How Phil DeMuth sold 400 homes in five years starting with for sale by owners

Ren Jones00:04

If you’re on the listing side of the business, that’s the answer, isn’t it?

Sarah Close00:08

A hundred percent.

Phil DeMuth00:10

A hundred percent. If you work with buyers, buyers control you. If you work with listings, you control the market.

Ren Jones00:16

Right. You can go on vacation, come back, and have sold four houses.

Phil DeMuth00:20

Like I said-

Ren Jones00:20

Not as easy with buyers.

Phil DeMuth00:22

I quit working with buyers years ago. I’ll do one or two every few months just so I can keep-

Ren Jones00:29

Just a little threshold of pain there.

Phil DeMuth00:31

Yeah, just so I can remember what it felt like so I can coach my agents.

00:37Yeah, but I would never, ever work with buyers again at that level. I mean, I remember my first two years, man, I put like a hundred thousand miles on my car.

Sarah Close00:45

Yeah. Here’s the neat thing about that, Phil, is that when you think about the dynamics of a team and you think about individuals that absolutely get joy from working with buyers, and you’re able to put someone in their joy zone by taking yourself out of your pain zone, that’s where it all comes together.

Ren Jones01:03

And you’ve got a good point there, Sarah, because there are people that just love that. And in a team type of an environment, they can have that around the clock, because the parts they don’t like are a lot of the things that the team can take away from them. And they can just go show, show, show, and it’s just Christmas every day.

Phil DeMuth01:22

There’s power in delegation.

Ren Jones01:32

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 and apply the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from Greater Cincinnati, Sarah Close. Hi, Sarah. How’s the real estate business?

Sarah Close02:05

Real estate business is great, Ren. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here today.

Ren Jones02:09

Good. And Sarah’s amazing. Sarah runs, owns, and co-owns both, several Keller Williams offices in southern Ohio. I say that because it includes several markets, Dayton, Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, on and on and on. And you run a team. What’s the goal for sales this year?

Sarah Close02:29

We do have a great team. Our goal for sales is 250 this year.

Ren Jones02:32

250. Nice, even number. It wasn’t 252. It was 250.

Sarah Close02:36

250, yeah.

Ren Jones02:38

Good. I love it. Good. Well, let me introduce our guest today from beautiful, and it is, Raleigh, North Carolina. Phil DeMuth. Welcome, Phil.

Sarah Close02:48

Hi, Phil.

Phil DeMuth02:49

Hey, guys. How are you?

Sarah Close02:51

Good. Thanks for being here today.

Phil DeMuth02:52

Thank you.

Ren Jones02:54

Glad you’re here. Good deal. Put him in the middle. There we go. All right.

Phil DeMuth03:01

I’m in the hot seat now. I’m in the hot seat.

Ren Jones03:03

Now you’re in the hot seat. That’s it. Good, good. Let’s dive in and learn as much as we can. What’s your goal for sales this year?

Phil DeMuth03:13

This year our goal is 150 as a team. So I have a team of about five agents total. I still do quite a bit of the listings, not as many listings as I once did because we’re growing, so I’m recruiting a lot, hiring a lot of new people. But yeah, about 150 is the goal this year, and we’ve got a pretty good chance of getting it. I think we’re already at like 85.

Sarah Close03:34

That’s awesome.

Phil DeMuth03:35

So yeah.

Ren Jones03:37

Good. Well, this is going to be fun.

Sarah Close03:40

Absolutely. Phil, so you guys are on track already. You’re at 85 units. Where do you see the majority of your production coming from? What do you guys do? What are your major lead gen components for your organization?

Phil DeMuth03:51

So my business has always been pretty heavily for sale by owner, expired listing, circle prospecting, and as well as we do a lot of buyer leads too. New construction. We’re also part of Zillow Flex, so we get a lot of business from that company, but mostly a lot of listings and buyer leads. We’re pretty even, 50/50, I’d say.

Sarah Close04:14

All right, terrific. So you guys are obviously proactively lead genning to get this business done. What does the anatomy of your lead gen look like? How often are you guys calling? What are you trying to accomplish when you do call? Tell us a little bit about what that looks like.

Phil DeMuth04:30

Yeah, it has kind of changed over the years for sure, but it’s still the same structure. We lead gen every day for three hours a day, two hours of outbound calls, an hour of follow up calls. And then what they do after that is up to them. But that’s the requirements for me. So typically, you do a FSBO for an hour, expireds, and then circle prospect, so they have to make a hundred dials a day.

Sarah Close04:58

Okay. Wow. That’s a busy morning. So are all of the salespeople in your organization, is that their requisite if they’re going to be working with you?

Phil DeMuth05:08

Yes. We hold them accountable. We track all their numbers using a platform called Sisu, and I’m very particular on that because that’s the only way I can coach and mentor, and my main thing is to help them with the conversion coaching and things like that. So that’s something we do every day. We track it every week. We have an integrator slash operations manager who looks at all those systems to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to do.

Sarah Close05:36

That’s exciting. When you guys are tracking your conversion rates, what is it that you’re looking for? So as you’re developing an agent and you’re coaching them through to build up their skillset, what do you guys look for as far as a call to appointment to listing taken to close? What do you guys, what’s your target there?

