S7 E14: Powerful Circle Prospecting Strategies

Ren Jones (00:06):
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 several listings each month, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes on them, apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carly Hathaway. That’s carlyhathaway.com. Hi Carly. How’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway (00:39):
Hi Ren, hi everybody. Real estate is great, low inventory is so good for us. We’re so happy.

Ren Jones (00:46):
Oh, I know, I know. No, I mean, you list it on a Tuesday and you sell it on a Wednesday. It’s not a bad thing. That’s a wonderful thing.

Carley Hathaway (00:54):
It’s not.

Ren Jones (00:55):
Before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone that we are also simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook. They have 52,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. We’ll be pausing for commercial messages during the show as a thank you to the Lead Gen folks. Let me welcome our guest today from beautiful Palm Beach County in Florida, Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, all through there, Mr. Dan Demott. Welcome, Dan.

Carley Hathaway (01:24):
Hi, Dan.

Dan Demott (01:24):
Thanks for having me. Hey, Carly. Hey, Ren. Thanks for having me.

Carley Hathaway (01:26):
We are so excited to have you. Thank you so much.

Dan Demott (01:30):
Good. I’m excited to be here.

Ren Jones (01:32):
So how’s the real estate business? How long you been doing this?

Dan Demott (01:36):
Oh, well, the real estate business is fantastic right now. As Carly said, low inventory, it’s amazing, and low mortgage rates are even better. So we’re having a lot of success right now. It’s a great market down here in south Florida.

Ren Jones (01:48):
Fantastic.

Dan Demott (01:49):
I’ve been in the real estate business in different capacities for 16 years now, but just doing residential sales for the past three years.

Ren Jones (01:59):
So three years in just residential.

Carley Hathaway (02:01):
Three Years. That’s not long.

Ren Jones (02:04):
I know. For somebody that’s rocking all of a sudden, you’ve done a lot in 36 months.

Dan Demott (02:09):
I try to move quick.

Carley Hathaway (02:11):
Nice. And what’s your goal for the year?

Dan Demott (02:15):
My goal for the year is 20 million in production, at least 80 units.

Carley Hathaway (02:20):
80 units. I like it.

Ren Jones (02:21):
Beautiful thing.

Carley Hathaway (02:22):
And are you on track?

Dan Demott (02:24):
We are. We’re on track.

Carley Hathaway (02:26):
Mm-hmm. Nice. Good for you.

Dan Demott (02:27):
Yeah, I think we’ll get there. We might even exceed it by a little bit. The next couple months are ramping up. We’ve had a lot of growth in our team over the past four months, so that’s going to be a big part of our success.

Carley Hathaway (02:39):
Awesome. Okay, so growth. So let’s talk about your team structure.

Dan Demott (02:43):
Sure.

Carley Hathaway (02:43):
So you’ve only been in it for three years. I’m sure you started out by yourself as a solo agent, and then who did you slowly pick up along the way?

Dan Demott (02:51):
Yeah, sure. So the bulk of my growth has really been this year, but prior to that, I started as a solo agent. First year in the business, I did about four million of volume just on my own. Second year I brought in-

Carley Hathaway (03:05):
Amazing.

Dan Demott (03:05):
Thank you. Second year I brought in a part-time admin who helped me, and we got that up to just under 10 million, 37 transactions. And coming into the beginning of this year, I wanted to build a team, I wanted to get those numbers up. And the whole COVID situation came in and shut down. And for whatever reason, my mind clicked over to this being an unbelievable opportunity for me to grow, in spite of everything that was going on in the world. So the office shut down, I moved home. I actually, in all seriousness, set up my ironing board in my bedroom as my desk because I didn’t have a home desk. I didn’t have a home office. So I worked off the ironing board for the first 60 days of the shutdown.

Carley Hathaway (03:56):
That’s amazing.

