S8 E17: Highlight Show

Ren Jones (00:06):
It’s that time. Welcome to RoadMap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. This is the season eight highlights show. And can you believe we’re doing our eighth highlight show?

Sarah Close (00:22):
I can’t. When you were telling me that, I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Ren Jones (00:25):
Yeah, you’ve been here seven other times doing the highlight show-

Sarah Close (00:28):
Well, yes. It’s all good. This is the best stuff.

Ren Jones (00:29):
… on top of regular shows on an ongoing basis. So, good.

Sarah Close (00:32):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (00:33):
So, we encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle.

(00:42):
So, let me introduce my co-host from right here in Cincinnati. You’ve met her before. Sarah Close, always great to have you here. Sarah has several Keller Williams offices throughout Southern Ohio, Dayton, Ohio and Westchester and Cincinnati and serves … Well, you’ve got a lot of Northern Kentucky business, so you-

Sarah Close (01:01):
Yeah, we do. We’ve got Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.

Ren Jones (01:04):
You got some Indiana going on?

Sarah Close (01:06):
We do. I’ve got 570 agents-

Ren Jones (01:07):
Great!

Sarah Close (01:07):
… and they’re awesome.

Ren Jones (01:09):
570? Oh! So, the-

Sarah Close (01:09):
So, I’m very fortunate I get to work with a good group.

Ren Jones (01:11):
The number’s going up.

Sarah Close (01:12):
Number’s going up.

Ren Jones (01:13):
That is great.

Sarah Close (01:14):
That’s the way it’s supposed to go.

Ren Jones (01:17):
That’s the way it’s supposed to go.

Sarah Close (01:18):
That’s what we want.

Ren Jones (01:18):
That’s the way it’s supposed to go. So, this highlights show is, “The Market Has Changed, But The Solution Has Not”.

Sarah Close (01:27):
And you know what? Thank goodness the solution has not.

Ren Jones (01:29):
That’s it.

Sarah Close (01:30):
That’s what I love about this business is that regardless of the market, the fundamentals never change.

Ren Jones (01:35):
Right.

Sarah Close (01:36):
This is going to be a great season.

Ren Jones (01:36):
And the good news is if you use these fundamentals, you can pack your bags and move to another city-

Sarah Close (01:43):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (01:44):
… and pretty much keep on going without it missing a beat.

Sarah Close (01:48):
Yeah. That’s exactly right. They are absolutely transferrable to any market as far as geographically speaking, and even in terms of the way that the market dynamics are changing. It’s just finding the motivated and then matching your message to the motivated.

Ren Jones (02:01):
Right. I mean, carpet is carpet, paint is paint, windows are windows. I mean, you can move to any city and do this.

Sarah Close (02:09):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (02:10):
And we’ve seen a lot of people do it.

Sarah Close (02:12):
Well, especially if you look outside and see how gray it is here, there’s going to be a lot of people packing it out of Cincinnati.

Ren Jones (02:16):
When you think about the snowbird thing, we have a lot of real estate agents that have two markets, Chicago and Orlando or whatever it may be.

Sarah Close (02:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Kind of a bivocational agent.

Ren Jones (02:28):
Yeah. Exactly.

Sarah Close (02:29):
And it’s really doable into this market.

Ren Jones (02:31):
Very, very, very doable.

Sarah Close (02:32):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (02:33):
And we all know many, many, many people doing that. And they didn’t miss a beat.

Sarah Close (02:38):
No.

Ren Jones (02:38):
They went down there and picked up three or four listings the first month.

Sarah Close (02:41):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (02:41):
Yeah.

Sarah Close (02:42):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Fundamentals don’t change.

Ren Jones (02:43):
So, pay attention. All right, so we’re going to go down to Dallas and Mr. Corey Daniel, all about expireds and just fail forward.

Sarah Close (02:58):
Absolutely.

Corey Daniel (02:58):
And if we don’t get our mind right, this business will chew you up and spit you out, because when you get really busy, it’s very challenging to lead generate. And we know that’s the one thing that keeps the business going. We took five listings this week for a total of-

Ren Jones (03:12):
Wow!

Corey Daniel (03:13):
… 2.4 million in volume just this week alone.

Sarah Close (03:16):
Well, that … Yeah.

Corey Daniel (03:16):
It was a good week. Yeah. It was a good week.

Sarah Close (03:18):
Yeah!

Corey Daniel (03:19):
Thank you. And they were all off expired listings. Just pick up the phone and ask for business. Just fail through it. Ask for business, figure it out as you go. And you’re going to pick up listings here and there, and before you know it, you’re going to get this momentum and it’s just going to start popping. That’s basically what I did.