Phil DeMuth05:56

So when we get new agents in, especially if they’re entry level or brand new agents, we’re looking more at dials. Are they comfortable making those calls, or do they have a lot of hesitation? Are they nervous to make those calls? Because if that’s the case, we have to figure out what they’re nervous about. So we do a lot of script practicing, a lot of presentations to get them really comfortable on the phone and let them understand that it’s a contact sport, it’s a numbers game.

06:28So we’re very particular on what they’re saying. We have certain scripts they have to say, how they have to say it, and what it leads to, because I try to keep everybody systematic and structured in the same way. So whether Austin from my team calls you, Cam calls you from my team, or Nancy, you’re hearing the same thing with the same kind of format.

Sarah Close06:47

Got you. That sounds good. So is part of your day also a script practice, or is that something you guys do weekly, or how do you tool up on that front?

Phil DeMuth06:55

So typically we script practice every day from 8:30 to nine, and then they get on the phones from nine to 12.

Sarah Close07:01

Okay, got you. That’s great. And is that a five day a week requirement?

Phil DeMuth07:05

It’s not required if you’re hitting your numbers. If you’re not hitting your numbers, it’s required.

Sarah Close07:10

Okay, got you. That makes a lot of sense. Are you seeing changes in the marketplace with the, I don’t know, I’d say the dynamics are starting to rumble around, obviously for sale by owners, that being one of your targets, are you starting to see changes there at all?

Phil DeMuth07:25

Yeah, it’s actually really good right now. I mean, the typical home, I don’t know if you guys, I read, I watch numbers all day long. It’s my business. There was an article in Inman today that was talking the typical homes are lingering on the market a little longer. So what that means is, especially for some owners, they’re starting to realize they need us again. For a long time they didn’t think they needed us. So it’s a whole lot harder conversion.

07:48Now it’s starting to get a little bit easier again, especially have the numbers, like me and my team, we do heavily FSBO conversion. So we have a really good script for that. We have a really good presentation for that. We have good marketing material for that. So we’re pretty good at converting those for sale by owners.

Ren Jones08:07

Yeah, I’m glad to hear you say that because in the regular news it’s real clear that they’re just designed to upset you. But the reality is they actually need our services at a higher level. The supply hasn’t increased much at all. So these things are going to sell. You just might need to price them well, do a little bit of work in that process, which is nice. Then we get paid.

Phil DeMuth08:29

Well, I mean if you look at it realistically, and I’m not putting down anybody or what they work or their activity, but in the last few years, anybody could sell real estate because you were pretty much an order taker. I need this home, go get me this home. You go right to offer, you’re done. Boom, boom, boom, it’s quick. You didn’t really have to handle as many objections, you didn’t have to convert as hard.

08:50Now it’s getting harder. So you have to be a whole lot more skilled. You have to understand your objections because the objections have changed now. A lot of our objections are based on, obviously as we all know, mortgage rates. Where am I going to go? So you have to kind of pivot and shift what you’re saying to for sale by owners, as well as expireds, as well as buyers in general, buyer prospects. So you can’t say the same thing you were saying six months ago and get-

Ren Jones09:18

Well, that’s what I really, I wrote down. You have very strict scripting, very strict scripting, and to create a predictable duplicated one measurable result that you can count on, which is very impressive. And if anybody gets that point, that’s a huge point because you can’t wing it in this business and run it like a business.

Phil DeMuth09:39

Well, and the main thing is, especially since if I could go back in time, it would’ve never had my name on it, but since it does have my name on it, there’s a certain image I want to carry. There’s a certain amount of accountability. I don’t want renegades running around saying whatever they want to say, do whatever they want, because it comes back on me.

Ren Jones09:59

True.

Phil DeMuth10:00

And our company has all five star reviews, and I like to keep it that way.

Ren Jones10:05

That’s a beautiful thing.

Phil DeMuth10:06

Yeah, so I try to really make sure they’re saying the right things by educating them. We have a private Facebook page that I put videos in for them, scripts in for them to just learn from.

Ren Jones10:18

Internal training for your people onto the team. Okay, good.

Phil DeMuth10:22

Yeah, it’s really important. Because being that I am the CEO, also in production still, and interviewing agents, we’re trying to get up to 30 agents, my day stays very, very busy. So if there’s places they can go to get stuff before they need to come get me, it makes it a lot easier. So we do a lot of stuff on videos so they can literally watch how to use this system, how to use this tool, how to use Vulcan7, how to do a neighborhood search, how to set up your dollar, how to put your script in Vulcan7. So things like that.

Ren Jones10:51

Got it. Perfect.

Sarah Close10:57

That makes a lot of sense. So before you were a team of five and you were a solo agent, what did that look like for you as far as getting up and running? How did you get your business started when you were a new guy?

Phil DeMuth11:10

So I’ve only been in real estate five years and I’ve sold about 400 plus homes. I’m part of eXp, so I’ve hit icon status every year. My first year in real estate, I did about 50 homes. My second year, I did 70. My third year I started building a team and so forth. So for me, I never got in real estate wanting to be a realtor. I got in real estate wanting to be a business owner, with a goal in mind. And my goal in mind was to get out of real estate and just coach, mentor, and grow the company.

11:42But I knew to do that I needed to get quick immediate business, because I wasn’t a realtor. So I didn’t know how to do it. So the first thing I did is I went and found the lowest hanging fruit I could find at the least amount of expense because I needed to be as profitable as possible. So I started off with FSBOs from day one. And what I did is I got on YouTube before I knew of Vulcan7 and I just watched YouTube people talk about converting for sale owners, and I literally just copied their script and I just started saying it and saying it.

