S7 E16: Season 7 Highlights
Watch and review all of the most important highlighted clips of Season 7 with our host Ren Jones, CEO of Vulcan7 and with our co-host, Cincinnati Keller Williams Real Estate Agent, Sarah Close.
Ren Jones (00:03):
It’s that time.
Sarah Close (00:06):
What time is it?
Ren Jones (00:09):
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 two, three, four listings a week. But this is the season seven highlights show. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat-
Sarah Close (00:30):
Copycat principal.
Ren Jones (00:33):
Let me introduce my co-host from Camp Dennison, Ohio. Miss Sarah Close. Hi Sarah. How’s the real estate business?
Sarah Close (00:43):
The real estate business is amazing. Thank you for having me. This is a lot of fun. I love getting to see all the highlights from the season.
Ren Jones (00:50):
Good, good, good. I’m glad you’re here. I want to remind everybody that we are simulcasting the show on the private lead gen Facebook group. They have 52,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. And we’ll be pausing for commercial message during the show as a thank you to the lead gen folks. Sarah, it’s great to have you back here again. Sarah comes and does the highlight show with us. Sarah has several Keller Williams offices throughout southern Ohio and Dayton and Cincinnati and the surrounds. When are you going over to Kentucky?
Sarah Close (01:21):
Well, we just got to dip our toe in there.
Ren Jones (01:23):
We got to do it.
Sarah Close (01:25):
We got some Kentucky folks.
Ren Jones (01:26):
Kentucky’s a different role.
Sarah Close (01:29):
We do. You all better believe it.
Ren Jones (01:30):
I know. And now you have how many agents?
Sarah Close (01:34):
We’re right about 550, 560.
Ren Jones (01:37):
So yeah. Yeah. You-
Sarah Close (01:39):
Of all the best ones-
Ren Jones (01:41):
You have to stop and count them. Yeah. So good. Which is exciting. And you also, you run a team and you talk and you prospect every day and you take listings and you do… I don’t know how you do all that, but you do it all.
Sarah Close (01:54):
I do it
Ren Jones (01:55):
As well as horseback riding. So all that fun stuff.
Sarah Close (01:58):
Got to make time for a little bit of fun in there.
Ren Jones (02:00):
Yeah, she’s living the dream. I’ll tell you. So you understand the business from A to Z and everything because of running a brokerage, doing it yourself in the trenches daily with what agents are dealing with today. You’re doing it as well. They may very well be on a listing appointment and they’re competing with you. Would that be a fair statement?
Sarah Close (02:24):
Sometimes that happens. Yeah, sometimes that happens. But the good guys always win.
Ren Jones (02:29):
The good guys always win. Well first, our first guest is going to be… Who’s in Nashville and you know him and I know him and he is a good friend of ours. He runs it like a business. And that’s the theme of this season highlight show is running it like a business. He’s looking at the numbers every day. Mr. Bernie Gallerani.
Bernie Gallerani (02:49):
As a business owner and as a team owner, I’m probably different than some other folks, especially real estate agents. I look through my P and L and I look through all of my expenses daily, almost. Right? Now, it’s a little less excessive, but it’s just the way I do things. So this morning, I’ll give you a great example is every week I go through my system for my agents and I say, who has X amount of leads that we’re providing? And then what is that conversion percentage? So it tells me how many leads they received in the last seven days, how many leads they’ve had in the last 30 days, how many pendings came from the leads they had in the last seven or 30 days. And then it’s a 90-day overview that says what is their calculated conversion percentage.
Ren Jones (03:37):
So he runs it like a business. I mean he, he’s got a phenomenal operation somewhere around 850, 900 transactions, maybe a thousand this year. I don’t know, I haven’t talked to him in a couple months. But that is how we have to do our business in a predictable and duplicatable way. And he does that.
Sarah Close (03:55):
I think you hit the nail on the head and it’s predictable. You hear him talking about he’s able to actually get in under the hood on his agent’s pipeline and understand what their business is going to forecast out to be for the next 90 days. And he is able to then use that and figure out how to best allocate the leads that he’s producing for his team members based on their conversion. So nothing’s left to chance. It makes it’s so simple, yet I think it’s something that probably a lot of us could do at a higher level and get better results. What you focus on expands and what’s measured improves. And that’s exactly what he’s talking about.
Ren Jones (04:31):
And even if you’re just a solo agent or you’re an agent with one buyer agent, one assistant, closing person, whatever your arrangement may be, having a structure, a business plan, a plan of action, certain steps of schedule, looking at your daily, weekly, and monthly numbers to create that predictable business, sort of running a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, how many rooms were filled, how did the restaurant do, how did the bar do? What are the numbers for everything? And looking at those numbers daily. And we have real estate people that do not have a business plan. We have real estate agents that write a business plan and then never look at it.