Dan Demott (04:01):
And I just focused on growing. I doubled down on prospecting, I doubled down on contacting my database, and started interviewing people for different positions on the team. I thought it was going to be a great opportunity to recruit people who needed some direction and needed to see some positivity, given what was going on in the world. And that strategy played out, we’ve built a great team now. We’ve got three full-time ISAs making phone calls using Vulcan7, full-time lead buyers agent, full-time listing agent, operations manager/admin, and a transaction coordinator.

Carley Hathaway (04:44):
Wow, and you’ve done all this just in this short period of time?

Dan Demott (04:48):
Yes, just since March 30th.

Carley Hathaway (04:51):
Awesome. And it seems like helping others is helping you.

Dan Demott (04:56):
Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, my big mindset shift for me was when I realized that if I wanted to achieve the goals that I had for my real estate business and getting out and helping customers, I needed to help a lot of other professionals to get them engaged at a high level and focusing on what their strengths were. So yeah, helping people is a part of what the team does now on the community and what I do inside of our office.

Carley Hathaway (05:21):
I think that’s incredible. And I know Ren really holds on in high regard too. He is the same way and it’s like giving helps you. It makes you feel better.

Ren Jones (05:29):
Yeah.

Dan Demott (05:29):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (05:29):
It’s become a contribution with your customers and your employees, both. I mean, and the money just finds its way back nicely.

Dan Demott (05:39):
It always does. I try to impart that same thing to my team. And I think it’s a big part of the reason we have success in a lot of our outbound prospecting, because I train my team that we’re not in the sales business, we’re in the service business, and we have a value to provide to people. And when we’re prospecting, we’re not selling them something, we’re contacting them about information that’s relative and pertinent to their life, and we want to share that value.

Ren Jones (06:08):
Yeah, it’s a good value proposition.

Carley Hathaway (06:09):
Exactly in that mindset.

Ren Jones (06:11):
I mean the right words come out of your mouth if you don’t have commission breath, if you’re talking to them about how you can help them and mean it, then the right words come out of our mouth and everything works well.

Carley Hathaway (06:23):
And sellers can sense that if you have commission breath or you’re coming in service.

Dan Demott (06:29):
Yep. Humans, not just sellers, but all humans are good at sorting out what someone’s intent is and quickly, and it’s the words you say and how you say them. But if you focus on having the right intent when you approach something, it comes through.

Carley Hathaway (06:44):
Definitely. And they can hear it all over the phone.

Ren Jones (06:45):
The biggest challenge the agents have when you, I mean when were building this business, it’s like on a Monday they’re all ready to go. On Tuesday they get distracted because they got this buyer. On Wednesday they’re not in the mood to talk to anybody. How do you do it on the days you don’t feel like it where you’re making these calls, and you’re setting appointments and your team is doing the same thing? What’s the mental side of the consistency?

Dan Demott (07:10):
Yeah, I think that certainly there’s an aspect of discipline, but I’ve never been the most disciplined person. So I try to focus on how do we make it something that we want to do? And you got to have some containment and focus in it for it to be successful at scale. But for me it’s about getting the team together, understanding why are we calling people, what are we sharing with them, why it’s important for us and for them, and then rewarding the results of that. And honestly, the success we have has started now becoming a feeding mechanism where we’re checking in with our ISAs and our team on a daily basis, and we celebrate their victories on a weekly team meeting. We had earlier this morning our team meeting, and our three ISAs made over a thousand outbound phone calls.

Carley Hathaway (07:59):
Wow.

Ren Jones (08:00):
Holy, bro.

Dan Demott (08:01):
Yeah. Book 12 pre-listing phone call appointments for last week. So a lot to celebrate, a lot of success. And so the whole team celebrates them in doing that, and it keeps them motivated to push through the week.

Ren Jones (08:17):
Nice.

Carley Hathaway (08:17):
Yeah, bringing that excitement in is very helpful for sure. Can we talk about your routine, your morning routine, who you guys are calling?

Dan Demott (08:27):
Sure. So our primary prospecting technique is circle prospecting. So we circle prospect around any transaction that we either list or bring a buyer to. We use Vulcan7 to get that data and we use the dialer to make our phone calls. And that’s the key to our success. And like I said, it’s a very simple script because the intent is right. We say, “Hey, this is Dan Demott with Keller Williams here in Boynton Beach. The reason I’m calling you today is because we recently sold the property in your neighborhood. That sale is going to positively affect the value of your home, and we’re calling to share that information. Do you have a minute for us to go over it?”

