How Shonna Ruble took 17 listings in one week by calling expireds every morning

Ren Jones00:05

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 two, three, four listings each week, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway, that’s carleyhathaway.com. Hi Carley, how’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway00:40

Hi Ren, hi everybody. Real estate is great, as you know — it’s such a good time to be a listing agent, love getting those multiple offers right now.

Ren Jones00:48

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 a commercial message during the show as a thank you to the Lead Gen folks. Let’s welcome our guest today from Billings, Montana, Miss Shonna Key Ruble. Welcome, Shonna.

Shonna Ruble01:16

Hi, how are you? Thank you.

Carley Hathaway01:18

Hi Shonna, thank you so much for being here today, we’re so excited to talk to you.

Shonna Ruble01:24

Thanks, thanks for having me.

Carley Hathaway01:25

So Shonna, thank you again for being here. What is your goal for the year?

Shonna Ruble01:31

Our goal for the year is to finish the year out with 120 units.

Carley Hathaway01:36

That’s a lot, that’s a big goal. Are you on track?

Shonna Ruble01:39

We are on track to hit that goal this year, yes.

Carley Hathaway01:41

That’s exciting. So that’s a huge number — where is your business coming from?

Shonna Ruble01:48

Most of our business is coming from really a lot of things, but we actually believe real estate is pretty simple. We are a real estate team, so we do have buyer’s agents that allow us to hit those higher numbers, but I’m still in production, so I am getting on the phone every single morning and making those calls, and we’re following up with our database. Real estate, like I said, is really simple, so we focus on open houses, for sale by owners, expired listings — just really those basic things. Of course you have leads from listings, but we do not buy any leads, so every lead we have is organic.

Carley Hathaway02:38

That’s really cool, and that’s exciting. So your profit margin’s going to be a lot higher, right, because you’re not spending money on buying leads that don’t really work.

Shonna Ruble02:48

Absolutely, yes. And I have a phenomenal coach, Steve Powers, so he’s constantly making me go and making sure we’re in alignment, because even if we make a million dollars in GCI this year, if we didn’t have the profit, I wouldn’t even be able to go buy a Twinkie. So we’re going to keep those numbers down as close as we can so we’re having a good profit each year.

Carley Hathaway03:12

That’s amazing. It sounds like you know what you’re doing — you’ve built a team, you make your calls, but you still have a coach. Why do you feel like you need a coach still?

Shonna Ruble03:22

I feel like we have to have a coach in every aspect of our life, but definitely in real estate. As a team leader, the broker, and someone who’s been in the industry for 17 years, I think oftentimes we know what needs to be done — we’ve heard it so many times — but we don’t have anyone there to actually hold us accountable. When you’re at the top of the team, your agents aren’t going to hold you accountable, your admin aren’t. But if you have that coach you’re paying all this money to that’s helping you grow your business, then they earn that right to hold you accountable. And it’s good because we’re in it — we’re in the business, and sometimes we make bad decisions when we’re in it, we’re not on the outside looking in. So having that extra set of eyes really dissecting my business and bringing it back to reality: “Shonna, don’t chase this shiny object, let’s go back to the basics. Pick up the phone, work your expired listings. When’s the last time you called expireds?” So no matter if you’re day one in the business or you’ve been in it 20 to 40 years, I think everyone should invest in themselves by having a coach.

Carley Hathaway04:43

And I like how you say it’s like having a bird’s-eye view to help you in that way.

Shonna Ruble04:48

Absolutely, yes.

Ren Jones04:50

Carley, of all the guests we’ve had on Roadmap over the last few years, 120-plus guests, there have only been about three that didn’t have a coach — because in their case, within two weeks they paid for a whole year of coaching, and then it’s all plus return. Somebody that holds them accountable, that makes them so powerful they’re taking an extra two or three listings a month — and if an average listing is $7,000, $8,000, times three, that’s an extra quarter of a million dollars a year. So I can’t speak highly enough about the one-on-one coaching that everyone should be involved in.

Carley Hathaway05:32

I know Mike Ferry and Ron Kernan always say, look at professional athletes — they’re the best in the world, and they still are coached.

Shonna Ruble05:42

Yeah, I agree with Ren.

