
Key takeaways
- Works the whole business back to one number, one listing taken a week, which is 50 a year
- Counts on about 40 of 50 listings selling, and about half of those sellers buying again locally, for roughly 60 closed sales
- Treats the listing side as pre-tax net and lets the buyer side pay the buyer agents and all the overhead
- Books listing appointments only at 4:00 and 6:00, Monday to Friday, and fills the 4:00 slots first
- Refers big buyers out at 25, 50 or 75% rather than breaking the prospecting stride to chase one large commission
- Qualifies a FSBO on two things only, whether they have to sell and whether they have to sell right away, and discards 5 of every 6 leads
- Keeps pending folders locked on the far side of the room, because servicing files is the most common form of creative avoidance
Transcript
00:00 — Welcome and the 50 sales formula
Ren Jones00:00
It’s that time. Welcome to Roadmap: How to Take Three Listings a Week Until You’re Ready for More. And this is a special show. The show is How to Easily Add 50 Sales to Your Business. How about that? We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. If you’re watching on Vulcan7 or the LeadGen Facebook group, you’ll have an opportunity to ask questions during the broadcast. Get your questions in early folks. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway. That’s carleyhathaway.com. Hi Carley, how’s the real estate business?
Carley Hathaway00:45
Hi Ren. Hi everybody. Real estate business is great. San Diego Market is amazing as always. It’s great to be on again.
Ren Jones00:52
How’s the snow? No snow?
Carley Hathaway00:55
No snow. It’s beautiful, 80 degrees out.
Ren Jones00:59
There you go. Wonderful. So we have an exciting show, Carley. We haven’t done this in a long time. And that is how to easily add 50 sales to your business, easily, easily add 50 sales. And there are people here that would like to have 50 sales there. Maybe there are 12 or 18 sales a year, 22, and this will take them to 50. If you’re at 50 and you’re going to 100, great. If you’re at 100, you want to go to 150. This is about adding 50, adding 50. It’s a formula, and you can just keep working that formula out to 250, 300. This will make you a quarter of a million dollars additional over what you’re making now. And if you need to make a million dollars… It’s sort of like that show… What was that show Carley? Who wants to be a millionaire?
Carley Hathaway01:47
I like it. Who wants to be a millionaire? I think-
Ren Jones01:50
And this is the only business where you can make a million dollars every year if you follow a very strict formula. You can make a million a year and you don’t have eight years of med school. And even then a lot of times you don’t have a million dollars a year.
Carley Hathaway02:06
And no student loans.
Ren Jones02:08
And no student loans, that’s right. But this is the business that you can do it in. And we’re going to go over in a very simple way, the formula for that. And so just take some notes and then use the copycat principle folks. Because here’s the secret, if you’re working six, seven days a week and working late hours, that goes away. You work Monday through Friday, start early, end early, take the weekends off, take six to eight weeks of vacation a year. And it’s simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple. Okay, so let’s take a look at how we do that. So let’s say we want to add 50 sales. So what we’re going to use as a formula, 50 sales. So we’ll say 50 sales and we’re going to use a formula of listings taken equals closed sales. Now if you take 50 listings, how do you end up with 50 closings? How do you that Carley?
Carley Hathaway03:13
You’d have to sell every single one, right?
Ren Jones03:15
No.
Carley Hathaway03:15
50/50?
03:18 — Fifty listings, forty sales, twenty buyers
Ren Jones03:18
So if you take 50 listings, 50 listings taken equals, I’ll say 50 plus closed sales.
Carley Hathaway03:28
Oh, so maybe the buyers that come from them.
Ren Jones03:31
There we go. That’s right, because if you take 50 listings, some of those are not going to sell, right?
Carley Hathaway03:36
Right, definitely.
Ren Jones03:39
Okay, so how many you’ll sell out of 50? Let’s not assume all-
Carley Hathaway03:43
40.
Ren Jones03:43
Pardon?
Carley Hathaway03:46
I’d say 40.
Ren Jones03:46
Okay, let’s say 40 sell. So 40 listings sell. And you’re going to have some buyers that are caused by those 40 listings sold. Now where do those, and feel free folks on the chat to ask questions, where is the number one source of the buyers out of this whole deal? Where’s the number one source of the buyers? Number one source?
Carley Hathaway04:11
Should we let someone else answer or should I answer?
