S5 E9: How to have a Productive Mindset

Ren Jones (00:04):
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 who’s consistently taking 2, 3, 4 listings each week. And we’ve got an exciting guest today and he’s taking a lot more than that, let me tell you. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can and then use the copycat principle any. Let’s jump right in and introduce our guest. Actually, before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everybody that we’re simulcasting the show on the private lead gen group on Facebook. They have over 50,000 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. So let’s welcome our guests today from Nashville, Tennessee and surrounds, a lot of beautiful areas there. Mr. Bernie Gallerani, how are you Bernie?

Bernie Gallerani (01:07):
How are you? Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Ren Jones (01:10):
Good. I’m glad you could be here. I’m excited to pick your brain because Spring is around the corner and agents are getting excited. They’re taking listings and all of a sudden they’re going to go down like dominoes. Their listings are going to sell. It’s going to be a pretty exciting time for a lot of people. And I was thinking we could chat, I could pick your brand on a couple things that they should be thinking about as they’re going into this period. Where they’re taking listings now by the end of March, those things are going to start selling. They’re going to build up a whole lot of pendings. They’re going to have homeless people that they’ve sold their home, they have to take them out or find somebody to take them out. What do they need to think of? And folks, let me first give you some background, Bernie, when I first met him, it was his first year. He moved from Nevada to Nashville, sold 49 homes his first year, didn’t know anybody in town. And now what’s your goal for sales this year?

Bernie Gallerani (02:07):
550.

Ren Jones (02:10):
550. That’s several million in commission checks, I can tell you that.

Bernie Gallerani (02:15):
Probably close to 6 million in commission checks.

Ren Jones (02:20):
6 million in commission checks. It’s not a bad thing. He has people on his team that are also calling buyers for sale owners, past clients, severe database, prospective buyers around a listing or things like that. So I wanted to pick his brain on two things. What do you do when all of a sudden all your listening sell to keep that going like he did on his first year 49 sales? And ask him when he’s working with people that are making these calls, what’s some of the course correction? What is he hearing them say often? Because many of us don’t know what we don’t know. What are they saying that he’s able to refine what they’re doing so that they just all of a sudden explode? Because a lot of you want to explode this year. even beyond where you are now.

Bernie Gallerani (03:08):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (03:08):
What do you think about it, Bernie? They’re going into spring, we know what’s going to happen. They’re going to get overwhelmed because all the new pendings and then there’s no time to lead generate. What do you do?

Bernie Gallerani (03:18):
Yeah, well that’s a good question. I’ll talk a little bit about what I do with my group because that brings it a little closer to home for me. Because I get an opportunity to hang out with them and talk with them and coach with them on a daily basis. I’ll say this to you, the matter of the overwhelm that somebody will get is obviously going to be based on the production that they’re doing. So if an agent comes in and they’re go out and they list seven properties or 10 properties and all those sell within the next four to six weeks, they’re going to go into an overwhelm rent because they’re now feeling like they’re managing their deals and they’re going to come up with reasons why they don’t want to lead generate or prospect. I always say this, you can always find out what’s important to somebody based on how committed they are to doing it.

(04:10):
So in our group, we always say that you have to commit as a minimum of two hours on the phone every day. And that’s uninterrupted time on the phone. So it’s not answering texts, it’s not dealing with emails, it’s nothing. It’s not calling agents back, agents from our buyers or our sellers on the other side of the transaction. So that two hours of business is built for your business. So I actually just had a group of folks that came and shadowed me the other day and we had this conversation and I said, “You owe yourself your company, your corporation, you owe it to that business to dedicate at least three hours every day to that business. And the best way to dedicate that is to say, for three hours every day, regardless of how busy I am, I’m going to prospect and lead generate for new business. Because eventually when all the stuff you have sells, you’re going to have nothing left if you don’t spend that time during the time you’re busy to lead generate.”

