How Candace Decker took a listing on day one in a market where she knew 25 people

Candace Decker00:04

So when it comes to skill building, it is repetition and consistency. So you have got to be on the phone dialing every single day. And I think this is the biggest mistake that agents make is they think they can get on the phone once a month and make it happen. And then they say, well, I got on the phone for an hour and it didn’t work.

00:24Well, an hour it’s just not enough. So, you know, I try to teach them exactly what I did, which, hey, you’ve got to be in the dialer for 2 to 4 hours every single day. You have to you have to time block your prospecting time. And you can’t be interrupted and you can’t go show houses at 830 and roll into the office at 11.

00:47And then maybe you make your calls. Maybe you don’t. It is about consistency and doing it every single day. And, you know, the funniest thing is I’ve sold homes to people. I called the wrong number and I sold people houses. So you could be you can be really bad at scripting and not know what the heck you’re doing.

01:07But if you just call people enough, eventually you’re going to connect with somebody that needs your services.

Ren Jones01:23

It’s that time. Welcome to Road Map. 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. We have an exciting guest today and we encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can and then use the copycat principle.

01:48Let me introduce my co-host from the Southern Ohio Cincinnati area, northern Kentucky, eastern Indiana, Sarah Close. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Close01:57

Hi, Ren. Thanks for having me.

Ren Jones01:59

Sarah is the best co-host you could ever have. Not only has she run a team selling a couple hundred homes a year for many years and you did it solo for a long time. And doing what? And now owns and co-owns several real estate offices in southern Ohio and serves Northern Kentucky and eastern Indiana.

02:23Big wide areas, swath of the country and has made five hundreds of agent 550. Yep 550 real estate agents that she has to herd and put in a box every day.

Sarah Close02:38

Now there are all good.

Ren Jones02:40

Now you have some great people. You really have some amazing, you have some amazing rock stars that are really very take my word, and it’s a very professional operation. You and your team. Your tracking for you still tracking in the mid two hundreds.

Sarah Close02:57

That’s the goal. We’ll see where we land. But right.

Ren Jones03:00

So good, good, good, good, good, good. All righty. Let’s dive in. Wonderful guest. Let me introduce our guest from the Cape Coral, Fort Myers area of Florida.

Sarah Close03:12

Fabulous.

Ren Jones03:14

Yes, Candace Decker.

Candace Decker03:16

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah Close03:19

How are you, Candace? Thanks for coming today.

Candace Decker03:21

I’m doing awesome. I’m really excited to be here. Great.

Ren Jones03:24

Good deal. Welcome. So let’s dive in and see what we can learn about your business. Did you say you move from one market to another at one time?

Candace Decker03:34

I did. So I moved from a very rural area in northern Illinois back in the fall of 2019 to Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Florida. So I’ve been here since culture shock.

Ren Jones03:50

Yes, that’s a big move. That is a big move. Yeah. They celebrate New Year’s Eve at 8 p.m., don’t they?

Candace Decker04:02

So bad

Sarah Close04:04

Tell us what that transition was like for you. That’s a big move. That’s not just to the one market over. Do you still have a team in Illinois or did you move everything to Florida or what does that look like for you?

Candace Decker04:13

And so I’m I was very lucky because my sister in law and I work together in Illinois. So she took over my business there. As I transitioned down to Florida, I really only knew about 25 people here when I moved. So taking my prospecting skills and being able to transfer them here was huge. It was a huge asset to me because it is it is scary moving 1200 miles and you go from a market where you’re very confident and, you know, a lot of people and everyone knows your name to a brand new market landing in an area where there’s 30,000 real estate agents in our entire market and then in our city

04:57alone, there’s 7000.

Sarah Close04:59

Yeah.

Ren Jones04:59

Good bunch.

Sarah Close05:00

Of agents.

Ren Jones05:01

Yeah, well, I think they’re all fighting over that great dollar. What’s the typical commission check there?

Candace Decker05:07

Well, the average sales price now is about 400,000 dollars. About $12,000.

Ren Jones05:15

That’s a good sized check. Yeah. that’s good.

Candace Decker05:19

It’s good. How did you do that?

