How Kim Ackerman took 5 listings in a month after moving to a city where she knew no one

Ren Jones00:04

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 consistently taking several listings each month, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. If you’re watching on Vulcan7 or the Lead Gen Facebook group, welcome, we’re glad to have you here. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway, that’s carleyhathaway.com. Hi Carley, how’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway00:43

Hi Ren, hi everybody. Real estate is great as always, couldn’t ask for a better place to live than Southern California.

Ren Jones00:53

It’s nice and warm there. We were at two, what, seven yesterday here, I believe. As you can see, it’s a beautiful sunny day here today. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone that we’re also simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook — they have over 52,000 members now, 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’s welcome our guest today from Atlanta, Georgia — and Florida and Ohio, we’ll explain. Let me welcome Kim Ackerman. Welcome, Kim.

Kim Ackerman01:32

Thank you, Ren.

Ren Jones01:35

How is beautiful Buckhead today?

Kim Ackerman01:40

It’s very chilly today, that’s why I’m dressed in the layers.

Ren Jones01:45

Oh my gosh, is it 43 in Atlanta?

Kim Ackerman01:50

Heat wave up here — it was 23 this morning, it’s 43 now.

Ren Jones01:54

Good lord, in Atlanta people are freezing. You drive through Georgia and see those signs that say “Look honey, peaches” — always cracks me up.

Ren Jones02:08

So we have Kim on here, and what’s interesting is you sold in Cincinnati and surrounds, Northern Kentucky, for many years, also started selling in Florida going back and forth, and you’ve recently moved to Atlanta. What we’re going to demonstrate here is you can move into a city where you know no one, never became familiar with the neighborhoods, and you can immediately have a burst of business. Kim can outline how that works a little bit, because for a lot of people they’re like, “Well, I don’t know anybody, so I don’t think I’m going to sell much,” or “I don’t know the area, so I don’t think I’m going to sell much.” Yet that hasn’t gotten in your way, has it?

Kim Ackerman02:50

No.

Ren Jones02:56

So give us a little background — how long have you been selling real estate?

Kim Ackerman02:59

I have been licensed for 23 years.

Ren Jones03:02

Licensed for 23 years. So this is what they call unconscious competence — it just moves through you. And how long have you been living in Atlanta?

Kim Ackerman03:12

I’m working in Atlanta — I’ve only been here since July.

Ren Jones03:16

Since July. And how many listings are you able to take in a month?

Kim Ackerman03:23

My goal is to take ten.

Ren Jones03:26

And how’s it going this month so far?

Kim Ackerman03:32

Five already.

Ren Jones03:36

So how can you, not knowing the area and not knowing anybody there that needs to buy or sell, do that? How do you do it?

Kim Ackerman03:44

What I do every morning is get into the office, role play first thing, and then get on the phones. I’m in a Google Hangout group — I have seven people, and a business associate of mine has eight in her group. We have to be on the phones by 8:30 in the morning, and we prospect nonstop from 8:30 to 11:30.

Carley Hathaway04:04

And who are you prospecting to?

Kim Ackerman04:08

Primarily expireds and for sale by owners.

Carley Hathaway04:14

And that seems to be working for you? It sounds like it’s working very, very well.

Kim Ackerman04:18

It does. What was interesting is in Cincinnati, 75% of my business came from my sphere of influence — repeat customers, come-with-me calls. So when I came to Atlanta, I don’t have a sphere of influence yet, so my only recourse was to get on the phones.

Carley Hathaway04:42

You’re not going to have much sphere of influence moving to a new town, you’re starting fresh all the way over.

Kim Ackerman04:46

That is correct.

Carley Hathaway04:51

Talk to me more about the Google Hangout — how does that help you stay on the phones?

Kim Ackerman04:59

You start off by chipping in money for accountability. If you show up, you cannot be five minutes late, because then you get dinged fifty dollars. That’s just in one group. If you don’t show up at all, you get fined even more. But it does make it fun, because you’re sitting there prospecting and I’ve got friends all across the U.S. prospecting with me — you can hear the different dialects, we’ve got people from New Jersey. Yesterday I did something for the first time ever, what they call Money Mondays — we started at 8:00 a.m. and finished at 8:00 p.m., and our goal was to hit a hundred contacts.

Carley Hathaway05:49

Oh my gosh, did you meet your goal?

Kim Ackerman05:52

I did not talk to a hundred people, but I talked to a lot.

Carley Hathaway05:56

Your voice sounds great considering all those calls.

Kim Ackerman06:08

What the Google Hangout does is it almost makes a game of it, so you’re not just prospecting by yourself — you can hear the other players. You cannot put yourself on mute, you can’t be doing email, you cannot do admin, you cannot do buyer calls. It is strictly 100 percent prospecting for new business calls.

Carley Hathaway06:25

I love that, and I bet you get little takeaways and tidbits from hearing people’s responses.

Kim Ackerman06:31

You do, yeah. That’s new for me — I’m trying different things since I’m in Atlanta, and it’s working.