Ren Jones (03:36):
There’s a little subtle hint. Do it every day.

Sarah Close (03:40):
That’s exactly right.

Ren Jones (03:40):
Focus on it and just make that your core business. It’s not a now and then thing. People think it’s, “Yeah, I can do it now and then well, I’ll prospect next week.”

Sarah Close (03:49):
Well, and you can see what those results are with an agent isn’t consistent with their leg gen. The results aren’t consistent, either.

(03:54):
And what I love about what he said is that he just pick up the phone and go do it. And I think sometimes I know even I can do this, I feel like, “Oh, I can’t do that yet because I’m not perfect. It’s progress, not perfection. And it’s moving through it and doing it anyway.

Ren Jones (04:07):
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You don’t want to be caught in ready, aim, ready, aim. You want to be-

Sarah Close (04:10):
Exactly.

Ren Jones (04:10):
… Nike. Just do it.

Sarah Close (04:14):
There’s a reason there’s a swoosh.

Ren Jones (04:15):
Just do it. That’s it. That’s it.

(04:17):
All right. Let’s go up to Detroit. And I like the concept here. Just go ahead and act like you’re their agent already. Just go ahead and act like you’re their agent. Talk to them as if you are already in business with them.

Sarah Close (04:30):
Yeah. Act as if.

Brandon Mulrenin (04:35):
So, Mondays we call all of our FSBOs that are in our pipeline. Tuesdays we are sending them out a piece of direct mail. So, they get a letter for eight weeks, eight pieces of direct mail over eight weeks. Wednesday they get our FSBO email. Thursday, we do a Facebook custom audience so that FSBO’s seeing our message, seeing our videos, seeing our face in their Facebook, Instagram feeds. Every Friday, we do a text message and then we offer to do open houses for them on Saturday. So, we’re touching them six times a week, all serving them. So, it’s no surprise, we act as their agent, Ren, before they think they need one. So, when the day comes where they need to hire an agent-

Ren Jones (05:22):
I love it. I love it.

Brandon Mulrenin (05:23):
… who do you think gets the business every time? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It’s a no-brainer.

Carly (05:27):
What is on the Friday text. What does the text say?

Brandon Mulrenin (05:30):
The text always says, it says, “Hey, Carly. Brandon here with Brookstone. Hey, wishing you best of luck this weekend. If something pops up, you need a contract, you have a question about an offer, be happy to be a second set of eyes for you. I’ll be here all weekend for you if you need anything.”

Carly (05:43):
I absolutely love that. You’re just, “Hey, I’m here to help if you need it.” That’s great. I love it.

Brandon Mulrenin (05:50):
I’m serving you. I’m acting as your agent before I’m your agent.

Carly (05:54):
Yeah, yeah. I love it. This is such a great strategy.

Brandon Mulrenin (05:58):
Thank you. It’s worked really well.

Carly (05:58):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (06:01):
He is selling a lot of property, so it is working at some good level for, because the man’s doing a lot of deals.

Sarah Close (06:07):
Absolutely. You know what I love about what he was saying is he knew every single day what the messaging was going to be for that for sale by owner play that they follow. He didn’t have to read a script or anything. He knows precisely what messaging they’re going to do, and he just repeats it and repeats it and repeats it.

Ren Jones (06:22):
Right. So, find a system and copy it, because if you have a plan, what do they say? “If you don’t have a plan, you plan to fail,” or something like that. And our industry is, as most people know, there’s a lot of winging it. And then they’ll get on a little tangent for a week or two, and then, “Oh, a buyer from Chicago came in and I got a show for the next two weeks,” and then everything they were doing falls apart. So, get a plan in place.

Sarah Close (06:47):
Yeah, absolutely. And don’t negotiate them.

Ren Jones (06:50):
That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. That is just my belief. But I think if you were not allowed to ever work with a buyer ever, and you had to refer it out or get somebody that worked them for you, whatever, I believe you would sell more.

Sarah Close (07:06):
I don’t disagree with you. What is it? The average number of hours that an agent will spend with a seller is eight. And then the average number purported to be spent with a buyer is 32.

Ren Jones (07:15):
Right.

Sarah Close (07:16):
Four to one efficiency, right there.

Ren Jones (07:17):
But yeah, but think about those 32. That’s where they finally gave up. But the eight, they sold it, closed. The 32, they’re like, “Well, we’re going to give it a break. We’ve looked at so many houses with you, we’re going to see if something shows up next year.”

Sarah Close (07:33):
Yeah. It’s rough.

Ren Jones (07:33):
Right. There was someone I knew in the market where I sold a lot of houses. She had five kids, single mom. She could not work with a buyer. She listed so much property.

