AgentLocator Live Dials and Expert Talk, January 19, 2022
Highlights:
12:11 - 13:30
Objection vs Excuse
When talking to your leads, you need to differentiate between what’s an objection and what’s an excuse. Here’s why
16:39 - 17:59
Understanding Lead Quality
In this video, Beverly explains why you should change the common definition of what’s a good quality lead.
19:38 - 24:28
Don’t Sabotage Your Conversations
The quality of questions you ask your leads is more important than the quality of the leads. And it’s not only about what questions you ask, but how you ask them. Watch this video for great tips on how to ask the right questions
26:35 - 29:21
The Quality Is in the Conversation
Your main goal when dealing with online leads shouldn’t be to get appointments. You should focus on having great conversations Beverly explain why
31:05 - 34:18
Overcoming the “I want to wait until Spring” Objection
Winter months are usually considered slow months in real estate. The reason: everyone is just waiting for Spring Beverly gives you suggestions on what questions to ask to overcome this objection
34:47 - 35:11
Listen More, Talk Less
The #1 mistake real estate agents make when talking with their leads is that they do all the talking, instead of letting the lead do the talking
“People don’t care what you know, people wanna know that you care”
43:42 - 45:47
Understanding Online Leads
Online leads are a long-term game. When a lead enters your CRM, you don’t know where they are in their purchase journey Your main goal is to find this out and help them along the way.
56:19 - 56:56
How Many Leads Are Too Many Leads?
Every agent wants more leads. In this video, Beverly explains how to know when it’s enough
Crystal:
So typically when I do trainings, I do some of our intros. So I don't do that. It's more of an introduction to leads. I usually help those people that may be struggling with their system or what have you. So the biggest factor that comes across my plate is people saying lead quality. Lead quality is crap. These leads are horrible. No one answers, or they're not moving now. No one's looking to move. They're just looking, right? So it's all the pre-qualifying questions, but of course, when I jump into their system, nothing's being logged, right? There's no traction of what's actually happening in there. So I can't be like: well, yeah, I can see you've done all these call attempts. I can't see that. And then the leads are active for sure. But yeah, it's really... And then if I go through and I do filter out leads and lead quality and what have you, like valid phone numbers, emails, things like that, the lead quality is there. It's at your standard average, it's, you know, one count, I think yesterday was at 93% of validity of the leads and they're complaining that they weren't great leads. I was like, your quality is amazing for online leads. What I'm seeing is a lack of, you know, commitment on your part as far as documenting your actions. So it's really hard to track your progress when we're not documenting it. So that's the biggest, really, lead quality. And I think it's just the motivation. So we try to educate, and that's what our lead training is. Now for our new clients is: what to expect with these leads, right? These leads are not all gonna be buying right now, ready to go look at houses within the next few weeks. Many of them are in the initial stages of their home search and can take anywhere from 6 to 24 months to transact. Um, it's really about determining where they’re at in the process, having that conversation, establishing a relationship, and then keeping it going and ultimately converting them through the process. And then I'm finding now the ones that are having those leads training, they're a little less frustrated when they're talking to leads that are not buying now. Cause they know that this is what I'm to expect, right? You will get leads that will be ready to transact right away. It's all relevant to who comes to your website and where they're specifically at in the process.
Bev:
Yep. I take away a lot of takeaways from what you just said. Number one, I'm kind of laughing inside because nothing's changed in the last 10 years.
Crystal:
I know, I know.
Bev:
That’s always been the thing, right? My leads suck. It's like, that's never changed. So, that's a good thing - that's never changed. Right? You know the problem.
Crystal:
Yes.
Bev:
But is the lead quality really the problem? And, collectively, it does not matter how you're generating leads, into what CRM you're generating leads to. The one known amongst just about every single real estate agent that is paying for leads - is the quality. And I'm just gonna say the reason being is, it's not meeting the expectation that they were expecting when they agreed to pay for the platform. That's it. And I always say: in real estate, the only thing that makes a deal happen is opportunity meets the person's expectation. The list price is right and the sale price is right. The property is right, the price is right. Meets the buyer's expectation - we have a deal. It's no different with agreeing to pay for lead generation. We have an expectation. Our expectation is: I want more deals on the table. I want more closings and more money in my bank account. This is the magic bullet that is going to give me more deals. But when we sit down to call leads, we're not closing a deal today. That is the unfortunate thing within real estate. I can go to a restaurant, sit down and order my food instant or I can be the server. Yeah. I can be the server that serves the table. And I get my tip. I can go to work, exchange my time for money and get a paycheck. It's guaranteed. You get it. You know what you're exchanging. This you don't know. You're paying for something with the intention of billing your business, not thinking about what you have to do in the process to make it happen. It's imperative to have a system in place to be able to go back to say why it's not working. It's easy to blame the lead quality. That's the easiest thing to do. It's not sexy to take accountability for the fact that we may not know what to say when we call them, or we may not be calling them, or we may just be relying on text and email and we're not calling them, and we're just not working it because we're out being busy. Right?