Ren Jones04:13
No, don’t you answer. You better let somebody else answer. So if somebody would type in… Where is the number one source? If you take 50 listings, what’s the number one source of buyer activity for you? Silence. Nobody wants-
Carley Hathaway04:29
Come on you guys, you know this one.
Ren Jones04:31
Nobody wants to speak. Nobody wants to speak. Okay, that’s such a… Contacts on the list. Oh, the sellers. Okay, Lawrence, I think you might be right. Deborah Fairchild says open houses. Bart says contacts on listings. Bill Vernon says sign calls. And if we were playing Family Feud, we’d say sign calls, is it the number one answer? We would say, Deborah Fairchild, open houses, is that the number one answer? No, because I didn’t hold open houses. But Lawrence has got it right. So it’s the number one answer on Family Feud is what, Carley? What is the number one answer, it begins with an H?
Carley Hathaway05:12
Homeless people.
Ren Jones05:14
Homeless people. You sold 40 listings, some of those people are homeless and they have to buy either locally or you make referral money. But let’s say, okay, I’m going to have 40 listings sold in your market, how many of those would then buy something locally, maybe? What would you say for every-?
Carley Hathaway05:29
I’d say half. I’d say half.
Ren Jones05:30
You think it’d be as many as half? So you got 50 listing sales, creates 20 buyer sales. Now these are the best buyers. These are the best buyers. Are they in a hurry?
Carley Hathaway05:46
Yes.
Ren Jones05:47
Are they extremely loyal to you?
Carley Hathaway05:50
Yes. Because you’ve done such a great job selling their house.
Ren Jones05:53
They’re not going to have much time and they’re in a hurry. Great. Because they love you, you just sold their house. So now 50 listings taken is really 50 plus, so really in this case it’s really 60 closed, right?
Carley Hathaway06:03
Yeah, definitely.
Ren Jones06:03
Right. So there’s the formula. So then we have to back it out. To take 50 listings, how many do we have to take a week? How many do we have to take a week? How many weeks are there in a year? How many weeks in a year? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody? Yes. 52. Lawrence, you got it right again. And Lawrence is-
Carley Hathaway06:26
Lawrence is on point.
06:28 — What one listing a week actually pays
Ren Jones06:28
So there is 52 weeks in a year. So basically we have to take one listing a week. Now here’s the interesting thing, before we go into reducing into the ridiculous here folks, take a look at this, if we only look at the money off 40 listings sold and I’m going to use a real low number on the commissions because there are people from Louisiana and there are people from San Diego, some are making $18,000 in commissions, some are making five and six, but we’re going to use a figure of eight. Okay? So $8,000 commission times 40 is $320K, right? That’s not bad. $320K. Now what am I not counting? I’m not counting the other 20 buyer sales, it’s 20 times 8 is, that’s another 160.
07:20Now if you’re doing it right, you work with zero of those buyers. So 160 you’re going to say bye-bye to maybe as much as 80,000 as much as half for the buyers as much has, but maybe less. But we’ll just say in a worst case situation, 80K goes to the buyer’s agents and 80K pays for all your admin plus overhead. So we’re not even going to pretend that you make that money because this needs to be your pretax net. The listings that you take, that you sell is your pre-tax net income. The money on the buyer side pays all your overhead and the buyers. Is that fair?
Carley Hathaway08:09
Yeah.
Ren Jones08:09
So if you were making $320,000 and all you did is take one listing a week and you worked with zero buyers, think about that. All you have to do Monday morning at 7:00 AM you wake up and go, “I’ve got to take one listing this week. That’s all I have to do. And I will have this.” Now if you take three a week and you’re making a million. Okay, somewhere around there, depending on-
Carley Hathaway08:40
Yes. It’s a good life.
08:42 — Taking away every distraction
Ren Jones08:42
One a week. So if you took away all the distractions in your office, you got to your office and you weren’t allowed to do anything except for take one listing a week, you weren’t allowed to do anything else, you had to delegate everything else, delegate working with the buyers, delegate fooling with the pending folder, delegate every step of the way. And I’m not saying hire incompetent people. I’m not saying work with incompetent people at all. Work with competent people that will supplement and strengthen your small team that you’re operating. That’s how this works folks. And you can start out of the gate folks, as a new agent. We have agents that have been on this show and their first year have done this exact formula. And now they make $3 million a year. And you know what we’re talking about. So it can be that simple, it’s not easy. But what gets in the way? Let’s look at what gets in the way. What gets in the way? I should leave this up for a little longer. What gets in the way?
