Episode 13: Prospecting

Don't let market uncertainty hold you back! In today's episode, we discuss the importance of building meaningful relationships, the power of handwritten notes, and the art of consistent prospecting.

Key takeaways:
    Personal touch matters: Handwritten notes can create lasting impressions.
    Consistency is key: Keep your pipeline full with regular prospecting.
    Quality over quantity: Focus on meaningful conversations, not just numbers.
    Understand your clients: Build relationships by connecting on a personal level.
    Track your progress: Use a CRM to monitor your activities and identify successful strategies.

Want to learn more? Listen to our latest episode! (link in bio)

Transcript

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They're like, well the market's going down. I want to see when the bottom is, well, no one never knows or the bottom is you never know. And so then the frustration is, as a realtor, that you want to like, sink. I'm like, guys like, are you going to buy or not? if someone wrote you a handwritten card, let's just say for your birthday, you probably keep that for even a week, two weeks, a month on your desk. So imagine if you wrote a handwritten card and mailed it to somebody. They probably would keep it Yeah, how many people get handwritten card? It will think of five guys like, what a simple concept. It's literally burgers and fries. I think that I think they have a hotdog. Colby sway here with Adam Bradley. Another edition this week, like always. We're talking about prospecting today, Yeah. which we've been talking about for a little while. As the market continues to change and churn, we want our agents to get more aggressive, to get out there. And sometimes it takes more work for the same or less pay. So that's what kind of throws people off, is you have to do more work than you did the year before. If you're going to expect the same result. Yeah. Well, I mean, what's going on right now is just talk about the market as most agents are going through is we have a slowing market. We have an election year. You have inflation, you have a lot of, uncertainty. So just people are not moving like they once were. Right. Even, you know, the Fed's meeting here in a couple of weeks talks about lowering the rates. What, probably a quarter percent. But that doesn't necessarily mean whole mortgage rates are going to go down. And a lot of people, a lot of loan officers saying, hey, these are they've already been reflected. So don't be surprised if they don't go down. It helps like small businesses because that money's cheaper. But then again, and what it can do is it helps potentially have people take their money out of the bank that they're getting a higher rate and then put it back into maybe stocks or real estate. So that could help spike it. But I think we're all I guess the way I'm operating is like, it is probably just going to be slower through the end of the year and going into next year for sure. So I think the biggest shift that we had, and mainly due to our we had a really good conversation with Josh black, our real estate coach or our business coach last week was really focusing on how many two minute or more conversations are you having with prospective people. And this is it, like following up with your your leads, like are your, existing clients that you're showing? That's that's just called follow up. And again, I'm always surprised whether it's an agent on our team or another agent at a different brokerage, at our brokerage, in a different market, where they can't honestly say how they've committed to over 30 minutes a day of prospecting, and we're paid to prospect. That's how you build your pipeline. Yeah. And and so I think you're dealing with rejections always a thing that everyone deals with. They struggle with, especially if you are a new agent or you maybe you're of that agent, you haven't had the prospect in a while and now. Guess yourself. Well, and then you start prospecting. You start getting rejected. You start getting down on yourself. Yeah, right. And then this side tracks you on continuously going forward with that. and you're already down. You're already down Yeah well or your business is slowing. Yeah. And it's just this horrible vicious cycle that it just creates this bad momentum. And so again we're shifting to so what John said last week, which I thought was really interesting, is the teams that are and they're real. And then the other thing too is the tracking of it is so we use follow up loss. So whatever CRM you're using, can you go in and look at what you did the previous week? How many phone conversations did you have? How many text messages you send out, how many emails did you send out? And so the teams that are seeing success is they're having, on average, 52 minute or more conversations per week per agent. So it's about ten a day, right? Five days a week. So that doesn't mean you called ten people. That means you actually talked to ten people and had a two minute conversation or more. And it's not just like. A real estate conversation. It's really important to make sure that you are deep diving them. Yeah. And that's why having follow up boss or a nice CRM is effective, because now you can take notes on how your conversation went with them a month ago, or. Well and a lot of the calls are recorded in for a boss and transcribed automatically. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Add on on that too. I think is interesting is I know I have a lot of clients too that are like, you know, you can never win. You never feel like you're going to win. Because if the market's starting to go up, I don't want to buy. The market's too hot, too good, no one to compete. I'm going to wait till goes down. Okay. Market's going down. I mean, in my opinion, now is the most opportune time to be buying a house to get the best price negotiated. Pull them down on price, like by far out there. This is the first time in a really long time that there's more active listings. And pending sales in our market. So it could be. Shifting towards a buyer's market. Oh yeah, I definitely think. And so now you think like, okay, it's it's like it's now is the time to buy. But then those same types of folks are like and I have friends that are this way. They're like, well the market's going down. I want to see when the bottom is, well, no one never knows or the bottom is you never know. And so then the frustration is, as a realtor, that you want to like, sink. I'm like, guys like, are you going to buy or not? Like, do you want to buy or not? Like, but but then it goes back to, you got to buy low and then sell high, which is impossible. Yeah. And so it's if it's going up I don't want to buy it. I want to compete. Well, it's going down all the time. You want to buy, right. What's going down when when's the bottom going to be like, how long is this going to last sort of thing? And it's like, oh, you don't really know. But that's why it always goes back to you. You got to focus on the folks that have real life changing events, divorce. Their last kid went off to school. Maybe they had another kid. So now they need a bigger house. Just got married. Like those kids, Yeah, it's a family event, which is a normal real estate selling market. But I know agents are stressed because they're like, things are moving like they once were. I don't even have any showings on my listings, or I can't get a buyer to go out and look. I had an open house this weekend. No one stopped by. It's like, well, did you promote it? Did you door knock it? Did you do any social? Well, no. I just kind of waited Yeah. And it's like, I guess like we get paid to get rejected. Yes. And so I think the more we can, like put in our head like, oh, embrace the suck, embrace the rejection. Like you get paid to read, get rejected, like, but guess what? It's an opportunity for you to go make 5000, six, $10, whatever your commission is on a transaction now, you got to work for it. But you have had a lot of rejections leading up to that transaction. of like at bats in baseball, right? Do you go up to bat? You strike out a lot. Yeah, to hit the ball. Everyone in a while and you'll be highly successful. It's the same thing in real estate. We just need more at bats. Yeah. And so. How. It's you know, I was talking to two agents on our team this morning and you know, we're talking about activity versus skill. Right. Well Because usually there's a skill or will thing, right. Like, do they have the skill to do it or do they have the will to do it. So Yeah. Yeah a lot of people are like, well, if I just retrained a little bit more Yeah. And it's it's in my it's never more training. It's always like what is the activity you're doing to go out and do it? And that's where we have to make sure we're spending our time on that. Because if you go out and do the activity, yeah, you might be a little bumpy along the way, but you're building your skill while you're doing that and that is like that. That's really going to be, I think a big fundamental shift for us on our team is like for Janelle, for example, we're going to try to shorten her conversation she's having with the agents on the team from an hour down to like 15 to 20 minutes, and we're going to have like 3 to 5 questions that she's going to ask them on, you know, a little personal, but also like, what did your calendar look like? What did you commit to? What are the things that you did this past week? What are you committed to this week? What midweek would you commit to? What are you doing? What have you done? How far behind are you, are you ahead, etc. on the activity that you've said you're going to do? Because generally continuously doing that activity you will see success. It might take 60 days, 90 days, six months, but if you continue to push through that you will win. It's just getting, you know us from five two minute conversations a week. I like John's approach like, hey, don't just go to him, say, hey, you need to start having 52 minute conversations a week, like stair step. At first, the goals ten a week. yeah. Start with two conversations a day. Yeah. you know. Yeah. m and then it automatically dials them. It automatically records it, it automatically transcribes it and it automatically will set the next task to do It's just intimidating when you first start doing it initially, like most people get overwhelmed and they're like. Exactly. Well, and a lot of agents say, what do I say to like I just called them two weeks ago. I just called them a month ago. Like. And that is an ongoing thing is like, you know, it can be about anything that's going on right now. It could be a Asking for referrals. Yeah, that's. Actually going to be buying or selling someone that can maybe just help them get introduced to someone? Yeah. So it's just like, well, why would I ask for something when I haven't gotten anything yet? And you have been providing service, you maybe have set them up with a mortgage lender. You might have gotten them certain percentages or rates. Maybe you helped them on an open house, maybe you showed them some houses, maybe provide certain materials so you have done something. You haven't just called them and said, hey, do you want to buy a house today? Yeah, yeah. we really haven't. Yeah, it'll be very interesting. I actually see some people not being able to commit. Yeah. Which I