12:15And then as I’ve got more mature in the business, I’ve had coaches who helped me with FSBOs, that were like for sale by owner coaches, to help me get better at it. And it just went from there. And then I started teaching people how to do that, and that’s why people started coming to my company because they’re like, well, I want to be a listing agent, how did you do it?

12:33But my days always kind of start the same. I get up very early in the morning, I work out, I get to my office early. Usually by 10, 11, 12:00, I’ve already had a full day. And then still as the owner, I work till six, seven o’clock every night. Not really because I have to at this point, because I have a lot of delegation and a lot of employees, but because I just enjoy sales, I enjoy the most-

Ren Jones13:00

Yeah, there’s a passion when you own your own business, isn’t there?

Phil DeMuth13:03

There’s a passion to it and a fear.

Ren Jones13:05

Yeah, there’s that, too.

Phil DeMuth13:07

You’ve got a lot of employees you’re taking care of who depend on you, their kids depend on you, their families, their spouses. So there’s a lot to it to keep it going.

Sarah Close13:19

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So you’ve got your goal this year is 150. You’re looking to grow your organization to be about 30 sales people strong. What does that trajectory look like for you? What is sort of the arc and your timing and all of that stuff?

Phil DeMuth13:34

Yeah, it started really strong. We got up to about 15. A lot of them were younger agents, decided they didn’t really want to be in real estate. It was a lot harder than they thought. It wasn’t Million Dollar Listing, it wasn’t Selling Sunset, it was a lot of grit. And they just said, “Hey, real estate’s not for me.” Which is totally fine. It’s not for everybody. It takes a special breed to do what we do, especially at a high level.

14:03But what happened was I took my foot off the recruiting pedal, where I should have never took it off. I need to be interviewing and hiring two to three agents a month every month minimum, which means I need to be going on probably an interview a day because a lot of these agents, especially ones I’m looking for, you’ve got to be able to provide them things they can’t do on their own. So a lot of that’s going to be dating them, getting to know them, seeing if you really can help their business grow.

14:33Because when I got in real estate, I was successful from day one. I didn’t struggle like a lot of people did. I just hit the ground running and never slowed down and still haven’t slowed down. But I was just so disciplined. I would start my morning at eight o’clock making calls, and I would call until I got a listing appointment, period. So some days I’d go in at 8:00 AM and I’d be on the phone til 8:00 PM and then I would, if I still didn’t have it by 8:00 PM, I was like, I just got to go to bed and I’ll come do it tomorrow. But not a lot of people have that kind of discipline and drive. But my drive’s internal, just like everybody else is driving. I’m just a little bit different for what I’m trying to achieve in my life.

Sarah Close15:14

Well, that’s exciting. So talk to us a little bit about some tactical things, because for sale by owner sounds like that’s sort of your tip of the spear. So if I am someone that is in your crosshairs, I’m a for sale by owner, what is my experience like with your team? What are you saying to me? How often am I hearing from you? What does that follow up plan look like?

Phil DeMuth15:35

So that’s a great thing. I don’t do a lot of the calling anymore, like I used to. I have a team that does that calling. They set the appointments and I kind of go close it. But when I was starting off, I think it’s more knowledgeable. So every day, I made it simple. I wanted to talk to 10 for sale by owners a day. So no matter how many dials I needed to make, my goal was to talk to 10. And I used the dialer, I used the Vulcan7 dialer, and I would just call them. And my goal was to have 10 conversations.

16:09When I first got into it, it was just having conversations because I didn’t know as much as I know now. Now it’s a lot more direct conversations. My typical FSBO call takes about 10 minutes, and it’s just pushing for face-to-face. And a lot of the stuff they ask, I just push to, “Well, that’s a great question and that’s why we should meet, how does two o’clock or three o’clock work today?” So I avoid the commission, I avoid things like that until I get face-to-face because I learned if I could get in front of them, there was a high profitability I could get them to sign.

Ren Jones16:47

And there you go, folks. A lot of times that’s bait to get you to answer the question over the phone, and you have to pretend that what they said is, “Can you come over?” You said, “Great. How about tomorrow at four, or would six be better?” But instead of getting caught into answering the question, like what do you charge and this and that and all these other things, how would you sell it? We have to pretend that’s an invitation to meet and not answer the question. We can’t get caught into doing that presentation over the phone.

Phil DeMuth17:19

Because then they don’t need you.

Ren Jones17:20

Right. Then they’re like, what’s the point in meeting? You already told me everything I wanted to know.

Phil DeMuth17:24

And then what my agents would do is, so basically they would set the appointment and then they would call back and pre-qualify the day off or later that afternoon. And a pre-call was, okay, is all the decision makers going to be there? If you like what my boss has to say, are you going to be ready to sign paperwork? Are you interviewing any other agents? Typically, if they were interviewing other agents, our main thing was, okay, I want to be the first one in the door or the last one in the door. I don’t want to be in the middle.

Ren Jones17:54

That rocking chair’s tough because they kind of forget about you. They remember the first, or if you’re the last, they’ve already met with the rest. Let’s go ahead and wrap it up. If you’re the first, you can just cancel out all the rest, and if you’re last, they’ve already met, it’s time to make a decision.

Phil DeMuth18:12

So yeah, might as well be you because you’re there, right?

Ren Jones18:15

Exactly.