(09:08):
People respond extremely well to that. We don’t get a lot of people hanging up on us. We don’t get a lot of people telling us that they don’t have time. But we do get a lot of people who say, “Thanks for reaching out, thanks for sharing that information. That’s interesting. Put me in your database, check in.” And when there’s a more immediate need for a conversation, we elevate that to a scheduled time to really dig into the numbers and the comps, and give people advice on what their home would be worth.

Ren Jones (09:35):
I love your approach. When I think about that, I think of two or three things there. Number one, you’re calling people that a whole bunch of other people are not calling.

Dan Demott (09:44):
Correct.

Ren Jones (09:44):
And number two, you have developed a script that is low rejection, it’s an informational call, and they can either, if they’re thinking about moving or whatever, they’re going… And you’re asking a permission question, I noticed that permission question. Then if they’re interested, they’re going to grant the permission to go over that. So it’s very well constructed. So I can-

Dan Demott (10:06):
Thank you.

Ren Jones (10:07):
… see your ROI on that being very, very high and thanks for sharing that because a lot of people call and do the circle prospecting, and it can be very high rejection based on the script that they’re using. And this one’s beautifully done, beautifully done.

Dan Demott (10:22):
Thank you. Yeah.

(10:24):
We’ve had a lot of success with… I’m sorry, go ahead Carly.

Carley Hathaway (10:27):
No, no, go ahead.

Dan Demott (10:28):
I was just going to say we’ve had a lot of success with it, and I’ve kind of refined our follow-up process around that in terms of building out our pipeline. What we’ve found is that script is very inviting and so we do get a really good reception. And so we’ve had to kind of create this new category which we call a market evaluation instead of a pre-listing or a listing appointment. So we never go for the close on that first phone call, but we kind of moved people forward through that process. And this market evaluation call is something we’ve developed where our ISAs we’re building in such a short time a real relationship, and that person wants to actually have a serious and focused conversation, but they may not necessarily be immediately ready to transact.

(11:15):
So we’ve created this market evaluation call where we have a template that we send them out an email in advance, sharing some information we’re going to review, we scheduled the time for one of the agents on the team to contact that person. And then they can take the relationship from a seedling to something really substantial in 30 minutes, where that person now is really connected to us as a source of information for their home. And in that call, we’re able to get a fair bit of information as to what their timelines are. So what we’re finding is that those calls are turning into our six, nine, and 12 month out pipeline of people who clearly they’re thinking, but they’re not ready to be sold today on our-

Ren Jones (11:56):
Right. I like that market evaluation versus pre-listing, because pre-listing is sort of like saying, “Hey, we’re just coming out to hard sell you and sign you up.” But with the market evaluation, they’re basically saying, “We’re interested in doing something sometime soon.” Now therefore somewhere I have to believe you’re asking certain questions that gives you clues as to the strength of that lead. What would those little clues you’re looking for, and how would you word those kind of questions so that you can rank them on a passive interest, versus they’re moving in the direction to make something happen here in the next few months?

Dan Demott (12:36):
Absolutely. Well, I would tell you that it’s not specific questions we ask so much as it’s building that relationship. And like I said, I train my agents on, “Hey, we need to understand what’s their motivation? Why are they taking time out of their day to talk to us about it?” So you have to have that conversation, and to me it’s about being very natural about it. Understanding if you were to sell, why? Why would you sell, where are you going? What needs to be accomplished here?

Ren Jones (13:03):
What’s important about the next? Yeah, exactly. If you could move anywhere, where would you go next or something like that. So you’re asking something in a way that asks them what’s the next dream home or whatever, and then they paint the picture for you and based on that picture you… Is that kind of the question?