Sarah Close (07:46):
I bet. I bet.

Ren Jones (07:47):
Yeah. She listed so much property because she couldn’t work with a buyer.

Sarah Close (07:51):
Right.

Ren Jones (07:51):
So, consider it.

Sarah Close (07:53):
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense.

Ren Jones (07:56):
So, let’s head down to Raleigh and our good friend Phil Demuth. And here’s a slight variation on the for sale by owner strategy.

Phil Demuth (08:07):
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 to dial, I used the Vulcan7 dialer and I would just call them. And my goal was to have 10 conversations.

(08:23):
When 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 2:00 or 3:00 work today?”

(08:51):
So, I avoid the commission, I avoid things like that. So, I get face-to-face because I learned if I could get in front of them, there was a high probability I’d get them to sign. 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 Jones (09:14):
Or you’d walk away with a dollar and a quarter, huh? No.

Phil Demuth (09:16):
Yeah. Or typically they would just hang up on me. And a lot of agents would be like, “Well, if they hang up on you, you’re going to call back?” I say, “Yep, I’ll call 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 Jones (09:34):
So, we have to avoid getting caught in doing the presentation over the phone.

Sarah Close (09:39):
That’s exactly right. His point is excellent if you are kind of caught off guard and start saying too much, instead of saying, “God, that’s a great question, Ren. Let’s cover that when we get together.”

Ren Jones (09:50):
Right. “I haven’t seen your house yet.” I was pretend when they would ask me a deeper question like that, I always pretend they said, “Can you come over?” I mean, I just pretend.

Sarah Close (10:01):
“Why, yes. I can. Is Thursday at-”

Ren Jones (10:02):
So, yeah. They go-

Sarah Close (10:03):
“… 2:00 or 4:00 better?”

Ren Jones (10:05):
… “What are you going to do to get the home sold?” And then I would go, “Hey, great. How does your schedule look for Thursday at 4:00 or would 6:00 be better?”

Sarah Close (10:12):
Yeah. “When’s a good time for me to show you?”

Ren Jones (10:14):
And then occasionally they go, “Well, no. Can’t you just tell me I over the phone?” “Well, I haven’t seen your house yet.”

Sarah Close (10:18):
That’s exactly right.

Ren Jones (10:19):
“And we don’t do things cookie cutter.”

Sarah Close (10:21):
That’s exactly right. “You’re going to have a bespoke experience by working with me, and I can’t begin to describe what that should be with any fiduciary if I don’t see your home first.”

Ren Jones (10:30):
Right. And then if they’re banging off, they’ll say, “Listen. I come by, take a look at your home, tell you how much it’ll bring in today’s market, how long it will take, and what it is we sell so many homes in,” whatever their area is. “And if none of this makes any sense to you in the first eight or 10 minutes, I’ll just shake your hand and be on my way.” And now you’re reducing it to the ridiculous.

Sarah Close (10:56):
Yeah. That’s exactly right. “And the worst thing that’ll possibly happen to you, Mr. Seller, is that you’ll have another professional be able to give you an opinion on your home.”

Ren Jones (11:01):
There you go. There you go.

Sarah Close (11:02):
Don’t do it over the phone.

Ren Jones (11:08):
Don’t do it over the phone. Don’t do it over the phone. All right. Good deal.

(11:12):
And we intimated on that at the beginning. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to have a plan ahead. And before you start the new year, if you’re watching this when we recorded it. And if not, just do it anyway. Get your business plan together. Get a morning routine. They say you can keep a morning routine every day from the time you get up until noon every day.

Sarah Close (11:39):
Yep. Absolutely.

Ren Jones (11:40):
It can look exactly the same.

Sarah Close (11:40):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (11:42):
What happens in the afternoon? Maybe you’ve got five new listings. Maybe you’ve got five new pendings, maybe you have five closings. But the afternoon can be a little wonky, but you can have a perfect schedule from the time you get up till noon every day.

Sarah Close (11:57):
Yes. And if you do have that perfect schedule, that’s going to assure that you have those five listings, five closings down the road in that afternoon for that next wonky Thursday afternoon if you’ve got a pristine Thursday morning. It’d be like-

Ren Jones (12:10):
That’s it. That’s it. Yeah. That’s the only way to get it. It’s the chicken or the egg.

Sarah Close (12:12):
Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ren Jones (12:15):
Yeah. It’s good deal. Well, let’s see what Mary Anne Gorey has to say about that.

Sarah Close (12:18):
All right.

Ren Jones (12:23):
You prospect five days a week. Is that about right?

Mary Anne Gorey (12:26):
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Ren Jones (12:26):
So, are there days of those five days when you’re scheduled to do that, that you just like, “I don’t want to”?