think is good. You know, you kind of got to weed through some of that stuff too. But and again, we're talking on our team. But this goes for everyone that I'm, that I'm hearing and talking to too. Because I was talking to their agent. He's just solo agent at our brokerage. But, you know, I had kind of asked him and he he had to think about it like, I don't know if I ever really sat down in the last year and intentionally made album prospecting calls or, you know, did anything like that. The other thing I like that John said, too, which was good. I think impactful is having an email that goes out to your lead database once a week on something. It can be like the shiny penny house, like one cool house that you saw that got listed, they think is like a really good opportunity that you send out to everyone, even if it's not in their criteria. It could just be like a market update can give out interest, update of what's going on, maybe talking about the fed meeting here, how that how you think that might affect, just something to say in front of them I think is impactful to about just staying top of mind with your clients. Yeah, Yeah, it'll be easier to see. Visually Yeah. And on that too, the what do we call it, the nine month backward slide. Yeah. So we have a thing that we see in our on an RTM two. For years and then. Yeah. Before I go. Yeah we just didn't track it like we do now is so maybe it takes some 2 or 3 months to start getting some sales and then some of them see like really good success, and then they have like six months of like really good success. and. They get a little burnt, Then they get burnt out they take their first check and they go on vacation. That they, they feel like they forgot what they did, the activities to get to where they were. And then they start getting busy and then they're just processing their current files or current clients. new to them. They're like, oh man, I've never had three clients before. So this is a lot. So the The fun fluff stuff. That is fun, but it's not paying your future bills. not the future bills. The current bills. I mean, I just had not to stop you, but I had an agent who joined our team two weeks ago, maybe three at the most. They got their first sale on Sunday. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. We don't want to hold him and hold them as much meat for them. Not which we might need to start doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They start getting real selective. Yeah. Backwards. Like that's a real, real thing. Yeah. And So we've got some trainings in mind. Nothing's concrete set up, but we have some targeted trainings that we want to start trying with the agents. Yeah. But none of it's like crazy. It's just like simple stuff that we're going to just. rejection. How to get better at listings, prospecting, looking at, like owning the day in the first three hours. Right. Like John schedule. You know, some of those things, like for sale by owners or expired listings or some of those more difficult things to get them outside of their element because they just need to get some sales, and now they have some sales, so they're not desperate. Now they have a little more time. Yeah. So how do we get them to do their 52 minute conversations a week? Right now or average for the team with the agents that are doing it. Because there's a lot of people that aren't, but the agents that are doing it right now are just under four. Yeah. per agent. Yeah. And that's crazy to think about. yep. And those are the people that are actually making calls out of there. And like again we we have a lot of agents marking call like call cold call. So it's not like it's not like it's not happening. It's just not being called. But on the agents that are calling out of the CRM, it's right now for. well. It's skewed to like you said too, because let's take, you know, like one of the agents I met with, she's at like 45 homes for the year, which is incredible. So that's our what, first year or second year. So first year November. First year November. So like just having an incredible year and like she doesn't use any of it you know. So she's not tracking any of it. So those numbers are skewed. And you know I do believe she's having multiple conversations in a day. let's be honest, if I brought on 7 or 8 more agents, some of those leads might be spread out a little bit, Oh I know. you know, Yeah. Yeah. develop bad habits. So it's that fine line. You want to get the right lead to the right agent and not wasted on people that are squandering it. But then you're also developing a bad habit. Yeah. I mean that's the downfall of Zillow Flex for example, is I mean it's it's great for our business as far as like numbers goes. But it does. It creates a lot of bad habits when you just it's that I mean, you can afford to have less conversations and still sell a good amount of homes. Yeah. I can think of four agents right now that are 90, 95% of their business is Zillow Flex. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to get everyone to like a 25% Zillow. Like they take 25% of their businesses Zillow and that. But 25% is another lead source. Me and me, we give them Yeah, Their their prospecting because you can take our leads and get referrals from them. I mean, that's the that's probably one of the bigger underutilized Legion tools on our team. Is that right? There Because the statistic that Zillow gives me all the time is on average you're getting 2.12.3 referrals per lead over the course of the lifetime of that lead. