the show also on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook. They have 51,000 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, let me welcome my co-host, from here in Cincinnati, and she does all our highlight shows. Welcome back, Sarah Close.

Sarah Close00:50

Thanks for having me back. This is really fun.

Ren Jones00:51

Glad you’re back. And Sarah does a heck of a lot of things. You’re the operating principal for and own a lot of the Keller Williams in Southern Ohio, Cincinnati, Dayton, and all the surrounding areas. Several offices. How many agents now?

Sarah Close01:06

Right about 550.

Ren Jones01:08

550. I think it’s moved up since last time.

Sarah Close01:10

That’s a good thing.

Ren Jones01:11

That is a good thing. And the other companies are going down, shrinking. Well, too bad for them.

Sarah Close01:16

Too bad for them.

Ren Jones01:16

That’s too bad. And then you have a team, real estate team. And what’s the goal for sales this year? The

Sarah Close01:22

Goal for sales this year is about 200 units. We might be a little bit short, but we’re working on it.

Ren Jones01:26

Okay. Short, okay. But you’re going to bring it up.

Sarah Close01:30

Yeah, right.

Ren Jones01:31

You’re going to hit that 200.

Sarah Close01:33

We’re going to hit it.

Ren Jones01:34

So you make calls every day?

Sarah Close01:35

I do make calls every day.

Ren Jones01:36

She does what these folks do on our show. So that’s the exciting part. So what better co-host can you have than that?

Sarah Close01:43

Well, thanks for having me.

Ren Jones01:44

Right here, at Vulcan.

Sarah Close01:45

I love that I get the cliff notes version of all this too. It’s like a double bonus for me.

Ren Jones01:49

I know.

Sarah Close01:50

This is great. So thank you.

Ren Jones01:51

Just like everybody else, enjoy the cliff notes.

Sarah Close01:54

The red notes, we should call them. I get the red notes.

Ren Jones01:56

There we go.

Sarah Close01:56

We’re going to brand that.

Ren Jones01:57

I’m going to learn a lot too. All righty. So our first guest is Scottsdale, Arizona. He was in episode one, Adam Prather. Pretty new to the business. He’s only been in it two and a half years old. He’s going to hit at least 77 this year.

Sarah Close02:14

That’s fantastic.

Ren Jones02:16

So maybe 80 or 90. So he’s on a roll. Let’s take a look.

Adam Prather02:21

The biggest thing for me is I’m thinking profitability, I’m thinking profitability. So if I look at my past clients and my centers of influence, I probably can get a referral that I’m not going to have to compete for 1 every 40 calls. So that’s a highly profitable call and all these people like me, so just keep calling them. That’s a huge return on the amount of time invested that you’re putting in.

Ren Jones02:48

So that’s a wonderful thing when you look at calling your database and calling your sphere and the people and they know you, and he talks to 40 and he gets a transaction. And a lot of that’s future business. So it’s really not 1 out of 40, it’s probably 1 out of 15, or 1 out of 20.

Sarah Close03:02

It probably is. And then that’s building that pipeline. And when the fruit’s to be picked, it’s going to be that much easier for him down the road.

Ren Jones03:11

And then out of the blue. You talk to him on Thursday and then 12 weeks later, they’re ready.

Sarah Close03:18

Yeah, to come list me.

Ren Jones03:19

That’s right, that’s right.

Sarah Close03:20

That’s fantastic.

Ren Jones03:21

And it’s not as competitive on the listing presentation.

Sarah Close03:23

Which is really critical right now when we have as much competition as we have for inventory.

Ren Jones03:27

I know. They’re flying over in helicopters. They are. And lowering down on a rope to the chimney. There we go. Good deal. Well, let’s see what, Dusty Cole in Orange Beach, Alabama, right there near the Florida line. This one’s Florida too. Beach country. It’s all about old expireds.

Dusty Cole03:48

And the strip would be, do you still own such and such property or did you ever sell it?

Carley Hathaway03:56

Okay. Just finding, and I found that works too. You just, “What happened to this,” And they tell their story, and then from there you’re in report. You can…

Dusty Cole04:04

They just tell you, and it’s really not that hard.

Carley Hathaway04:08

Those old expireds are gold.

Dusty Cole04:10

What I love about Vulcan is you build this huge bulk of them over time. And so all the new ones become old and you have this huge bank.

Ren Jones04:21

And that’s the case. And Sarah, by the way, was our first customer in Vulcan 7, April 9th, 2011. Something like that. And-

Sarah Close04:31

Number, number, 001.