Phil DeMuth18:16

So I would do that, and it was pretty successful. So when I call FSBOs, I try to go for five closes. And what I used to do is I would get quarters, I’d have five quarters, and I would try to close them five different times. And one of two things would happen. They would either finally give me the appointment.

Ren Jones18:33

Or you’d walk away with a dollar and a quarter.

Phil DeMuth18:36

Or typically they would just hang up on me.

Ren Jones18:38

Oh.

Phil DeMuth18:39

And a lot of my agents would be like, “Well, if they hang up on you, are you going to call back?” I said, “Yep, I’m calling right back tomorrow and do it all over again.” Because what people don’t realize is typically these people are getting a hundred calls a day. They’re not going to remember you tomorrow.

Ren Jones18:53

But when you look at it, they’re interviewing you and you’re demonstrating how strong you are. And so you want to demonstrate that.

Phil DeMuth19:04

And they would ask me, hey, and if they did catch me by chance and say, “Didn’t I talk to you yesterday?” I said, “Yes, you did. And you’re going to talk to me.”

Ren Jones19:10

Don’t you want somebody that strong to list your house?

Phil DeMuth19:14

And I would tell them that. I’d say, “You’re going to talk to me every day until you sign me. Until we sign, you’re going to talk to me every single day.”

Ren Jones19:19

And I’m going to do that to get your house sold.

Phil DeMuth19:22

And then once we got in their house, we’d sign the paperwork. And then I have a transaction team and the transaction team would reach out, thank them for the opportunity. We’d also send them a handwritten thank you card with a $10 Starbucks gift card, saying, “Hey, for your first showing, go get a cup of coffee and relax. We’re going to take it over from here.”

Ren Jones19:41

That’s a nice touch.

Phil DeMuth19:43

We try to make everything humanized. So we do a lot of video. Videos are really important. Anytime I talk to a FSBO on the phone, I send them a video as soon as I get off the phone.

Ren Jones19:52

Okay, good.

Phil DeMuth19:54

And it’s nothing fast. It’s nothing major. It’s 10 seconds. “Hey, Ren, thank you so much for your time today on the phone. I’d love to be a resource for you when you’re ready to sell this house. Give me a call back. It’s Phil with DeMuth Realty Group.” And what it does, it humanizes that call so you don’t sound like a robot, you’re not like everybody else. In this industry you have to stand apart, and it’s very hard to stand apart on the phone. You can do it face-to-face. But you can’t do it on the phone because you’re just like the other 75 people that just called, so how do you stand apart?

20:24So we would send a video and then we’d send, even sometimes if we had a good conversation, didn’t go anywhere, we’d still send a handwritten notecard. “Hey, thank you so much for that call yesterday. Let’s talk.” And with FISBOs, it’s going to go one of two ways. You’re either going to get them right now, boom-

Ren Jones20:43

So you’re taking it up from just being noise over the phone to we see you. They get a handwritten note, which is a really nice touch. So you’re adding some humanness to this.

Phil DeMuth20:54

And then usually with me personally, I would learn if I didn’t set that call with you the first time, if I didn’t set that face-to-face appointment, everything came in the nurture, nurture, touching, follow-ups, follow-ups, follow-ups, follow-ups. And that’s where most realtors really mess up. They’re good at making the first call, but they don’t consider it low hanging fruit if they have to follow up more than once.

Sarah Close21:20

What does your follow-up plan look like, Phil?

Phil DeMuth21:23

So 11 to 12, I have in my CRM system everybody I need to follow up with. I don’t put them in my system. I delegate it out because time is money. So basically every good call I had, I print it out on Vulcan7, I just command P print, and I give it to my assistant, say, “Put them in for me to follow up tomorrow.”

21:42And then I’m not invoking seven, I’m invoking seven again from eight to 10, but then I’m on my CRM, touching base. And my follow-up is, like I said, I follow up daily every single day. Even if they told me to call in a week, a month, I call them every single day, and I just say, “Hey man, things change so quick in this market. I hope I didn’t catch you off guard. Have you thought more about what I had to say?” And then I go right back trying to close them again. Every day is a close, I’m either going to wear them down or they’re going to hang up on me.

Sarah Close22:19

So if I’m in your system, when am I off your call list?

Phil DeMuth22:24

You’re not off my call list till you sign with somebody, either me or somebody else.

Ren Jones22:30

Wonderful. What do you do with people that you’ve done business with at this point and they’re still on your call list? What do you do with your database?

Phil DeMuth22:38

So we have everybody in closed, meaning they’re closed lead, we’ve sold them something. We have everybody in active lead, meaning they’re looking to buy in the next 30 to 90 days. Then we have prospects, people who are looking to buy 90 days out. And then we have sphere of influence.

22:55So my job is simple now, especially as busy as I’m now running the business, I still have broken it down simple. I have five FISBO calls every day, five expired calls every day, five circle prospect every day, five sphere every day, five agents I’m trying to hire every day. And I do that every day.

Ren Jones23:14

Folks, listen to that, because a lot of people, what happens, they’re like, well, I’m the CEO, I don’t have to talk to anybody anymore. They aren’t recruiting. They should. They aren’t talking to for sale by owners and expireds and this and that. They’ve lost the pulse so they can’t teach that to their people and notice the changes. I mean, what you’re doing.

Phil DeMuth23:34

Just truly, you learn. It’s a number. Like I said in the beginning of the call, it’s a contact sport.