(05:14):
So here’s the question that you ask me and I’ll answer it. I think the person has to be dedicated enough to understand that if they spend their prospecting time managing a deal and they continue to keep behaving in that manner. Then when they’re done closing those seven or 10 or 12 deals for that month and negotiating those offers and communicating with those agents and taking their excuse of saying, I have to put the deal together and they don’t generate. The next month, they’re going to have zero income and you can’t have zero income and stay in this business. So the key is stay focused regardless of it. Here’s what I tell my agents. If an agent is calling you to discuss a file, they’re still going to have the same question after 11 o’clock. So wait till after 11 o’clock when your prospecting is done and then call the client. If the client has a fire, they have to talk to the agent. All that stuff is still going to be a critical conversation that needs to take place most likely after 11. So take care of your business first.

Ren Jones (06:28):
And in a funny way, sometimes by 11 o’clock because they can’t reach you, they’ve solved it.

Bernie Gallerani (06:34):
That’s true. That’s exactly right. For our conversation with our agents is listen, and Ren, I got to tell you, we have to tell them all the time. So inside of our prospecting centers, which of course you know what it is because you’ve been there, we have Kurt who basically maintains and watches everything that goes on in there. And he’ll come up to them all the time and go, “I’m not sure if that’s lead generating activity right now, should you be doing that?” And he always them pushes them back into the reality of what they should be doing because that’s a natural behavior for an agent to want to do that. And here’s the thing, I find that agents would rather do a lot of things rather than lead generate or prospect, there’s a ton of other-

Ren Jones (07:15):
Human, we want to do something more gratifying, repetitious, boredom can you know.

Bernie Gallerani (07:20):
That’s exactly right. I never can blame the agent for feeling that way. I’m never upset with an agent, I just have to keep coaching an agent and saying this, “You are preventing your business from continually hitting a home run every month if you allow yourself to service the business. And there’s plenty of time to service.” So we’ll ask them, “How much time do you need in your business with pending 10 transactions? How much time every day do you need to continue to keep working with the agent on the other side and or do the paperwork?” And well, they’ll say anywhere from an hour to three hours. So if we’re asking them to spend three hours on the phone, they still got two or three hours, they can work the files. And then they got three or four more hours in that day where they can show buyers or go on listing appointments so they can make it work. It really is just a commitment issue and a staying on your schedule issue.

Ren Jones (08:18):
So they can really do their own. So it’s year one, you’re not on a team where other people can handle your appendix. You’re not on a team where somebody else can handle your buyer. You were able to pull that off as one or did you pull in a little bit of help?

Bernie Gallerani (08:34):
Well, I had help because my wife came to help with me. So my wife there and she helped with some of the paperwork and things like that.

Ren Jones (08:40):
So they should get married.

Bernie Gallerani (08:44):
Yes. In case my wife is watching, yes. No, I would say this, I still stay disciplined because I still had… My wife was my assistant for lots of different things like feedback and stuff like that. I was still at that time negotiating all my offers. I do not negotiate a lot of offers anymore. It all happens through my system. But back in the day, I still negotiated offers. I still called all my clients for price adjustments. I still dealt with agents. It was a ton of stuff I still had to do. And in those days I was on the phone five hours a day lead generating.

(09:20):
So I had five hours and then I had a couple hours of communication with the files. And then I showed properties or when I’m listing presentations so you can make it work. And I’m not going to tell you that I didn’t stumble and that I didn’t have issues and I had issues trying to figure it out. I did stumble and I did have problems and I realized how much money it cost me. It cost me lots of money by not figuring it out. So I had to figure it out.

Ren Jones (09:48):
Really in a way, in a year one, year two, where you’re at this certain level where maybe you’re not ready to hire an assistant or maybe you do hire an assistant part-time or whatever it may be, or a buyer agent or work a deal with an agent in the office. I get that… If I understand you correctly, you just worked a little longer to build your business, you worked a little longer day, a lot more focus, a lot more focus. So you got a lot more done in the same amount of time. Would that be fair? A little longer and a lot more focused. Is that the ingredients?