Ren Jones04:31

Number, 001. And so when you look in there at the old expireds, they’ve been accumulating and he was talking about how they just accumulate and they build up, and they build up, and they build up. And these people are going to move, more likely, that is the group to work, because-

Sarah Close04:46

Well, if you think about it, they’ve actually taken the time at some point in the past to have said, made it made enough of an effort to want to move to actually put their house on the market. And very rarely does that circumstance change unless there was a job thing or a family thing. Normally that seed was planted and it’s just a matter of time before it sprouts. And what’s neat about those is it’s like for sale by owners where when it first comes on the market, everyone’s all over. Well then when you’re making the fifth, sixth, seventh call, you’re now only maybe one of five agents, then you’re one of four agents, then you’re one of suddenly one agent. And it’s the same thing with the old expireds.

Ren Jones05:19

And it’s a friendlier call. And unlike those for sale by owners, they know they need an agent, because they had one before.

Sarah Close05:26

Exactly. Exactly. Now that’s a great source.

Ren Jones05:28

Very, very friendly calls. And if you’re low and you need some old expireds, because you’re newer to the system, give us a call we’ll get you set up. Those are gold.

Sarah Close05:40

Absolutely.

Ren Jones05:41

So we have a lot of people in this next… Lady, Kathy Welch from Omaha, Nebraska is doing really well with calling around. Mainly I have a buyer for your neighborhood, because we’re in that kind of market. We’re in-

Sarah Close05:56

They’re list, she’s listing her buyers.

Ren Jones05:59

In 2018 right now. There’s a bidding war that sells and then they still want the neighborhood. They didn’t get that house, but they still want the neighborhood. So that’s like shooting fish in a barrel from my experience every time I’ve ever done it. Let’s watch a version of that.

Kathy Welch06:15

I have a buyer that wants to live your neighborhood. I had an offer and had two more offers on the house a peace. People didn’t get the house. And are you thinking about two sad families that want to live in your neighborhood? Are you interested in selling?

Ren Jones06:30

And the head rate on that goes so high. If you truly have somebody that wants to live in a neighborhood, and there’s a lot of that going on now, because they would like to buy something, but there’s nothing for sale. And you call through that neighborhood and you’re very specific with the call. The yield on that is so high. You talk to a hundred people, you’re going to find one or two or three people that are open to putting together a deal. So it works.

Kathy Welch06:54

Absolutely well, yeah.

Ren Jones06:55

So that’s the trick. You just call through the neighborhood and you’re going to get… It’s rare not to get a hit on that.

Sarah Close07:03

Absolutely. What’s interesting about it too is that you get a two for one, because you can then show your buyer what you are doing over and above what another agent would’ve done to service them as far as getting them the listing they want, besides finding a listing opportunity for yourself. So that’s a double whammy.

Ren Jones07:18

And we’re supposed to be doing that. We’re supposed to help them find it. And if there’s a shortage of inventory-

Sarah Close07:24

You got to get on it.

Ren Jones07:24

Yes. Creates the sale, create the sale. Good deal. We’re going to go over to probates. We have more, and more, and more, and more of our clients doing probate. They’re either calling probate-

Sarah Close07:36

Some because we’re all getting so old. No, I’m just kidding.

Ren Jones07:38

No, people are dying to list. So our camera person’s enjoying it. Calling estate, attorneys that specialize in settling estates and probate and such, and life estates and planning and blah, blah, blah. And cultivating a relationship with those people as well as calling. And there are a lot of services. We have one listed with us. We’re going to be continuing to expand in the area in probate, because it’s all listing business. And that’s a good fit. So this guy, he’s in Marin, San Francisco, Sonoma, works that whole area. And one of the things, the scripts in the dialogues are very different than you would use for an expired for sale owner just listed to sold. So he touches on that.

Sarah Close08:29

Okay. Terrific.

Ren Jones08:30

Has its own set of dialogues.

Sarah Close08:32

All right, great.

Bill Byrd08:33

Once you make the initial contact and the questions are way different than if you were expired and you were going to find out how motivated they were, you’re not asking that. You’re asking who’s responsible for the this. Trust and even if there is one person responsible for the trust, you want to know if anyone’s influencing their decision. So you want to get everybody in there.

Ren Jones08:57

And a lot of the things he does in his listing presentation and his pre-listing packets, very different. All the services, because people have no idea what they need, the different services that he provides, in that process. And there are several. And you want to know who the biggest competitor is.

Sarah Close09:09

Who?

Ren Jones09:10

It’s not necessarily other agents working probate because so few people do. The biggest competitor is the investor that thinks they’re going to go in and pick up wholesale.

Sarah Close09:21

Oh, that’s very interesting.

Ren Jones09:22

So they’re competing and they have to warn him to say, you’re going to have investors come out of the woodwork and want to offer you 15, 20% below market value. Be careful.