Crystal:
Well, I've had people say the leads aren't calling me. They're not supposed to be calling you. You're supposed to be calling them. It's a bonus if they call you, through that way, it's like woo-hoo, they're calling me.
Bev:
Yes. So back in the day, when I first got hired to work with the lead generation company that I was working for, they prided themselves on only selling to top-level agents that had systems in place that completely understood the leads had to be worked. We were converting like mad machines. As the company grew and we were setting ourselves up to sell, we changed the dynamic of our client and we would sell to anybody that wanted to generate a lead. What that did is, we then had to create a churn department to save the people that probably never should have paid for leads in the first place. So here I am going to the salespeople: Why did you even sell that to that person?. So it's always been in existence. It's always been there. Companies want to make money, agents want to make money. But the true reality is - what are the systems that you're gonna put in place? And even within my own team, we just met today with one of my agents. I'm taking full responsibility for not having anything under contract for January. We just started our team in August. We started lead generating. I purposely created two different types of lead generation knowing Google and Facebook are the long-term game. I wanted quick closings. So I chose, well, we have realtor.com. I don't think you have realtor.com in Canada, do you?
Crystal:
It’s realtor.ca. Yeah. Same idea.
Bev:
So realtor.ca. I knew they're very pricey, they're over $80 a lead. Very expensive, but I knew I could convert. And I knew those were going to be faster to convert because of the type of lead. But yet, I also did Google and PPC to build the pipeline over the long term. We started generating as of August last year. We closed 11 deals. None of them came from Google and Facebook. And everybody on this call knows I can convert. Everything that we closed were all realtor.com and referral. And I think 3 were referrals and the other 8 were realtor.com. But the pipeline that we have been building over the last six months we are nurturing a lot and we have a lot ready to pop. So could I be sitting here blaming the lead generation company? Could I be sitting here complaining? I had systems in place and we had people to call. Now, what happened in December? My life took a major turn. Me and my fiance opened a restaurant and we had a lot of moving pieces going on. Guess what Bev wasn't doing.
Crystal:
Calling her leads.
Bev:
We had a continual bucket when I stopped calling leads. We don't have them filled in the bucket anymore. So we had to change the systems and change the process, and not blame and complain. And that is what is so cool about this conversation because everybody knows that I'm a machine on the phone and I can close anything. It's the consistency. It's doing the work that matters. We don't bring on lead generation to make a million dollars and to have a hundred closings this year, we bring it on as a piece of. And I always talk about our business being like a table. In order for a table to stand it has to have a minimum of three legs. We have to have different forms of leads that are going to be coming into our business to be able to sustain and stand and hold that cup. Right?
So lead generation is one lead generation into your business for Google and Facebook. Working your spear, working your referral, working on listings. Those are all other different components. We can't just put all of our eggs in one basket. Because if we did, if we put our eggs in one basket, I promise you I did it. It didn't work very well for me because when you have a shift in the market, you're done. You have to start all over again and shift with the market and change your plan. But the reality is calling the leads and being consistent is what is going to make the dream work. And it's not about sitting down and “I'm going to get an appointment today”. It's how many people can I find out where they are in the process so that I can fit into their life when it's time.
So if we could all just change our perspective and absolutely change our expectations. The quality doesn't suck. Because everybody has a story and I don't care whose dashboard I'm going to jump into. Whether you have 100 leads or 10,000 leads, you just have that many more stories. You have 100 different stories, you have 10,000 different stories. And people are going to be all motivated to move at different times. And we generally cannot make someone move if it's not their time. Just because you want to make a paycheck doesn't mean it's time for them to move. Are there objections that we can get over in the process? Absolutely. But we have to learn what's an objection and what's an excuse. Excuses - we can really start to peel back the layers of: they've been in their home for 50 years and they got a ton of stuff in their house and they really don't want to have to go through it, to put their home on the market. It is a lot of work and for some people, it's not worth it. So instead of us going: Oh my God, this lead sucks, what's the solution? So let me ask you, Mr. Seller if I would have somebody come in here and completely take all of that heavy lifting and load off of you, and you didn't have that to deal with, would you still consider moving? Yeah. Well, let's make it happen. And they're like, oh no, no, no. It goes deeper than what's there. Right? That's an excuse.
And I had a lady that, and my agent sitting right here, it was her lead. Everybody knows how I am on the phone and how much empathy I can have for people. We converted her and she was trying to get on some kind of government assistance. And she was literally working on her preapproval for like a year. And I finally said to her, she's like, I gotta be outta my house. We gotta be in something in December. And this was like, September, you know what I'm talking about? Don't you? Yeah. This was like September. She's like I have to be in somewhere. So we got her over to our lender and got her completely pre-approved without government assistance. And she was fine with it. Destiny starts taking her out, showing her homes. This lady cannot commit to anything. She legitimately had committal issues and she's like, babe, you've got to talk to her.