Ren Jones23:42

But so many people are like, well, I don’t prospect anymore. I don’t do anything. I’m just busy running the company. And they aren’t really effective. You’re hands-on in this.

Phil DeMuth23:52

How can I teach-

Ren Jones23:53

And that is how it will grow, it will continue to grow, because you’re so hands-on.

Phil DeMuth23:59

Well, you can’t teach it if you get-

Ren Jones24:02

Exactly. And just like you said earlier, it’s changed in the last four months and you need to be able to teach what you’re observing of those changes, and what people are responding and no longer responding to and how you have to modify the scripts.

Phil DeMuth24:15

Yeah, still as the owner of the company, I don’t really work with buyers anymore, but we were having a issue with converting buyers so I jumped back on buyer leads. So when I was coaching them, I knew how to coach them. Because I could find out what was going on, what had changed.

Ren Jones24:29

So I mean, I don’t care how far up the rank you go, maybe you only work some luxury business and stuff like that, you still have your toe in that water.

Phil DeMuth24:37

You have to. You have to lead by example.

Ren Jones24:39

Yes, it’s perfect.

Phil DeMuth24:43

It’s easy to tell somebody what to do. It’s another thing to show somebody what to do.

Ren Jones24:45

And to be totally detached and telling them what to do, that doesn’t work either.

Phil DeMuth24:49

And I’m not telling you five years from now, that may be the case.

Ren Jones24:54

And that may be, but you’ll have an operations person that’s got their toe in the water.

Phil DeMuth24:57

Just doing the same thing I’m doing.

Ren Jones24:58

Right, basically what you’re doing.

Phil DeMuth25:01

There’ll always be somebody in my business teaching by leading. Leading by example.

Ren Jones25:04

Right, exactly.

Phil DeMuth25:07

Because you have to in this industry, because real estate’s the hardest thing you’re ever going to do. And if you don’t know what to do as a new realtor, you don’t even get a fair chance. And that’s why we lose so many realtors so quickly. Now, some realtors aren’t going to have the grit and they’re just not going to make it. And that’s a reality. Just like in sports, not everybody’s going to cut it.

Ren Jones25:33

Well, and some, it’s just not their DNA to be a hunter. They’re better as a gatherer or something.

Phil DeMuth25:41

And look, I’m not going to lie, I need those people in my business too.

Ren Jones25:44

You need somebody to catch the fish and somebody else to filet and fry them.

Phil DeMuth25:48

There’s room for both in my business, but I have to be with them enough to learn what they are. And as a team leader, that’s my responsibility, to make sure I’m teaching my agents to be the best they can. Like my agents, like I said, as soon as they get off the phone with somebody, they send a 10 second video, period. And they say-

Sarah Close26:07

So you do that by text?

Phil DeMuth26:08

Just by text. And I say, “I just wanted you to be able to put a name with a face.” Because if you do that with somebody, the likeliness of them following through is going to be 75% higher. It’s been proven.

26:21Another thing we do is we do handwritten notecards with a $10 Starbucks gift card. I pay for them. I get $500 worth of gift cards a month for my agents. I stick them in the drawer. And they write it and they sign it. I give them a nice little pen, something nice to write with. It’s an image. It makes them feel a certain way.

26:39Every Friday, every one of my agents with their hot leads sends a market update video. It’s 20 seconds long. This is how many homes hit the market. This is what’s pending. This is what has closed.

26:52We do a lot of different things, man. Another thing we do is we follow a website, and I look at it every morning when I wake up. It’s Mortgage News Daily and they have really cool charts, and those charts, I’ll send a picture that I like and I’ll put it in our Facebook group page. And I say, “Hey guys,” because they check the Facebook group page every morning, I say, “Hey guys, send this chart to your clients in a text message, especially your nurtures, who are like, oh, the mortgage.” And then I say, “Send the video right after explaining what that chart means.”

Ren Jones27:28

Wow, I like that. So they’re sending the chart. Then that agent, Bob, is sending in saying, this is what this means here in Raleigh Durham, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This means this, this, this. And they’re like, wow, this person’s an expert.

Phil DeMuth27:45

The amount of credibility that gives my agents.

Ren Jones27:48

Mortgage News Daily. Sarah and I are both writing that down.

Phil DeMuth27:51

The amount of credibility that gives my agents, and no agents are doing that consistently. They may start to do it, but to do it weekly will change your business for life. Just my team has a very, very high conversion rate because of these things.

Ren Jones28:10

Wow. Wow.

Sarah Close28:12

Very good.

Phil DeMuth28:16

As the world changes and technology changes, I was really against it for a long time, but I’ve adapted to it because it works. Still trying to figure out social media. That’s a tough one, especially with these young kids, they all want to be the next YouTube sensation or social media star. And I’m like, man, there’s like one percent of people that do that. The rest of us-

Ren Jones28:41

I wish it was that high.

Phil DeMuth28:43

The rest of us just work. We work a lot of hours.

Ren Jones28:47

If it was one percent, I’d go for it.

Phil DeMuth28:49

I’m telling you, man. You’re pretty close, friend. You’re pretty close with your stuff you got going on.

Ren Jones28:54

But that isn’t being a YouTube star.

Sarah Close28:56

You’ve got to help me out here. I’ve got to live with them here in Cincinnati. Don’t be helping him out. Come on.