Sarah Close09:32

Well, and he gives himself some specialization by being able to be the person that then can tell them what the value really is. So I think he probably has a lot of folks willing to meet with him just to get that knowledge at least initially. And that opens the door for him to be able to lay out his value proposition.

Ren Jones09:48

And all the services along the way, because some of these houses are still furnished and whatnot. Give them names of people that specialize in all the areas of the steps to get it ready.

Sarah Close09:57

It’s a big project.

Ren Jones09:58

It is.

Sarah Close09:58

Oh, that’s fantastic.

Ren Jones09:59

And it’s all, they have people that do it. They’re there by themselves, a lot of times.

Sarah Close10:06

Oh, that’s great.

Ren Jones10:07

So one of the things that happens, and we see it every year, is, and you see this, agents, they come off of Christmas and they hit January and they’re like, “I got to get some business,” and nobody’s there. And they work really hard, and somewhere around May, and June, and July, they stop looking for business-

Sarah Close10:25

Because they start servicing.

Ren Jones10:29

They’re like, “I’m full. I’m full.” And then they don’t look for business until September, the day after Labor Day. And then they look until Halloween and then they stop.

Sarah Close10:37

Yep. Realtor holiday.

Ren Jones10:40

Which is crazy. So the consistency is how you get to that next level. And our friend Aaron Wittenstein was doing a show up at Westchester.

Sarah Close10:49

Right, that was great.

Ren Jones10:51

Your Westchester office. And here’s a little clip on consistency.

Sarah Close10:58

Fantastic.

Aaron Wittenstein10:59

Yeah. So what it comes down to is just the flat on consistency of everything. And it’s like no matter what, I don’t know if everybody knows, we’ll get into that probably a little bit later. The thing is, every single day I’m coming in and I’m doing my job. All right. My job is lead generation. My career is real estate and my job is lead generation. So now I have a team of five of us now, three of us agents are on the phone every morning at 8:00. We dial from 8:00 to 11:00 every single day, because at the end of the day, you’ve got to do the consistency, because what will happen is people will start doing this, that, and whatever. They’re like, “I got to negotiate this deal. I got to enter this listing, I got to do that.” Everything can wait until after 11:00. So I’m curious, out of everybody who’s sitting there, I can at least see 9 or 10 of you guys. How many of you guys are actually lead generating on a regular basis? Raise your hand. Be honest. One of you, two of you?

Ren Jones11:47

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

Aaron Wittenstein11:51

Okay, got it.

Ren Jones11:51

So about five of them.

Aaron Wittenstein11:53

Okay. So what it comes to, it’s consistency. It’s consistency, consistency, consistency. Ren always calls 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. And that’s where I will tell you that I’m better than most, is that I come hell or high water, five days a week, maybe every now and then. Like Monday, I was sick, so I didn’t come in five days a week. I’m in here doing my phone calls, 8:00 to 11:00 every day. So that’s where my opinion, what’s most important.

Ren Jones12:24

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

Aaron Wittenstein12:41

Well, I’ve got a team in place, so I got two busy about, God, what was it? Two years? Last year. So I hired Priscilla, she’s my operations manager, assistant, whatever you want to call her over there. So she takes over everything, absolutely everything for me. She’s an absolute machine. She takes all my phone calls, she takes 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 was enough money to cover her for three months, and she made me her money back tenfold, within the first year.

Ren Jones13:13

Yeah, the return, you’re either saving $20 an hour, by being your own assistant, or you’re making 200 and $250 an hour by hiring somebody and paying somebody $20 to… It’s tenfold, the amount of money you make back hiring somebody.

Sarah Close13:29

It is and what’s interesting, and I think where people sometimes get a little sideways is the feeling that, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to commit to a 30, $40,000 salary.” There’s really no need to do that when you’re just getting to the point where you need to have that additional leverage. There’s opportunities with transaction coordinators. He was talking about someone answering his phone. There’s all kinds of services that can answer your phone. So there’s a lot of ways to do it without taking that big leap if you don’t feel like you’re right there.

Ren Jones13:53

You don’t have to take the big leap. You and one other person in your office can commit to an $18,000 a year part-time person that works three and a half, four hours every morning, and now you’re committing to $900 a month.

Sarah Close14:10

And that’ll get you through that transition time.

Ren Jones14:13

Yeah.

Sarah Close14:13

Yeah. It’s great.

Ren Jones14:14

Because you’ll get that 900 bucks back pretty fast.

Sarah Close14:16

Absolutely.

Ren Jones14:17

If, if, if, if.

Sarah Close14:18

You use the time doing your job.

Ren Jones14:21

And you don’t do your assistance work for them.

Sarah Close14:24

Absolutely. Who’s next?