Crystal:
Big decisions.
Bev:
But she had to get out of her rental. So it was her and her husband and she had two kids that were older teenagers. Every time we talk to her, she goes, I know it's me. I'm trying to find a house where my kids can have the Jack and Jill bathroom, or they can have their own bathroom. That's what they're used to. But my husband's like, no, let's not make them comfortable because we want them to get out of the house. She goes, so I know it's me, blah, blah, blah. So she's literally looking at something that was not in her budget. We found her; well, destiny found her multiple homes and she kept having an excuse for everyone. So I get to her on the phone. And I said to her - this was her excuse - I have a hard time judging the size of the room, if my furniture's going to fit in it. And I said to her: Here's what I want you to do. I said: Are you moving your furniture into that house? She's like: Yeah. I said: Okay, measure your rooms, that you have now. And you're going to know the size of the room of the home that you're looking at. If that home, when you see the sizes of the rooms, won't fit your furniture, don't go look at it. Because she wanted to look at everything. I said: Don't look at it. If your furniture won't fit in there, don't go look at it. Well, but. I said: No, no well buts. I said: You've already stated that you want your furniture to fit in these rooms. And you already stated that your kitchen has to be this way. So don't go look at it. If it's not going to meet your expectations. We had a great conversation. So I thought because she realized she was high maintenance. Yeah. She sends my agent a text and she says: This has nothing to do with you. I love you. But I felt very held by Beverly and I'm not going to work with you guys anymore.
So I say all of this to say, could we have pushed, could Destiny have pushed to work with her and close, I'm so sorry, blah, blah, blah. Destiny could have pushed. If there comes a point, we're talking about lead quality here. She was already a willing and able buyer. The quality was there, but was it really? Do you want to do that to yourself and put yourself through that? And I told Destiny: Let her go because it's exhausting. And it takes people from everything else that you could be doing.
Crystal:
So many listings. And then they find the false in each single home that they look at.
Bev:
Yeah. And as real estate agents, we don't get paid for what we do. We get paid for what we close. Yes. So we have to be very conscientious of what we're doing in the process. Because every minute that we spend, our dollar per hour keeps going down. So when we talk about lead quality, it's finding out from the 8, what is the lead quality. Just somebody that is going to write a contract and it's going to close. Is it somebody's just ready to buy a house? Is it somebody's just ready to put their home on the market? Well, here's the reality. We have to be confident enough in our business to be able to convert this person, to overcome their excuses, because everyone's gonna have an excuse at some juncture. Hell, we make up excuses on why we don't have certain Christmas gifts at Christmas for people. Yeah. Well, I got sick. Well, the weather got bad. Well, I got busy at work, right? And it's freaking Christmas and it's your relatives. Yeah. We all have amazing excuses when we need that pull-back pocket. So I completely went off on a tangent there, but I think it was all for a really good reason.
Crystal:
No, it's absolutely that, because yeah. And then it could be the price point as well. Right. And then what I try to guide our clients on is you need to educate these people. These are people that no one's actually taking good time and setting the expectation and you know, guiding them on the market and the alternatives and their options based on what they're looking for in those ranges. Everyone's just looking for the nail money. Right? I want the nail money. And I think we were on that one call where it was the buyer and she was saying: I'm ready to go. I'm a first-time buyer and I'm ready to go. No one is taking the time to help me. Remember that? It was like no one could be bothered to sit there and walk her through the process. And she was ready. She was, she's already active. I think she already had her pre-approval done, but she didn't know what to do next. She was like: Hey, I don't know what to do now. What do I do now? What are the next steps? But no one's actually taken the time to actually talk to me about that. And that goes to show that that's just one person, right? How many other people are out there in all different situations where no one is taking the time to help them? Guide them and lead them.
Bev:
That was something I learned very early in the game because I came in at a time where this was all new to everybody, being able to look online at houses and being able to get a call from a realtor. So I was in the very, very baby beginning of this and I learned trauma fire because there were no webinars like this. There was nobody doing it there. We just, we just did it. And we learned as we went. And I knew in the beginning how uncomfortable I was asking certain questions because it felt so personal. And it felt so - abrupt, I guess, would be the word that I would use because like, do you have an agent? Are you pre-approved? It's so cold that there was no personality to it that showed that I actually care.
Did I care about my time that I didn't want to waste with somebody that was already committed to an agent or somebody that couldn't afford to buy? Absolutely. But more of the importance there was being able to break through that communication without being like everybody else because we protect our time so well that we sabotage our own conversation. Because we go right to, well, do you have an agent? And are you pre-approved? Well, yeah and no. Okay, bye, lead quality sucks. But the real question there lies: How long have you been looking? How did you get into homes? And do you know how much it's going to cost you per month if you choose to buy a home at that price? It's a completely different conversation. So is it the quality of the lead or is it the quality of the question or lack thereof? Because we have quality questions, conversations go a lot differently.