Sarah Close05:20

What did that transition look like? You know, so you jump in from, you know, the great white north and into the Florida. And how did you how did you get started there? What did your prospecting look for? Take us on that journey with you a little bit.

Candace Decker05:34

So I had a lot of pressure because I had talked my husband into moving and leaving his job and uprooting. We had our kids were two and four years old at the time, so it was a big move. And I had a lot of weight on my shoulders that I had to make this work because I was not going to drag us all the way back up there to the winters.

05:55So I knew that I had to make this work so. Day one, we were in our new house. We did not have any furniture because we moved during a hurricane. And so we had no furniture. So I think I had a couple of books or I took some sort of box and I sat my laptop on my kitchen counter and I just started dialing day one in my new market.

06:20And it was cool because I was able to take I think you guys set me up on my new data right away. So I was just able to get the the new expired list for the day. And I just started calling on day one using the same script that I had been using in Illinois. And that’s what’s so crazy.

06:38I think sometimes we think, well, a different market. There’s so many different conversation. It really is the same conversation. You know, 1200 miles away. And this is the craziest part. I took a listing on my first day in my new market

Ren Jones06:55

It’s a very portable business, isn’t it? Isn’t it just maybe paint and carpet and ceramic tile? Isn’t that really all it is?

Candace Decker07:01

It is it is the same and it’s still a human being on the other end of the line. I think that’s what’s really important to know is we’re just people, right? I’m calling to help you because you didn’t have a successful sale last time around. And I just want to see how I can help. So I think just coming from a place of value and having a good heart and not chasing a check, but just chasing the opportunity to help somebody is very important.

07:29And, you know, that was something in the Midwest that I had those values and I just brought them here and and it worked.

Ren Jones07:37

Just coming in contribution, like how, you know, let’s see if we can help you get where you want to get move to.

Candace Decker07:43

Exactly.

Ren Jones07:44

This is a wonderful thing.

Sarah Close07:46

Absolutely. So it sounds like you were saying it was it was at an expired or canceled. Is that a large part of your prospecting anatomy is spent in that space?

Candace Decker07:56

Yes. So, I mean, I looked at expired and in our market they’re called terminated. I look at them really as the same thing, even though they are a little bit different. But a lot of times the terminated or the canceled, they just didn’t have a successful sale or there was some big life change that happened to them that maybe right now is not that good, a good time, but maybe two months from now or six months from now, it will be another opportunity for them to sell their home.

08:30And actually, I think those canceled and terminated are the best because most agents will only call once or twice and then they give up. And those terminated are the long term follow ups. And so it’s almost like the last man standing is the one who ends up getting it.

Sarah Close08:47

Talk to us about your follow up. That can be daunting when you’ve got a lot in the hopper. What what is your follow up plan when you’ve been in dialog with the terminated?

Candace Decker08:56

Well, I think the first thing that’s really important there is and you can Google this to get the actual stats like the sales statistics of follow up that only 1% of sales or transactions happen in the first follow up. So if you are only calling one time your only capturing 1% of the market, which most of the time, you know, that person is just not ready at that moment.

09:22So that’s really important. The follow up is I don’t know if I call it aggressive, but it’s staying in front of them as much as possible. And being able to recognize when they really are ready and asking more questions. So we got to ask as many questions as possible to get to their actual motivation. Because a lot of times and I think about when I go to buy a car or I’m shopping at the store and the salesperson comes up to me and says, furniture is the best, right?

09:59Because they’re standing at the front and everyone’s harassing you. Do you need help? Do you have any questions? You know, what are you looking for? I don’t want to talk to you right now. I’m not ready. But guess what? At some point I’m going to find that couch that I love and I’m going to meet a salesperson. Right now, I’m like, looking at in the store, like, Why isn’t anyone here to help me?

10:20I need help. Right, right. That’s the same thing with terminated They’re going to need someone at some point. And the person who’s hovering around, right, who’s been calling in consistently following up is the one that’s going to get them on the right day. When they said, oh, actually, I was thinking about pulling an agent again because I do need to stop.

10:40So you’ve got a follow up forever.

Sarah Close10:45

Yeah

Candace Decker10:45

Forever.

