MASTERMIND CALL: How to Triple Your Business By Sticking to Your Prospecting Time Blocks

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Transcript:

Prospecting and lead follow up... everyone's got the same issue. Mornings go sideways with agents asking questions, clutter entering your inbox, or an offer you think you need to deal with. Here's what I know.

For those of you that are still prospecting for business, which is most of my clients, if your children's lives depended on you prospecting from 8:00am to 9:30am local time every day, I promise you would do it. Nobody would even think twice about it. You would make sure that your agents clearly understood that your children's lives depend on five time blocks of 90 minutes.

You wouldn't be late. You would be sitting at your desk at 7:50 ready to prospect at 8:00, and you wouldn't stop early because there's so much at stake.

Two things I promise: Your business would triple, but nothing else would happen. Your agents would understand that they just don't have access to you until 9:30. Then you would organize that 9:30 to 10 time block.

You'd have your email off at five til 8. You'd give your phone to your assistant. You wouldn't be allowed to do anything except outbound dial. That's the most important thing that needs to happen in your business.

How to Attach Emotion to Daily Activities

I had a coach with Tony Robbins, and Tony Robbins is really good at attaching emotion to everything. With me, physical fitness only became the first thing I focused on when I attached a lot of emotion to it. The two things are being a kick-ass father to my children - being that dad that can wrestle with his kids and pick them up when they're a hundred pounds. Just having all the physical energy to do that, and also to live long enough to see their children and maybe even their children's children.

The other thing for me is my dad. he had a stroke, and he was in a bad situation. So for me I've got a lot of emotion attached to working out when I think of those two things. I now work out at 5:30am so I'm up at 5am every day. it's easy for me to get out of bed because I think of those two things.

For one of my clients, he has to really be laser focused. He's got four children. He's a sole income earner. He wants to get stuff done before his family gets up and going. He's got a couple hours where everyone is silent in bed, where he could really kick ass and move his life forward from a fitness perspective and also from business and personal development. He's got time for reading. He's a believer so he's got time for Bible reading. 

So he's got a picture of his family with a caption. I'm a pretty sappy guy, and I could cry just thinking about it. It says, "We're depending on you, Daddy." Do you think when his alarm goes off at 5am, because he's got two hours of things to do to build a better life for his family 1, 2, 3, 5 years from now, when he looks at that picture do you think he's going to hesitate to jump out of bed?

The "Game" I Played to Stay on Task

I played this game where, and I still have it at my real estate office, and it was with respect to prospecting. I committed to time blocks with my coach. This was when I had agents and I was building a team, so I was doing everything, and life was crazy. I had the same problem, and I committed to this game.

There are lots of ways you can play this game. You can give money to someone you hate. You can give money to a charity you despise. You can give money to a kill shelter if you're a dog lover. Something painful. For me it was ripping up a $20 bill. I played a game where if I didn't pick up the phone during my time blocks for prospecting, if I wasn't picking up at the phone at 8am, I had a stack of $20 bills at my computer, and I would have to rip one up.  It doesn't take many of those to be in integrity with a commitment that you've made.

There's a handful of things like that that are as important as that in your business. You should have not a little but a lot of emotion behind these things. I do think that generating new business is one of those things that everyone on your team has to understand. Your agents have to know that that is your sacred time.

It's as if you were on a listing appointment every day from 8 to 9:30. Really nobody has access to you on a listing appointment, right? Nothing happens until you're out of that appointment. I promise you if a deal came in late the night before, nobody's going to know or care that you didn't touch it until 9:30.

MASTERMIND CALL: Stop Burying Good Leads Under Bad Leads

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Transcript:

Lars: I think there's some wisdom here. Hey Thomas, you there?

Thomas: I'm here.

Lars: Cool, so you were talking about your VA ISAs, in house ISAs, and good leads buried under bad leads. Talk more about that.

Thomas: Yeah, in May we hired our first VAs, and they were prospecting all of our listings. Just Listed, Under Contract, Just Sold, that's all they were doing. They were sending lead sheets through a Google Spreadsheet asking 10 questions about motivation, etc. They were sending them to our office and our agents were scrubbing the leads. So I went to Austin back in September, and I hung out with Tim Heyl and Sam for half a day.

And what I found was that our Senior Listing Agents should not be scrubbing these leads. These leads should be scrubbed by our in house ISAs first. If they are motivated in the next 0 to 30 days to do something, then turn it over to the Senior Listing Agent to call and do another pre-qual before they go on the appointment. If they find out they're not ready to do something in the next 0 to 30 days they turn it back over to the in house ISA and they nurture that lead.

We didn't understand the difference between a nurture and a true lead. Since we've implemented that in the last 3 or 4 weeks, it's been a game-changer for us. So now the Junior VAs are working for our in house ISAs which has been a complete game-changer for us.

Lars: Cool, so basically just identifying potential opportunities, and then having 10 of those come over to the in house ISAs to find the one or two that are ready to go.

Thomas: Correct. And that's caused our lead agents to really focus on the most motivated, the 0 to 30. And their contracts written have gone up considerably. It was my fault. I threw a bunch of squirrels in the office because I didn't know what I did not know. But once I went to Sam and Tim's office, I saw that the Junior ISAs were working for the in house ISAs, and they're scrubbing the leads before they hand them over to the lead agents. That makes more sense than what I was doing. We were just handing it directly over to the lead agents, and they were just chasing a bunch of squirrels.

Lars: Awesome, very cool. Good comment, thanks.

MASTERMIND CALL: Using Contests to Boost Your Team's Numbers

If you're serious about developing the tools and systems it takes to build a true real estate business that runs without you, I can help you. It’s never too late to move from a producer to an owner, all while adding some much needed balance to your life outside of work. Click here to schedule a FREE Strategy Session with me and we'll see if it makes sense for us to work together.