Ren Jones14:25

Who’s next? Who is next? And what’s on second? Yes. Next is, I can’t tell. How about that? Oh, from Hudson County. New Jersey and Jersey City, and all through there in that office. They’re office, Liberty Realty, they have a lot of strong agents.

Sarah Close14:45

Oh, that’s great.

Ren Jones14:45

And he talks about a little theme about how real estate is not a job. Well, you come into this, “I used to do this and I used to do this.” No, you have started a business. You have started a business.

Sarah Close14:58

Biggest mistake people make is not understanding that distinction.

Ren Jones15:01

He makes that point here.

Sarah Close15:02

Oh, excellent.

Michael Klein15:04

As far as tips to people out there that are either getting started or looking to grow, the first is remember that you do not have a job. And what I mean by that is I sometimes meet with new agents that come into our company, and the first question I ask them is, how many people are switching jobs? Or how many are starting their first job? And inevitably, everybody will raise their hand to one of those two questions. And I tell them that they should all actually leave, because selling real estate is not a job, it’s your own business. And unless you have the mentality of it’s your own business, then you don’t belong here, because nobody, your boss doesn’t care if you’re here. Nobody’s giving you a salary, nobody’s giving you benefits. So there has to be some type of self-motivation of wanting to succeed.

Ren Jones15:49

So what should they do? How do they self-motivate?

Michael Klein15:53

It’s a tough question for some people, but obviously you have to have a desire to want to go and improve where you’re at, both in life, in education, and in financial status. From there, talk to people that have already done it. Maybe mimic them, model them, be willing to work. Just because you see successful people doesn’t mean that they no longer work. I’m in the office every day between 6:45 and 7:00 AM and I don’t get home most days until 7:00, 7:30 PM

Ren Jones16:27

So when you’re starting it, when you’re starting this, and we see people that are able to pull back over time to where you’re working four, four and a half, five days a week and running a huge business. But when you start, you’re living and breeding that business. It’s your baby.

Sarah Close16:41

It is your baby.

Ren Jones16:43

And building it up and getting some traction. That’s a commitment when starting a new business.

Sarah Close16:48

Absolutely. It’s moving from being a self-employed person to being a business owner and actually making those decisions through that lens from the very beginning would save people years of frustration and reworking in their career, if they can start with that mindset he’s talking about. It’s a big point of distinction.

Ren Jones17:01

And some of the larger franchises in the United States really support that concept that it’s your business and how do we support you as your own unique business owner? Keller Williams, yours is quite that way.

Sarah Close17:17

It’s a business incubator, for lack of a better job.

Ren Jones17:19

It really is. They do a fabulous job.

Sarah Close17:21

Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Ren Jones17:23

So circling around all the different ways just listed, just sold, because there’s so many ways to create business. We can’t be a one trick pony, only call for sale owners. We have to work our way around.

Sarah Close17:37

So diversification source.

Ren Jones17:39

So from Portland, Oregon.

Sarah Close17:41

So the other side of the country.

Ren Jones17:42

Yeah. Doing a lot of just listed, just sold. And she does a nice little plug for us. I really like.

Sarah Close17:50

Are we going to watch yours twice because of the plug?

Ren Jones17:52

Yeah, we could just play it twice. Well, we did that with Bernie. We did that. He said all of our agencies use Vulcan 7 and we-

Sarah Close17:58

Say, “Rewind!”

Ren Jones18:00

I had to rewound it and played it a second time.

Sarah Close18:01

That’s all good.

Ren Jones18:03

Sure. So Spring Cutsforth for us.

Spring Cutsforth18:05

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. But just listed, just solds, what’s great is you’ll have to make more of those calls to get high quality leads, 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 Carly, I just got on Vulcan. I had been using the competitor, Redx, and I would say it, and I would dial hundreds of calls on the dialer. 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.

18:57You only need to download 25 because you’ll get plenty. And I’m like, “I don’t think so. I need a couple of hundred.” But then finally I thought, “Okay, I’ll just try it.” So it gave me 25. Oh, 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 Hathaway19:14

Oh, that’s great.

Spring Cutsforth19:15

And here’s what was so beautiful about it, you guys, is that I only got 25 records and it got two leads. So your data, I got to tell you, you guys are ahead of everybody else.

Ren Jones19:25

Yeah, that’s a new service for us. Vulcan 7 neighborhood search has only been out for six weeks. And 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 Hathaway19:42

Contacts.

Ren Jones19:43

Because everybody keeps answering.

Spring Cutsforth19:45

Exactly. I was so surprised.

Carley Hathaway19:47

Glad. I’m glad to hear that and thank you for that.

Spring Cutsforth19:49

Absolutely, absolutely. So that’s what that looks like. And it’s a real fruitful way, in a way, if you don’t have a ton of skills that you can get in and actually start making some calls.