Carley Hathaway06:45

Are you sticking to scripts when you’re calling these expireds?

Kim Ackerman06:46

Yes. As a matter of fact, I was critiqued some day last week that I was not adhering to the script strictly enough.

Carley Hathaway06:56

What’s interesting is you guys are all probably using the same scripts, right? Everyone in the Google Hangout.

Kim Ackerman07:02

That’s correct, we are.

Carley Hathaway07:05

So then you can catch each other and help each other and see how you navigate.

Kim Ackerman07:09

That’s very true. A gal who just joined us, she’s in California, was on yesterday for the first time and got so excited about the appointment, and she goes, “But I forgot to tell him what time to be in the office.” I’m like, just a little bit.

Carley Hathaway07:30

And are you guys calling for sale by owners as well?

Kim Ackerman07:33

Yes, they’re in there — I subscribe to Vulcan7, they’re in my database.

Ren Jones07:38

Now, to be fair, you’ve got somebody helping you make calls — Banzai’s there right now?

Kim Ackerman07:48

Yes, he’s on the couch, my good friend.

Ren Jones07:55

Banzai used to come in and help her make calls, now the only thing he got was Snoopy’s doghouse.

Carley Hathaway08:08

So obviously accountability is a vital component, right?

Kim Ackerman08:11

That is very true. People are different with accountability — I like high accountability. I tend to think the more painful it is monetarily, the more motivated I am, so I like to put high stakes on my accountability.

Carley Hathaway08:36

The more painful it is, the more motivated you are.

Kim Ackerman08:40

One month, for example, we were concentrating on working our sphere of influence, and even though my sphere of influence is primarily in Ohio, we had to make five sphere-of-influence calls a day, and if we didn’t, we were charged $5,000. We had to write the check out in advance — it was not up for discussion, it was just cashed. The check was made out to the Andrea Bocelli foundation. But again, it wasn’t up for discussion, it wasn’t like, “Oh gee, did you.” So the first five calls I made every single morning were sphere of influence. And you have to remember, I haven’t publicized — I guess I have now — that I don’t live in Cincinnati. I was at the Mike Ferry event last week, and it was, “Come with me and write a contract on this house, I’d like to buy it.” So on a regular basis…

Ren Jones09:39

And the good thing, you’re clearly in a price range where you’ll hop a plane, fly up on a listing contract, help a buyer, and fly back. Is that true?

Kim Ackerman09:47

That’s right.

Ren Jones09:51

So that segues into another part, because you’re not going to do that for a $120,000 house. One of the things that’s fun about Kim is she doesn’t sell $120,000 houses — they have to be big enough for her to see. Typically you’ve always worked the higher end, and I don’t know that it’s for any reason other than you have more fun in that and a higher comfort level. So somebody’s watching this right now working whatever price range they’re working, they’d love to have a comfort level up here, but the voice in their head says, “If I go talk to those people I’ll get their butler.” How do you encourage people in that price range to get comfortable with it?

Kim Ackerman10:43

I actually mentor two people in the office who’ve been licensed less than two years, and their question to me is always, “How do I get to that price point?” I just say, start off at a $300,000 price point, because it’s the person that sells the 150 house that’s buying the 300. Get comfortable with the 300, and then you can easily bump it up to 450, 600, 800, a million. It’s just poor carpeting — it may be a wide seller here and there. I kid with people, I say they put their pants on one leg at a time. And also, the higher you go up, they don’t ask as many questions, because they’ve done the transaction multiple times.

Carley Hathaway11:29

I feel like I’ve always noticed that the higher the price, the easier it is. They seem to be a lot more chill, not as uptight, it’s a lot more relaxed process.

Kim Ackerman11:42

I had a gentleman one time say to me, “Cut the crap, give me the contract, let me sign it.” Okay, here you go.

Ren Jones11:52

I would agree with you there. And if you think they’re not checking out your car, you’re mistaken.

Kim Ackerman12:01

They are. I remember not having one up to par way back, and I know I didn’t get the listing for that reason, but I got it the next time around.

Carley Hathaway12:12

So I wanted to get into listing appointments a bit. You’re probably a master at the presentation, but I feel like for newer agents, or even agents in the business a couple of years, the hang-up is always price — because a lot of times when you go on an expired listing appointment, it was overpriced. What’s your best strategy to overcome that?

Kim Ackerman12:36

What I find is twofold. Yes, they can be overpriced, and a lot of times they’re overpriced because the agent that took the listing previously bought the listing — they told the seller exactly what they wanted to hear. I’m very direct with sellers, I just say, “Mr. and Mrs. Seller, I can give you a list of a dozen people that will tell you what you want to hear.” Just yesterday I went on a listing appointment where 36 homes had sold in the neighborhood in the past six months, and they were convinced it was the time of year. No — 36 sold in the past six months and you didn’t even get an offer on your house. It was clearly that they were overpriced. You can supply the data, say, “Here are the comparables.” What we also do is send the comparables over in advance — we send an email after communicating with them, with our bios, then immediately follow up with very limited marketing material, because they don’t want to look at a book. We send over the marketing material samples, and then we send over our CMA, and we say, “Let’s talk about the comparables.”