Carley Hathaway05:48

Good. So you said you get in the mornings and you start calling — can you give us your morning routine breakdown?

Shonna Ruble05:58

Yes. Again, it goes back to having a coach. I’m a real estate agent, and we’re really great at sales, so we’re really not good at holding ourselves accountable. If you’re great at sales, most of the time you’re not organized, and sticking to a schedule is painful, so you actually have to learn those things. Before Steve, I’d be like, “I own the company, I’ll just come in at this time.” But you really cannot do that, so my coach Steve Powers has really worked on my schedule, and that is getting up at the same time every day. It does get easier over time — 90 days was a struggle — but getting up at the same time every day. For me it’s listings, because I’m still in production. My morning — I would like to say I go to the gym and work out, I do not do that, but I should. Once I get to the office, everyone knows that for the morning I’m going to be hunting for leads. I come in, I immediately pull up our expireds through the Vulcan7 we use, and I immediately get on the phone to start calling.

Carley Hathaway07:22

What time do you start calling?

Shonna Ruble07:23

About 8:30. I come in, I talk to my agents about really quick emergencies, “What do you need?” I love to focus on my business and systems, because our company’s only as great as our systems, and our people are only going to be as great as our systems. So in order for me to earn the right to do what I love, the fun part of real estate, I have to do the boring part — actually make calls and pick up the phone. I come in at 8:00, and by 8:30 I’m on the phone calling my expireds. The reason we do that is there are going to be others in the market calling them as well, so I want to be the first person to talk to them about their expired listing to try to set that appointment. I’ll then call the for sale by owners, then go through my database and the evaluations that came in from our website. So my morning is strictly all about lead generation. If I get an appointment set, then I earn the right to work on my systems and coach my team in the afternoon. But each morning, Monday through Friday, it’s all about lead generation.

Carley Hathaway08:42

That’s amazing. And how important is it that it has to be every day? Why don’t you just do it Mondays and Wednesdays — what do you think the importance is of doing it five days a week right away in the morning?

Shonna Ruble08:55

I’m sure there’s some great true real estate answer out there that sounds really intelligent when someone says it. For me personally, one, I’m a leader, so I need to show up every single day for my team, and I take that very seriously. If I skip a day, we get lazy and think it’s okay and justify it, and then next thing you know you’re missing two days, or you’ll be scheduling appointments during that time when you shouldn’t be. But it’s really about being a leader. If I want my agents to be consistent and accountable on what they say they’re going to do, then I also need to be accountable for what I say I’m going to do. So that’s coming in and showing my team, “Even though it’s painful, I don’t enjoy it either, but I want to show up every single day and do what it takes to be a real estate agent.” And that’s essentially getting an appointment every single day — that’s the minimum standard. If I expect my team to do that, I have to do it as well.

Ren Jones10:02

You’re right — if you expect the whole team to do it, you have to do it as well. You want to mirror and model a way of being. When you get down to it, what’s a better use of your time than taking one listing a day?

Shonna Ruble10:18

Right. We actually just did this in our team meeting on Tuesday. You come into real estate and you think, “I’ve got to be good at marketing, I have to do all these things.” We actually have one job — real estate agents, your one job is to get that one appointment every single day. Everything else is busywork. But if you don’t grow your company and you’re not in the mindset of being in production, then you’re failing your teammates. I tell people I have to show up every day so my admin and my agents can afford to put food on their table, or afford braces or glasses for their children. And that means I do the one job I’ve done for the last 17 years that I love, and that’s go after one appointment.

Ren Jones11:11

And that’s the power of doing it five days a week — it develops that muscle memory. If you miss a day, or start to miss a day, you’re like, “I’m supposed to be doing something.” By doing it five days a week versus two or three, that makes you powerful. That’s the power of it, it pulls you into place.

Shonna Ruble11:32

I could not agree with you more. It’s funny — once you have a few days of not doing your lead gen, like on a Monday, it’s hard to remember your scripts. But when you do it every single day, as soon as someone opens their mouth on the other end of that phone, I already know what my rebuttal’s going to be, because we only get so many actual rebuttals somebody’s going to throw at me. As soon as they’re talking, I already know what I’m going to say. That comes over time, and it’s going through the pain of saying it over and over, and actually knowing what to say and when to say it, and having enough people to say it to.