Mary Anne Gorey (12:31):
Oh, yeah. All the time.

Ren Jones (12:34):
What is the accountability component, or what is it that causes you to do it on the days you don’t feel like?

Mary Anne Gorey (12:40):
I think reviewing my goals has been really important. That was something I didn’t do last year, which I’ve been doing this year. So, before I even get started this year, I take out my business plan for the year, and I also have a goal board. And rather than just having it on my wall and it becoming kind of background noise, I just take the time to get it out and actually look at it. And that definitely just reminds me of what I need to do.

Ren Jones (13:08):
I know so many people put it together and plan, and then it just becomes background noise.

Sarah Close (13:13):
Yeah. Collects dust.

Ren Jones (13:14):
Yeah, yeah. I have one coaching client years ago in Montreal, Danny Bertier.

Sarah Close (13:21):
Oh! I went to meet him.

Ren Jones (13:22):
Yeah. That’s right.

Sarah Close (13:23):
I did. Yeah.

Ren Jones (13:23):
That’s right.

Sarah Close (13:24):
That was very cool.

Ren Jones (13:25):
That’s right. I forgot. We went up to Montreal to meet with him. He had his business plan out on his desk every day. He looked at it in the morning, and he looked at it in the afternoon every day for the whole year. Every day, he went through it twice a day. Now maybe that’s overkill, but yeah, maybe you could just-

Sarah Close (13:45):
It obviously worked for him.

Ren Jones (13:46):
It worked well. It worked very, very well.

Sarah Close (13:48):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (13:48):
So, having that plan and then executing, because we have to have that consistency five days a week. And then I wrote down, “12 months a year.” I can’t tell you how many time I would call past clients November, December, January, February. And then I’d stop calling them for the other eight months. It’s like-

Sarah Close (14:07):
Yeah, because you got busy.

Ren Jones (14:08):
Right. But that hurt me so bad.

Sarah Close (14:10):
I know.

Ren Jones (14:10):
You do an eight month gap talking to your database, your past clients.

Sarah Close (14:14):
That’s right. That’s right. One of the things we talk at all-

Ren Jones (14:16):
I only got through A through M.

Sarah Close (14:18):
Well, yeah. See? So, there’s a plan for that, and it’s called a DTD2 that has been introduced by a guidance Steve Slater.

Ren Jones (14:23):
Is that R2-D2?

Sarah Close (14:25):
It is like R2-D2, only it pays. And so, every week of the quarter, you take two letters out of the alphabet and call that client that starts with those two names. And then you’ll get all the way through your database in the 13-week quarter. So, it works.

Ren Jones (14:42):
Okay.

Sarah Close (14:42):
It’s good stuff.

Ren Jones (14:43):
All right. I never heard of that.

Sarah Close (14:44):
Yeah, it’s good stuff. Yeah. Absolutely.

Ren Jones (14:44):
Oh, that is wild. Good deal. Good deal. Well, that’s fun.

(14:49):
All righty. So, this next one, Justin Ford I really liked. He made six different points that he operates as business by. And again, notice there’s a pattern to this. There’s structure, and these are worth writing down.

Sarah Close (15:05):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (15:06):
So, here’s Justin.

Justin Ford (15:11):
I’ve created what I call the six keys to success. And the six keys basically give you that roadmap on how to overcome that rejection and really set yourself up for success. And number one is you have to start with the goal. What is your goal? And I remember my very first year in the business, my goal was to sell a hundred homes my first year. And I remember coming back from a retreat, was actually in my retreat. And Mike had said it was in January. He said, “Hey, what’s everybody’s goal this year?” And my goal was to sell a hundred homes my first year. Everybody thought I was crazy, but I believed it.

(15:44):
And so, I came up with a plan of what do I need to do every single day? How many people do I need to talk to every hour, every day, every week? How many listings, how many appointments? All the way to show, okay, if I do this, this leads me to this.

(15:58):
But then number two is I have to discover my why, why do I want this? Why am I getting on the phone? What is the end result? And what does that ultimately lead to and why is that important for me? And what I’ve noticed is you have to have a why that’s bigger than that knot in your stomach when you don’t feel like it. You have to have a why that is bigger than I don’t feel like it because if your why is not big enough, then you will, you won’t show up. You’ll be inconsistent. But then number three, Ren, I think is the big one, to create a strong mindset. And mindset is the thing that causes people to get on the phones and not get on the phones.

(16:34):
Mindset is the thing that causes people to be consistent. And those that kind of back off when they don’t feel like it. And what’s great about mindset is you can learn how to create a strong mindset. So, maybe today you don’t have a good mindset. Maybe today you’re struggling with rejection. Maybe today there’s things internally that are causing you to really struggle getting on the phones and being consistent. But what’s great is you can put a plan in place on how to strengthen your mindset.