And I remember one of my very first leads that I converted. So I was like win, win, winner. And I remember her being in the car with me. And I was just curious because I knew these people were talking to a lot of people. Her name is Megan. I will never forget her. I said: Megan, I just have to ask. And this was a really uncomfortable question for me to even ask because I didn't know that I wanted to know. I said: Megan, how many agents did you literally talk to? And she said: At least 5. I said: What made you decide that I was your realtor? And she started laughing. She says: You know what it was? I said: No, that's why I'm asking. You were the only one that did not ask me if I was working with an agent and asked me for a preapproval. And I'm like - light bulb! Because it was that conversation: Megan, how long have you been looking? Six months. What's going on? Why haven't you found anything? My agent's showing me all the wrong properties or the agents are showing me all the wrong properties or I can't get an agent to call me back. Huh? So you're looking, Megan, at 200,000ish. Do you know what your mortgage payment is going to be with taxes and insurance? Not exactly. Would it be helpful for you to be prepared for that? Absolutely.
Crystal:
Indirect questions, right? You're asking the same questions, just changing how you're presenting that question to them.
Bev:
Because you care, right? It's not blunt and bold. And you heard me say and I say it all the time: You don't have to be great. You just have to be a little bit better than your competition. And the fortunate thing is your competition doesn't know how to have a conversation. So if you're focusing on your conversation, it's not going to take much practice to be a little bit better, to have a different conversation than what the average is. And even on that note, the average agent's only making one phone call. Make two or three, you're already a little bit better. So the fortunate thing is it's not very difficult to be better than your competition. So instead of putting the focus on the lead quality, put the focus on becoming a great question, Oscar, and conversationalist. Because that's where the meat is. And I'm going to go back and Crystal, if I've told this story, please stop me, because I don't like to tell stories, unlike my grandma, right? One of the leads that we converted came in, looking at the neighborhood because she had just written an offer. I think I just talked about this.
Crystal:
I think this is the one where she put an offer in over, way over asking, just to get the place, because that's what her agent told her to do, out of frustration from not.. Yeah.
Bev:
And there was no appraisal contingency at all. And she was prepared and did not even understand. To be able to convert that... And I just told my agent today when we were talking, I said: I converted her at a time where I was very consistent calling leads and I was on top of it. I never a) could have converted her via text. And I never would've converted her this last month because I haven't been making my phone calls. I cannot blame my lead quality. I can only blame the fact that I haven't been as diligent calling my leads as I was. It works. If you work it. We can never blame the lead quality. So basically if we blame lead quality, we're blaming people for living in their home.
Crystal:
Can't force someone.
Bev:
Many people, because they don't want to physically move out of their house.
Crystal:
If it was easy, we'd all be doing it. We'd all be doing lead generation, selling houses up the ying-yang and you know, life would be amazing.
Bev:
Yeah.
Crystal:
Right.
Bev:
So, really be thinking about that when you are having a conversation with a lead that says: I can't move until my son finishes his grammar's university. Like he has to get out of a certain grade and that's gonna be next year. You can't blame the person for looking at homes online because they're preparing themselves. So, if we really start looking at what we're blaming and putting that into perspective, why the hell are you in real estate? You know what I mean.
Crystal:
Yeah, I know. And then a lot of those out there, they take the “just-looking” as not serious, that's your objection. But they don't dig a little bit deeper to find the answers that they need. And a lot of those just-looking people actually have intent of moving within the next six months, but we took that as they're not interested, they're not serious. And we kind of ended the conversation and carried on. There's definitely a ton of opportunity in those just-looking people because we have to just ask, we have to have those conversations.
Bev:
And that's what comes down to the organizing of your leads. Because if you have that conversation and they're just sitting back in the storage room, nobody can ever buy it because they don't even know it's for sale. So if you have the conversation and you just lose them in the dashboard, because you don't have a proper follow-up or you just don't know what to do with them, shame on you because it wasn't the lead quality. They just weren't ready. That's it. So the quality is in the conversation, not in the conversion. Because the more conversations we have, the more conversion we're going to incur over time. And I can't stress that fact enough, that it's not about sitting down and getting the appointments, it's about sitting down and having the conversation. And knowing what to do with them, because people aren't ready for a myriad of reasons.
And I always ask my agents whether they bought a home personally or not. Every single one of us that's listening to this has moved from one home to another, every single one of us. What made that move? What made the decision for that move at that time? And is there anybody that could have convinced you to move sooner than when you actually moved? So when we take that into perspective, when we look at a lead and go, oh wow, they have a real story. Now, can we ask questions to potentially help to expedite the process? A hundred percent. And those questions are: I'm waiting ‘till spring to put my home on the market. We get that a lot moving into the Fall and January, February. Because we want to get past.. How's the snow situation up there, by the way, right now?
Crystal:
Oh, we're okay. Not, well, me personally, all our snow stopped. Toronto just got hammered with snow. So I think they got like 40 to 60 centimeters in some places. It was a lot. Yeah.