Sarah Close (05:05):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (05:06):
He’s looking at his every day, what if… I remember one great client up in Montreal, he was just a solo agent and he looked at his business plan three times a day and there was a reason he made a lot of money. So we’re going to look at-
Sarah Close (05:22):
Absolutely, knew where he was and knew where he’d be.
Ren Jones (05:25):
Yeah, you got to know where you are to know where you’re going. I agree with you. So we’re going to go down to Houston, Texas, another large team. They’re doing around 2,700 transactions. They’re pretty darn famous. Lance and Karina Loken. This is Karina.
Karina Loken (05:43):
Honestly, right now the phone… I truly believe right now, the phone needs to be everybody’s best friend. The more that we are doing this whole social distancing thing and being removed even from the people. A lot of folks are so used to feeding off of the social energy they get from the workplace. And if they’re at home, and especially if they’re home with kids, that changes the whole dynamic of their environment. Right? And so you might be the one voice that they hear today that’s positive and upbeat and answering questions that they have proactively. That is the voice that they needed to get their own head back on track.
(06:25):
Through text or Facebook or Instagram, you can’t read people’s emotions. You can’t read their level of concern or lack of concern. And their understanding about things and what their interest level is, their timeline that they were on when you talked to them a month ago may have just changed a whole lot. And they might be ready to go do something right now. I know there’s a lot of investors who are definitely watching things pretty closely right now. You don’t know unless you talk to them. And so honestly, I don’t think there’s any better medium ever than a telephone. I think it’s the most effective. It’s not always the most efficient for touching lots of people, but there’s just so much more that you get out of voice to voice contact.
Ren Jones (07:09):
Sarah, even with the business plan and the structure, as she was talking about, they’re constantly measuring and using carefully chosen scripts.
Sarah Close (07:19):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (07:20):
So everything is a business science. Everything is structured.
Sarah Close (07:28):
It’s so on purpose. And I think one of the results of this year, if we’ve learned anything that we’ve learned, how important it is to take that limited exposure we now have with our clients to be really surgical about what we’re extracting from that conversation. And you can only do that with scripts. And you can only do that when you’ve internalized those at such a high level that you can really focus on what that perspective client or customer is saying to you. And they’re running what, 2,700 units? I mean, everything’s bigger than Texas and what she’s saying, the most important tool they have is something that is accessible to all of us and that being the phone.
Ren Jones (08:05):
So Sarah, one of the things about… You’re talking about the script, so you internalizing those scripts so you can hear. When we internalize that script, it’s easier for us to listen. And some of the agents out here saying, I would never use a script. It’s the poor use of a script that’s offensive.
Sarah Close (08:24):
That’s exactly right. And I think whether…
Ren Jones (08:27):
Yeah.
Sarah Close (08:28):
Anything you’re saying is a script, it’s just whether or not you choose to actually identify it as such. We all have scripts that we run subconsciously or unconsciously rather is the word I wanted there. And being really purposeful and really curating the right words is going to make all the difference.
Ren Jones (08:45):
I mean, every parent uses scripts with their kids.
Sarah Close (08:51):
Some of mine could not be shown on the Road show.
Ren Jones (08:57):
Good. Let’s go to another great business up in St. George, Utah, John Ames, Chase Ames. They run a great well-structured business. Here they are.
John and Chase Ames (09:11):
I wouldn’t necessarily call it an objection, but most common question we’re getting right now is, oh, our home’s actually selling? Or, oh, how’s the real estate market? Know your numbers. It makes things so much easier and you can take a big part of the emotion out of it, which it is emotional. There’s a lot of craziness going on and it does hurt. But when you can make it kind of more of a logical decision and put some numbers and facts and figures at it, it makes it so much easier. And it makes it a lot easier to move forward to get a listing. ‘Cause homes really are selling and it’s had surprising little impact on the real estate market here.
Ren Jones (09:43):
So here’s the thing. There’s another aspect of running it like a business. They know they’re market statistics.
Sarah Close (09:50):
Exactly. Yep. The local economist. And that’s so important when you’re having those meetings with clients that are trying to navigate this sort of VUCA environment with everything that’s going on with the health situation, et cetera. When you can come to the table and be crisp and clean and well-read about what exactly your clients are going to be impacted by from a metric standpoint, it puts you head and shoulders above all of your competition as far as the presentation goes. But more importantly, you really know where the market is and where to point your business so that you can make sure that you’re maximizing your opportunity. ‘Cause we’re not going to get a lot of opportunities like we’ve had this year.
Ren Jones (10:28):
And then when the competition with Zillow and other things, that is unique and highest value you have, is that hyper-local knowledge. And we have to continue to do our research and study and write that out and present it in a very succinct way.
Sarah Close (10:47):
That’s right. Because otherwise we’re just going to be another functionary out there and we’ve got to have that point of distinction, it’s our responsibility.