Carley Hathaway09:52
Yes, please do that. I think what gets in the way is ourselves. Don’t you guys think? Having a bad day of phone calls or something like that, it’s the discouraging inner monologue.
10:06 — Creative avoidance and the pending folder
Ren Jones10:06
Creative avoidance behavior is the, “I need to go potty, I need a cup of coffee, I need to work on my file. Oh, the inspections coming up.” Administrative folders, your pending folders need to be on the other side of the room locked up away from you. You’re not allowed near them, not allowed to touch them. So pending folders, creative avoidance behavior. What else gets in the way? If everybody does this really well, there’s one thing that will still get in the way and because they haven’t thought this through. And what’ll happen is you sell… I’m not going to use your numbers, I’m going to use Ohio numbers, I’m going to use Milwaukee numbers or I’m going to use Dallas numbers.
10:49I’m going to say that you sell a $250,000 house. You sell that, you’re listing sold. And they have told you they’re going to go out and buy an $800,000 house, which in your market means $24,000 in commission. And you tell yourself a story, “Well I can’t look for listings because I’m not going to give away half of this to some buyer agent because there are only four houses to show anyway. And so I can’t prospect this week, I can’t take any listings.” And then that one week turns into two weeks and then fiddling around with the whole process. And you may save $12,000 in your head, but you lose a lot more because you’re not taking listings and you break your stride, so that $24,000.
11:44But here’s the deal, if you’re working with somebody regularly, you refer things out at 25, 50 and 75. And this is a good example of a 75. You would say, “Here’s the thing, you work with them and you’re going to get 25%, I’m going to pay you $6,000. There are only four homes to show. Do you think you can handle that?” And if they say no, then say, “Next.” Somebody is standing behind you that said, “Yes, I’ll take $6,000 for showing four homes.” You remember we had Marilyn Lair and her daughter Kim on the show a few weeks ago. Remember how much they’re paying to show homes, showing assistance?
Carley Hathaway12:24
I think they were just paying a flat fee, right?
12:26 — Refer the big buyer out
Ren Jones12:26
$30 a house. So don’t get hung up on the 50/50 rule because what you don’t want to have happen is to over 250, the buyers are going to go out and buy an eight and tell yourself a story. You have to be the one to work with them
Carley Hathaway12:43
Because in that-
Ren Jones12:43
You don’t have a competent person to show them an 800,000 house. Get somebody who’s competent means we have to hire well.
Carley Hathaway12:50
Right. Because in that time you could have taken how many more listings or gone on how many more listing appointments?
Ren Jones12:54
That’s it. And like David Polvinsky says here is family and life, with this formula, you get that. You can be with your family, you can be with your life because it’s Monday through Friday, basically it’s like 8:00 to 6:00 PM Monday through Friday with six to eight weeks vacation a year. Maryanne Reese was on our show a few weeks ago. I saw her yesterday. You know what she told me? She goes, “I sold four homes last week and I was out of town.”
Carley Hathaway13:26
Love that.
Ren Jones13:27
Do that working with buyers.
Carley Hathaway13:29
No, not possible.
Ren Jones13:32
Not possible. But she sold four. That’s not bad, being out of town and selling four homes.
Carley Hathaway13:39
Pretty good deal.
13:42 — Why automation is coming for the buyer side
Ren Jones13:42
So we can’t let that get in our way. Buyers take time, listings take skill. And there’s a dangerous road going on here. And folks go to Inman News, inman.com and read the news and watch. You have a lot, Purple Bricks and Compass and all these other companies shooting up. And you’ve seen what Airbnb has done and Uber has done. Pretty soon there’ll be an Uber agent who will go onto their tablet and go, “I’m going to look at this house, this one, this one,” click a little button and Uber realtor drives around with a little R on their ball cap and the car, “Get in,” and shows them the houses, shows them four or five houses.
14:26And they click paid $36 to that person for taking and showing them four or five houses. And then if they wanted to put in an offer, they could click another thing. For $500, they can get a top notch agents to negotiate the whole piece. You have to be on the listing side. You got to be on the listing side. It’s automation’s coming. Be a powerful listing agent, which is a lot of scripts and accountability. So what else gets in the way? There was a clue there. What else gets in the way?
Carley Hathaway14:54
I think the motivation.