Ren Jones20:02

And she’s absolutely right, because it’s wide open. It’s fairly friendly, unless you’re really saying crazy things. Those are friendly calls, for sale owners can be friendly sometimes, just listed, just sold are very, very friendly and old expireds are friendly. It’s only a fresh expired that’s a little hostile, then you need a high level of skill. So starting off at the shallow end of the pool, but you can live your life at the shallow end of the pool. I know a lot of people where they work, their spear just listed, just sold as their dominant money makers.

Sarah Close20:37

Well, and there’s a lot of, I think, apprehension about the idea of making a cold call. And this is the furthest thing from a cold call. You’re telling someone, you’re giving someone the gossip about some real estate activity in their area, and who doesn’t want that?

Ren Jones20:50

But it’s all in the approach. If you’re a little flat, you’re a little boring.

Sarah Close20:55

You can find that Gladys Kravitz though, that’s like a gold mine. There’s one in every neighborhood.

Ren Jones20:59

Oh yeah. Yeah. They’ll tell.

Sarah Close21:00

That’s awesome.

Ren Jones21:01

Yeah, they’ll tell you-

Sarah Close21:02

They’ll tell you it all.

Ren Jones21:03

Yeah. You got to use energy. Like Aaron Wittenstein. Remember that. Remember? Notice how slow he talks.

Sarah Close21:09

Yeah, he’s excited.

Ren Jones21:11

He is excited. He is excited.

Sarah Close21:13

All right. Who’s next?

Ren Jones21:14

Well, we’re going to talk about, this is interesting because in your franchise, I don’t want to just talk about Keller Williams all day long, but you won’t mind. The topic of showing agents came in, was especially promoted in the educational base and-

Sarah Close21:36

Exactly, with the emery model.

Ren Jones21:36

And part of the model is showing agents became in really strong and they’ve embraced it and they were sharing a little bit of the success they’ve had, because they’re KW down there. And here we go.

Sarah Close21:50

So who is Marilyn and Kim?

Ren Jones21:52

Marilyn Lair and her daughter Kim. Kim Goss, down in Dallas.

Marilyn Lair21:58

We have two staff and then Kim and I list, and then we’ve changed our model somewhat, because we now use showing agents. You want to describe?

Kim Goss22:15

Well, because of the numbers that Marilyn had just quoted you, we felt like we were missing out on, we had buyers agents, but that required a lot of management for us. And neither one of us took us away from trying to get listings. So we’ve switched the model to showing agents, and then we have showing agents for different areas, depending on where they’re looking. We meet with them, we go over the process and then tell them our skills are in understanding, value and negotiating. So then we pay actually $30 per home that the agent shows. And then the benefit of that is that we keep the business and we don’t tie ourselves up with showing homes.

Carley Hathaway23:09

That’s a great idea. What a great strategy.

Ren Jones23:11

That’s fantastic. Yeah,

Carley Hathaway23:14

That’s very smart-

Ren Jones23:15

That is one Of the things you want to develop your past client database, and if you turn that over to someone else, they end up leaving. The relationship was built with, a lot of times with that agent, and it’s hard to interrupt that. So this has been very successful for us, a way of trying to still work with the buyers, because about 70%, the people coming in are buyers here, but without taking up our time.

Sarah Close23:45

That’s great.

Ren Jones23:46

That is fantastic. Yeah. And it makes for a very simple operation. It is.

Sarah Close23:51

You’re essentially using a tour guide and then they’re keeping the more technical parts of the transaction, and then that’s giving them that time to build the relationship with the client, which gives them the referral business down the road.

Ren Jones24:01

Back in the conference room, “Well, ok you solve the five homes? Let’s talk about it and, great.”

Sarah Close24:05

“Which one are we buying?”

Ren Jones24:06

That’s it. That’s it. And Marilyn’s such an inspiration for her for several years. Here’s a well under her 80s and she’s on the cutting edge of everything.

Sarah Close24:15

She’s in her 80s?

Ren Jones24:16

Yeah.

Sarah Close24:17

That’s amazing.

Ren Jones24:19

I know. So this is one of those businesses you can do for your whole life all the way to well up there. So it can be a wonderful thing. Well see what surprises she has for us 10 years from now.

Sarah Close24:30

Yeah, no kidding.

Ren Jones24:31

That’ll be fun. Good. So we have from Chicago.

Sarah Close24:35

Chicago, Wendy City.

Ren Jones24:37

It is windy there sometimes, it is. So we have Sohail Salahuddin, and he’s on fire and his first clip talks about the process a lot of agents go through. They get started like, “Who do I call? What do I say?” And it doesn’t look pretty.

Sarah Close25:02

No, no, it doesn’t look pretty.