Ren Jones12:15

The other important component about five days a week is the lead follow-up. If you’re not doing it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it breaks your stride and lead follow-up breaks down, so it’s really important to do that. Shonna, can you comment on a hunter mindset?

Shonna Ruble12:33

Yes. My coach, Steve Powers, has taught me that there are two personalities, or two roles, on a real estate team. You have the hunter, that goes out and kills the buffalo every single day and brings it back to their team. And then you have the skinners — the skinners are my admin, like my transaction coordinator and my listing manager, and they take care of it, so that my job every single day is to feed my team. I go out, I get that listing, I bring it back to my team. Our systems, our models, our customer service base of who we are is all run by my admin team. Then I just go back out, get the listing, bring it back in, and allow the skinners — my admin team — to do the work and offer great customer service. And if I’m successful in hunting that day for the listing, then I earn the right to work on our systems and our growth model.

Ren Jones13:36

Carley, you can tell this analogy is designed for Montana.

Shonna Ruble13:43

It’ll work in all 50 states, I promise.

Ren Jones13:47

There’s not a lot of skinning going on in New York.

Shonna Ruble13:51

You talk to Steve about that. I don’t know what he uses for his New York clients.

Carley Hathaway13:58

Hunting pigeons. So I think it’s really cool that you’ve built a team, because it almost seems like building the team helps you be held accountable as well — like you said, this person needs braces, glasses, whatever. So accountability is a huge aspect for you, right?

Shonna Ruble14:18

Absolutely. It’s in our value statement, it hangs on the wall as soon as we walk in the office. One, we hire accountable people, but also I need to be accountable, and we do what we say we’re going to do. I tell my admin, if you tell someone you’re going to get them a listing packet out that day, I don’t care if you remember at 9:00 that night, it needs to be dropped in the mailbox, because we really do what we say we’re going to do. So accountability is a huge part of our team.

Carley Hathaway14:57

That’s amazing. Let me ask you this — what do you put in your listing packet? Will you give us the secret?

Shonna Ruble15:05

I wish I had some big fancy thing, but our listing packet is very basic. You’re going to laugh and judge me when I say this — I write a handwritten note in the listing packet. I’d like to say I do it, but my admin team does it and I sign my name. It’s a handwritten note talking about their property and a little bit about who we are. I’ll share what the card says: “Hi, my name’s Shonna Ruble, I’m with the Shonna Key Team. We believe in national exposure — there’s a thing called a local market and a national market. We also believe in being 100% transparent, and we’d love the opportunity to sit down with you and show you how we do real estate differently than most agents and brokers in the area. Most brokers and agents you interview are going to rely on the five Ps: they’re going to place your property on their website, place it on the MLS, which goes to Zillow and realtor.com, place it in the local paper, put a sign in your yard, and pray it sells. We do the five Ps, but a lot more. We’re more of a marketing and technology firm — we just happen to be in the business of real estate. So if you’d like to learn more about our company and our team and how we’re truly different at getting your property sold, please give us a call.” It’s really simple, not rocket science.

Carley Hathaway16:44

I absolutely love it. And you’re the first one I’ve ever talked to that does handwritten cards like that. Everything you said is perfect — you’re knocking out your competitors in one little letter.

Shonna Ruble16:57

Right. When I get on that listing appointment, they’ll have a whole stack of mail-outs and things people hung on their door. But sometimes you have to go back to the basics, and real estate’s super simple. We at the Shonna Key Team are all about customer service, and we truly love our clients, and everything we do shows it. I want them to trust me to sell their home, and I want them to understand I’ve taken the time to know their home and write this letter — I want them to feel important. And when’s the last time you actually got something in the mail that someone hand-addressed your name and address to? Rarely. So when they get it, they’re like, “What’s this?” and they open it and it’s a card that somebody took the time to write. So they read it. It’s just a different way of marketing. I’d love to tell you I have a bunch of flyers and this really awesome marketing, but this works for us. I work in four states, it works in all four states so far, and it allows us to take listings — this month alone we’ve already taken 24 listings.