Ren Jones (10:55):
Absolutely. So we’re going to go to someone who is a one-man show plus a buyer agent and a couple assistants up in Dayton, Ohio. He runs it like a business, even a solo operation. You run it like a business, Mr. Bryan O’Gletree.
Bryan O’Gletree (11:09):
So April, we’re looking to take 12 new listings. We want to do seven buyer sales… I’m sorry, seven listings sold and five buyer sales.
Carley Hathaway (11:19):
Wonderful. Okay, nice. And are you changing up anything you’re doing?
Bryan O’Gletree (11:24):
We’ve not changed our end goal. Now, COVID-19 has dropped right in the middle of our second quarter here. We don’t have a choice but to work around it. We’re not going to change our goals for the year based on what’s happening right now. What we do to achieve that goal, yes, that’s going change. We know we’re probably going to have to talk to more people. We’re spend more time on the phone. And that’s just the nature of the business. If you want to keep the same income, you want to keep the same standards, you’re just going to have to raise what you do to make those reality.
Ren Jones (12:04):
So obviously Sarah needs to come work at your company.
Sarah Close (12:14):
I know we got to work on this.
Ren Jones (12:15):
I know.
Sarah Close (12:15):
Got to hold out on me, Ren. We got to get this done.
Ren Jones (12:15):
Yeah, I know. He’s very professional. He is very structured. He makes a great income. This was from the show in April. He’s already planning on 14, 15 closings just for that month and continuing at that. But he’s already calculated the adjustments he has to make to reach the business goal.
Sarah Close (12:37):
Yep, that’s exactly what I was going to say is, his goal is immovable and he’s willing to adjust the dials and do the work and ramp it up to make sure that that is still achieved regardless of whatever else is going on around it. So it’s critical.
Ren Jones (12:51):
Real easy. You just start somewhere, you just set up a Google spreadsheet and you start tracking your numbers, contacts, leads, appointments, listing appointments, listings taken, listing sold, buyers, sales, closings, income and some expenses. And you just start tracking that stuff and you can expand it over time. You just got to start somewhere.
Sarah Close (13:09):
Absolutely right. Absolutely. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
Ren Jones (13:12):
Performance is measured performance is gained or something like that?
Sarah Close (13:15):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (13:16):
When you’re measuring it-
Sarah Close (13:16):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (13:17):
You have to measure in order to improve.
Sarah Close (13:22):
Right.
Ren Jones (13:22):
That’s all the plan that
Sarah Close (13:23):
It’s critical.
Ren Jones (13:24):
Good.
Sarah Close (13:25):
It’s critical. Well that’s exciting.
Ren Jones (13:27):
So as somebody we all know really well, we interviewed shortly thereafter and has quite a big following. I think that that particular show is one of our higher rated shows, Mr. Mike Ferry. And he was talking to us about the efficiency that happened in the industry because of COVID. It actually raised the level of efficiency that a real estate agent can operate from because of the shortcuts we had to establish to do business. So here’s Mr. Mike Ferry.
Mike Ferry (14:07):
The efficiency that realtors that are working can experience today is second to none. Because as you and I have said, when Vulcan7 produces all the phone numbers for the people to call, they answer the phone.
Ren Jones (14:22):
Mike, Mike, working from home is not a new concept for realtors, is it?
Mike Ferry (14:27):
No, it’s just like when people talk about virtual presentations, second home market, resort markets, desert markets, a good portion of Florida, east and West Coast, Arizona, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, the Jersey Shore, these are all second home markets. They’ve always been done virtually.
Ren Jones (14:47):
And that is the case, Sarah. What happened that started with vacation areas, resorts and vacation areas. The method of doing business is now carried over into the mainstream. If you’re an agent in Vail, Colorado, this is how you always operated the rest of the country have quickly learn it. But it’s been done forever. In fact, what I always liked, and I’m sure you enjoyed it as well, if a seller was out of town, the job was so much easier.
Sarah Close (15:21):
Oh, it’s night and day. Yeah. What’s funny though, if you think about it, that’s all in our head. The job didn’t get harder or easier because of their locations because of what we anticipated or believed that it should be. And I think there’s going to be a lot of legacy practices after we’re back in a more stable health environment that are going to have efficiencies built in that are never going to go away. And I think everyone’s gotten pretty proficient. The public’s got him pretty used to using it. And Mike’s right, you cannot be more productive than you can be in this type of an environment. It’s incredible.
Ren Jones (16:01):
It didn’t just happen in real estate, it happened in banking. We went five years forward. I’m not taking a picture of a check and depositing it, well now you are. Telemedicine, everything has become more efficient. This was a great leap forward. It was a pain in the behind, but it was a great leap forward for a lot of industries and real estate is one of them. So we’ve got a lot of absolutely wonderful gifts as a result of that.