Bernie Gallerani (10:19):
Tremendously more hours my first year than I do today at selling 550. So I knew that I worked seven days a week. Typically, I would say on average during the five days a week, I’d probably work about 12 hours a day. On the weekends I would work my weekend business, so it’d be more like a six to eight hour day, but it was typically seven days a week for about a year. And then I slowly started tapering that back. But as my business grew from going from 50 to 80 transactions to 120 to 150 to 210 to 280 to 300, so on and so forth. You have to keep adding other people in to allow all the distractions to stay away. So I hired people as I earned more money to answer all my phone calls and to check all my emails and to closing coordinators to answer and all the concerns that the files would have. So yes, I worked a lot more hours in the beginning, but that’s what you have to do until you get it off the ground.

Ren Jones (11:23):
That makes perfect sense. And I know how hard you worked. Way back then, Mr. Bernie Gallerani was good friends with a gal up in Dayton, Ohio, and he would drive five hours north. He had to get up at four in the morning, drive five hours to Dayton and on a Saturday to prospect all day with this other great agent in Dayton. And then he would drive back five hours to Nashville, not many people do that.

Bernie Gallerani (11:52):
That’s how you learn.

Ren Jones (11:52):
Do what other people won’t do and have what other people don’t have.

Bernie Gallerani (11:55):
I don’t know if you guys can see the little sign back behind my thing. Here, it says, “If you surround yourself with four millionaires, you’re bound to be the fifth.”

Ren Jones (12:08):
I like that one, I want that. I want one of those. There is a lot of thought and people should consider who they hang around with because I know who you hang around with.

Bernie Gallerani (12:17):
Yeah, well I just talked to a guy on the phone that was selling 300 homes a month and I look at that and go, “My gosh, I mean, that’s a guy that I want to continue to keep connecting with.” I would say driving to Dayton, Ohio and hanging out with our friend up there, Denise. And I have an agent right now who I totally respect and I know you know her too, Kim Musgrave from Paducah, Kentucky. And every single Friday morning she leaves her house at 30. S4:he drives two and a half hours every Friday and has been doing it for six months from Paducah, Kentucky to my office in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

(13:00):
She prospects with all my agents until about noon and turns around and goes home back to Paducah. And she does it every single Friday for the last six months. And I asked her, she came down this weekend, hung out with some other agents who came down to visit our office. I said, “Why do you do it?” And she says, “You guys give me such great inspiration and great ideas that my business is continuing to keep growing. And so yes, I’m driving this distance but I’m learning so much about my business.” So anytime you can attach yourself to somebody doing better than you-

Ren Jones (13:35):
And yeah, look at the return on that. It’s an investment in time, but look how much money she’s probably picking up as a result of that.

Bernie Gallerani (13:43):
Absolutely, yeah.

Ren Jones (13:45):
Things that makes all the difference and shadowing and hanging around with people that are doing a lot more than you, in a lot more efficient way.

Bernie Gallerani (13:54):
Well, and here’s what’s great, is we talk about developing a strong schedule and staying in our prospecting time. And then leveraging our files to other people and then holding ourselves to a high level accountability. Those weren’t things that I made up on my own. Those are all things that I learned by traveling to all of these different offices and meeting all these great agents. Not one idea is mine. They all were stolen or bootlegged from some other great agent that I met. So I would just say to your listeners too, if they’re not really focusing on meeting other people outside of their market. Here’s what’s great about the outside market, your agents in your market aren’t going to share a lot with you.

Ren Jones (14:39):
True.

Bernie Gallerani (14:39):
The agents in the outside market have zero threat to that. So they’ll give you everything. I would say to any of your listeners, if you want to learn how to do it right, go find an agent on the outside of your market who will share it all with you. And then come back to your market and dominate it.

Ren Jones (14:56):
Shadowing is gold and our belief system is more willing to embrace it if it’s right in front of us and we’re watching it happen.

Bernie Gallerani (15:05):
Well, t something to think about. Because about a year into the business selling 50 houses in a year, I wanted to find an easier way to do it, like we all do. We don’t want to work that hard. So we want to find an easier way. So I jumped on an airplane, I flew to California and I visited three agents up in California, one in Valencia, one in San Diego and one up in Ventura County. I just flew out there, got a rental car, drove around and I got back, I flew back, my wife says, “What’d you learn?” I said, “I learned that they all do what I’ve been doing, but they just do a lot more of it.” And that there is no secret formula to being successful other than rolling your sleeves up and going to work. The only way they all did… These were all mega agents selling between 200 and 800 homes a year. And I was like, “I just am not going to get out of prospects and lead generating, as much as I would like to. It’s just not going to happen.”