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One on that too I remember I did this was I went bought like$205 Starbucks gift cards, you know, send them out. And I didn't put in the letter, give me a referral. All I said was, hey, I hope you enjoy a pink King cake pop on me. Or my favorite, a pink cake pop. And kickboxer about five bucks now. So that's from. All Yeah, yeah. And, I, I mean, the last time I had done that, like, I probably got like, 5 or 6 referrals come off of that, so super simple. Just a touch. you don't have to overthink it. I feel Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's just because agents see what other people do, like, at all these different levels. And then you got like Ryan certain. And you have selling sunset and you see all the shit that everyone else does. I mean, you think it's that is it just like a typical mindset of, 80, like typical agents have ADHD? Is it like, I don't know, like what? Why is I mean, I'm guilty of it. I do it all the time. Well, I think it and something to think about, too, is like, if someone wrote you a handwritten card, let's just say for your birthday, you probably keep that for even a week, two weeks, a month on your desk. So imagine if you wrote a handwritten card and mailed it to somebody. They probably would keep it Yeah, Like treating it like a business. Yeah. because we're very reactive. Very reactive. Need to treat it like a business. Business plan. Stick to your plan but keep a simple things. And I'm working on this. This is nothing new. The prospecting by the way. So I'm going to sidetrack us a little bit is something that I'm working on is and it's actually through a pastor buddy of mine and it's words to Live by. Okay. So think of it as like, you know, we talk a lot about like what's there. Why like, why are you doing this like going deep on that. And then they we need to be reminded of why we are doing what we're doing. Because you get a lot of rejection. But you can also make a lot of money. Yeah. So what are you going to do with that money now? Your average agent I mean, what is your average agent makes 30,000 a year. Something like that. If you're talking of the real estate market in Omaha sells two or less houses a year. 70%. So you're you're way under 30. You're you're maybe 50. Yeah. If you're if you're talking the average sales price. took the average, you would you would probably be 35 to 40. But if you looked at just let's just that's because a lot of the higher in offset that. Yeah So yeah you probably looking 1520. Geez. Probably 70% of the real estate community earns today. Yeah. So but like so this was a live by thing. I'm working on it right now. I'm literally spending a couple hours each day working on this. Like what are my words to live by? And I almost like compare it a little bit like to affirmations a little bit. And I remember back in the day when I was first starting, like I was into affirmations a little bit. It's kind of like a mike fairy thing, like do these affirmations. I always thought they were super cheesy, but like, I think they're, you know, I, I texted another buddy right before this since like, hey, do you? I asked him if he did this. He goes every single morning from 6 a.m. to 615. He goes over his words. He'll live by like 15 minutes a day. He just. And like, my pastor does it. And he has a three page document with pictures in there and his words that he lives by. So think of it like kind of like affirmations that he lives by. And it it sets the tone because your words, the dialog that you have inside of you like your your thoughts will what leads you in your life essentially. And so I think to like to the prospecting point is like we almost have to have these words to live by who we are on a, on a like who we are. But, you know, I think it, it will give us like some sort of like, I don't want to say encouragement, but almost like direction to be able to go and do the suck, do the, the, the boring, mundane things like we have to do to to see the end results too. But also, why are we doing it? Like is it to pay off medical debt? Like we hear tons of stories on our team, like all different, you know, whether it's medical debt, go on a family trip, buy a nice car or whatever, And do something with your family. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. Yeah, I would say 90% is with their family. It's not just like a fancy sports car. You'd think it is, but we rarely hear fancy cars. Yeah. It's rare. I'll go we'll go deeper on the words I live by once I get mine done. And I. Because I do think it would help a lot of people really, because I think we get so busy. And that's also the bad thing is we have these phones and it's like it's it's like a curse for us. It's a, it's a blessing, but it's a curse at the same time. Yeah. And it's just like the what is that whole doke. It's this dopamine dump. And it, it drains us in all these other ways too. But I think it's that is part of why we probably overthink so much is because we get so much thrown at us. Like my mom would always say to. She goes, I don't know how the heck you guys do it in your generation, because you guys are always so attached. There's no shutting down. And so we get distracted of why we're here, what we're doing, our purpose, and you know, our words to live by. Which then would affect you on on your daily task of you're running in circles, you're in this, you're in this negative vacuum of like, just you're, you're in this vacuum of repeating the same bad habits. You're on a daily basis, too. So I think really figuring out like, what are your words to live by and what are what's your why to help you do the boring, mundane things on a daily thing. But like, that's I think that's the other cool thing about cells is everything can get cookbooks backwards. What do you want to make that? Or what do you want to do