Carley Hathaway13:56

I think that’s a great strategy, just educating people and sometimes letting them make their own decision.

Ren Jones13:58

It helps to send those comparables a day ahead — now, you have to be careful how you do it to get it to work, but if they get those 24 hours ahead, they go through an interesting process. First is denial — “What, 850?” — when they think it’s worth 1.1. Then anger. Then they look through a little more — “Oh, there’s only sold at 735.” And then finally acceptance, and then you show up. Otherwise, you walk in and spring that on them, they hit denial, anger and acceptance, but 24 hours later you’re gone and Coldwell Banker is now sitting in front of them — and you set up the other agent.

Kim Ackerman14:52

You’re right. But also, I’m in a new market, so I have to study them — I have to study the market intensely, I have to fake it till I make it.

Ren Jones15:07

Well, it’s working very well, and I think a lot of people will be envious, because there are some beautiful price points that you work. It’s a happy life — Kim goes on some of the greatest vacations and some of the most amazing events, and if you followed her around you’d have an exciting life.

Kim Ackerman15:33

Thank you. I do love to travel, I do love to dress, and adventure.

Ren Jones15:46

Is that what goes into your mindset of staying on the phone for two to three hours every morning — your next vacation, your next adventure?

Kim Ackerman15:51

Yeah. As an example, we were just in — I’d taken my daughters, they wanted their Christmas gift to be to go to Whistler, Canada, they wanted to go skiing. The last day it was kind of raining, raining at 30 degrees, I’m not quite sure, but it was raining. They wanted to go to the slopes, so I said go ahead and go, and they’re like, “You’re going to be sitting at your computer next week wishing you were on the slopes.” And I said, no, I’m going to be sitting there saying how many calls do I have to make before I can get back there. It’s a numbers game. You go, “It’ll cost me one transaction to get back to Whistler, stay where I want, fly first class, do what I want.”

Ren Jones16:33

So watch it, folks — I know she says it’s a numbers game, but do you all notice the other ingredients? Energy and enthusiasm. Energy and enthusiasm — she’s got an abundance of that, and she’s not even on coffee. You’ve got to have both of those elements. I appreciate this, it’s been exciting and very helpful for a lot of people. Thank you for coming on our show today, and we’d like to have you back again.

Ren Jones17:06

One last question, a little survey question we get around to asking most people on our show. We’re not in the business of promoting coaching, but we’ve noticed that 99.99% of everybody on our shows — I think we’ve had one that wasn’t — is involved in coaching. Are you involved in coaching?

Kim Ackerman17:29

Absolutely. I was introduced to coaching when I joined Keller Williams in Cincinnati, and I’ll never forget, we went and shadowed Bernie Gallerani, and Bernie asked this very vital question — he goes, “How many transactions did you do last year?” I go, “I don’t know, I can tell you what I made.” And you guys know that’s not what he asked. “How many transactions did you do?” I’m like, “I’ve got to go back to the office, I don’t know, sir.” He says, “You’ve got to call me tomorrow and tell me how many it was.” I called him back and told him how many, and he said, “So what did you do with the rest of your time?” When I got involved with business coaching, it actually tripled my production.

Ren Jones18:17

That’s what a coach will do. And who are you coaching with?

Kim Ackerman18:20

I have a Mike Ferry coach.

Ren Jones18:29

Is this a weekly call, monthly call?

Kim Ackerman18:32

I do a weekly call with that business coach, and I also participate with Mike Ferry — he has two other programs, one is called Think Big, which has been a tremendous help.

Ren Jones18:48

Oh, you have to be doing a lot of production to be in that group.

Kim Ackerman18:50

They invited me, I’m like, okay. And then I also do Monday mornings — there’s a group we call, where you’re surrounded with accountability.

Ren Jones19:13

And Google Hangouts too, right?

Kim Ackerman19:15

Absolutely.

Ren Jones19:27

Good for you. We’ll check back with you. Let me read this — if you’re watching on Vulcan7 and you want to get involved with the Lead Gen Facebook group who is simulcasting the show, go to facebook.com/groups/gotobjections, and thank Aaron Wittenstein, who runs that — he has a program called trajectorynow.com. And I want to give you Kim Ackerman’s secret: after she’s done making all the calls, and she and Banzai are going to go out for a walk, she actually goes and gets some delicious Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. It’s the one for listing property — all the other flavors are great, but those are for working with buyers. If the listing doesn’t sell right away, dig a hole in the front yard, bury it upside down, and it will sell just like that. Thank you everybody for being here, and thank you so much, Kim.

Carley Hathaway20:16

Thank you so much, Kim. Hey, next time I’m in Atlanta I’d love to come shadow you if I could.

Kim Ackerman20:22

That’d be great, awesome. And I’ll come your way to California.

Carley Hathaway20:27

Come on, here we go.

Ren Jones20:30

Good. See everybody next week, bye guys.