Ren Jones14:57
I don’t know, poverty doesn’t seem to be a good motivator.
Carley Hathaway15:02
I think it is. I think our mindset, sticking with it, that kind of stuff gets in the way.
Ren Jones15:10
Well yeah, because the creative avoidance behavior but it’s a lack of structure, if we have the structure. Because think about it, if your structure… Well the analogy is always sports and athletics and exercise. If you had to meet somebody at the gym tomorrow morning at 6:30 AM, would you be there? They’re standing there, “Carley…” Waiting for you, would you be there?
Carley Hathaway15:41
Yes, 100%.
Ren Jones15:42
Is there an agent typically waiting for an agent for somebody like you to come into the office and start making calls?
Carley Hathaway15:51
No, there isn’t. We’re not clocked-
15:55 — Setting appointments at 4 and 6 only
Ren Jones15:55
Not. So unless if you have the structure, but you have to build that. You have to get accountability partners, role play partners, a routine. And you have to have script, and you have to have standards and procedures. I almost need a paper towel, this board’s wet. And procedures so that everything’s structured. My listing appointments were four o’clock and six o’clock. I filled my fours first. And if somebody said, “Well can you come at 7:30 because we’ll be eating dinner at 6:30?” I’d say, “How about 6:00?” I never wanted to be on the backside at dinner or else I wouldn’t get home till 9:30 or 10:00.
16:41But set standards. And I’ve had people fight me and say they can’t do this, that hey they can’t do 4:00 and 6:00. But I had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 4:00-6:00, 4:00-6:00, 4:00-6:00, 4:00-6:00. I didn’t have a problem. But what would happen is I’d go, “Can you do four o’clock on Thursday? Well what about 6:00?” No, I can’t do either.” I said, “Well what about Wednesday? Can you do 4:00 or can you…?” Eventually they get the hint that those are the choices. 4:00-6:00, 4:00-6:00, 4:00-6:00, 4:00-6:00. And 98 and a half percent of the time you’ll fill those. And so you have some structure.
Carley Hathaway17:14
Yeah. And then every agent that we’ve interviewed on the show, they have a really strict morning routine. So obviously that’s important because like I was saying earlier, we don’t clock in and we don’t clock out in this industry. We have to have accountability partners. So Ren, what’s your best exact schedule to stick to?
17:35 — Clocking in and clocking out
Ren Jones17:35
And you should clock in and clock out. When we talk to some of the best people, and I’m trying to think of who it was two weeks ago who did the exact same thing Jeff Quentin did. You know people go, “Gosh, you’re selling that many homes, I don’t know if I want to work that hard. How many days a week do you work?” And you saw him look over like that. I’m trying to think of who it was. It was somebody in the last couple shows and they did the same thing, looked over and said, “Well in November I’m working 21 days, in December, I’m working 17 days.” And they were looking over at their schedule. Basically it said, “On, off, off, on, on, off.” Everything was pre-planned as if you were clocking in and clocking out. Everything was pre-planned. It was all scheduled. You can’t just wing it and too many people wing it.
Carley Hathaway18:21
Agree. But if
Ren Jones18:22
Every day all you’re doing is one listing a week, so where is that business going to come from? So we have to look at where the business was going to come from.
Carley Hathaway18:30
And I remember he said he had a bet with everyone in the office that if he wasn’t in the office by 7:30, he had to pay them all a hundred dollars.
Ren Jones18:39
There you go. And I love it when you have little cheap sucker bets like that. Whether maybe it’s $20 your assistant said, “If you don’t see me on the phone during these times, unless I’m in the restroom, you can feel free to come in and take a $20 bill out of the jar in front of me.”
Carley Hathaway18:53
I love that, I love that. So yeah, it’s getting the schedule and sticking to it. So what do you think the best… What was your schedule Ren when you were selling 16, 17?
19:06 — Where the listings actually come from
Ren Jones19:06
Yeah, I always took two, three listings a week, if not more. So 7:30 role play, 8:00 AM on the phone, 11:30 return calls and go to lunch. And then I had a 4:00 and a 6:00, or a 4:00 and a 6:00 or nothing. And if I had nothing I would make some more calls for another hour and a half and then go home early. But at the end of the month I had 12, 14, 16, 18 listings a month. So it worked. So David, yeah, I see where you’re saying that expireds and fisbos are beaten up by everyone, that’s right. So you have to be in the front, you can’t be the 14th caller calling. And sometimes that means starting at the shallow under the pool if you’re newer to this. Calling old expireds, the success rate with old expireds with newer agents is really high, really high.