Dan Demott (13:20):
Yeah, exactly. And a lot of times, especially in this market, what we’re finding is people are solving problems. I’ll give you one example, a client we’re talking to right now where they did some renovation work on their house. They’ve decided now given everything going on in the world, they need to be closer to their elderly parents, and maybe combine into one household. So they need to balance selling their home for top dollar, which is why we initially approached them with selling the mother’s home, which has some challenges, and then ultimately bring those two sales together into purchasing one new home that’s good for this multi-generational family. That’s a complex problem that you have to kind of have a nice conversation with and understand, but it gives us such a strong position to come from value and say, “Hey, we now understand what you’re trying to accomplish. We can help you get there.”

Ren Jones (14:13):
So many agents don’t really learn what the seller is trying to accomplish. They don’t ask enough questions. If you sell this, where would you go next? How soon do you have to be there? You got to add what’s important about that, and what do you envision? What are all the things you’re considering? Getting a full picture. Because once you have that full picture, then you can exactly how you want to… So somewhere you’ve got a process where you’re asking all these pictures that paints this thing and then you decide, is this something in the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, six months out, whatever it may be. But I love-

Dan Demott (14:48):
Yeah, a lot of those timelines are revealed in-

Ren Jones (14:51):
You’ve got this stack well-built.

Dan Demott (14:52):
Well, I appreciate that.

Carley Hathaway (14:53):
And so let me ask you this. So when you do those follow-up calls or when your agent does that follow-up call, when do you do it? How long after the first conversation?

Dan Demott (15:03):
So the goal of every conversation is to book that next step. So on our initial phone call, the way our script works is if someone has some interest, if it’s a very immediate interest, “Yeah you know what, we are thinking about selling right now.” “Great, let me book you a listing appointment with one of our agents. They’ll come out and go over everything.” If it does dial back a little bit, “So we’re thinking about it or we’d like some information,” then they book that market evaluation phone call on there. If someone is not interested, then the script is to always close for getting an email, verifying the email address, and ask if we can just add them to our database to keep them updated on what happens in the market.

Carley Hathaway (15:47):
Gotcha. So there’s like three different files that you’re putting in.

Dan Demott (15:52):
Yeah, because the conversation opener is so strong and we’re not getting outright rejected, we’re kind of been able to develop the latitude to kind of walk people through some options depending on how interested they are.

Ren Jones (16:05):
And at some point you’re doing comps for people that may be eight months out. So do you just give them a range? Because price is sort of a moment in time, if you will. What do you do with that person that’s eight months out, but they want to know a price today? And that’s kind of hard to crystal ball that. Is it a range?

Dan Demott (16:23):
Yeah, so we do a very high level comp analysis, and because we’re mostly circle prospecting, we kind of know in advance before we’re making those phone calls what the area is, and we can give some kind of range. We pull the comps we want to share with people in advance, so we’re prepped for that. And part of our process that I’ve developed is that I share that information openly before we even have that call. So our ISA calls someone, they’re interested in having this market evaluation, they close the appointment, and put it on the agent’s calendar. They then send the email out to the client copying the agent saying, “Hey, we’re really excited to speak to you tomorrow at two o’clock. Here’s a link to view some comps in your neighborhood. Here’s a link to view our team profile so you can learn a little bit about us. Dan’s going to talk to you tomorrow about more specifics.”

(17:14):
What I’ve found is sharing that information, even though it’s more broad and doesn’t necessarily pinpoint the value of that specific property at the moment in time, gets people more invested in our process. We’re giving them value before they’ve even talked to us. So that change has increased the number of appointments that we keep. We have a very low no-show rate because people are invested in us. They get the comps, we know what they looked at them, they’re more likely to show up to that follow-up call. At that point the agent can kind of vet out what’s the motivation, what’s the timeline, learn some specifics about the property. They’ll help us narrow that range in, but by then there’s a relationship building.

Ren Jones (17:51):
And you’re really educating them very well there, as opposed to whipping out freestyle, “Here’s three comps, bump, bump, bump, you should be at this,” which is you can’t do eight months out.