Phil DeMuth29:03

No, but no, dude, I do appreciate you guys. Like I said, I’ve been using y’all’s services for about three, four years now. And I was looking at my conversions. I’ve closed, you guys have helped me make well over a million plus dollars, it looks like.

Sarah Close29:23

Wow, good stuff.

Ren Jones29:25

I like that.

Phil DeMuth29:28

But truly, as you guys know, and you all say it all the time in these things, man, it’s just consistency. I don’t understand why agents can’t do something consistently.

Ren Jones29:42

I mean, when you think about it, Phil, and I always wondered that too, and then I figured it out one time. I would have people on the team making commissions and they were inconsistent. When I brought them in on salary and said, you’re going to spend four hours making calls and then two hours doing follow-up, they would do it because they were on salary, because they could be fired. But if I did it on commission, they would just be like that. It’s funny, people have a hard time being their own boss.

Phil DeMuth30:13

And I think until people-

Ren Jones30:15

People want to be led, they want to be told what to do. If they’re on a salary, they’ll work 10 times harder, which is bizarre.

Phil DeMuth30:23

I don’t think they think it’s really possible. So it’s like until they see it or someone close to them does it, they don’t believe it. You know what I mean?

Ren Jones30:35

And there’s too much of a delay for the gratification. For example, I always would say this to people as coaching clients, I would say, here’s the deal, if I came to your office and sat in the corner for every intense hour of prospecting, I gave you three $100 bills, how many hours would you go? I’d go all day. No, realistically. Well, I’d go about five hours. Okay, $1,500. And what if I did it all week long? Would you do it? Yeah. So that’s 7,500 for the week. Would you do it all month? Yes, I would. All right. So here’s the deal. You do that, I get all your commission checks, I’ll actually make money on you.

Phil DeMuth31:17

Yeah.

Ren Jones31:17

It’s just that the carrot, the reward is months down the road.

Phil DeMuth31:22

Yeah, 90 days.

Ren Jones31:23

If you were a rat and hitting a lever and a pellet comes rolling out, but if the pellet comes rolling out four months later, that’s kind of how this is. They’re making these calls and they don’t see that pellet for months.

Phil DeMuth31:37

Yeah, it’s a typical 90 day. And if you’re a new agent, what I’ve learned when I started hiring new agents, for a new agent it’s six months. And for a senior agent, it’s 60 to 90 days. So like you just said, a lot of people can’t wait that long for some reason.

Ren Jones31:56

That’s why I loved the expireds. I would call them on a Monday and meet with them on a Tuesday and sell it on a Friday

Phil DeMuth32:04

With expireds, you’ve just got to be the first one.

Ren Jones32:06

I know. You have to be like, call at 10 til eight, before anybody else is calling.

Phil DeMuth32:12

Oh, dude. I’d wake them up out of bed some mornings. I’d be like, I’m just so excited.

Ren Jones32:16

It’s easier for them to be slightly annoyed that it’s a little too early than damn mad that you’re the ninth caller.

Phil DeMuth32:25

I used to tell them all the time when that happened, I’d say, “Well, if you don’t want this to happen, go ahead and sign with me and no one will call you again.”

Ren Jones32:30

That’s it.

Sarah Close32:30

Yeah, thanks for that.

Ren Jones32:35

Yeah, I have a real fix for that. I’ll see you in 45 minutes.

Phil DeMuth32:38

That’s right. That’s right, man. But we’re getting there. We’re getting better with agents. Thank you. So it’s getting there. We’re getting a lot of better agents now in the Raleigh area, but as this market shifts, I do see people leaving the industry, which is unfortunate, but also a good thing for someone like me and my team, because we’ll take that market share.

Sarah Close33:01

Yeah, I’d say that is good news all the way around.

Ren Jones33:03

No, that is good. No, you need people that are, yeah, we get a little unpolished when it’s order takers and then when we clean it out.

Sarah Close33:12

Yeah, your only skill is speed.

Ren Jones33:14

But there is no supply in the United States. So we really, I mean, we’re not going to see the normal pendulum swinging change in the market because there’s nowhere to live. There’s nowhere to buy, nowhere to rent. Cincinnati’s one of the worst. We have nothing. We have nothing here. Sure, less people are moving because they’re just staying put, but not that much less. And every listing’s going to sell unless it’s a greed sale.

Phil DeMuth33:39

It’s just they’re sitting longer. So it’s giving buyers a longer time to make a decision.

Ren Jones33:44

And the good news is the news is making it sound so awful that they think they need our help. And that’s great.

Phil DeMuth33:50

And I tell my agents, I tell my agents to say, your clients can watch the news, but you can’t.

Ren Jones33:56

There you go, because it’s not real, anyway. If there was a lot of inventory, we would have a problem, but there isn’t.

Phil DeMuth34:02

It’d be a huge problem at this point. But we’re not. I mean, you’re going to sell what you get in front of if you can provide value.

Ren Jones34:08

Correct. Now you’ve talked about the control of the scripts. You’ve talked about running it like a business versus being a realtor. How else are you tracking numbers, measuring things like that?

Phil DeMuth34:17

So I track every conversation had, every dial had, every appointment met on the buy side, every appointment set on the buy side, every listing set, every appointment set that way. Even every lead source, did it come from FSBO? Because you’ve got to know where your book of business is coming from because that’s where you want to put a majority of your money back. So if you’re a heavy FSBO person, you say, okay, FSBOs is how I’ve made so much money this year. I need to put 75% of my budget back in those FSBOs. 25% can be delegated elsewhere to the other two tiers of business. I teach all my agents, you need three sources of business that you need to be good at, at all times.