19:58If you don’t have enough of them, call our office. We’ll make sure you get plenty of old expireds. For sale by owners if you’re to the point and you’re strong because they’re, they’re friendly but sometimes they’ll talk to too many agents. So you have to really get skilled in the area of expireds and for sale owners. Just listed, just sold a great source of business. Corporates, and corporates encompasses a lot of things. And corporates is business that keeps on giving it’s pipeline business. You pick some insurance company, 250 employees and you talk to their HR department or if they’re real small, that may be a role that somebody else has, and you become the representative for that company. And every year you get 6, 8, 10 transactions or maybe 1 or 2 if it’s a real small company and you do corporate business.
20:46So there’s other types of corporate or probate where people are dying to list, there’s an estate, that’s probate. Or divorce. Divorce a lot of times can be two or three sales. I know you can sometimes get a little heavy on the buy side on that, but there’s the listing side. And there’s a mile long list calling around a recent listing or a recent sale. There’s plenty of people to call. And rejection is part of it. And that’s why we have the mind chatter because the rejection easy is simple but it’s not easy, it’s not fun. But one listing a week. Questions anybody? Sylvia, do you have a question? Bill, do you have a question? David, Edgar, Deborah, who else? Go ahead.
Carley Hathaway21:35
Well I’m hearing you’re talking Ryan, a lot about calling people and really it being a contact sport, which you’ve said before. So we have really have to go out and get the business, can we just mass email everyone or send postcards?
Ren Jones21:50
Well how’s that working for most people? And they call it the dirty little secret. There are people that have that figured out and their net income, net income after expenses ain’t pretty.
Carley Hathaway22:05
Agreed.
Ren Jones22:06
They’re doing a lot of units but they’re sort of like the Exxon station, they’re only making 3 or 4 cents a gallon. They’re just not making much per gallon. So if you talk to people you can count on it. We’ve seen too many people try to automate this process and they come and go mostly go. Deborah, what about door knocking? It’s a great thing and if you watch the show, we have a lot of people that door knock. Alex, his team is on Segways motoring around, which I thought was hilarious. But door knocking works very, very well. There’s your highest level of contact with people.
Carley Hathaway22:46
Definitely. My coach was telling me, “Make your calls in the morning. If you don’t reach your contacts in the afternoon, if you don’t have a listing appointment, go door knock. Why not?”
22:56 — Finding corporate relocation business
Ren Jones22:56
Yeah. So you’re not going to get a listing appointment every single day, but if every day you spend a good three hours or four hours looking, you’re going to average one a day. And all you need to do is take one a week based on this simple formula. It’s just one a week. One a week. You’ve got all week to take one listing. And what’s your mom for if she can’t list her home with you? So all the fun. Questions. An agent dropped off a pumpkin on my front doorstep yesterday, thanks, but I know a good realtor. There we go. Hi Don Sheetz. That’s a good one. Ryan Laley on Facebook wants to know how to get in with corporate sellers. Well in most major cities, if you go to, not most major cities, this is a lot of the cities in the us, if you go to B-I-Z-J-O-U-R-N-A-L-S.com, many cities across the US have a business journal page that’s listed here.
24:06Now there are many cities that are missing from that. And so what you do is you go to Google and type in your city name and put quote business journal unquote, and your city name and you’ll find your local business journal. Every major city has a business journal of some sort. And the articles typically talk about companies that are growing and hiring or companies that are moving. And then it tells you who the key players are and call them up. I’ve gotten a lot of business from doing that, a lot of business from calling, looking in there, reading so and so, so-and-so is the CEO. Call and ask for the CEO, it doesn’t matter. You would be surprised at how far you get. And it’s a numbers game because not many real estate agents are doing this. So it’s business to business. So go for that.
24:57Moving and storage companies were a great source because… Now many times I knew somebody was moving before a moving and storage company did. And many times a moving and storage company will know somebody’s moving before a real estate agent does. So develop relationships with the moving and storage companies. I went around and started doing that and I found all of them were drinking out of this coffee cup with this real estate agent’s name on it. So there was one other person in my town that had figured that out. Yeah. And someone that I’m working with temporarily on a coaching basis, which I don’t do a whole lot anymore, but just was talking about how they went around to some yard sales and picked up listings. Because what is it, one out of every eight yard sales, they’re going to sell the house here shortly.