Bev:
Yeah. I saw pictures. One of my clients had a closing Monday and he's like: We're still going to close, but it was like a state of emergency kinda thing.
Crystal:
It could go anywhere, yeah. It was pretty decent. So I think it was like making up for the lack of snow they received from like November till now kinda thing.
Bev:
We all have those sellers that say: We don’t want to go before spring, right?
Crystal:
Yeah.
Bev:
What can we do to get them? We call it off the fence. We can't make them list their home now, but we can ask the right questions. Right? And our job, and if we focus on this instead of the lead quality, our job is to deliver all of the information for them to be able to make the best-educated decision for their future. That's it. Our job isn't to put the sign in the yard. Our job is not to find a home yet. It is initially, but it's to give them enough information to make an educated decision for what's best for their future and their family. If we keep the eye on that, it takes it away from the quality. So when someone says, I don't want to go in the market before spring, instead of going: Oh, okay, I'll follow up with you in April. That's the average. That's the normal conversation that everybody has. Okay. Well, let me just ask you: In the spring, how many people do you think are waiting until spring to put their home in the market? Probably a five, right?
So if you were on the market now, and there's not a lot of competition, there's more demand for your house, and you may be able to make more money without the demand. So, if we ran some numbers, and we saw that the demand would be high right now and we could get you a little bit more money than what we may even think to be able to get you in the spring, would you consider moving sooner or listing your home sooner? The answer's going to be yes or no. And it was already a no. So you didn't lose anything. But there's a potential he’s going to say yes, because now you've got him thinking from a different perspective. Because it is true. Right? When there's no inventory, there's a higher demand. So you, but you don't know what's gonna happen in the spring. If more people are putting their homes on the market in the spring, there's not gonna be as much of a demand and you might not get as much money for your home.
So that's an excuse. Right? I don't want to go into spring. Well, why? Because that's what the rest of the world does, everybody waits ‘till spring to list their house? Oh, because pictures are just gonna show so much better, and I have a beautiful backyard, and I just wanna make sure the pool is open and blah, blah, blah, whatever. Right? People just think that's what sells it. That we have to be educated enough to have that conversation, to be able to say, you know, what if? What if? The buyer - same thing. Well, I just wanna wait ‘till spring to buy. All right. Well, it might be in their best interest to wait till Spring or it might be more inventory. But if I found you a home right now that checked all your boxes and met your needs, would you move sooner? Yeah. Because the reality is people have their mindset in a certain way that I'm just going to wait ‘till spring. Well, why? Are you in a lease term that's holding you to it? No, a month to month. Well, if you found a home that would meet your expectations right now, would you consider moving sooner? Well, yeah. Okay. Well let's look, right?
And same with the retirement people. Well, I want to wait until I retire to buy that home. Well, let me ask you, if we found a home that checked all the boxes and met all the criteria, would you be in a position to buy now and start building equity before you even retire? Yes? Or no? So if we're always talking to leads being solution-minded, the conversation can go a lot further. But it takes practice. And it doesn't take practice just with the leads. It takes practice with your everyday conversations. We truly, truly, truly have to learn how to listen more and talk less, because people do not care what you know. People want to know you care. And the only way we can do that is by asking questions and listening and not trying to talk over somebody. How do you feel, Crystal, when someone asks you a question and you start telling the story and then they start talking over?
Crystal:
Oh, I just want to punch them in the face, to be honest with you. It's very frustrating, especially if you ask me something and you're taking my time to be responsive to you, and then you have no interest in what I have to say. No, it's super frustrating. Super frustrating.
Bev:
Well, you're a bad-quality lead in my database. And that's what I'm saying. Like, we literally need to look in the mirror to see conversations that we are having with our leads. Because we do it.
Crystal:
We were anxious too. When we're nervous or anxious, that's when we talk really, really fast. Right? And we don't let a word in edgewise. Right? Like the first time I ever started making calls, I had my boss right next to me. And I never cold-called, never done that in my life. And he was like right there. So I couldn't make an excuse, I had to do it. And he just kept looking at me like, slow down, slow down, slow down. You have to let them talk. Let them talk. Right? You have to listen and let them talk. But I was so nervous and anxious about it that I wasn't doing that. I just wanted to get it over with. Right? And see if I can get the answer I was looking for. And if not, then hang up, and you know, hope for the best for the next one.
Bev:
Or you could have been like my agent, years ago, when all right, you have to call a hundred leads and she'd be done like this. And I'm like: How? I said: How many people do you talk to? She goes: Nobody. I said: There's no way you made a hundred phone calls and then talked to anybody. Well, come to find out a couple of months later, she was letting the phone ring once and hanging up, letting her ring once, hang up because she didn't want to talk to anybody. But she got her hundred dials in. So I had to get really clear with my expectations on hundred of calls. Right? Yeah, so it's really interesting. And one of my coaching clients, two weeks ago. She's doing a lot of video. Well, she wants to do a lot of video and she's talking about doing the video and she's been talking about it for over a month.