Ren Jones25:05

It doesn’t. And the best thing you can do is not stop over and analyze it. Just put your head down and call a lot of people, make a lot of mistakes and go through it. And he had a very good example of that here. So let’s look at Sohail’s…

Sohail Salahuddin25:21

Well, when I first started, I actually, I was coached. I didn’t know how to prospect and this was 2012 I think, or 2013. It took me a long time. 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 Vulcan 7 and a dialer. I was dialing by hand before.

Carley Hathaway25:59

Oh no.

Sohail Salahuddin26:01

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 it’ll follow up with a video from bonbon sending it to them. 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 Jones26:33

Got to start somewhere.

Sohail Salahuddin26:34

Yeah, absolutely. But the dialer, 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 pace 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?”

Ren Jones27:06

“Oh, they paid too much three years ago.” “Oh yeah, let me look at this one.” The dialer forces you to just-

Sohail Salahuddin27:13

It forces.

Ren Jones27:14

The gains.

Sohail Salahuddin27:15

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

Sarah Close27:20

Yeah. Makes a big difference.

Ren Jones27:21

Don’t think, just do. And Sohail said this, is a really good example. He’s doing like 150 sales now.

Sarah Close27:30

Well, and he started focused on listings, which is the key difference maker. That’s where people flush out of that system initially. They get in and they don’t know who to call or why to call them. And then they get like, “Oh, this isn’t working.” And then that’s why 8 out of 10 agents don’t keep their license after the first, what is it? 12 months. So the key is getting to that really focused part of your job that makes the most difference in what your ultimate production’s going to be. So that’s awesome.

Ren Jones27:54

It’s so easy to get off track. And his coach, to his credit, he had a coach that was sitting there going listings, listings, listings, listings, listings, listings, listings. And you’ve got a lot of agents with a good KWM coach that is driving that theme. They’re all about the listing inventory.

Sarah Close28:12

That’s where it is.

Ren Jones28:13

I know.

Sarah Close28:13

That’s where it’s at.

Ren Jones28:13

It is. That’s where it’s at.

Sarah Close28:16

Now we’ve got another clip from him. Tell me about this one.

Ren Jones28:19

We do. We do. So I added this clip because so many people have this idea, and I’m talking to a couple of you that you want to go meet these people and then become their best friend and have go have pizza with them. This is about being a friendly professional, not their friend. And this clip exemplifies that.

Sohail Salahuddin28:43

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 Jones29:05

Tell them what that is if you would, that would be helpful.

Sohail Salahuddin29:06

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 interrupt that pattern. When you come back, you take control of the conversation again.

Ren Jones29:24

And it’s important to have that leadership role in that process. And so many get off track.

Sarah Close29:30

He said that very well. Great way to make that distinction between a friendly professional and a friend who’s also a realtor. That’s really cool.

Ren Jones29:37

Exactly, because then they’re not going to take you seriously when you say, talk to them about reducing the price and very true. What they need to do before closing. And they’ll think of you as their buddy.

Sarah Close29:47

Well, and then they’ll think of you as their buddy that’s telling them they have an ugly baby when you have to tell them something that you don’t want to tell. And that makes a lot of sense. It’s a great point.

Ren Jones29:55

That’s it. We’re going to go a little closer to home. And I don’t know why not in your office, or maybe he is by now, is he this gentleman in your office? It’s Dayton, Ohio. She has an office there.

Sarah Close30:06

You’re going to have to help me out here. I think you have an introduction to make, just saying.

Ren Jones30:10

Here we go. So our next guest he make, he’s really good on a listing presentation. He went on, he was describing one worry, he was up against six people and it became a bidding war. “Well, list it for this high, and I’ll only charge you 4%.”

Sarah Close30:27

And I’ll make you breakfast four days a week.

Ren Jones30:31

That’s it. “I’ll come by and I’ll meet all the buyers there.” “Oh, shoot me.” So he makes some good points here. Bryan Ogletree, Dayton Ohio.

Bryan Ogletree30:45

And when you’re competing against multiple agents, I think the easiest thing to do is, number one, ask the seller, did you let everybody else know that there’s multiple agents coming in here? And then of course they said, “Yes, we did.” When you let the client know that, then it’s easy to lay the groundwork and say they’re trying to buy your business. They’re telling you a higher price to get you to try to get them to beat you up for a price reduction later. And that’s not what you’re looking for is it?

Ren Jones31:16

I wish I’d learned that dialogue a long time ago. because a lot of times you’re competing.

Sarah Close31:21

Well, And he’s obviously pre-qualifying because he has that information when he is going in there. So in the back of his mind when he’s walking into that meeting, he’s already got those scripts at front of mind to take someone through that navigation process. So that’s pretty cool.