Ren Jones10:46

A newer agent thinks that they get one. No. Well, no, we’re not. We’re we’re just going to leave it off for a while, okay. Bye bye. And they never call back. Yeah, or they might call back four months later, but. Oh yeah, we sold that. Okay.

Sarah Close11:03

Yeah. What, what would be the cadence of your follow up if if my house terminates? How when am I going to hear from you? How frequently am I going to hear from you? What are you saying to me?

Candace Decker11:13

Well, you got to be really organized on your leads because you’ve got to make sure you’re calling them at the right time. And they say that they’re going to sell in a month. You always want to cut the time in half because things end up happening and people change their mind, especially in our market. Typically, these are second homes, investment properties for people.

11:34So, you know, they could get a call from their accountant or their financial advisor and they’re making a different move than what they said. So our follow up always has to be more aggressive then maybe what that expired was originally thinking. But what I found is that they like when we’re aggressive, I’ve been hired so many times by sellers that said, you know what?

11:56I just love how aggressive you are. And my last agent was so passive. I need a bulldog to get my home sold. So I teach. The same thing to my agents is we have to be aggressive, we’ve got to get out of our comfort zone because people want that. You know, I always tell this to my team, which is, do you want to hire a passive attorney or an aggressive attorney to work on your behalf?

12:23Right. We’re all going to say we want somebody who’s aggressive and a seller wants the same exact thing.

Ren Jones12:29

Right. So when they when they start giving you pushback, you make that observation. Right?

Candace Decker12:34

Right.

Ren Jones12:34

Right. You want someone like me to represent you?

Candace Decker12:39

Mm hmm. Exactly. And you can say, hey, the reason I’m so aggressive is because I’m really passionate about selling homes, and I want to get yours sold, too, because look at the last agent you hired, right? You were on the market for 200 days, and it wasn’t successful. Don’t you want it different this time around? And something else I would say is, hey, I don’t want to have this same conversation with you six months down the line.

13:09All right. We’ve already been through this once. I’ve called you once. I don’t want to I don’t want to have this conversation again. So let’s do the right thing and let’s get together for a couple of minutes.

Ren Jones13:18

Do the right thing. I love it. Let’s do the right thing. You know, and that’s an interesting you are well-scripted that that little piece about doing the right thing is a part of human nature. Yeah. And I’ve heard another variation of let’s list it right and sell it right. You know, when they start talking about flaky things like I might try it on my own or this that now so that you are well scripted.

Candace Decker13:44

It just comes from the experience, right?

Ren Jones13:45

Let’s do the right thing. Do the right thing. Because most people want to do the right thing. So I love that.

Sarah Close13:54

So when you’re coaching the agents on your team because I understand you’re less in production now and you’re more kind of working through others, what types of things are you sharing with them so that they get their skills tooled up.

Candace Decker14:08

So when it comes to skill building, it is repetition and consistency. So you have got to be on the phone dialing every single day and I think this is the biggest mistake that agents make is they think they can get on the phone once a month and make it happen. And then they say, well, I got on the phone, you know, for an hour and it didn’t work.

14:28Well, an hour is just not enough. So, you know, I try to teach them exactly what I did, which, hey, you’ve got to be in the dialer for 2 to 4 hours every single day. You have to you have to time block your prospecting time and you can’t be interrupted and you can’t go show houses at 8:30 a.m. and roll into the office at 11 and then maybe you make your calls, maybe you don’t.

14:53It is about consistency and doing it every single day. And you know, the funniest thing is I’ve sold homes to people. I was the wrong I called the wrong number and I sold people houses. So you could be you can be really bad at scripting and not know what the heck you’re doing. But if you just call people enough, eventually you’re going to connect with somebody that needs your services.

Sarah Close15:18

So your teams are on the phone 2 to 4 hours a day. Do they do script practice? Do they have like a contact target or what is the anatomy of their morning look like? Mm hmm.

Candace Decker15:30

So we do do script practice together. So always sharpening those skills. I say you can’t practice on the client or potential client. You’ve got to get, you know, that a little bit of anxiety we all have it that fear of the phone. We’ve got to we’ve got to get over that. And so practice is key. And I know for me every single day I have a different role play partner.