And I said to her: Did you get your video done? She's like: No, she had every excuse in the book. And I said: You know, I'm hearing a lot of judgment, because she's talking about this person's doing that video, and this person's doing that video and how this video, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, all right. She goes: I hate watching myself. I said: Well, you hate watching everybody else too. I said: So, if you hate watching yourself and I'm sitting here thinking I enjoy watching myself. I learn from what I say whenever I watch back and that. So my first initial thought was: there's something wrong with me because I like watching myself. And I'm like: Oh hell no, I said to her, I said: Meredith, here's your homework. I want you to create one 30 second video.
And then maybe a two-minute video. Watch it until you fall in love with that person that you see on that video. And if you don't love that video, create another one and watch that one. If you don't like that one, create another one and watch that one. Because the reality is, if you don't love yourself, and love your voice, and love what you're saying, and love how you're projecting, how can you literally expect anybody else to do that? How can you expect anybody else to love how you are showing up? So the best advice I can give to anybody here is: Listen to your calls like it's somebody else. And if you don't like how you sound, listen to another one. Because I did that with one of my training last week, we were listening to the agent's calls, and the one agent that we were listening to, it was like a two-minute and 38-second call. We listened to the whole thing and then we went back. I asked everybody what they took away from it. And then we went back and listened to it in increments and talked about the differences that could have been made. And what worked, what could have been changed? There's no perfect way. There's no perfect conversation. I can take every single one of my conversations and recordings and I could pick myself apart. Because it's Monday morning quarterbacking, but that's how you learn. And he's like: I say um a lot. And I said: Yes, great. So the next time you listen to yourself, it'll be one less. And the next time you listen to yourself, it'll be one next.
Crystal:
You sort of become conscious of what you're doing, right? I do it too. My husband pointed out to me, he's like: You say um a lot. I was like: Now every time when I do it, I'm so conscious of me doing it, that I try so hard not to do it. Right. And I get rid of that.
Bev:
Then you replace it with another word. Until you get comfortable with that silence, we always will have those words. And even when he asked the one question that he asked, instead of she, her situation was she was looking for a retirement home, but she's years away from retirement. And instead of asking her: Well, what would have to happen for you to make that move?, he said: So what do you do for work? Which is not a bad question. When he listened to it again, he said: Man, that was a nervous question. He goes: I really didn't care what she did for work. I wanted to know when do you plan on retiring? What does that plan look like? Because what she did, it didn't matter. But then he's like: If I knew when she planned on retiring, it would've been much different of a conversation. Because he doesn't know her timeframe. Now he just knows what she does for work. We can't learn unless we listen to ourselves. I did not get to be a good question asker without listening to myself. And I remember the first webinar that I did where I was calling leads live. I was sweating petty balls. I was mortified. It was the scariest thing in my life, but it forced me to have better conversations because I knew people were watching me. I knew people were depending on me. And every webinar I got a bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better.
Crystal:
Think jumping off the high board at the pool, right? You just kinda stand there, and you're like: Oh my gosh. But you do it once and then all of a sudden you're able to do it again and again, and again and again. And it gets easier every time, right? So it's the same idea, a different process that we're using it on. So, it's the same with the videos. I usually make videos. I like, I laugh at my, I make silly videos, but before I was doing real estate or anything video, I wouldn't sit there and play it back to myself. I would just post it. I'd be like, because you know what? It's good enough because if I listen back and then every retake you do, you end up screwing up every single retake you do. If you feel like it came out fine, it's probably fine. Just post it. You're good. So I don't watch, I just post it. This is what you get, real thing.
Bev:
Right. You're just jumping off the diving board. Cause you're just like, eh.
Crystal:
Yeah. Whatever. And then you're like, it takes a little panic attack a little bit later. Oh my God, why did I do that? But you know, you're like: Eh, no one cares, right? No one cares. We care more than anyone else does.
Bev:
A hundred percent, no one else is even thinking about it. And that's where it's really changing that perspective of why we're doing what we're doing and, and what we're depending on when we are calling leads or we're or texting leads or it's, it's a long term gain. It's not: can you get lucky and get a quick close. Absolutely. It happens all the time. And to your point, Crystal, we never know where that person is in the process. Why I set up my call filters to be much more aggressive in those first couple of weeks, because just like that lady, she'd already written a contract on something, right? People pick up the amount of searching that they're doing when they get closer to taking action. People love to go through the process of looking at real estate well before they're ready to take that action. And we can't say the lead quality's bad because it's just their time frame doesn't meet your expectations. That's all, that's it.