(17:00):
And then number four is you have to make a commitment because without a commitment, what’s the point in even showing up? Number five is discipline. You have to have discipline. Discipline is the thing that sets people apart that are winning and people that are not. And then number six is accountability. If you’re going to commit to getting on the phones and you’re going to commit to making calls, find an accountability partner. Find a coach. Find a mentor, somebody that can hold you accountable to the first five. And when you put those six keys in place, I found those are the six keys to success. It really equips someone, gives someone what they need to succeed on the phones.

Ren Jones (17:34):
Yeah. I wrote down one thing he said, because he was talking about accountability. It’s such a huge piece. And he did mention coaching as one of the options there. I’ve come to realize anybody that is in coaching gets a return on their investment. Coaching, basically, not only is it free, it pays you to be in it.

Sarah Close (17:57):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (17:59):
Unless you’re not showing up and you’re not doing anything. But I mean, that is the best bang for the buck to-

Sarah Close (18:05):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (18:06):
… get consistency.

Sarah Close (18:07):
And I think one of the concerns I have for an agent who’s not thinking that is that as the market changes and you see some different dynamics out there, that it’s easy to say, “Oh, my gosh! I need to make a reduction in my expenses, therefore I’m going to cut coaching.” It’s absolutely the last thing that should be removed from an expense P&L. Absolutely the last thing.

Ren Jones (18:27):
Right. I’ve got Starbucks and everything else.

Sarah Close (18:29):
There you go.

(18:30):
You probably have enough for coachie if you added up all your Starbucks.

Ren Jones (18:32):
When I think of some of the really super achievers that I knew, they would hire a second coach and then a third coach, because they figured this ROI piece. “This coach has helped me make this many, this coach has helped me …” And you know …

Sarah Close (18:45):
It makes a huge difference. It really does. The other thing that he said that he just kind of glanced over, but I don’t want to go on without highlighting it, is he mentioned that he was in a seminar in January his very first year of the business. And so, what I like about that is he’s not waiting until he’s selling a hundred units to get education. He’s jumping right in. And at that point, he maybe hadn’t even started yet.

Ren Jones (19:10):
Right, right.

Sarah Close (19:10):
And he’s already out of retreat.

Ren Jones (19:11):
The biggest mistake I ever made was not doing it for the first three years, winging it for the first three years, selling actually, it’s technically respectable number, I suppose, 19 transactions. But I looked back on it and go, “My first three years were wasted.”

Sarah Close (19:30):
Yeah. The opportunity costs.

Ren Jones (19:31):
Looking around the office, what should I do? What should I do? And people that have been in the business are trying to saddle me up to hold their houses open.

Sarah Close (19:38):
That’s exactly right.

Ren Jones (19:39):
And then the phones ringing with all these knucklehead magic answers trying to sign me up. And so, you get caught up in all that. The best thing you can do is find a best practices.

Sarah Close (19:50):
Exactly.

Ren Jones (19:50):
Go and follow those.

Sarah Close (19:53):
Just sit right down and do it.

Ren Jones (19:54):
Right. Follow those best practices. Give yourself a chance.

Sarah Close (19:58):
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Biggest favor you can do to yourself.

Ren Jones (20:00):
Give yourself a chance. So, good. This next one talks about routine. One of my favorite subjects, Shonna Ruble. I talked to Shonna the other day.

Shonna Ruble (20:18):
You come into real estate and you think like, “Oh, 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 busy work. But if you don’t grow your company and you’re not from a mindset of being in production, then what you’re doing is 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 they can afford braces or glasses for their children.” And that means I do the one job that I’ve done for the last 17 years that I love. And that’s go after one appointment.

(21:03):
Actually, it’s funny. Once you have a few days of not actually doing your lead gen 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 that somebody’s going to throw at me. And soon as they’re talking, I already know what I’m going to say. And that just comes over time. And it’s going through the pain of saying it over and over and over, and just actually knowing what to say and when to say it, and having enough people to say it to.

Sarah Close (21:42):
So, what she’s talking about there, again, it’s subtle, but it’s so powerful, is that she’s showing up every single day. That’s what she is expecting to do when she gets out of bed in the morning, that’s her whole persona is programmed to do that five days a week. And that’s why she’s getting those predictable results.

Ren Jones (22:00):
And she commented the routine around it and routines pull you. Think about any part of your life where you have a routine. Brushing your teeth.

Sarah Close (22:10):
Yep. You’re on autopilot.