Sarah Close (16:27):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (16:28):
Good.
Sarah Close (16:29):
The Corona bonus, if you will.
Ren Jones (16:30):
The Corona bonus and yeah, we’ll look at it that way. So we’re going to go out to Prescott, Arizona to see Mr. Geoff Hyland. He has got a great operation going.
Geoff Hyland (16:43):
The other thing that I find a lot of strength in and a lot of accountability in is my Mastermind group. So that’s once a week every Friday. It’s like minded people that are positive, that all care about one another, whether it be professionally, personally, the whole thing. But, you’re late to that call by a minute, it’s a hundred bucks. If you’re not making-
Ren Jones (17:02):
Wow. I like it.
Sarah Close (17:04):
I like that accountability.
Ren Jones (17:05):
That is great.
Geoff Hyland (17:07):
And then there’s a shared spreadsheet and each month you’re posting, how many listings am I going to take? How many price reductions am I going to take?
Ren Jones (17:13):
How embarrassing that could be.
Geoff Hyland (17:17):
And you don’t want to be on the call and be the one that’s pulling everybody back. So I’m a somewhat competitive guy, so that’s a really good structure for me.
Ren Jones (17:26):
Accountability. Accountability. Accountability. Whether you’re solo and so many solo agents or an agent and a buyer agent will set up accountability with people like them in another city in their time zone. They all hop on a Zoom call, they prospect together, they report numbers in a buddy system. There’s so many ways to set up accountability.
Sarah Close (17:49):
Absolutely. Absolutely. You got to find your tribe and being able to plug into them and have that group accountability that you can’t hide from. It’s pretty effective.
Ren Jones (17:57):
I know and you can take it to the bank. You can join the gym and you’ll go on the days you feel like it or you can join the gym and have somebody meet you there every morning at 6:00 AM or whatever, and you’ll go just so that you aren’t embarrassed.
Sarah Close (18:14):
You’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. It’s funny you say that our gyms moved to having to sign up to go and my attendance has improved dramatically because I’ve taken up a spot and someone else knew that I was supposed to be there. So it’s like you just can’t dodge it. So it’s all good. I mean he’s really figured out the way to be effective with a network group and he didn’t care that they weren’t in his backyard or part of his team. He found his tribe. So makes a difference.
Ren Jones (18:39):
And the fact that you pointed that out, Sarah, with your gym and you filling that slot, even you who are a self-starter, self-driven person don’t need that accountability. Well it seems like it works even for you. So for those of us to say I don’t need that, I’m driven as it is. It works for all of us. It works for all of us.
Sarah Close (19:02):
A hundred percent.
Ren Jones (19:03):
Yes.
Sarah Close (19:04):
A Hundred percent.
Ren Jones (19:05):
Good. We’re going to go to Little Rock, we’re working our way around the map here. Little Rock, Arkansas, miss Carrie Ellison.
Carrie Ellison (19:15):
I think the most important thing is to start and plan a schedule. I think the biggest mistake I see in a lot of agents and even agents on my team is they get up and they know they’ve got stuff to do, yet their top 20% isn’t on their calendar. Everything else is on the calendar. They’ve got to be here or they’ve got to go to a home inspection. Yet somewhere along the way they forget that… I heard this in one of our classes at KW that, there’s nothing more important than finding new business.
Ren Jones (19:48):
Accountability. Schedule is accountability. A schedule is accountability. And they make their 20 contacts-
Sarah Close (19:55):
You know what I like-
Ren Jones (19:56):
Everybody on her team is making their 20 contacts a day and they logged that so that her team is accountability, but the schedule is accountability too. Pardon?
Sarah Close (20:06):
Right. She’s made it so simple. She’s just paired back all the other layers and just said focus on the core and that’s why she’s crushing it.
Ren Jones (20:13):
Well that’s the gas on the engine of those 20 calls a day.
Sarah Close (20:17):
A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
Ren Jones (20:20):
Yeah. Good deal. Well, we’re going to head over to Omaha. We’re kind of working our way around the map here and then back up to the center of the country. Jeff-
Sarah Close (20:30):
We’re going to places and I can’t say that I’ve ever been, so this is a good summary. Little Rock Omaha. All good.
Ren Jones (20:38):
I know. Well, Jeff was the number one team at Berkshire Hathaway and he recently went to your Keller Williams very recently, about a year and a half ago. It’s going very, very well. But accountability is a very important piece to him, Jeff.
Jeff Cohn (20:56):
We help motivate people to learn to lose and to learn to fail and to learn to get nos. Because I know it takes five calls to get a contact. So you need to fail four times to get a contact and it takes 10 contacts to get an appointment. You need to fail nine times to get an appointment and it takes three appointments to get a sale. Meaning you need to fail two out of three of those times. And so instead of just celebrating the sale by giving them a commission check, you need to celebrate the failures. That’s more important to me to help people get comfortable failing. And so we’ve broken the numbers down in the bottom right corner. And so we know over tracking numbers, nine years, it takes five call attempts to get a contact and it takes 10 contacts to get one actual appointment.