But we legitimately have to be, if we want to increase our conversion to meet our expectations, you can't just depend on texting and email, you have to pick up the phone. Is the phone the only answer? No. We need three sources of communication to be able to hit that lead. And I'm gonna sound like a broken record. These leads are not gonna do business with you because they're loyal. They're gonna do business with somebody because you were just accessible at the right time. You were convenient. If we don't work our leads, we never position ourselves to be the convenient one. Every single transaction that is happening in your market started with one conversation, started with somebody saying my leads are bad quality. Promise you. And I don't know, Crystal, do you all have the numbers? And I know Ado is really good at knowing these statistics, how many buyers bought from searching online?
Crystal:
That would probably be, we'd have to get, I don't know if we would do a survey, we'd have to do a survey to see with ours. But the real estate board or the councils might have that information if they did a survey or did anything like that, right? I'm not sure. They're almost all unless it’s a repeat, right? Unless you have that long-lasting client that's moved five times and used you every single time. There's no need for them, right? But the majority of people out there, agent, no agent, are going online, searching for real estate because it’s there.
Bev:
We hear it all the time, where we're talking to a lead and they say their family member is a real estate agent. However, that family member will still do business with somebody that's more convenient than their family member. Because guess what? I have family members that did not do business with me. Thank God. So that is just an excuse.
Crystal:
And you know what, you don't work as hard. And that's like, you know, when you have those individuals, you'll never work as hard for a family member as you would for somebody you had to earn for your business. And I even do it when I serve a couple of nights at a restaurant or I manage it and sometimes grab tables. But back when I was serving, I'd have family members come in for dinner, but if I was busy, guess who'd got the least of my service. At that point, they were the ones that got neglected for sure, because I could care less about a tip from them. I could care less about making their experience fantastic because I didn't have to. I didn't have to earn their business. It was already there. And I knew they would come back regardless of how well or not well I treated them or serviced them.
Bev:
Fantastic analogy because it's a hundred percent true. And we're looking at these low-quality leads because they’re family. But to be honest, they're not really committed to their own family. They're committed to convenience.
Crystal:
Convenience and easy money, unless they do it for free.
Bev:
And that's the only reason they're loyal.
Crystal:
Yeah.
Bev:
Because it’s a family member, depending on how close is giving up commissions, that's the only reason they’re loyal. Because I guarantee if you go to a survey and you ask people that close with family members, hands down, it wasn't a good experience. But they felt like: Oh, I had to because mom would've been pissed if I didn't use my sister. A lot of people do feel forced into, but we can't hold it, because of their situation. We just have to be very...
Crystal:
Absolutely. It's even like trying to find an agent to do this. Do you know how many calls I made and hit a voicemail, but you expect your leads to call when you call to answer, right? So most of the people I called today to try to get here on the app have never received a call from me, so my number would've been new to their system.
Bev:
And how many phone numbers do you call that the voicemail is full?
Crystal:
I've had that sometimes. Give me a callback or can you gimme a call? And the voicemail was full, so clearly you don't actually listen to your voicemails or you're out of town or on vacation, but maybe you should have changed your voicemail.
Bev:
So many voicemails are coming into text and email that we don't listen to them. And they get cleared out. And it's horrific. I cannot tell you how many agents I call and their voicemail is full. It's poor practice.
Crystal:
Yeah. I think that's almost like an update that the phone companies should do. If you're doing the message, that there's an option - reply, done, or read, and this will be erased from your voicemail inbox or something like that. So they can do it from their text to remove that message. Because it's hard. Then you're forced to send a text to the person and hope that they respond back to your text. Or it's hard sometimes to communicate that through whatever you wanted to leave a message about, you don't necessarily want to put it into text.
Bev:
Yeah. And we're very quick to judge what leads are doing when we do the very same thing.
Crystal:
I tried to pull it up too with our sales, with our clients and I can see here, you've been in our system and I called and called and called and called, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, finally got you. Then I was following up. No answer, following up, no answer, but look - now you’re a client, right? So the consistency, the quality of you as a lead, if we were looking in the mirror and kind of switching the table tier, you would've been a horrible lead, horrible quality, right? But it's the perseverance of calling and calling and calling and being consistent with it, that ultimately won you over and hammered you down. Got you committed. And here you are now.
Bev:
Such a great point.
Crystal:
It's the same thing. It's a little different in some sense, people learn about our stuff. They want that demo and what have you. Before we used to do some cold calls, or we do sometimes now, just calling different realtors, but it's the same idea. You all don't want to answer your phone. So to expect your leads to just answer your phone because you are calling - that’s a pretty high expectation.
Bev:
Yep. I remember back, one of my coaches, he would do group coaching once a week. And in that group coaching, he would ask the agents to come prepared with a competitor on your market that may have just listed a home. And he would call them and we would be able to hear the conversation and how horrific it was. It was the most amazing training. It was just unbelievable how you could hear your competition not being able to close the deal and the amount of agents that didn't answer the phone. And it was basically a sign call.