Ren Jones (16:06):
It’s all right here. It’s all right here. The mindset in know mental toughness. And like Pythagoras said, I think he was, what was he a realtor… Nigel, was he a realtor back in like Rome or Egypt or somewhere? Greece. Yeah. Anyway, Pythagoras said, “Take the road that’s best no matter how rough and soon it becomes easy and agreeable.” I mean, as tough as that is for people out there. If you do it often enough after a while you’re like it’s automatic and you’re wealthy.

Bernie Gallerani (16:41):
Well, I think the challenge with our team members is we have, it’s interesting because we have a minimum standard that you have to sell 24 houses your first 12 months in our system, 36 within year, 36 in year two I should say. And the challenge with them is they’re not used to working this hard. So I always tell them, “Listen, you’re just not used to working this hard. How you do 24 is really easy.” But what the tough part is getting yourself to commit to working this hard. And what I mean, working this hard, I’m just telling them to work 40 hours a week, but they have to work for 40 hours a week and to see how much money, hundreds of thousands of dollars these agents on our team make.

(17:23):
I tell them, “In order to make a hundred, 200, 300, 400, $500,000 a year, whatever it is that your goals are, that is a lot of money. And there is a ton of smart people that work a lot harder for significantly less money.” And I’m not sure why anybody believes they could get in the real estate business, try to earn that kind of money and not have to go to work for it.

Ren Jones (17:48):
I mean, there are surgeons that make less than a lot of the people that prospect on your team.

Bernie Gallerani (17:56):
I mean, it’s crazy actually for my team, I Googled the top paying professionals in the world, the professions. And of course a doctor was at the top, it was like 200 some odd thousand dollars. I made that last month. That’s their income. And then they had, you had a pharmacist making a buck 30 and then an astronaut made 86,000. They get a perk, because they get to go to the moon, but their salary was under a hundred grand. If they were a top astronaut, they made like a buck 20. You look at all these top professionals and you look at real estate agents and look at the opportunity we have Ren-

Ren Jones (18:31):
It’s huge.

Bernie Gallerani (18:32):
… Turning 500, 600, 700, 800, a million dollars a year. And all we have to do is go to work, figure out how to stay focused on lead generating, find an opportunity to leverage our time to doing the work that is not generating income, like servicing files. Doing that at a time that fits into that time and not into the prospecting time and stay focused on our goals. And everybody could make a half a million bucks a year because there’s way too much commission dollars in our industry.

Ren Jones (19:06):
I know, it’s a wonderful thing. And what’s that expression? I can’t remember who said it. Sales is the highest paying job in the world if we’re good at it.

Bernie Gallerani (19:18):
And I would actually change that a little bit because I don’t think we have to be really good at it to make a really nice living. We just have to work towards being better at it and we’ll make a really nice living. I said this to you when we did one of your other shows one time and I said, “Success is not convenient.” And what happens is people get into our business or probably any business in general and they go into it and they say, “Well, this just didn’t work out for me.” It’s like you can’t expect success to jump into your calendar and just show up. You have to… Success isn’t going, I only want to drive five minutes to work every day. I want to be home by four o’clock. I don’t want to go to work till nine o’clock. I don’t really want to speak to that many people.

(20:04):
Success just doesn’t show up that way. You got to go outside the box, you got to do all the things you don’t want to do. You’ve got to be uncomfortable because if you aren’t successful and you want to become successful, you have to change your behaviors. You have to feel uncomfortable, you have to be uncomfortable, you have to fail forward. And that’s always the challenge with people in this business, the realtors especially because they get into business as independent contractors and they just don’t want to work. The problem is not… They just don’t want to work. And it’s like if you learn to work, Mike Ferry says this all the time, “If you just learn to work.”

Ren Jones (20:44):
Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people won’t do it unless someone requires them to be there at a certain time, requires them to do certain things and then they get paid. But they won’t do it for themselves. They’ll do it for other people, but they won’t do it for themselves. It’s an interesting mindset.