Ren Jones (22:11):
Right. You don’t think about it. You don’t go, “Hmm. I haven’t brushed them in a few days. Maybe I’ll wait till tomorrow. I’ll just brush them for a half an hour on Friday.” You don’t do it. There’s a routine around it.

Sarah Close (22:23):
Right. Exactly.

Ren Jones (22:23):
You don’t get up and go, “Should I put on a sock and a shoe and a sock and a shoe or should I put it on two socks and then two shoes?” I mean, we have a routine in everything we do.

Sarah Close (22:33):
Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Ren Jones (22:34):
And when you set that rhythm up, that’s why if you get from the time you get up till noon.

Sarah Close (22:38):
Right. It builds an incredible efficiencies.

Ren Jones (22:41):
You can become a machine that pumps out listings.

Sarah Close (22:45):
And what she was saying is, her job is just to get one appointment a day. It’s not to get five in one day or do some other superhuman exercise. It’s one appointment a day.

Ren Jones (22:56):
That makes perfect sense.

Sarah Close (22:57):
It does.

Ren Jones (23:00):
I like that. I like that a lot. And she said she’s been doing that for 17 years.

Sarah Close (23:02):
Yeah. That’s a lot of houses.

Ren Jones (23:03):
Yeah. And with a routine, there’s a lot less energy. When you’re-

Sarah Close (23:06):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (23:07):
… you’re not in routine, the energy required is so much higher.

Sarah Close (23:10):
Exactly.

Ren Jones (23:10):
When it’s routine, it’s just so automatic. It just flows.

Sarah Close (23:13):
Yeah. Absolutely. And she’s got her scripts right at the tip of her tongue because she’s used them as recently as yesterday.

Ren Jones (23:20):
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

Sarah Close (23:20):
Huge time savings.

Ren Jones (23:21):
What do they call that? Unconscious competence.

Sarah Close (23:23):
That’s exactly right. I’d say she’s quite competent.

Ren Jones (23:25):
Yes. Yes. So, let’s go to Los Angeles and visit our good friend Kathryn Hatayama. As she would say, prospecting equals predictable income.

Sarah Close (23:39):
That’s what we’re all looking for.

Ren Jones (23:41):
I like predictable income.

Kathryn Hatayama (23:42):
The year before I got into calling, I was getting deals from people I know and my husband’s network of people. But it wasn’t predictable. And I really disliked that. And I thought to myself, “This is not how … I can’t live my life like this. I can’t cross my fingers and sit here and think, ‘I hope I get something this month.'” That’s not my personality at all. I just can’t.

(24:11):
So, when I decided to take charge of my business and have more control, I decided to integrate this into my everyday routine. If people have success from it, I don’t care what they’re doing, I will do exactly what they do. I’m very coachable like that. So, repeat and duplicate. That’s all we have to do here.

(24:31):
So, if this person’s having success, let me just do exactly what they’re doing. Oh, they’re calling people. They’re making their contacts every day. They’re being held accountable. They have coaching? Of course. I mean, all our answers are in front of us. Whether we want to work them and do them is up to us.

Sarah Close (24:48):
Well said.

Ren Jones (24:49):
That’s it. That’s it. Repeat and duplicate.

Sarah Close (24:51):
Yeah. She has no ego in that.

Ren Jones (24:53):
The copycat principle. Yeah.

Sarah Close (24:54):
If it’s a good idea and it works, she’s going to do it. She’s not going to worry about the creativity part.

Ren Jones (24:58):
Right. Right. Just like Justin Ford in his first year, went in there and like, “What are the best practices? I’m following them.”

Sarah Close (25:03):
Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Very simple.

Ren Jones (25:06):
So good and very, yeah, same idea. Let’s go up to, let’s cross back over.

Sarah Close (25:11):
We went all over the place.

Ren Jones (25:12):
I know. But we’re going to go from LA to Hoboken.

Sarah Close (25:15):
All right.

Ren Jones (25:15):
Hoboken, New Jersey. Dean Clark. So, he talks about being a hunter. And I like that. I mean, there is a hunter mindset. If you have a hunter mindset, you’re going to be wealthy. That’s just the way it is.

Dean Clark (25:31):
And so, one thing that I’ve always loved doing, even in my finance days before real estate, was that you have to be a hunter. And you have to go out there and actually look for business. If you don’t, and you always rely on either paid sources or something else, you’re always going to be at the whims of the market. And so, if it goes down, then your productivity goes down. But if you stay in the game five days a week and you’re consistently generating business, what was that saying that they said, “Whenever you generate, you don’t have to tolerate.” And so, it’s so true.

Sarah Close (26:01):
Very well said.

Ren Jones (26:02):
Very well said. Very well said. If you generate, you don’t have to tolerate. Yeah, yeah. Because it’s so much easier to just say, “Next.”