15:57We are jumping on the phone. We work having conversations about how our family was. We were just getting on the phone practicing and practicing harder than the actual calls and making sure that we were on our game so that when we did call that, we were not we weren’t practicing. So that’s a big one. Is that practicing on our own time?

16:21Just writing the script out word for word and then reciting it back to yourself and then going as far as actually recording yourself, saying it and listening to it back while you’re driving. So I know it sounds so crazy, like wow I’m getting this intent on memorizing this stuff, but when you can internalize the script, then you have the ability to listen.

16:47Because if you’re thinking about what you’re going to say next, we can’t listen. We can’t actively listen and take notes. And that’s the most important part because we want to talk 20% of the time and listen 80% of the time to the seller.

Sarah Close17:05

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. How much as far as ratios of business like are you 50/50 listings / buyers. What does that look like for you?

Candace Decker17:14

Yeah, I would say we’re a little bit more buyer heavy than listing heavy just because we have a lot of newer agents. I like to work with buyers, so they’re a little bit heavier on buyers.

Sarah Close17:27

Gotcha, gotcha. So do you have any particular scripts that you are working with them on the buyer side? As far as as far as prospecting for buyers goes, are they mostly coming from your listings? Where does that stop off?

Candace Decker17:41

Yeah. So with online lead generation and we like to use us a script called ALM. get the appointment, get the area, location, motivation, and then book the appointment. So we are very appointment heavy team because we know once we get in front of them face to face, show our value proposition, our professionalism, our knowledge and value that we are able to retain them as a client.

18:10But we’ve got to get that face to face. And it’s the same thing with sellers and expired. Right? We’ve got to get that face to face because this is a human business and transactions don’t always happen over the phone. They may in our market, but that face to face is so important.

Ren Jones18:27

Yep, that’s it. I know we’re a lot more powerful when we’re face to face. Zoom will be a good second. But you know, if you can be face to face, stuff happens.

Candace Decker18:38

And I think for me when I first started calling expired, I mean, so my goal was to book an appointment every single day. So when you first starting out, you’ve got to take you got to get really scrappy and take every single appointment you can get because then you can go out and you can you can perfect your presentation and then once you get going, you get better and better and better.

19:03Then you can take the more ready to go pre-qualified listing appointments. But for me, I learned so much when I just like really rolled up my sleeves and said I’m going to get an appointment every single day, whether they’re ready right now or they’re not. And sometimes they weren’t ready, but I could show them how they should be ready.

19:24So I’m taking all those appointments. Really, really built the momentum for me.

Ren Jones19:29

Right? A little full immersion there. And then you back it off so that your batting average, you go on ten appointments you knew you like to order. Do you like the batting average for your folks to be you go on ten listing appointments. How many would they take?

Candace Decker19:46

Six.

Ren Jones19:47

They take six. 60%. Six out of ten. Good. Yeah. Which is a lot better than the average of two out of ten which is out there. That’s I think those are NAR stats

Candace Decker19:59

What we do, which is really, really important, is the pre-qualification call prior to the appointment. So if you take anything away from this today, this should be the Golden Nugget because a lot of us book the appointment and then we just show up and we’re blindfolded. We don’t we don’t have the right answers to cater the presentation to get them to sign.

20:27Right. So the important questions that you have to ask is, hey, I know you said you wanted to be you want to hit the market, you know, November 1st. When do you want to be closed by? Do you have a price point in mind that you want to list? Are there any other decision makers that need to be present for our meeting?

20:51What is important to you about the agent that you choose to represent to you? And the most important question you have to ask is, Hey Ren, when we meet and I show you everything with our marketing and the pricing and everything looks good to you, are you prepared to sign the listing paperwork? And the reason why this is important is because if they’re not prepared to, they said, no, we’ve got to meet with two other agents.

21:22Awesome. Now I know that information. Right? So we’re we’re getting keyed in. So then when you’re actually at the appointment, if they said yes, we would sign. Now we’ve shown them everything we’ve gotten to the point where they need to sign and they say, No, well, I haven’t done my job. So now we’re missing something.