34:59So same as a business owner, what is my main three sources? For us, I bring a lot of agents in and I teach them how to catch a fish. I teach them how to be a seller, how to work with sellers, how to work with FSBOs, how to work with expireds. Not everybody wants to do it. I’ll have people come and do it for three months and say, “Phil, I don’t want to make calls every day. I don’t want to have to sell my self worth every day, and why list with me. “

35:25And I said, “That’s great. It’s not for everybody.” I enjoyed it. To me, it was a hunting game. It was how many nos do I need to get a yes. But not everybody’s cut that way. So those people, I would naturally lead them to the buy side and say, “Okay, you can work with our internet leads. That’s a very simple phone call. They came into our system, you know they want to talk, go talk to them.” And then I’d keep the people who wanted to focus on FSBOs, expireds focused on that side.

Ren Jones35:51

And maybe some, you start up in the shallow end of the pool and pretty soon they’re on the high dive at some point in time. It just depends. Do you allow, if somebody wants to come and shadow for half a day and they’re not in Raleigh Durham or Cary or anywhere around you, you ever have people do that?

Phil DeMuth36:11

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do Zoom with a lot of people from other places so they can watch as well.

Ren Jones36:20

Because you’ll get people to reach out, and if they live in Virginia or Atlanta or somewhere and they come and spend two or three hours.

Phil DeMuth36:29

Well, plus what it does for me, even as the owner of the-

Ren Jones36:32

The showoff factor, yeah.

Phil DeMuth36:34

But even as the owner of the company, I like having script partners myself at my level. So me scripting with one of my entry level agents doesn’t sharpen my blade. It doesn’t make me better. It helps them tremendously, and that’s good. But what I try to do is find people from different places around the country and I place them with my agents because they’re at the same level and they teach each other.

Ren Jones36:59

Perfect.

Phil DeMuth37:00

And then with me, I find people at my level, in the same stature I am, trying to grow a business. What is it? Birds of the same feather flock together. So I try to learn from those people. We motivate each other. So it helps doing that because I have script partners all over the country I work with about four days a week.

Ren Jones37:18

Nice, nice, nice, nice. And in the world we’re in with Zoom, it’s so much easier to do.

Phil DeMuth37:23

It makes it nice. And we like to do Zoom. So I script with someone in New York, someone in Kentucky, someone in South Carolina, and then I script with someone in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Ren Jones37:32

Got you, got you, got you. Well, speaking North Carolinian to New York, those are two different languages, aren’t they?

Phil DeMuth37:41

Two different speeds, too.

Sarah Close37:42

I was going to say.

Ren Jones37:42

Yeah, the rate of speed.

Sarah Close37:42

That’s pretty funny.

Phil DeMuth37:48

Well, I do, I’m a firm believer in urgency. I think a lot of people don’t have urgency anymore. And time kills all deals. If someone tells you to call them in a month, call them in a day. Someone’s going to convert them.

Ren Jones38:04

Yeah, exactly.

Phil DeMuth38:05

It’s either going to be you or someone else. That is a condition, not an objection. They’re trying to just, oh, why don’t you give me a call… because you didn’t provide enough value to keep them involved.

Ren Jones38:14

They say something just to slow you down and then you say something else and then you get a little further along. People say stuff just to slow you down, not for any good reason.

Phil DeMuth38:22

Yeah, yeah. No, a hundred percent, man. I mean, I tell people that all the time. Most of these things you’re hearing are not objections. They’re conditions. And you’re falling for their trick. So it’s just like, right, but it really-

Ren Jones38:40

Can’t take it literally. They say, “Oh, we’re just looking,”

Phil DeMuth38:47

And I feel like a lot of agents with FSBOs and expireds take it so personal, like oh, he hung up on me. And hanging up on you sometimes is the nicest thing they’ll do. I mean, they can sometimes say all kinds of things to you.

Ren Jones39:00

Well, you see, that’s the good news because if this was easy, everybody would do it. If everybody did it, it wouldn’t pay much. But because of the mental game of it, you can make a million dollars a year.

Phil DeMuth39:12

I’ve made over a hundred grand in a month.

Ren Jones39:15

That’s it.

Phil DeMuth39:15

You know what I mean?

Ren Jones39:16

There you go. Multiply that times 12, folks.

Phil DeMuth39:18

When you make a hundred grand in a month, your mindset changes.

Ren Jones39:22

It does. It gets you thinking. The wheels start turning. And then you’re working starting at six, seven in the morning. You’re working til six, seven at night. But you’ve got a big smile on your face.

Phil DeMuth39:33

You just check your bank account and you smile a little bit.

Ren Jones39:35

That’s it. That’s it.

Phil DeMuth39:37

But with me now, my goal is to get my agents making six, seven figures, because if I get them doing that, now I’m being taken care of financially and I’m helping other people achieve their dreams and goals.

Ren Jones39:51

And that really feels good. And it’s a win-win. They’re making you a bunch of money and they’re making themselves a bunch of money. That’s a big win-win.

Phil DeMuth40:02

Yeah. I mean, because what other industry can you go into and make that kind of money without going to school for eight or 10 years or whatever?

Ren Jones40:10

And even then, I don’t care if you’re the best surgeon in the world, I think the realtor might beat you.