Sarah Close (26:08):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (26:09):
Have another conversation. “Oh, they’re a lot more interested.” That’s the thing. So, many real estate agents are working with people that are like, maybe they’ll do something. Maybe I can convince them to do something because they’re not having enough conversations.

Sarah Close (26:23):
Yeah, because there’s a fear of loss because they don’t know what would replace it if they were to choose to not engage with that client right now.

Ren Jones (26:30):
But if they’re having a couple dozen conversations every day, they wouldn’t think twice about it because they go, “Tomorrow I’ll find a better one.”

Sarah Close (26:38):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (26:38):
Yeah. In fact, this next person from Philly, Mr. Tom Toole talks about just that. Whoever has the most conversations is the winner. Well, let’s see what Tom Toole has to say.

Tom Toole (26:55):
I made the decision to go out and bring in listings, find people that were really motivated. And I was reading a book and it said, “The best places to get your business from the first was your sphere.” And I’m like, “All right, great. I’ve already done that.” Second was expired listings, third was for sale by owners because the people were motivated. Expireds, they sign a contract with an agent. So, they believe in realtors. They let people come through their home, which is a total pain in the butt. They had open houses, they did all the things except pick the right agent. So, that tells me there’s some motivation there. And for sale by owners, a little different but they’re literally raising their hand saying, “Hey, I want to go sell my house. I’m just not sure if an agent’s the right move for me.”

(27:35):
So, when I heard that, I put the book down and I started prospecting expires and for sale by owners. And that literally has driven our business being a call first company ever since that started.

Sarah Close (27:47):
That’s awesome. That is awesome.

Ren Jones (27:49):
Wow.

Sarah Close (27:50):
So, talk to us about your lead generation. What does that look like in your team and how are you getting after those targets?

Tom Toole (27:58):
Sure. So, I mean, there’s a couple ways we do that. I mean, I was an individual agent in production. I was doing 90 homes a year for 10 years straight. And these were pretty much all listings up until jumping out of production last year as our team grew. So, my day-to-day was expired listings, people that were hot and had some motivation, leveraging the software and technology to make as many contacts as I could. Because whoever talks to the most people, they go on the most appointments and they sell the most houses. It’s not rocket science here. That’s what I love about real estate. It’s all about the people that have the will to win and have the mindset to do it every day, because there’s going to be some days when you don’t feel like making calls. I mean, it happens to everybody. It’s when you push through anyway and let that discipline carry you when you’re not that motivated.

(28:43):
So, for me, and I got hooked up with Vulcan7 obviously through our coaching organization. They had recommended it that I work with Tom Ferry and his coaches there. And I remember vividly the first time I even was aware of the software, my coach says to me, “You’re not using a dialer? Are you kidding me?” And hung up the phone on me and I was like, “Man, I’m an idiot. I should,” because I’m manually dialing all these people. And I was still taking listings. That wasn’t a problem. But it’s an efficiency question. I mean, you manually dial someone and look up the phone number and do all that stuff. It’s taking you like eight, 10 minutes to actually get on a call. That’s just one call. That’s not all of them.

(29:22):
So, by utilizing software and data and all the different things that are out there and being able to talk to 15, 20 people in two hours and make a hundred to 150 dials, I mean, that’s where you can really scale a business.

(29:37):
So, that’s really what lead generation looks like at our team is we’re leveraging software. We’re creating our call lists in advance. We’re coming in super prepared because there’s always a prime time to make phone calls. You guys all know this. And we want to be ready to execute during that time to make it as profitable and as productive as possible. So, it’s really about prep software, phone skills, scripting, role play, all the stuff you’ve probably heard before that most people just never want to commit to doing.

Ren Jones (30:07):
I wrote down, “He’s running it like a business.”

Sarah Close (30:10):
He is, absolutely. And we’re getting into the market of more where we’re going to be doing more calls, we’re going to need to spend more time in our lead generation activities. And what I love about him is that he’s coming into that prime time totally locked and loaded and ready to go. He’s not wasting that first of the morning energy on getting ready to get ready. He’s got his call list, everybody knows what they’re going to be doing and then they can just hit it and then they can go. So, it’s incredibly efficient what he’s doing.

Ren Jones (30:38):
Absolutely. Well set up.

(30:40):
I wanted to comment on, because the market changed a lot over the last six, eight months from one market to the other. I was saying to somebody the other day that if I was brand new in the business, I find that where we are now would be a better entry point than it would’ve-

Sarah Close (30:57):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (30:58):
… been a year ago or two years ago.