Ren Jones18:16

You’re talking about a high level of personal touch, is that what we’re saying?

Shonna Ruble18:20

Yes, absolutely.

Carley Hathaway18:22

I agree. And you said it works in all four states — I’m going to try it in California and let you know. What are your four states?

Shonna Ruble18:29

We are Virginia, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Montana.

Ren Jones18:34

Wow. So Shonna, are you going to fill in the states in between those?

Shonna Ruble18:42

That’s always the goal. Becoming complacent is like a slowly terrible form of dying, so I want to grow as much as I can, and as much as my coach feels we can do, that’s our goal.

Ren Jones18:59

Good, that’ll be fun. So do you track numbers? Do you have a way you’re measuring your business?

Shonna Ruble19:05

I’ll be honest, I’m 100% transparent. I truly believe success is in the math — there’s a saying, I’m sure I’ll mess it up, so I won’t even try, but it’s something like “success is in the math.” To answer your question, Ren, at first, being new — remember, we’re just a little over two years in as a real estate team — numbers were not that important to me. What was important was getting one listing, because I know if I can get one listing, I can usually turn that into two or three, because it allows me to call the neighbors: “Hey, we just listed your neighbor’s property.” I can door-knock that neighborhood to invite them to open houses. My goal at an open house — yeah, I’d love to get the home sold, but let’s be honest, the reason we have open houses is to get listings. Everything I do with an open house is geared toward getting listings. Once we sell that listing, I get to say, “Guess what, we sold your neighbor’s home, we have other people looking in this area — do you plan on selling? If so, will it be in a month, two months, six months, a year, three years, five years? Are they going to take you out in a pine box?” So it lets us have those conversations. At the beginning — I know this will sound horrible and people will disagree — numbers were not my focus, listings were my focus. I had to build our inventory. Now our goal is to double each year, and we’ve been doing that. Going into 2021, my goal is 240 units. How we get that is: I have to have the admin and systems and model, so we really focused this year on systems, and then on customer service. We also brought in new agents and launched an ISA department — right now we have four ISAs that have been going through training for the last 60 days, and seven new buyer’s agents coming on, so we need to make sure they’re trained because I need that support to hit 240 units. So now tracking numbers is very crucial. But in the beginning, the only number I cared to track was how many appointments I was setting a day, whether those were qualified listing appointments, and what my close rate was. I know for me, if you put me in front of a listing appointment, I have a 98% close rate.

Ren Jones22:02

Good, that’s what I wanted to find out. So you’re pre-qualifying the appointment before you go out, or you just don’t go out.

Shonna Ruble22:08

Everyone looks at pre-qualifying differently. I feel like pre-qualifying is asking the right questions on the phone. Over time, in a conversation, you learn how to make it natural and ask the questions that tell you, “Is that an appointment I want to go on?” And you also need to know your market. When you’re new in the business — I came to Billings, Montana, and I knew no one. I require everyone who joins our team to come in with 200 people to add to their database. I couldn’t even add 12. I did not know anyone at all in Billings, but I knew one thing: I wanted to grow a team. So I’d go around to businesses and say, “Hi, we have a lot of people moving in from outside the area, and they want to know where they should take their pets, where they should get their hair done, which dentist they should use. Can I have your business card to add to our closing packet?” Everybody said, “Yeah, absolutely,” so I’d get their card. Then I’d go back two weeks later and say, “Thank you so much, I got that card put in there. Here’s my card, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate.” So I started nurturing those people. That’s how I built my database in an area I’m not from.

Carley Hathaway23:46

That’s smart. People want to help people, so when you say, “Hey, if you need a hairdresser, if you need this” — you help people. What a great idea.

Shonna Ruble24:06

When you move into an area and don’t know anyone, you don’t know who’s the best dentist, the best place to groom your dog, who to recommend to change the oil in your car. All of these are businesses around town, so I started building rapport with the business owners — and when you really send business to them, they all send business to you. We also have a phenomenal CRM, which let me take those 200 business cards and nurture them every single week with something. Once we did that, they’d say, “Hey Shonna, you’ve been sending me this market report,” or, “Thanks for the pie on Thanksgiving.” So it helped us grow our business.