Bernie Gallerani (21:02):
We have a recruiter for our team, and I was listening to some calls that she had/ and a lot of these agents she was talking to and I was listening to this one and he says, “Yeah, I’d like to improve my business.” And she says, “Well, if Bernie can show you an opportunity to increase your business by 25 to 30 home sales per year, would that be something you’d be interested in?” And the guy’s like, “Well, I don’t want to work that hard.” Melissa talked about the work, let’s talk about the money. Would you like to make the money? And then the work will follow or if you want to do the work, the money will follow. But it’s always a challenge, I think to getting people to understand. But I want to answer your question here is how do they stay on schedule so their deals don’t run out and there’s not any deals left? I think they just have to stay committed to that time on the phone, whatever that means for them, whether it’s-

Ren Jones (21:52):
Even in June and July, even in late… Because mid-May through June, they stop. They just stop. Which is interesting to me because the public, I mean, the public is more ready than ever to do business, but the agents stop talking to them in the prime months.

Bernie Gallerani (22:13):
There’s more and more realtors getting into this business and less and less and less professional people. So if you just become a professional person in the industry you’re in, you’ll dominate in the marketplace because your competition is no competition. You have no… The competition is with the ones that are not competitive at all, they’re all fighting amongst each other to try to get a deal. When you’re a professional person and you show up every day and you do the work the way it should be done, there is no competition.

Ren Jones (22:44):
I know it’s a wonderful thing, folks. I mean, it’s gold. Where are you going to be able to make a million dollars a year like that TV show? Who wants to… What was that million dollar? What was that thing? Pyramid or whatever. But I mean, where can you make a million dollars a year every year? In our business. Last question, Bernie, because you are listening to what people are saying on the phone and then you’re pausing and saying, “You know what, if you change your approach here or there?” So there’s got to be some common things that you’re noticing that people do that you have to often help them slightly shift the way they’re approaching, an expired or for sale by owner or a recent listing or sale or whatever it may be that they’re talking to. What are you running into that could help our folks out there? Anything that’s commonly not being done in the best is, what do you call best practices that you-

Bernie Gallerani (23:42):
Is your question, how do I coach my agents or if I’m on the phone talking to-

Ren Jones (23:46):
I mean, are there common things you hear people doing? Maybe they’re not marrying and matching, maybe their response pattern, they’re just like, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” And then lose the client because they’re not doing repeat plus really strong approval or whatever it may be. What is common? What are you running into, you’re able to help them with that’s commonly a common thing that they’re doing, they don’t even know that they’re doing it. Because there are people out here that are doing things and they don’t know they’re doing it until somebody comes along and helps them..

Bernie Gallerani (24:15):
Yeah. Oh, that’s a great question. So yeah, I agree. Marrying and matching is super important. Repeating and approving, voice inflections, upswings, downswings, those are all important things. And for some of the listeners are going to say, “Well, I don’t understand what that means because I don’t really focus a lot on what upswings or downswings or repeating and improving.” So for example, if you say, “Hey, when you sell the home, where are you planning on moving?” And they say, “Well, I’m going to move to Florida.” “Florida. Well, that’s exciting. What’s taking you to Florida?” “Well, I’m going there to be near my grandchildren.” “Grandchildren? Well, that’s awesome. And what’s your timeframe?” “My timeframes 90 days.” “90 days. Wow. Good for you.” So you have to repeat them because if you repeat them-

Ren Jones (24:56):
The bate plus really strong approval. Yeah, and a lot of them don’t repeat. They just go, “Uh-huh, okay, okay. Uh-huh.”

Bernie Gallerani (25:04):
Another thing too, I’ll add that I say, “Learn to repeat and approve.” And those are things that I coach my staff on all the time. And I’ll say, “Listen, I didn’t hear you repeat. I didn’t hear you get excited about that. I didn’t hear you use an upswing or downswing.” So those are things we all coach on. The other thing I think is pretty critical is a lot of people make a ton of mistake at not identifying the personality style. For example, if you’re dealing with an analytical, how do you have that conversation over the phone to get them to trust you to come to the house? If you don’t identify their personality style, you’re losing about 25% of business in a year because you’re not adapting to that 25%.