Ren Jones21:41

Yeah, that question is that question is one of the first closes before you even get there. You, you have just closed them.

Candace Decker21:48

Yeah.

Ren Jones21:49

And then depending on how they answer that, you carry it forward.

Candace Decker21:54

Right. Exactly.

Sarah Close21:55

What other lead gen levers do you guys pull to generate your sales?

Candace Decker22:01

Yeah. So we do a lot of online lead generation so that that’s a big one. Facebook agent agent referrals and we have a lot of lead sources that we lean on.

Sarah Close22:14

Okay. Gotcha, gotcha. But still very prospecting based. Yes. Yeah, that’s awesome. Good deal. And how many agents are on the team right now that are selling?

Candace Decker22:25

We have 16 agents

Sarah Close22:28

And then how many units do each of them target to do per year?

Candace Decker22:33

So the so the goal it’s 24 and of course, we have newer agents that that does take a little bit of time to get going especially the market has shifted. Right. So last year where that was really easy, we had agents coming on the team getting a deal within their first 30 days. Now that’s taking between 30 and 60 days, but we are getting our new agent on the phone.

22:57Day one when you join our team, you are getting on the phone and we used to wait about two weeks, but now it’s like, hey, we, you know, we are a prospecting team. We have minimum standards of the amount of dials and appointments you take a week. So we’re just going to get you in right away. We’re going to get that fear of the phone over with and get you in the group.

23:19So we have definitely shifted how we’ve worked with our new agents.

Sarah Close23:24

Gotcha. That’s great. Do you guys have any programs that you run for your sphere of influence or your past clients?

Candace Decker23:30

So we have a VIP program, so we do quarterly events with our with our clients. And of course, that’s really fun because we have all of these clients that we got to work with and then we don’t always see all the time. So that’s a great way for us to get together and make it fun and it’s a great way to connect with them instead of just always calling to talk to them about their home value.

23:55So we still want to talk to them about that. But hey, we also just want to hang out with you and get to know you as people.

Ren Jones24:01

Some good information here and you’re. Well, it’s well, it’s very organized, very consistent and very scripted, which is huge, which is huge and well-scripted. And any coaching influences as part of this whole thing?

Candace Decker24:18

Yes, I have had coaching for the last three years. That’s really how I was inspired to start calling expired. I went to a Tom Ferry sales edge, which actually those are no longer after COVID. But back in 2019 I went to a Tom Ferry edge event. But it was funny because they had a panel of agents and there was three agents up on the stage and there was this guy from Atlanta, and he he got on stage and said, I’m doing 550,000 and GCI and I call expired.

24:56And I was like, Wait, I’d even know Agent made that much money because I came from a small town where there’s only 60 transactions in the whole town. And I’m like, Wait a second, I can do this, and this guy’s doing it and this guy can do it. I know I can do it. And he actually sat behind me.

25:13So I, you know, I circled back and I was like, hey, I need to know what where are you getting this information from? Tell me everything I need to know. He’s like Vulcan7. Here’s my referral code. Get onto Vulcan7 and just start dialing. So I went home and on day one. So my average price point was, I think 175 and I got on the phone and and day one I got myself in the door in a $1.5 million listing.

25:42I had no idea what I was doing, but I just I just did it. See, that’s the thing. We always think we have to aim, get ready and then fire. But it’s actually the opposite. We’ve got a fire. Get ready and we got to do the opposite.

Ren Jones25:57

And then you started at the top. Let’s see, what’s the most expensive listing that expired today? One point.

Candace Decker26:03

So but here’s a cool thing. I’m like, wow, I can get in the door on this listing that I normally would never, ever had access to, and that is what excited me. So that’s why I’m back to coaching an influencer.

Ren Jones26:16

Who was that guy that was on stage, you remember?

Candace Decker26:19

Yeah. Carl Phillips. He’s a great friend of mine, from Georgia. And he’s still a good friend of mine. And I just remember him saying, he also said, I am I going to say the swear word? He said, he said, my junkie videos is better than your no video. So he was also doing video and he was like, he just showed me like, it doesn’t matter what you look like or what market you’re in or who you are, just execute and just do it.