Dan Demott (18:01):
Right. And the other thing is-

Ren Jones (18:02):
And they’re really giving them a lot of stuff early on. I like the whole process, it’s very well constructed.

Carley Hathaway (18:09):
It is. It’s very well constructed. I like how organized-

Ren Jones (18:11):
And I like the fact that you’re-

Carley Hathaway (18:12):
… and systemized.

Ren Jones (18:13):
… going after business where it’s low rejection but a good high yield if you’re very organized about it. It has to be very organized, that’s for sure.

Dan Demott (18:23):
It’s been a process.

Ren Jones (18:24):
How are you managing the structure of all that, because it’s sort of BoomTown for listings or something.

Carley Hathaway (18:31):
Mm-hmm.

Dan Demott (18:32):
I mean essentially we’re trying to create something like that. How do you build a… That’s always been the challenge. My business, by virtue of my style has always been listing heavy. I’ve never been a really good buyers agent and the last person that came onto our team was a buyer agent, because I needed the right person to help build that process out for us. But coming from always going for listings myself, that’s the challenge. There is no easy way to pay money and get seller leads that are reliable, yet anyways.

Ren Jones (19:01):
Right. Well you’ve done it. You’ve built something that gets that seller business, and the seller business is a much easier side than the buyer’s side. I mean except for a buyer agent on a team like that where you’ve created all these homeless people. That person, they’re very-

Dan Demott (19:17):
That person’s staying busy.

Ren Jones (19:20):
The people have nowhere to live.

Dan Demott (19:21):
Right. But so it’s about building out that process for us, and it is about going after blue ocean so to speak. We’ll go where people aren’t looking and find people-

Ren Jones (19:36):
Yeah, that blue ocean strategy. I remember that. Yes.

Dan Demott (19:38):
Yeah and listen, Vulcan7 is a big part of our success there because it allows us to do that at scale. We can get multiple people dialing, we can get them to be very efficient. So our number of conversations per hour has gone up substantially, and you start to get that progress.

Ren Jones (19:56):
This is exciting. I want to come down and visit your operation as soon as I don’t have to look like the Lone Ranger with a black mask on.

Dan Demott (20:03):
Anytime.

Ren Jones (20:05):
And I’m serious too because I think you’ve got an efficient piece going on here that’s repeatable, duplicatable.

Carley Hathaway (20:12):
Yeah I like how systematized it is. It’s very easy to follow.

Ren Jones (20:17):
Yeah, it’s very well-thought-out, very well-thought-out because it’s-

Dan Demott (20:20):
I appreciate it. A lot of rapid, rapid learning, right? So one thing that I always make sure is that we’re listening to what are people doing. So we record. Everyone on the ISA team they do script and role play by Zoom because we’re not all in the office at the same time these days. So they do that in the morning, and then they do their phone calls together on Zoom so they can listen in on each other. And we record some of that so we hear one side of the conversation. So I told you we’ve developed that market evaluation piece, and that’s something we’ve just happened over the past two weeks because one of our new members on the team started booking these appointments on her own. And all of a sudden it’s like, well wait a second, why isn’t anybody else booking these appointments? Let’s watch the tape and let’s see how she’s doing it. What is the conversation that she’s having that we weren’t having before that unlocks these new kind of appointments that are helping us build a pipeline further down the funnel?

Carley Hathaway (21:15):
That’s so smart and so amazing. I think when you’re on a Zoom too and you’re prospecting, it helps you to stay prospecting. You’re not going to go check out for a little bit, you’re going to stick with it because you’re with everyone.

Ren Jones (21:26):
Right, Carly’s on a lot of those every week on prospecting Zoom calls so-

Dan Demott (21:30):
I’m sure.

Ren Jones (21:31):
And I like what you’re doing. It reminds me, there was a thing called the military close that came about, and they called it that because there was this recruiter that was signing up people under the army left and right like crazy. What’s he doing? And they recorded it and they mapped out the scripts. So what you’re doing is the efficiency piece, who’s running a high batting average and what are they saying? Who’s on the low end, they need to be listening to these people. So very well done, very well-

Carley Hathaway (21:59):
Yeah, very impressive, and only three years. That’s amazing.