Ren Jones (25:49):
Well, they should learn because there are a lot of personality style things. There’s Disc and then there’s social styles. You can go onto Amazon type social styles. Larry Wilson, I think it’s Wilson Learning. They used to have a book, but learn that folks, learn that. That’s a great thought, Bernie. That’s a great thought.

Bernie Gallerani (26:06):
Just for your listeners to think about. It’s something that you have to study to understand. So it’s like in having this conversation with you just now or having this conversation with you now, someone might go, “Well, what does he mean?” I would say, “Take some time to study how people pick up the phone and the conversations you’re having with them over the phone. The longer you keep them on there with tonality, upswings, downswings of approval, repeating, the longer they’re on the phone, the better chance you have to identify a personality style. When you identify a personality style you could use trigger words that make them accept you where you normally would not, if you didn’t identify that.”

(26:48):
So this learning to get better on the phone is really a business in itself. You have to understand that we’re dealing with personalities and people. We’re in the people business. We’re not in the real estate business. If we can identify that we’re in the people business, we’re in the people business. The people own the real estate. And unless we can adapt to them and understand them and work with them in a manner that gets them to trust us, we can never get the opportunity to list or sell their home or work with them as a buyer.

Ren Jones (27:22):
True. That’s well said because that is it folks. So hopefully there’s been some good ideas on here that’ll help you because spring is coming. You’re going to build up a lot of inventory and are you going to cycle or are you going to be consistent? Are you going to work on your people skills and get really strong at building rapport in that first 7, 10, 12 seconds when they say hello? Are you going to be committed? Are you going to work a little longer, a little harder, a little more focused? And hopefully you got some good ideas today. This is great, Bernie. Thank you.

Bernie Gallerani (27:53):
I always love working with you, man.

Ren Jones (27:54):
So you know 87 people are going to be down there shadowing with you next week.

Bernie Gallerani (28:00):
Well, I think you’ve been up shadowing a few times with other… You’ve brought a ton of agents to my-

Ren Jones (28:05):
I have learned… So every time I go down there, I learn a lot. I really do.

Bernie Gallerani (28:10):
Well, it’s always a pleasure working with your company.

Ren Jones (28:12):
You want to see success? That’s right there, man.

Bernie Gallerani (28:15):
And I love Vulcan 7, as you know, I’ve been a Vulcan 7 user for probably, what, eight years maybe, seven years?

Ren Jones (28:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We appreciate that. You got to have good… You got to have the tools of the trade for darn sure. Good deal. Well, thanks everybody for being here. Thank you Bernie, and we’ll have a great spring and summer and I’ll catch up with you real soon.

Bernie Gallerani (28:39):
Thanks, Ren.

Ren Jones (28:40):
Yeah, pick up our conversation where we left off.

Bernie Gallerani (28:43):
Great.

Ren Jones (28:43):
Thanks, again everybody. Boy, what a great interview that was. If you’re watching on Vulcan 7 and you want to get involved with the lead gen Facebook group, they are at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And I want to thank Aaron Wittstein who runs that group. He’s a real giver and he runs a program called trajectorynow.com, so you may want to check that out. And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you are not yet involved with Vulcan 7, make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for a special deal. And then I’ve got the secret you’ve been waiting for. There is a secret sauce in what everybody who is successful does, and I happen to have Bernie’s. What he does after he has done his lead generation and it’s around lunchtime, he goes and gets some delicious Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. Now it’s the min chocolate chip for listings taken.

(29:43):
If the other flavors are for working with buyers, and that’s fine too. They’ve got a great black raspberry, they’ve got some exciting flavors. Peach comes up in July, so you’re going to want to check that out. But if on the listing side of the business you want the mint chocolate chip, if the listing is slow to sell, dig a hole in the front yard, buried it upside down, and that listing will sell just like that. So you can buy Graeter’s anywhere in North America. Just go to graeters.com and look at the store near you. Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you guys next week and have a great week and we’ll have another exciting guest.