Crystal:
Oh, I have had that. It was like inquiring about a property and was calling and calling and calling and then finally after I think I called the brokerage being like: Listen, I have called and I am not getting a response. And then finally the guy called me: Well, the owner’s on the fence, possibly taking off the market. Was that so hard to answer your phone or reply to my text and tell me that? You're making me call again. I was calling for somebody else, like a senior that was inquiring, wanting me to inquire on their behalf. And I was like was it really that hard just to tell me that or just to answer the phone and tell me that bit of information. Instead, I had to go calling all these agents. And I even called another agent from that office to try to get: Can you get me? I've called you and he's not returning my stuff. So it was super frustrating and I know it happens a lot of the time and people are inquiring about, or they do a sign call or what have you, and agents don't check if the voicemail or their texts. And then they end up getting frustrated and they call somebody else, right? So it happens.
Bev:
Absolutely. And that was such a great analogy because it's so true. And that's why I say we have to really watch how we judge our leads because of the habits that we do ourselves.
Crystal:
Yeah. And for every call, moving forward, if you wanna say, at least don't ever answer. Yeah.
Bev:
Well I know we have people on here and nobody has chatted anything today.
Crystal:
No. No one's asked a question of any sort. Does anyone have a question of anything that we could, Beverly or myself answer for you? Quiet. The webinar people are quiet.
Bev:
Cynthia.
Crystal:
It's that motivation, that’s all. Get up and do it. It's why we go to the gym and hire trainers because they're sitting there yelling in your face, telling you: We know you're capable of doing this, stop giving excuses.
Bev:
Well, I think it even helps for them to hear, I failed in December, you know? And it works if you work it. We can't complain. We have to take responsibility.
Crystal:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Bev:
Yeah. The struggle's real, Cynthia, that was my problem in December. And you know, my agents suffered for it and I dropped the ball. I wasn't calling leads. We weren't following the systems and the protocol. So how do we fix this moving forward? What is the solution now? What is this looking like? And putting new systems in place. And that's the only thing we can do. You know, if you're not able to get to your calls, maybe pause your leads for a bit. Don't pause them so much that you lose Google ranking. And that's a whole conversation you'll have to have with Crystal, but only generate the amount of leads that you know that you're going to be able to handle. And if you're working them consistently, guys, you should not be in your dashboard anymore than about now, depending on if... Well, a single agent should be 30 leads-ish a month. So every agent should only be really responsible for 30 leads a month. If that be the case, you should be able to spend less than 30 minutes a day on your leads. If you are staying consistent and if you have your filters built properly. So I'm not even taking the busyness as an excuse.
Crystal:
You find time, but you get exhausted too, right? That's, you're exhausted.
Bev:
I could have found time. My priorities changed. And that's what it was, because we always make time for what's the priority.
Crystal:
Yep. Absolutely.
Bev:
Cynthia, check your busyness and make sure that your busyness is high-level activities. Yay. And Cynthia, she's going to call a lead and she's going to come back here in two weeks and she's going to say: I got one.
Crystal:
I find a lot of this. I catch myself, we all do it, right? We sit there and we've got all these things we know we have to do. Whether it's, you know, business-related or life-related. And we constantly think about it and we make ourselves feel busy when a lot of it's just in our head because we know we have to do it. So put a date or action, you know, a plan, a list, take your calendar and say: Okay, on Monday, I'm going to do this task, and on Tuesday, I'm going to do this task and on Wednesday, and or use your calendar period. Because then you take it off your head and it's now something you don't have to think about. And it's that relief when you had all those things you had to do and you finally finished the last half and you just feel like you can just now relax. You're not so tight and stressed about it, right? So, that's why my calendar is like a blessing. People ask me: Oh, when's our next appointment? And I’m like: I don't know. Let me go look, I'm not gonna remember when my dentist or doctor appointments or any of that. I don't remember any of that. It's all on my calendar. Kids, sports, kids’ things, whatever it is. It's all on my calendar. I don't know about it.
Bev:
If it's not on my calendar, it doesn't happen. And even to take that a little bit further, Crystal, leaving you all with this, when you know that you have to do the task at hand, are you making excuses to not doing it, by finding other distractions? Because it makes you uncomfortable to actually do the task. We're masters at that. I have to check my text messages. I have to respond to this. I need to clean my house. Is that a distraction that we're creating to take us away from what we know we need to do, but we're uncomfortable doing it. So I need to clean my house, I didn't have time. So leaving you all with that, it's what is more uncomfortable? Not having the deal on the table or doing it? Because there's a difference, right? Either one's gonna be uncomfortable, but what is more uncomfortable. Because sometimes when we just do it, it's like getting on that diving board and going: Oh my God, this is so far, but I have to do it because there's 10 people behind me and there's no way back. You take that jump. And you're like: That wasn't so bad, I'm gonna do it again.
I loved today’s webinar. It was awesome. I hope there’s a lot to take away from it. We dug deep. I know Cynthia got something out of it. Yay. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day and investing in yourself. And I'll see you all in February.
Crystal:
February, I know. Time is moving too fast. Hopefully, it'll be summer soon. Next month. Thanks, everyone. See you all later. Bye.