(21:34):
That’s where you’re meeting in person to either show a house or do a buyer presentation or a listing presentation. And it takes three appointments to get one sale. And in our market, one sale ends up being about $3,300. So if an agent comes in and says they want to make six figure, we know it’s going to take them 36 unit sales to make a hundred thousand dollars a year. Well we also know it takes about 150 calls based on those numbers there to have one closing. So all we do is take 150 calls multiplied by the 36 unit sales so that they can make that a hundred grand. And we divide that number 5,400 by 52 weeks and that tells us how many calls they need to make each week.
Ren Jones (22:13):
Sarah. It’s a script. It’s a roadmap. It’s a plan. It’s just a… It’s a script. It’s like the pilot getting ready to take off. It’s going through the checklist. It’s a script. That formula is a script. All you have to do… When you go to Starbucks, Starbucks operates like a script. McDonald’s run by 16-year-olds. It’s not that 16-year-olds are brilliant. It’s the structure and the script that makes it so consistent and so predictable.
Sarah Close (22:44):
That’s exactly right. Billions served by a 16-year-old. To your point, he’s made it a really easy math equation. And what I think he’s done so well is he’s let people… He’s called out the fact that there’s going to be failure. And I think that the expectation, if that’s put out there and that’s what you’re looking for, it makes getting through those calls so much easier if you know that it’s not just you and it’s everyone that are going to get nos. And I think that’s really where people get that call reluctance is, they expect everything to be a yes. And they hear of the successes hearing about the things that weren’t successful I think really is kind of the secret sauce.
Ren Jones (23:22):
Yeah, well it’s using a sports analogy because if you’re batting average is 300, that means the other 700 are failures. Strikeout.
Sarah Close (23:33):
Not so much. Right, exactly.
Ren Jones (23:35):
So we have to look at it as a sport, have a sport mindset with that. So we’re going to go down to Cape Coral, someone you and I know and he’s making 2.3 million in income. But here’s a little tip that if you have an extra 25, 30 minutes a day, you can make an extra 200,000 a year. Here’s the tip, Mike Darda can return Cape Coral.
Mike Darda (24:05):
So the 15-minute Hot Somebody’s is a seven-day week activity. It’s calling usually for me new expireds, my hot lead follow up, even if I still have some time left over, I’ll get into for sale owners and the other people we always call. So that’s the goal. Catch them while you’re not in your normal prospecting time and you’re going to get them at odd times when they’re available. So now that’ll add about one to three contacts a day to your contacts, but my ratios have been adding about one to two more listing appointments a week.
Ren Jones (24:43):
So can you imagine that? I mean if somebody just… And that he ran the math and it’s about $200,000 in commissions.
Sarah Close (24:50):
Yeah, that’s huge.
Ren Jones (24:51):
Just for doing that, now he’s prospecting every morning for three or four hours, but he’s adding that extra little bit on and brings him an extra 200,000.
Sarah Close (25:02):
Yeah, that’s like the Geico commercial. 15 minutes gets you $200,000. I mean that’s a pretty good deal.
Ren Jones (25:07):
I know.
Sarah Close (25:08):
It’s amazing.
Ren Jones (25:09):
Go. So folks, follow that Geico plan. There we go. So someone you know from Chicago, Kari Kohler, lead follow up. That’s an important formula in this whole business plan.
Kari Kohler (25:24):
We all have our weaknesses and we have our strengths. I think my one strength is lead follow up. I am golden on it. It’s where all the money is as far as I’m concerned. There’s so few people that call a second, third, fourth, fifth time. I mean, I just basically call until people tell me to go jump in the lake. I don’t mind like hearing, no, no, no, I’m not ready. I’m not ready, ’cause I’m going to catch them. I’m going to catch them when they’re ready sometime.
Ren Jones (25:52):
So the lead follow-up component in this whole business plan, accountability now the lead follow-up, which is an area that a lot of… Some agents are really good at because… For all the wrong reasons, it’s easier to call the same person back sometimes and others who’ll just call one and never call again.
Sarah Close (26:12):
Yeah, no, and that’s what… When you’re using a system like yours, like Vulcan, when you’re able to see that history of how many times you’ve reached them, it’s all in the follow-up. Very rarely do I have a high level of success with the first call. It’s generally chipping away at it over time and they finally give in.
Ren Jones (26:36):
So it makes a difference. Well, and I would think that the listing appointment to listing taken would go way up because by then everybody else-
Sarah Close (26:45):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (26:45):
Would have dropped off.
Sarah Close (26:46):
They’re all gone. Yeah, they’re all gone.