with your money? What are you gonna do, pay off to go on a family vacation? Whatever. So what is that money? It's. It's 80,000. Yeah. And then. And then you cookbook it backwards. Like, how many cells does that mean? I have to make? Okay. For every cells. How many contracts? So I have to make how many appointments to get those contracts. How many phone calls a conversation do I have to get those appointments? And then how many dials do I have to make to get have those conversations? I mean, you can literally get back to the ridiculous, yeah, daily mundane thing, but I think we all get too distracted of of that. And I'm guilty of that too. Big time for sure. So I'm actually rewiring myself or attempting to, to go back to simplifying. And so think of like you and I like we have, you know, we have a mortgage company, we have insurance company, I have a title company, like all these ancillary things where same concept, you know, going around with their head cut off and then certain things will sometimes suffer if we're not spending some amount of time working on building those things. Same thing goes with prospecting. and forget it. Yeah, totally. You don't just leave it behind. So I think it's also to like figuring out like your deep why. And the funny thing is to is like there's a ton of awesome resources out on that stuff. And like I've even like used ChatGPT a little bit like, hey, here's me, here's what I think I'm about. Can you help me get down to who I am? And it does help. It has helped, but I think it helps give clarity of like the mundane thing you get to do. Totally. Well, I like you said, it's a direction for where you live. And like again, if you're looking at and there's a statistic out there, if you're looking at news when you first wake up, your day is dramatically worse. Yeah. anything Instagram. So Facebook, any of it. Yeah, yeah. Those are good. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. So just he kept it super simple. And, a lot of those that I listen to, a lot of those founders or business leaders that you think of, these massive, massive behemoths, they all started with the simplest concept. It was never money. It will think of five guys like, what a simple concept. It's literally burgers and fries. I think that I think they have a hotdog. and they that's recent because they never did that. He wanted two menu items. That was it. Yeah. It's a Yeah. It's a good it's a good burger too and it is Yeah. so and even he even joked about like, hey, there's long lines people don't want a away like. And he charges 4 to 5 times the price of McDonald's, 4 to 5 times Yeah. Yeah. community. Yeah. Yeah, which there is a little bit of like, learning skill in that too, by the way. Yeah. that's not easy. Trust me. There's plenty of reasons why people think internet leads suck. Yeah, Yeah. And at Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah, well, I mean, the skill you build by doing that till. Yeah, but I think it's just overall, we want our team to be as the market shifts or as it changes. Again, our business is up year over year. We could sit back and relax, but I feel like we'd set ourselves up for failure. We really would like if we just sat back because again, if we sat back, we would be severely behind. Yeah. So Yeah. I think the other thing too, that I'll end with is, Adam said this, I believe, and it was basically like, every time you break a promise with yourself, like, every time. And this, this, it's all goes back to the prospecting. But it's about life, too. Like, every time you set your alarm for 6 or 7 to go do a workout and then you don't do it and you hit snooze. Or every time you say you're going to call and you're like, I'm going to have ten, two minute conversations today. And every time you don't do it, every time you say you're going to make a Facebook post about whatever concerning real estate or business and you don't do it like all these times you say you're going to do something, you don't do it. It's like, that's one of the biggest, confidence decreases, like you're breaking a promise with yourself every single time, and it just keeps taking you down and down to where you feel like, well, man, what is my worth? So imagine if we all said what we said. We do what we say we're going to do. That's why keeping us simple is really effective. And we stuck with it. And then that just starts compounding. So that's why I like the stair step approach on okay, ten two minute conversations a week. Yeah. Because we're just we keep just building that compounding it. And yeah. You know what I mean. So like you're already like you just said, well I'm not getting up on time. I'm not making my calls, I'm not doing my all. And it's just like it's just a beat down Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah. Anyway hopefully that was effective. And Y'all know. No I'm not prospecting. Two minute conversations. How many two minute conversations are you having in a weeks period. Are you frontloading it get it all done it right away. Yeah. Are you waiting until last minute? Which is what most people do. That's why the mid check in is huge. Yeah that's our thing. Yeah. Mid checking. prospecting like I was going to say is prospecting isn't checking in with my clients. Prospecting isn't sending an email. Prospecting isn't just No that's it. Yeah. It's it's calling out of the pawn leads. It's calling for seminars. It's calling expired. It's calling your database sphere of influence for referrals. It's reaching out to people that you're not talking to on a daily basis. Yeah, It's really what it is. It's so simple. We overcomplicate it. know Why? Yeah. Why. Yeah. Why I don't know. Anyway thanks guys. Hope.