Carley Hathaway25:48
What a great idea. You’ve got to think outside the box.
Ren Jones25:50
Yeah, there’s mile long list of where find a seller. There’s plenty of places to find a seller.
Carley Hathaway25:56
But you got to be-
25:57 — Mirror and match to stay on the call
Ren Jones25:57
If your job is only take one listing a week and your pretax net is invisible here, 320,000 pretax net, taking one listing a week, working Monday through Friday, daytime hours, what else could you want? How do you overcome the fact that people don’t even let you start a conversation realizing you’re a realtor calling, they hang up on you? Well Jessica, that’s interesting. And there are a whole lot of skills in that. And now what was the most common thing in our last 50 shows, that every single person that we interviewed, Carley, there were several things that were common, but there’s a very common thing where they learned how to do what they do.
Carley Hathaway26:44
I think it’s definitely internalizing the script.
Ren Jones26:47
Internalizing scripts. It was they’re all in some sort of coaching with some sort of coaching company. And then that forces them to internalize the scripts. And one of it, Jessica, is Marion Matching because for much of my career I called people that were very angry, expireds and they had talked to seven other agents and I was able to get in rapport without them hanging up. But there’s little techniques and some of that has to do with saying hello back the same way they say hello to you and mirroring and matching their tonality to the point, almost to a fault because people won’t hang up on themselves.
27:20So if they go, “Hello,” and you go, “Hi, I’m David Smith and I’m…” Then they’re going to hang up on you before you get very far. But if they go, “Hello,” and you go, “Hello, I’m calling…” And you talk like them or their family, for whatever strange reason, they’ll hang in there a little longer than they normally would. But you have to make a compelling value proposition in about seven seconds. But all that is a formula, Jessica. There’s a key that will open that lock and make that door come open, and it takes practice. But it does work.
Carley Hathaway27:58
It definitely does. And the scripts help because the scripts tell you when they say, “Ah, you’re the 17th person that I called me.” The scripts tell you exactly what to say, that you overcome that action. “Oh my gosh. Well how do you think I feel I have to work with these people every day.”
Ren Jones28:13
And if you go shadow people that are really good at it, because sometimes when you hear the tonality of what is said and you listen to both sides of the conversation of somebody that’s been doing it for 10, 12, 15 years… You did that with Hal Swayzee.
Carley Hathaway28:27
Yes. Incredible.
Ren Jones28:29
And all you have to do is use the copycat print, so shadow those people. So I’m reading this here, it says, “If I change my focus to only listing properties, what do I do with the a hundred plus buyer leads per month that I get?” So it’s an interesting question because David Polinsky, if you truly had a hundred buyer leads that were worth a darn, you would be a very rich soul because you could pick 10 people and go, “Here’s 10 for you and 10 for you and 10 for you and 10 for you.” But what do we know about those hundred plus leads? They aren’t worth a darn.
Carley Hathaway29:09
No.
Ren Jones29:10
Out of those hundred, there’s probably one or two or three. And somebody’s got to work those very hard, refer them out.
Carley Hathaway29:17
Refer them out, take them out.
Ren Jones29:19
25%. And let somebody else… Give it to the blind. Squirrels, every once in a while they find a nut.
Carley Hathaway29:31
Let them drive him around all day every day.
29:34 — Two questions that qualify a FSBO
Ren Jones29:34
Don Sheetz will have to interview you sometime, he’s making some good points. And I’ve watched Don Sheetz prospect. I had the privilege of getting to watch him make calls. Because I didn’t know how good he was and I’m like, “He’s good.” So it’s tonality, mirroring and matching, building rapport, assuming rapport, which is a real trick where you talk to somebody as if you’ve known him your whole life. It’s assuming rapport. He’s really, really good at that. I’m reading on here, “Pre-qualifying for sale owners and expireds to find motivation, make sure they actually are able to sell and get the listing appointment rather than just previews.” Absolutely. So when you look at for sale by owners, for sale by owners, there’s only two things you have to know and you’re going to throw 85% of the leads in the trash.