Ren Jones31:34

I should have included it, but he did some sections of the listing presentation and it was canned. And I said, “So you’re telling me that canned presentation beat out the other five people?” And he goes, “Yeah,” and he goes, “most of the time.”

Sarah Close31:49

Pretty much every time.

Ren Jones31:50

We think we’re being, “Oh, I customize my presentation to each person.” You wing it. Come on, come on. You wing it.

Sarah Close31:58

Fancy way to say that you wing it. And not very well.

Ren Jones32:03

Not very well. And the numbers prove that, because a lot of these people that we interview are running 80 20 and they go on 10 appointments and they take eight. That’s very common.

Sarah Close32:13

It really is. It really is. And when you’ve got your listing presentation that’s solidly built into your brain, you can actually focus on what the client or prospective client is saying to you, and it enables you to actually have meaningful responses.

Ren Jones32:26

And you can listen.

Sarah Close32:27

Exactly. Exactly. Funny thing.

Ren Jones32:29

Yes, exactly.

Sarah Close32:31

Where are we going now?

Ren Jones32:32

So we are going to go to the beach. What the heck? We’re going to go to Virginia Beach. She’s on track to make her first million dollars in commissions. A million in commission, a million in commission. And she has a very strict discipline. Her mantra is like, “I do this every day,” and it reminded me of John Maxwell, who-

Sarah Close32:59

Right, the five things.

Ren Jones33:01

Every day, every day, every day. And so Anna says, anyone can do this as long as they’re doing the right thing. So really when you look at everything that all these interviews, it’s just a recipe. If you follow the recipe, you’re going to get the cakes.

Sarah Close33:15

Some very common threads.

Ren Jones33:16

So from Virginia Beach, Anna Paduhovich.

Anna Paduhovich33:21

My regime is very strict every morning. I do not deviate. I get up at 5:15, I work out, I have a power hour where I do some visualization, visualization. I write my goals down for the year for this year, five years and into the future. I have an accountability partner that I share those with every single day. And that takes me up to about 9:00 in the morning, once I’ve showered and everything. So I start prospecting at 9:00 AM I prospect with an accountability group via Google Hangout every day without fail from 9:00 to 12:00. My only job, every single day, is to make two qualified listing appointments. It’s all I’m responsible for every day. That really simplifies it for me. I’m analytical, so I tend to get overwhelmed in my head. So as simple as I can make things, my goal and my responsibility for my family and for the folks that work for me is to make two qualified listing appointments every single day.

Ren Jones34:21

There you go.

Sarah Close34:22

That simple.

Ren Jones34:23

That simple. Just two a day. What’s interesting is she was looking at how do I get to the next level to make that million dollars, and the way she’s doing it is moving her price point. So she’ll pick up an extra quarter of a million dollars in income just by moving her price.

Sarah Close34:40

By purposely moving her price point.

Ren Jones34:42

I love that.

Sarah Close34:43

That’s fantastic.

Ren Jones34:43

Yes. So we’re going to go down to Nashville, Tennessee, your friend and mine. We did the Tesla show down there a few weeks ago. And we’re going to talk to Mr. Bernie Gallerani, and his first clip is going to be a theme we heard a few clips earlier. Go ahead, Bernie.

Bernie Gallerani35:05

If you and I own any business, we were cutting grass, we were working a restaurant, we were plumbers or contractors. Our job is to get that business off the ground. It’s in its infant stage, it’s a child. We have to protect it and watch it grow and see the fruits of its labor through the effort we put into it. And the challenge with real estate agents today is they come in and going, “Well, I don’t want to work that hard.” Well, you’re starting a business, so you have to be able to go into that mindset, or that environment and have the right mindset that I’m going to put 3, 4, 5 hours every day on the phone. I’m going to do it six, seven days a week until this thing’s feeding me back an income that I’m fairly satisfied with. Then you want to take a day off. You take a day off.

Ren Jones35:51

Just like Michael Klein said, it’s a job. Not a job, it’s a business. And you have to just put your heart and soul into it until you start getting some traction.

Sarah Close36:01

I think one thing that happens is because our business is relatively low barriers to entry, I think that that’s almost a disservice, because if we had to fork over a million dollars like you do to open some franchises, our mindset would have to be in a lot of different place. The level of intensity and seriousness. So we almost do ourselves, I think, a disservice by the fact that it is relatively speaking, low barrier entry field.

Ren Jones36:25

So you could go back and take the bottom 10% off your agents now, right?

Sarah Close36:31

Yeah, well.

Ren Jones36:34

Just kidding.

Sarah Close36:35

Long as they’re selling.

Ren Jones36:37

So Bernie, by the way, Bernie’s goal this year is 450 transactions, not a small number. Not bad. And his long term goal is to hit a thousand, which may be another two or three years away, if that. So knowing him probably two years.