Ren Jones (26:48):
Exactly. So it’s just you and they’ve already kind of gotten to know you-
Sarah Close (26:53):
That’s right. You thinned out the field and you didn’t have to do anything. So it’s all good.
Ren Jones (26:57):
So this next one is a favorite of mine because for 20 years… And if you meet her, you’ll think she must have… If she’s been doing it for 20 years, she must have been two when she started. She’s up in Maryland, DC area up there. Now she’s made for 400 to $500,000 in income a year for 20 years. Now you think that’s a lot of money but not up there. That’s kind of like a typical income up there. But she got involved with Vulcan7 and she now makes two and a half million in income. The jump of adding those components and working the seller side so intensely is just… And she chats with us a little bit about mindset.
Carley Hathaway (27:46):
And how do you bring those listings to you? Just sit around and wait for them to call you or Facebook ads?
Carolyn Young (27:53):
Nope. I take more of the hunter mindset. I use Vulcan7. I’m a big fan of it. Definitely changed my career over the last few years.
Carley Hathaway (28:05):
Okay, great. So on the phone you’re calling, you’re hunting.
Carolyn Young (28:09):
Yes. Our team is big on prospecting. For us, our team, especially right now with all this COVID going on, everybody’s social distancing, but we kind of did it all the time anyway. But we do it more. We’re all on from 9:30 to about noon and we’re prospecting, we all prospect, we’re all trying to set appointments every morning and then usually the afternoon, evenings and weekends we’re on appointments.
Ren Jones (28:39):
So she’s got the hunter mindset and that’s the piece, the hunter mindset. And that’s something a lot of people don’t have. And you have to develop that if you’re in this business. So you want to catch something and you-
Carolyn Young (28:55):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (28:56):
Again, there it goes back to that sports analogy that when you have that hundred-
Sarah Close (29:03):
It’s a very competitive field and if you wait for it to come to you, you’re only going to be able to get what’s left over. So she’s made it real simple.
Ren Jones (29:11):
That’s right. Be a hunter like Carolyn Young. So right in your backyard are two people that would be great to come over to your company. I’ve known them for a long time and as well as you. These two ladies run it like a business. It’s very predictable, duplicatable. They make a lot of money and they have a lot of time to enjoy it. The two Sues, Sue Miller and-
Sarah Close (29:38):
Sue Wahl.
Ren Jones (29:39):
Sue Wahl.
The Two Sues (29:41):
We only go after we’ve pre-qualified, pre-qualified, pre-qualified. We make sure that they’re ready to list and then we’ll go.
Ren Jones (29:51):
What’s your batting average? You go on 10, how many do you take?
The Two Sues (29:55):
Eight and a half.
Ren Jones (29:56):
Eight and a half. 85%.
The Two Sues (29:59):
Yeah.
Ren Jones (29:59):
So seven or 8% of the time they don’t want you. And seven or 8% of the time you don’t want them. Is that what it is?
The Two Sues (30:04):
Yeah. Or they’re going to wait.
Ren Jones (30:04):
Okay.
The Two Sues (30:04):
They’re going to wait.
Ren Jones (30:04):
Okay.
The Two Sues (30:11):
We’ll get them later.
Ren Jones (30:12):
We’ll get them later. So out of the gate they’re at 85%. Here’s the thing, when I ask an agent, “You go on 10 appointments, how many do you take?” If they kind of don’t know that number, they’re not running it like a business.
The Two Sues (30:28):
Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Ren Jones (30:29):
If they say 85% or I take 82% or 78% or a good number is always close to that 80% range plus or minus. And that speaks volumes if they don’t know that number. So folks, if you don’t know that number, there’s work to do here that will add an efficiency and change your life.
Sarah Close (30:53):
What I really respect about them is they have done a very high level of… Frankly very high quality business for 20 plus years, but through a number of different market situations. So they’re not a flash in the pan, they’re not using bought leads to build a business that might get ripped away from them someday. The world could turn upside down and they’re going to have the exact amount of business that they choose to get that year. I mean, they’re amazing.
Ren Jones (31:24):
They certainly are. And they’re working two categories of people, the people you know and the people you don’t know and of course-
Sarah Close (31:35):
Yeah, your Metts and Brats.
Ren Jones (31:36):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well maybe Keller speak at your company, it’s Metts and haven’t Metts or in Cincinnati speak it’s, Brats and Metts if you brought them in.
Sarah Close (31:44):
That’s right. That’s exactly right.
Ren Jones (31:46):
That’s it. So all the fun. But again, it’s running it like a business. And as you add folks, as you add structure, as you operate like McDonald’s and 16-year-olds, or as you add operate like Starbucks, the efficiency and the consistency of your business and the amount of energy you have to put into your business, it becomes less and less and less. And the monetary yield goes up and up and up.