30:24There’s only two things you have to find out in a conversation. Just say you’re homes per sale. May I ask you a couple questions about it in case I have a buyer for the home? Find out where they’re moving to and how soon they have to be there, and what’s important about moving there. And from that determine, do they have to sell and do they have to sell right away? Because if those aren’t a yes and a yes, then throw the lead in the trash. If they have plenty of time, they’re going to talk to plenty of agents and you won’t be the one listing it. If they don’t have to sell, it isn’t going to go anywhere. So if they have to sell them, they have to sell right away. And you’re going to keep one lead out of six and throw the other five away, as painful as that is. Throw them away, throw them away, throw them away.
31:07Hopefully this helped a lot of you. Do you offer one day listening to a fisbo to hold their house open to find buyers and create trust ever. If you want to hold open houses, it’s the least level of rejection and that’s why agents hold open houses because one 1 of every 10 homes sold comes from an open house. But it’s not the house held open as we know because otherwise that would work. So it’s such a high percentage, it’s a way of meeting people, more buyers than sellers. But if you’re going that route, just be happy with a little mediocrity. But if you’re willing to talk to 30, 40, 50 people a week Monday through Friday, you won’t have to hold an open on Sunday and work off a potluck.
31:56What is your technique for capturing a share of a saturated higher end listing market? Edgar, that’s great. Yeah, because the saturated higher end listing market can be competitive. You’re talking about some lower commissions and everything else. You got to have a lot of polish. That’s a long answer, Edgar. And we’re getting near the end of our show. In fact, we’re at the end of our show. Well, here’s our last question. Jessica Chavez says, “What do you do when a seller says yes, they’re interviewing more than one agent for the job of selling their home? You want to be first, last, or in between the other appointments seller may have scheduled?”
32:31Generally speaking, unless it’s on the same day, I wouldn’t want to be in the middle. I’ve seen sometimes where they’ll have a 4:00 and a 6:00 and an 8:00, and I didn’t want to be the 6:00 because you can be a little forgettable, but sometimes first or last or wherever it falls in. Best thing is just to make sure yours stands out. I don’t know about self-storage, Bill Burnett. But the thank you for everybody. And we have our commercials. If you’re watching on Vulcan7, you want to get involved with the LeadGen Facebook group who airs this show, they’re at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And I want to thank Aaron Wittenstein who runs the group. He runs a program called expiredmasteryelite.com. And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not yet involved with Vulcan7, make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for a special deal.
33:28And the secret I always took, it worked every time and it was 11:30, I was returning calls and sometimes I had a diversion. So I would prospect from 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, 11:30, return some calls and then I would go to the freezer and get some delicious Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. It’s the only one for the listing business. All the other flavors are for working with fires. And if you’re listing is a little slow to sell, dig a hole in the front yard and bury it upside down in the house, and sell it right away. Graeter’s mint chocolate chip, you can get it anywhere in North America. Go to graeters.com. See you guys next week. Glad you could be here.
Carley Hathaway34:10
Bye everybody. Thank you so much. Ren, thank you.
Ren Jones34:13
One listing a week, folks, just one a week.
Carley Hathaway34:14
One a week. I think we all had some great takeaways. Thank you so much.
Ren Jones34:18
Glad you could be here.
34:18
Questions this episode answers
How many listings do you need to make 300,000 a year?
About 50 taken, in Ren Jones’s model. He assumes 40 of them sell, and at an 8,000 dollar commission that is 320,000 before anything from the buyer side. Spread across 52 weeks it comes down to taking one listing a week, which is the only target he wants an agent watching.
Should a listing agent work with buyers at all?
Ren Jones says no, and lets the buyer side pay the overhead instead. He refers buyers out at 25, 50 or 75%, and warns against the trap of stopping prospecting to personally handle one large buyer. He points to showing assistants paid as little as 30 dollars a house.
How do you qualify a for sale by owner quickly?
Two questions only. Where are they moving to, and how soon do they have to be there. From that Ren Jones works out whether they have to sell and whether they have to sell right away. If both are not yes he discards the lead, keeping roughly one in six.
When should you schedule listing appointments?
Ren Jones ran only two slots, 4:00 and 6:00, Monday to Friday, and filled the 4:00 first. When a seller asked for 7:30 he offered 6:00 instead. He says sellers take one of the offered times about 98% of the time, and it kept him home in the evenings.
Where can you find sellers besides expireds and FSBOs?
Ren Jones lists just listed and just sold calls, probate, divorce, door knocking and yard sales, where roughly one in eight households is about to move. He also recommends corporate relocation, found through a city’s business journal, and building relationships with moving and storage companies.
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