Sarah Close36:53

He’s got another clip here.

Ren Jones36:55

He has another clip, and the clip is discusses that we just need to pull back and study and internalize those scripts and learn the skills and master that recipe to be successful. We’ve got to put in the homework on that. And Bernie can say it best,

Bernie Gallerani37:13

Success isn’t convenient, it’s not going to show up when I want it to show up. It’s not going to show up because I say I want it. It’s only going to show up because I’m putting in the time and I have the right mindset towards it. So I know it’s frustrating for those that are listening, I’ll just say it this way. Take a step back. Learn the scripts and skills. Eliminate the time with buyers unless they want to buy. I think a good question for somebody that wants to make a transition is this. If somebody wants to buy a house right now, I want to buy in the next 7 to 14 days, work with them, cut everybody else out, refer it to somebody else. If somebody says, “Hey, I want, I’m flying into town from Wisconsin and I’m only going to be there one week,” and I have those clients come in, they’ll go, “I’m flying in. I want to look at these three houses. I’m going to buy something,” work with those people. If they’re not that, cut them out and spend that extra time working on listing property.

Sarah Close38:08

It’s great advice.

Ren Jones38:08

It is.

Sarah Close38:09

It’s great advice.

Ren Jones38:09

It is. And I’ve learned so much from him. You’ve been down there. Learned it. Every time I go down there, I learn a lot. And he’s making several man. And one day I’ll grow up and get there too. So we’re going to go up to-

Sarah Close38:26

We’re going up 75, aren’t we?

Ren Jones38:27

Yeah, we are. We’re going to work our way up into Michigan. And she’s pretty exciting. She’s built her business and each year she’s done more, and more, and more. Goal this year is 180.

Sarah Close38:41

That’s excellent.

Ren Jones38:42

Yes. Michelle Seward.

Michelle Seward38:45

It was an organic growth of my business. It was not like rocket ship. It was 25 deals, 35 deals, 45 deals, 50, stuck 50 for a couple of years. Hired help. Whenever you get stuck something’s got to change. 75, 90, then it went from 90 to 115, 125, 135. And then 150, 156, I think, 175, 185, 195 like that. It doesn’t get done without help, without a great support staff and great team. When I wanted to get over to that hump, the 50 deal marker, I added my first full-time assistant. Then you get to like 75, and then you realize you need someone to help with the other aspects of admin. So I had two admin at that person, a listing, and a closing coordinator. And then from there, it feeds into, “I can’t run all these buyers.” And then you get a buyer’s agent. So you hire where you want to go.

Ren Jones40:00

So you hire where you want to go. So it’s a process. It doesn’t happen overnight that where you go from 25 transactions to 180. You got to work your way up there and hire along the way.

Sarah Close40:11

She’s asking the who question, not the what do I do? Who do I need question. And that’s the key to that difference in actually getting where you want to be. It’s exciting.

Ren Jones40:20

Exactly. Yeah. So she works hard. And she’s making a fortune right now.

Sarah Close40:25

God for her.

Ren Jones40:26

But hiring, people are afraid to delegate. They’re afraid to hire. They just need to just jump off the deep end and hire part-time, hire, like you talked about, a transaction coordinator.

Sarah Close40:37

Virtual. Hire a piece of someone.

Ren Jones40:39

Yeah, just start somewhere and keep building it up, and building it up, and building it up, because we have to have that leverage. You’re running a business.

Sarah Close40:46

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ren Jones40:47

So that’s our show, that’s our season highlights.

Sarah Close40:50

Oh, fun. That was all the good stuff.

Ren Jones40:51

Yes. All the good stuff.

Sarah Close40:51

Thank you. Thanks for including me.

Ren Jones40:53

Yeah, thanks for being here. And I want to mention, if you’re watching on Vulcan 7 and you want to get involved with the Lead Gen Facebook group that airs our show as well. They are at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not yet involved with Vulcan 7, make sure to sign up at Vulcan7.com/leadgen for a very special deal.

41:15And then the secret, Sarah Close knows his secret. Everybody on here knows this secret. It’s their secret. What they do is they do that lead generation, whether it’s just listed, just sold, probate, whatever it is, somewhere around noon, maybe it’s 1:00, they go get some delicious Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip. It’s the only flavor for listings. All the other flavors are for working for buyers. So if you want to list property, get the mint chocolate chip, go to graeters.com. If the listing is a little slow to sell, dig a hole in the front yard and buried it upside down, and the listing will sell a lot faster. And we’ll be back next week for another exciting show, interviewing somebody that takes 2, 3, 4 listings a week. You don’t want to miss it. We’ll be here. See you then.

Sarah Close41:59

Thanks for joining us.

Ren Jones42:00

Thanks for being here.

42:00