Sarah Close (32:13):
That’s exactly right.
Ren Jones (32:14):
It’s fun.
Sarah Close (32:15):
That’s exactly right. Yeah.
Ren Jones (32:18):
We’re going to go down to South Florida. There’s a gentleman. He went from Michigan down to Florida. He didn’t know the market. He’s only been in the business two years. He discovered Vulcan7 and makes about $600,000 a year. Mr. Nick Grodzicki.
Nick Grodzicki (32:35):
Originally from Michigan. So five states north of Sunny South Florida. It came down, so it was March 2019 when I got into the real estate business, joined the top producing team off a million dollar listing Miami. And from there right away they had put me into using Vulcan7. And I went down to South Florida with absolutely zero contacts, not knowing anything about South Florida other than visiting Miami, maybe once or twice per for spring break in college. And from there, Vulcan7 just has really tremendously helped me become successful in the real estate business in a short time. Sales is just a numbers game and it’s a mental game. So when I was in college, I had three sales internships, all of them happen to be around cold calling in different industries. And so I really developed that rhino skin or something like to call it.
(33:25):
I mean I’ve been told lots of things. To keep it good for the air, I’ve been told lots of things. But honestly, you can’t let the nose affect you. You got to just keep going. You’re going to get that yes. And honestly, if I set one listing appointment a day, there are many days that I set a lot more than that. But if I set at least one a day, it’s a numbers game again. So at the end of the month, I call seven days a week. By the way, Saturdays and Sundays are actually the best because no one else is calling. But if you do 30 days of the month or 31, whatever, and then at the end of the month, if you just did one a day, that’s 31 appointments and if only five of them sign and they’re all a million dollars, that’s 5 million in inventory and five new listings a month.
(34:05):
So like I said, I was calling 1,000, 12,000 people a day when I first got started and it’ll work. It’s just get past those nos. Don’t let it personally affect you and continue to get the yes.
Ren Jones (34:20):
He’s got the rejection mastered.
Sarah Close (34:23):
I love that rhino skin. I’ve not heard that phrase, but that’s… I’m going to borrow that. Makes a lot. That’s all it is. And he is just crushing the numbers. He’s not letting anything get in his way.
Ren Jones (34:33):
I know the man’s just living the dream. Can you imagine two years in the business and making 600,000 a year? He just crossed me-
Sarah Close (34:41):
And he’s got out of Michigan, so that’s good.
Ren Jones (34:46):
Gave up that snow
Sarah Close (34:47):
Oh, just kidding. No, no, sorry.
Ren Jones (34:50):
There we go. So it’s a dream life. And it can be everybody who’s watching this, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Omaha, as you can see, doesn’t matter if you’re in South Florida, doesn’t matter if the houses are 80,000 or they’re 800,000 or they’re 8 million, it doesn’t matter because it’s easier to list and sell a lot of little ones sometimes than it is to sell to list and sell a 2,000,000 one. So it doesn’t matter where you are because we’ve met people that make millions in all of the different markets.
Sarah Close (35:22):
Know the models apply everywhere.
Ren Jones (35:24):
Sarah, this next one is a lot of fun. He’s down in Boynton Beach. He has an amazing method of calling through neighborhoods circle prospecting. He uses Vulcan7 to talk to people and he has a wonderful script. So you should watch… Folks should watch the entire show. He’s only been three years in the business. He also is making about $600,000 a year just calling through neighborhoods using Vulcan7, Mr. Dan Demott.
Dan Demott (35:55):
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?”
(36:33):
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 (37:00):
So many ways to do this business. He’s doing it all on neighborhood making the same amount of money as Nick. He’s been in the real estate industry and commercial and other components of it, but only three years in residential. He and Nick are making about the same amount of money in totally different ways.
Sarah Close (37:16):
Yeah, they’ve got a totally different style where Nick or Jeff got the rhino skin and is comfortable with the rejection. The way that Dan has set up that script, there’s really not an opportunity for rejection. Yeah. This home is going to affect the value of your home. Would you like to know? Okay. Who’s going to say no?
Ren Jones (37:34):
Yeah, it’s brilliant. So it’s a little softer method to make the same amount of money.
Sarah Close (37:39):
It’s very subtle.
Ren Jones (37:42):
It all works. And there are plenty of numbers to call-
Sarah Close (37:46):
Absolutely.
Ren Jones (37:47):
And our final guest also down in Florida, Florida, Florida, Florida, last three are Florida. Fort Lauderdale. She spent five years as a buyer agent on a team in the last year, year and a half. She decided to go solo. She ran into Vulcan7 and she is blowing it up. And the ladies, she’s excited. Kimberly Desocio.