In this Mastermind Call excerpt we discuss how to keep your agents motivated. One of my clients on the call explains her success so far conducting holding contests within her team, describing a recent group contest to get 48 listings in 45 days - 6 per agent. They ended up with 50 listings, with the prize being a ticket giveaway to a big event.

Here is what she had to say about a few of the contests she's been running recently.

"We had sold a lot of our listings over the summer, and I wanted to boost those numbers. We really didn't do anything major out of the ordinary, but I think it gave everyone a focus and kept a competitive spirit within the office. We gave away tickets to this event for the whole team if we hit our goal, and the person who had the most listings got an extra prize as well.

"Now, we're looking into what we can do for the fourth quarter this year. Most of our deals closed in 30 days, so anything we can get under contract now, we're trying to do 60 deals in 60 days so we can get those all to close this year. So we're trying to finish the year strong.

"We put a big board up, and our agents are excited about it and working hard. It's just kind of keeping us focused, and now we're going back through older listings trying to get price reductions, saying, 'What do we need to do get these properties moved and closed this year?'"

Take a version of me from 3 or 4 years ago, and I was not big into the culture and the fun aspects of real estate. I've since come to realize the real reason people are on our team. Real estate is a lonely existence, and it's a tough business. It's crucial to make as much fun as you can from it, especially working together towards a common team goal. It's a win-win for everybody.

MASTERMIND CALL: The 2 Qualities to Avoid When Making Your Next Hire

If you're serious about developing the tools and systems it takes to build a true real estate business that runs without you, I can help you. It’s never too late to move from a producer to an owner, all while adding some much needed balance to your life outside of work. Click here to schedule a FREE Strategy Session with me and we'll see if it makes sense for us to work together.

When you're looking to hire new agents onto your team, in general there are a few key qualities to look for in each candidate. I learned this the hard way after hiring several agents who promised to work hard but consistently under-delivered. I've now trained my sales manager and operations manager to seek out these qualities during the first round of interviews.

What we're trying to build here is a team that is self-managed and self-motivated. And here are the 2 main qualities I look for.

1) You don't want candidates who can't show you that they've achieved something in their life, and that they have no experience driving themselves towards a goal in the past. You want someone who has proven themselves even if it's in a different industry. You can tell if they have that drive really quickly when you speak with somebody. 

I've found you just can't motivate somebody beyond what comes from them internally. If someone has no track record of achievement, if they don't seem to be a driven person who wants more for their life, it is painful to even try. 

2) I also try to avoid people who have no huge "why" when it comes to their desire to succeed. I don't like hiring, for instance, a single guy with no reason to make money except to go drink beer at night. I recently hired a current member of my team whose wife was a stay-at-home mother to a young child, they wanted to have a second child, and he was leaving his insurance job because he didn't like it.

I know when I show someone like that the path to making $100,000, he's going to do whatever it takes to reach and surpass that number. That's because he needs it. This year, because he's got the motivation and the big driving force behind his reason why, he's on track to make about $160,000, and he's already asking me how he can make more. My margin on him is around 66%.

So you want agents who want to make money, that are motivated, and who have driven themselves to success in the past. Real estate isn't all that hard, but you will need people that are driven and have a big "why". As you're interviewing agents, you want to find these things out before you make the mistake of hiring under-performing agents.

MASTERMIND CALL: How to Generate More Reviews After Closing

If you're serious about developing the tools and systems it takes to build a true real estate business that runs without you, I can help you. It’s never too late to move from a producer to an owner, all while adding some much needed balance to your life outside of work. Click here to schedule a FREE Strategy Session with me and we'll see if it makes sense for us to work together. 

In this Mastermind Call excerpt, a client shares a recent "win" involving sending Starbucks gift cards after closing to increase the number of testimonials she receives. It's also important to use this feedback to discover what you're doing well and what challenges clients feel you need to address.

What we do is mail out our Raving Fan Survey after each closing with a $10 Starbucks card included. The form first congratulates them on the sale or purchase of their new home, then asks 3 questions:

1. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to refer your friends and family to The Lars Group?
2. Would you use our services again?
3. Please tell us about your overall experience, and include your name and the agent's name.

We include a Starbuck's gift card in the mailing with a self-addressed stamped envelope so they can return it. When we used to tell them that if they return it they'd get a $10 Starbuck's gift card in the mail, our response rate was about 20%. After included the gift card in the initial mailing, we got up to around a 60% return rate.

Plenty of people respond with 10s, and we even get the occasional 1 or 0. My concern though is the segment in the middle, those who had maybe a 5 or 6 and never get back to us. I would encourage you to call, text, or email all the people who never get them back to you, and ask them to fill out the online version of the form. Generating this kind of feedback is a vital step to building up your client fan base.

MASTERMIND CALL: How Can Working Fewer Leads Help You Set More Appointments?

If you're serious about developing the tools and systems it takes to build a true real estate business that runs without you, I can help you. It’s never too late to move from a producer to an owner, all while adding some much needed balance to your life outside of work. Click here to schedule a FREE Strategy Session with me and we'll see if it makes sense for us to work together.

In this Mastermind Call excerpt, we discuss the strategy of backing off leads in order to set more appointments.

Listen in as a client discusses how she doubled her appointments in 2 weeks after reducing her spending on internet leads by over 90%.

How did that happen?

The leads are now being properly worked. The agents are now able to focus on the leads they have, distractions are reduced, and correct follow-up has become a priority.

Watch the full video to hear the major difference this one simple change has made in this client's conversion rates.