26:50You know, most of us get paralyzed with our fear of the phone, but if you can just get over that and just do it.

Ren Jones26:58

You love it.

Candace Decker26:59

I love it better than 97% of the other agents out there who are doing zero actions to move their business.

Ren Jones27:07

Good. This is great. I love that story. You’re doing all the right stuff. What is what’s the future? Hold for what you’re doing because you’re in production now. You’re leading this group doing and teaching them everything that you’ve learned to be successful on the listing side of the business, what’s next? Where does this all go?

Candace Decker27:28

Yeah, so we have really, really exciting things coming up. We are growing our team every day, so we have about four agents joining our team every single month. And just my my passion for helping sellers is now helping agents help sellers. So we’re really passionate about helping agents and we’re going to continue to do that in our own market and then we’re also expanding across the United States and helping other team leaders build out their teams.

28:01So that’s what the future holds right now.

Ren Jones28:03

Wow, that’s exciting. Now, so you’re going to really just be hopping around a lot of other markets. Are you yourself expanding what you’re doing in Florida? Are you going to, you know, Naples, Marco Island, all these other are. What are you doing there?

Candace Decker28:17

So so Naples is in the works right now. I mean, naturally, we’re already helping buyers and sellers down in Naples and Marco Island. So, you know, it’s just a natural progression in our market.

Ren Jones28:28

Wow. And the price point is not so bad there.

Candace Decker28:31

Yeah, you know what? It’s not bad. The people are pretty awesome, too.

Ren Jones28:36

Yeah, that’s it. I know. And in the winter, you know, snow shoveling is not quite as difficult. There.

Candace Decker28:44

It’s the cold sand shoveling down here.

Ren Jones28:46

And it’s better. That’s it. That’s good. This has been very helpful for a lot of the people that watch the show. As you said before, we we came on, she goes, I just started watching road maps, figured this out. And and and now you’re on one helping people continue this process.

Candace Decker29:08

Yeah, it’s so cool. And the one thing I do like before I go though, one, there’s a couple of things the coaching, but also finding a mentor who helped me. So there is an agent out of Philadelphia named Tom Toole and he took me under his wing. He saw how hard I was working and he showed me the ropes and really, really helped me.

29:30And then I just watched YouTube videos every single morning, so I watched Road Map and then there’s a lot of content on YouTube, just live calls, and I would listen to that every single morning while I would work out. And so it was just really ingrained in me and I would learn what other people were saying. I just took those little nuggets and implemented that into my business.

Ren Jones29:54

It’s kind of a copycat principle and I mean, basically you’re like, What works? Yeah, what do I need to say to make that happen? I mean, it’s not rocket science. Just do what people are doing and you’ll have what people have.

Candace Decker30:08

Yeah. And don’t reinvent the wheel here. But that’s hasn’t really changed. Even if you look at my query scripts, we’ve been saying the same things for 25 years.

Ren Jones30:17

Yeah, right.

Candace Decker30:18

There’s there’s not much that has changed.

Ren Jones30:20

So Candace, here’s the thing. There are going to be a lot of people going now how do I reach her? I want to ask our question. I have somebody moving down to Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Naples, Marco Island. They want to buy a 2.1 in Naples. Well, that would be a condo in Naples, but, how do they reach you?

30:40What’s the best plan?

Candace Decker30:42

All right. So the best way to reach me, go to my Instagram at Candace Decker real estate. I’m in there quite often, so give me a follow and then shoot me a DM and I’m always happy to help. Even if you have a question about calling expireds or looking for scripts, I actually I’d love to help and give feedback, so please reach out.

Ren Jones31:05

Well, thank you so much. Candace has been wonderful. This has helped a lot of people and we’re grateful that you finally made it to our show. May we check back with you in six months to a year and see how how the Candace Decker empire is coming along?

Candace Decker31:20

I will love that Ren.

Ren Jones31:22

We’re probably going to check with you in February in person when it’s cold up here.

Candace Decker31:27

In Atlanta and come on down.

Ren Jones31:29

All righty. Thanks again.

Sarah Close31:32

Thank you. Have a great rest of today. Thanks, Candace.

Ren Jones31:34

And thanks, everybody. See you next week.