Sarah Close (30:59):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (31:00):
Because it must have been frustrating when you’re one of 22 offers because if you’re brand new in the business, you’re probably working buyers. And unless they’re all cash …

Sarah Close (31:09):
Right, and you probably aren’t having necessarily the nuance and experience to get your offer accepted. So, we moved from a speed-based business to more of a skill-based business. And the good news is skill is available to everyone that chooses to go get it.

Ren Jones (31:27):
Right. And that’s the biggest need. And I’m glad you touched on that because skill, they actually need your services-

Sarah Close (31:34):
That’s right.

Ren Jones (31:36):
And you got to be skilled. You’ve got to have-

Sarah Close (31:37):
That’s right.

Ren Jones (31:39):
… all your market knowledge. You have to have a strategy, you have to have a batting average, you have to be good at this. So, you better get skilled because we’re going to lose, what do we have? 1.4, 1.5 million realtors?

Sarah Close (31:50):
We have a lot. Yeah. We have a lot of realtors.

Ren Jones (31:51):
And that’ll drop down. We’ll lose about a third of them for strictly because of a narrative out there because news like that, “Oh, this is a terrible time,” which I find interesting.

Sarah Close (32:07):
Well, and what’s interesting is if you think about when that exodus will happen, it’s going to take a little while, but the market in terms of the number of units that are actually transacting has already shifted. So, we are what? 6.1 last year, and I think we’re targeted to end this year at 4.8 million units sold.

Ren Jones (32:22):
Right. That sounds about right. Yeah.

Sarah Close (32:23):
And we’re expecting that to change again next year.

Ren Jones (32:26):
Right. So, yeah. It’s a drop from roughly-

Sarah Close (32:29):
What? 18% or so?

Ren Jones (32:30):
Right. Yeah, something like that, which is not horrible, but-

Sarah Close (32:34):
Not at all. It’s not horrible at all. And if you’re skills-based, those clients want to be speaking with you because they want to know why didn’t I sell in three hours when my neighbor did in April.

Ren Jones (32:45):
Yeah. Somebody did an interesting chart and it showed buying a house six months ago and buying a house now. It came on the market at 450 six months ago. It sold for 500 and this is what the payment would be. Now it comes on the market for 450. It sells for four and a quarter, and this was what the payment would be. Not a big difference in the payment.

Sarah Close (33:11):
Right, right. No, that’s really true. That’s really true.

Ren Jones (33:12):
Right. And it’s not that homes are going down in price.

Sarah Close (33:14):
No.

Ren Jones (33:14):
It’s just they’re not selling for a premium because the froth is gone. The simple fact is there’s no homes to buy or rent. There’s still. The NAR, I don’t remember what the title is exactly, but basically that studies all the statistics, inventories and everything like that, and it was probably one of the few news reports I saw that was accurate. He said, “We’re not going to have significant declines at prices, but what we-”

Sarah Close (33:50):
Because we’re still technically in a seller market.

Ren Jones (33:52):
Right. Because when you go from a two month supply to a three, three-and-a-half month supply, you’re still … In fact, the builders are building a little less. And we’re actually going into a market that’s even worse where we’re going to have even less homes available. And so, all the houses will sell pretty quickly, but-

Sarah Close (34:13):
It’s just, will you be the listing agent?

Ren Jones (34:15):
Right. And it’ll be easier to be a listing agent now than it would be six months ago, because all you have to do is study a little bit, get your best practices and list these properties.

Sarah Close (34:28):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (34:28):
And you’re still going to sell most of them.

Sarah Close (34:30):
You are.

Ren Jones (34:30):
That’s the nice thing. You’re going to sell most of them. We didn’t have that in 2007 or eight.

Sarah Close (34:34):
No, that was not.

Ren Jones (34:36):
You would list 20 and you would sell seven. Now you’ll list 20 and sell 18 or 19.

Sarah Close (34:41):
Right. Exactly, exactly. And if you’re working with the buyer, they finally have some choice and they don’t have to make a panicky decision in five minutes they’re going to want to back out of tomorrow when they have buyer’s remorse. It’s actually, I think the market conditions that we’re moving through are far improved to be able to act as a professional in our field.

Ren Jones (34:59):
Right. This is so much better. It’s always dangerous when they don’t need your services. And if that goes on for too long of a time, then all kinds of bad things happen where they find a way not to use your services.

Sarah Close (35:11):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (35:11):
Good. Well, thanks for being here. This was another season highlight show on the books.

Sarah Close (35:19):
Absolutely. Season eight. It’s a wrap.

Ren Jones (35:21):
Season eight. And our studio director doesn’t like it when I bang papers around, which I’ve done during the show. So, come back for more of that. We’ll see you next week.

Sarah Close (35:34):
Have a great holiday.