Phil DeMuth40:18

Well, I mean, look at the amount of debt they accrued to get to making that kind of money. So now, you may be making 200,000 a year, but you owe half a million in debt.

Ren Jones40:27

That’s it.

Sarah Close40:28

Well, I think the other part of it, Phil, is what you’ve done, is that a surgeon only has two hands. And the way that you’ve been able to structure your organization, you have an infinite number of pairs of hands. And that enables you to create something that is not just you as a self-employed individual. And it gives you something that’s a standalone entity that’s got real value.

Phil DeMuth40:50

I was brand new to real estate. I went to like a KW event, and there was a guy there, he was a commercial realtor, and he said, “I was an independent agent making a fortune, got cancer, couldn’t work for eight months, lost it all.” So as soon as I heard that, it resonated with me. I said, “I don’t want to be that kind of person. I want to make money while I’m awake or asleep, while I’m on vacation or not vacation. I want money coming in my door no matter what.”

41:23Now, running a company, a lot of money goes out the door too, which a lot of people don’t understand. It’s a lot to run a company, but if you get enough hands and you’re teaching them and providing them value, you can have a lot of money coming in the door no matter what.

41:40And then that’s going to give you freedom or flexibility to help others, whatever you want it to be. Whether you want to work til you’re 50, 60, or you want to stop at 40, it’s your journey in life. What you want to do is up to you. I’m a workaholic. So I don’t know if I’d ever retire, but like right now, I’m taking tomorrow off. Now I have my phone on me so I can talk to my agents. A few years ago I couldn’t do that. I don’t work weekends. A few years ago I couldn’t do that. So who knows in a few years where I’ll probably be. But to give people that kind of freedom, too, where they can build teams within teams and things like that, is pretty amazing as well.

Ren Jones42:25

Yeah. A lot of interesting combinations in our industry. And everything’s very team driven now. This is powerful, powerful stuff. I think if anybody was watching this, they’re probably going to want to watch it one or two more times because there’s a lot of good thoughts on here that’s going to help somebody who wants to take a few listings, build some list. If you’re on the listing side of the business, that’s the answer, isn’t it?

Sarah Close42:52

A hundred percent.

Phil DeMuth42:54

A hundred percent. If you work with buyers, buyers control you. If you work with listings, you control the market.

Ren Jones42:58

You can go on vacation, come back, and have sold four houses.

Phil DeMuth43:02

Like I said, not-

Ren Jones43:03

Not as easy with buyers.

Phil DeMuth43:04

I quit working with buyers years ago. I’ll do one or two every few months just so I can keep-

Ren Jones43:12

A little threshold of pain there.

Phil DeMuth43:13

Just so I can remember what it felt like so I can coach my agents, but I would never, ever work with buyers again at that level. I mean, I remember my first two years, man, I put like a hundred thousand miles on my car.

Sarah Close43:27

Yeah. Here’s the neat thing about that, Phil, is that when you think about the dynamics of a team and you think about individuals that absolutely get joy from working with buyers, and you’re able to put someone in their joy zone by taking yourself out of your pain zone, that’s where it all comes together.

Ren Jones43:46

And you know, you’ve got a good point there, Sarah, because there are people that just love that. And in a team type of an environment, they can have that around the clock without the, because the parts they don’t like are a lot of the things that the team can take away from them. And they can just go show, show, show. And it’s just Christmas every day.

Phil DeMuth44:04

There’s power in delegation. When I got real estate, the first thing I did was hire an assistant, because I knew I didn’t like paperwork.

Ren Jones44:13

And in fact, you’ve got two of them right there on the couch, sitting on the couch right there. There we go. You’ve got your two assistants there.

Phil DeMuth44:23

Yeah, I need to let them go, man. This is what they do all day. Great stuff.

Ren Jones44:29

That would be good to end with, a little shot of your assistant there.

Phil DeMuth44:33

What’s the saying? It’s hard to find good help. There you go. There they are.

Ren Jones44:43

Well, good. It looks like it’s a lot of fun to work on your team.

Phil DeMuth44:47

We are dog friendly. You can bring dogs to our office. I’m at my home office today, but you can bring dogs to our office.

Ren Jones44:53

Now, Raleigh Durham, Cary, all around there is a wonderful place to live. And there are people that are going to like, hey, I want to refer something to him. What’s the best way for them to reach you to send you a piece of business?

Phil DeMuth45:04

You can email me at phillip@demuthrealtygroup.com, which is my company, phillip@demuthrealtygroup.com. It’s two LS. Or you can call my office line, (919) 521-8927. And one of my agents or assistants will pick up and we can help you guys.

Ren Jones45:24

Good deal. So let’s send some business their way. We really appreciate this. This is very, very helpful. There are a lot of people that are aspiring to get where you are, and sometimes we just need to get into your mind and do a little Spock mind meld.

Phil DeMuth45:42

Yeah, trust me, I still have a lot to learn and I talk to people every day to get better myself. But the best way to get where you want is find someone who’s doing it and just replicate it.

Ren Jones45:53

That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Yeah, don’t reinvent the wheel. Use the copycat principle. Yep.

Sarah Close45:59

Phil, such a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for spending some time with us.

Phil DeMuth46:02

Thank you guys so much. I appreciate everything you do. You’ve been very successful to my business, so I appreciate you guys for sure.

Ren Jones46:08

Thank you. And we appreciate you. See everybody next week.

Sarah Close46:12

All right, take care. Go list something.

46:12