Carley Hathaway25:05

Amazing. How big is your sphere, your database, now?

Shonna Ruble25:10

My personal database has grown in the last two years to about 4,000 people. A lot of those are — there’s a difference between the database of past clients or sphere and buyer leads. Mine has grown quite a bit, and the reason is word of mouth, which goes back to customer service. We do great things for people, and it’s amazing how many are sending us business. But a lot of those are also buyer leads, and I’ll be honest, I don’t take buyers — I don’t believe in competing with my agents. However, I do sometimes get buyer leads, so we nurture them through our system.

Ren Jones26:08

So of those 4,000, you’ve got your A clients — you’ve sold them a home or they’ve proven they’ll send you business — your B clients that haven’t proven themselves but are strong, and then a bunch of suspects that may buy or sell something. Would that be fair?

Shonna Ruble26:25

Yes, absolutely. You have your A buyers — as soon as someone says, “I want to do real estate,” they’re going to have you on the phone, they’re not just going to give away your card. A prime example is my massage therapist. She’ll call me, “Shonna, what are you doing right now?” “Well, I’m kind of working.” “Great, I have someone here who wants to sell their home, I told them you’ll be down here in 15 minutes.” I’ll stop and go down to her place — she gives me great business. Then you have your B clients and your C’s. I often tell people my C clients are the ones that are like my cousins and family members you have to hang out with at Christmas but only see once a year — you still want to nurture them and make them B clients and A clients. So yes, we do the ABC.

Ren Jones27:23

I’ll tell you, you’ve got some good systems in place. With the goal for your growth, working your way up to 240, and the plans in place, it’s an exciting time in Billings, Montana and your other four states.

Shonna Ruble27:40

It is, yes. Those are brokerages, so yes.

Ren Jones27:43

Gotcha. Well, what your team is doing is doing great.

Carley Hathaway27:46

Seems like you’ve built an incredible life for yourself, and it’s only going to go further and further. It’s wonderful, thank you so much for sharing.

Ren Jones27:56

She’s having a lot of fun, that’s for sure, and making a great income too.

Carley Hathaway28:04

How do we send you referrals? Where do we send info to you?

Shonna Ruble28:08

You can always pick up the phone, because if you’re going to be in real estate, that would be my number one suggestion. Our office number is 406-591-6519. You can always go to our website at shonnakeyteam.com, or send me an email to Shonna, that’s S-H-O-N-N-A, at Shonna Key Team dot com.

Ren Jones28:42

Fantastic. This has been a real treat, some great ideas on here. If we can help some of the folks out there figure out how to get this done, be on that listing side of the business, and have a week like you did where you had 17 — were they 17 appointments or 17 taken?

Shonna Ruble29:04

We ended up taking those listings, yes.

Ren Jones29:05

You took all 17. Can you imagine that, taking 17?

Shonna Ruble29:09

Yes, we did. It’s a life by design.

Ren Jones29:16

So folks, if you’re watching on Vulcan7, you want to get involved with the Lead Gen Facebook group 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 you all want to know what her secret is? How do you take 17 listings and sell them in a week’s time? How does Shonna do it? She makes the calls, but she has this power: she goes to the freezer and gets out Graeter’s mint chocolate chip ice cream. This is the one for listings. You can buy Graeter’s all over North America — just go to graeters.com to find the store nearest you. The mint chocolate chip is for listings. If you’re working with buyers, you know the flavor for that, Rocky Road. But this is the one for listings. If a listing is slow to sell, dig a hole in the front yard, bury it upside down, and that listing will sell just like that. Glad you guys were here today. We really appreciate Shonna for all the tips and ideas and mindset, because you exuded the mindset — I think that’s apparent. And as a hunter, what do you have? Hunters and skinners. Love it.

Carley Hathaway30:42

Hunters and skinners, I love it.

Ren Jones30:43

So much fun today.

Carley Hathaway30:43

Thank you so much, Shonna, we so appreciate you.

Shonna Ruble30:45

Thank you guys so much for having me on today, I appreciate it.

Ren Jones30:48

I do too. Thanks everyone, bye everybody, thanks for being here. We’ll see everybody next week.