Ren Jones (22:03):
I know.

Carley Hathaway (22:04):
Wait, what’s on your vision board? What’s the next big purchase or what’s the next vacation?

Dan Demott (22:11):
I’ll be honest, someone recently told me I needed to focus more on rewarding myself. So that I don’t know. I haven’t been much of a vision board person, but my families do some reward, let’s say that. They’ve made a lot of sacrifices to help me build this and we’re getting there. I’m looking forward to getting the rest of this year where we want it to be for the next one to be as successful. Again, we’re hoping to expand substantially next year, and once we have that set up, then they’ll be some vision board time for sure.

Carley Hathaway (22:45):
Dan, thank you so much for being here. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be moving to Florida soon, so where can we send referrals?

Dan Demott (22:52):
I appreciate that Carly very much. Always available on our office line. You can call or text (561) 329-4972. Once again, that’s (561) 329-4972. Or feel free to send me an email, dan@homesourceteam.net.

Ren Jones (23:10):
Okay. One of the things we like to do on Roadmap, and we’ve done this, is we’ve talked to somebody like you and you’re doing 80 and 80 transactions.

Carley Hathaway (23:17):
80 units.

Ren Jones (23:18):
Your accounting is like 210 in anywhere else in the US which is a wonderful number, but we’ll check back in a year and a half, two years. And your numbers keep going way up through the ceiling, so we would like to check back with you.

Dan Demott (23:34):
I would love that.

Carley Hathaway (23:35):
We want to come do the interview in your mansion next year.

Ren Jones (23:38):
I do too.

Dan Demott (23:40):
That’d be good.

Carley Hathaway (23:41):
Or on your yacht, either one, the mansion or the yacht.

Ren Jones (23:44):
It’s a private island. That’s what he’s buying.

Carley Hathaway (23:48):
Oh.

Ren Jones (23:48):
Good. All right. Well this was great.

Carley Hathaway (23:49):
Well Dan, thank you so, so much. This was so incredible. I think everyone’s going to re-watch it many times. I love the market evaluation. It’s great.

Dan Demott (23:58):
Thank you guys. It’s been a pleasure. I’m happy to share. Glad to share it with your audience. And again, thank you guys for putting together a great tool that helps us do this kind of business.

Ren Jones (24:09):
Great. And folks, if you’re watching on Vulcan7, you want to get involved with the Lead Gen Facebook group that simulcasts the show they are at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not yet involved with Vulcan7, can’t imagine, make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for a special deal. And finally, a lot of people ask, what is Dan Demott’s secret? You think he’s just got this well organized, but really there’s this secret power because he’s on the listing side of the business. What he does, does this around noon every day he goes to the freezer and gets out delicious Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. This is the one for listings. This is the listing side of the business. You’re working on the buyer’s side, you know the flavor. It’s called rocky road. So get this, go to graeters.com for a store near you all over North America where you can pick up the mint chocolate chip. It’s the power to list property.

Dan Demott (25:06):
I was glad that you plugged the Graeter’s Ice Cream. So before I did residential real estate, I was in the commercial real estate on the finance side for about eight years, and my partner in that business was from Columbus. And whenever we would close the transaction, we celebrated it by sending everyone involved the case at Graeter’s Ice Cream. It’s definitely the best ice cream there is.

Carley Hathaway (25:25):
That is so cool.

Ren Jones (25:26):
And the mint chocolate chip for residential real estate. And there’s a little secret if the listing is slow to sell, and it isn’t this time of year in this market, but if it ever is you take it, you dig a hole in the front yard, and you bury it upside down and that house will sell.

Dan Demott (25:42):
I believe it. The power of good Ohio ice cream.

Ren Jones (25:45):
Have a great week everybody.

Carley Hathaway (25:46):
Bye, everyone. Thank you so much Dan.

Ren Jones (25:48):
See you next time.

Dan Demott (25:48):
Thank you.

Ren Jones (25:48):
See you next Wednesday, everybody.