Kimberly Desocio (38:11):
I worked for probably the first five years as more of a buyer’s agent just because of the particular company that I was with. Didn’t really know much more of the other side of it. And then once I changed companies, I started to figure out what do I need to do? How do I want to run my business? And then just recently going into Vulcan7 because I needed something more to add to my business. And that has opened up a whole new world for me, actually. And now I do business a whole different way because of that. I picked up 10 listings just recently and I have about $20 million in inventory right now.
Carley Hathaway (38:55):
I love that. 20 million, I’ll take it.
Kimberly Desocio (38:57):
And I owe that to Vulcan7. I really do. Because I would’ve never gone outside the box, as I call it, to do what I do every single day? I now make prospecting a big part of my day and it’s every single day rather than trying to find the time for it.
Ren Jones (39:18):
That’s it. It is making that a priority. Running it like a business, the gas and the engine being lead… Making those calls, lead generating, talking to people. Every day, talking to enough people to make a consistent business in this. Being on the listing sides. Buyers take time, listings take skill.
Sarah Close (39:38):
Right.
Ren Jones (39:41):
That’s why all the buyer agents buy Rocky Road, right?
Sarah Close (39:43):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s the way to go. Absolutely. It’s list to last. So she’s getting her prospecting done, then she’s got all of her little soldiers out there with her signs. There’s nothing that makes me happier than single showing has come up in my phone when I’m doing something that is not work and someone else is out showing the properties that I’ve listed. So good for her.
Ren Jones (40:06):
Yeah. What did they say? The analogy is, if you list property, you are the employer and if you show property, you’re the employee. There’s some truth to that.
Sarah Close (40:16):
I can see where that has an application.
Ren Jones (40:18):
When you look at people that been in the business for more than 10 years. Most of them have a fabulous business on the listing side of the business. And if they’re doing it mostly on the buy side, usually they’re in some levels of exhaustion because that’s-
Sarah Close (40:37):
I was going to say.
Ren Jones (40:38):
It’s not sustainable for any length of time.
Sarah Close (40:41):
No, it’s not sustainable. It really isn’t. And the fastest way to burn out is buyers. And having a listing based business where your average time on task to get that one piece of business done is estimated to be about 25% of the amount that it takes to get a buyer piece of business to the finish line. It is just almost nonsensical to not be listing based. Makes a huge difference. And that’s why she’s crushing it.
Ren Jones (41:07):
And if you want to have a life, if you’ve got kids and all the family photos, have a picture of mom or dad with a phone to their ear the whole time, it’s just not fair. But on the listing side of the business, what’s interesting, ’cause you’ve done this for a long time. I have too. I worked Monday through Friday and Friday afternoon I was kind of done until Monday again on the listing side of the business. Try that on the buyer side. I don’t think so. If you’re listing property and you go on vacation for a week or two and you come back, you probably sold three or four or five homes. Try that on the buyer’s side, you can’t do it.
Sarah Close (41:42):
That’s right. You just can’t.
Ren Jones (41:42):
Good.
Sarah Close (41:43):
No, it’s the only way to go if you’re going to do this long term.
Ren Jones (41:49):
So if we did this right, Sarah, the people that are watching the season seven highlights, will get an understanding of how they can run this in a very structured way, make a lot of money, and have the time to enjoy it. That’s the only thing I care about in this whole deal. I really do.
Sarah Close (42:02):
Yep.
Ren Jones (42:02):
That’s all I care about.
Sarah Close (42:03):
Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Ren Jones (42:06):
Well folks, if you’re watching-
Sarah Close (42:07):
We need good guys to stay in the business.
Ren Jones (42:09):
Say that again.
Sarah Close (42:11):
We need the good guys to stay in the business. We don’t want to burn out.
Ren Jones (42:17):
It, that’s it. If you’re watching on Vulcan7 and you want to get involved with the lead gen Facebook group that simulcasts our show, you can reach them at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. We’re very grateful for them simulcasting this. 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. And then finally, the secret. You think it’s just all that we’ve just picked these people based on their performance, but they all have a secret that none of them are willing to share. But I am willing to tell you how they do it.
(42:51):
What they do is they make some calls usually in the morning and around noon they return some calls and they’re getting ready to go to lunch. But instead they go to the freezer and they get some delicious Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. This is the one for listings folks. You want the mint chocolate chip that is working with sellers. That is being a good listing agent. If the listing is slow to sell, you bury it upside down and that listing will sell just like that. If you’re working with buyers you know the flavor.
Sarah Close (43:23):
Rocky Road.
Ren Jones (43:24):
That’s it. Rocky Road. So you certainly want to be on the listing side of the business unless you like Rocky Road. That’s right. Thanks for joining us, everybody. I hope you got some value out of this. If you did, share it with somebody else who’s not in your market competing with you and help them make some good money too. They’ll be your friend forever.
Sarah Close (43:46):
Well, this was a great season. Season seven was amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. Take care.
Ren Jones (43:51):
Bye-Bye everybody.