Transcript
Kevin: It’s 09:01 and we’re talking with if you guys don’t know Mike Bjorkman, really just awesome guy really good friend of mine, top producing agent, rock star been in the business for a long time and has been in the top probably one percent of agents over a decade now and really just a guy I have looked up to for a long time in terms of like his entrepreneurial spirit and all the businesses that he’s involved with. And it’s always good to talk with people like Mike because although he’s been really successful in all these different businesses, he’s still like in the trenches I know you’re still working with listings and working with buyers and still doing stuff day to day. So I thought who better to have on today than Mike and it’s a really great pleasure to have you on man, thanks for joining with us.
Mike: I appreciate you calling me, just so you guys know this was super last minute so I apologized Fridays are pretty much my day off, so I didn’t get all dressed up in a suit for you this morning, and to make matters worse my voice is kind of gone, we were at our awards banquet we got number one agents in the country and so there might have been a little screaming and yelling celebrating there, so if my voice completely goes out I apologize but hey man I know you’ve got a list of questions let’s dive in.
Kevin: Okay let’s do it, so we want to talk about a little bit about routine, a little bit about prospecting, a little bit about conversion stuff like that. So here’s my first question and guys by the way this is an open dialogue, it’s on a webinar platform so if you have a question you can raise your hand or you can just post it in the chat and we’ll ask away so I’m going to start asking questions now. So basically like oftentimes as an agent a lot of times you find ourselves not knowing what to do next, like I just got my license or I’ve been in the business and I’m doing some calls and I’m doing stuff but like what do I do next, how do I stay busy, what’s the best way to build a routine so that I’m always busy?
Mike: Got it, yes and I saw how you asked that earlier and I figured so if you guys look in the chat I believe that’s public, the very first thing I would do is go to my podcast real estate marketing show, that link there’s an hour-long webinar it’s basically what should I do all day as an agent. If you don’t stay fully laser focused and have a schedule we find ourselves at the movies eating just doing things we shouldn’t be doing. A lot of people have heard of the club wealth perfect daily schedule we’ve adopted that, but I’m not that kind of guy I can’t micromanage myself down to 20 minutes or even 10 minutes and some of that, so there’s a schedule I follow probably for the last 20 years that I’ve never really wavered from, even as I do other businesses I still follow it so if you guys are taking notes I’ll kind of give you the schedule and it’s up to you how to do it, when to do it but I think there’s a few very important things [00:03:00.06] and the first thing is an hour a day of self-help. In our business we get beat down all the time, we have deals fall apart, we have jerk agents we have all these things get in our way and it’s just hard to stay motivated, so I think an hour a day of self-help.
And then when I say self-help that’s Tony Robbins kind of stuff pump yourself up, sometimes it’s learning about how different energy things, it’s just not real estate specific it’s for your mind, your body and your soul as cliché as that sounds. The second thing I think is crucial is an hour a day of skill set, skill sets doing exactly what we’re doing right now, chit chatting about real estate it’s very simple it’s role-playing, its scripts and dialogues you can work all day in this business but if you don’t know what to say to people you’re never going to make money. So sometimes skill set is learning maybe a bolt-on like call action or learning follow up boss better or whatever programs and software you guys are using, but an hour a day I think is really important to focus on that and sometimes that’s just pure marketing, working on my buyer presentation, how am I presenting that, what can I say and I think we’re going to get in a little bit of that a little bit later from what we’re talking about earlier.
So then the third thing naturally is prospecting you guys, this is the business that we’re in and we have no choice but the prospect and I think two hours is about the maximum anybody can handle and if you’re a good agent you’re doing four or five deals a month it’s hard to find more than two hours a day to prospect anyways. And so you know if you prospect two hours a day, if you follow the schedule in general it’s good for about 50 transactions a year, for the average teammate they make a quarter of a million dollars a year or more if you just follow the schedule. So when I say prospecting it’s super important, it doesn’t have to be the same every day and I know some of us as team leaders we get stuck and get in our database and call, get in their database and call. I think that’s really important but I’d also recommend mixing that up because sometimes our sphere of influence, our past clients and our friends are easier to get than simply local leads or conversion or whatever you guys are using.
So I would schedule it up to where you have an hour a day or two hours a day at prospecting, but an hour might be just calling through the database, and I’ve watched our team and it’s very simple if you commit to call through those leads and our commissions Inc. or whatever for one hour, I promise you you’ll pull a client out of there, I watch it every single day. Sometimes it gets a little frustrating, sometimes it gets a little boring but I’m very visual and what I like to do is tell people to think of your last job before you have this, picture yourself daily doing that job so if you worked at McDonald’s flipping burgers, [00:06:00.08] picture yourself dripping grease flipping burgers. If you were working for corporate America picture yourself sitting behind that desk going in and typing in at nine o’clock and sitting in traffic and it makes you appreciate how easy calling through our database is. I mean I would rather call through that database and get hung on and f-bombs thrown at me all day long, than flipping burgers.
My last job before I got into real estate was corporate America and I used to work at Lens Crafters and I used to make eyeglasses and I was the guy that worked 1:00 to 9:00 on a Saturday night, the most awful job there was and then at nine o’clock at night on a Saturday I was taking out trash. So every time I was going to go door knocking and I hated that I’d say well it beats being in a lab coat taking out trash at nine o’clock on a Saturday night, so it sounds silly but you guys if you ever get kind of hung up on calling it’s really important I think. So after prospecting is our previewing property and it’s nice to not see anybody I know on this call because my team beats me up so hard and they don’t like it because I say you need to preview property all day every day for two hours, and everybody goes well I can’t get into the houses because the agents always want these appointment only or whatever, and that’s fine I get that. But the reality is you got to be able to know your inventory better than your clients, if you can imagine your clients as I want to live in Green Acres and I want a three-bedroom home between 750 and a million you bet your butt they’re going to know the inventory better than us, they’re on 25 different websites all signed up for all of them, waiting for those houses to go on.
They’ve already researched the schools, they’ve researched the local restaurants and shopping centers so they really know these areas and for a buyer to take this seriously we need to know the area’s too. So if you at least drive by the homes if you can’t get in, I think that’s really important a lot of my team has tried to get away with just going into the MLS and running hot sheets and that’s okay if you really truly understand the market but most people don’t. We have such big areas that we work these days, I think driving around is awesome you get a feel for the streets, you get a feel for what side of the homes are maybe learn a view side or maybe learn cold the SAC you didn’t know about because as a busy street name but it’s just at the end of the busy street where it actually stopped, who knows what it is. But you’re going to find for sale by owners, you’re going to find all kinds of stuff when you’re actually driving around and it’s nice to get out of the office too, it really is get your head cleared up a little bit. You are going to say something?
Kevin: Yes these are some really good points, I wanted to go back real quick to the first part of what you said in terms of the routine and the daily self help, daily hour skill set, two hours prospecting basically what you’re saying is you’re creating a schedule for yourself.
Mike: It’s the same every day.
Kevin: Like you’re creating right, it’s the same [00:09:00.07] every day and I think a lot of us because we don’t have a time sheet where we’re clocking in and clocking out every day it’s very easy to stray from that, so how do we get into that mindset of like this is what I’m going to do every single day, how do we avoid straying from?
Mike: It’s pretty simple you put it in your damn phone and your Google Calendar or either iCal or whatever you use, but you get in a routine right the experts say it takes 90 days to really determine what the habit is, so for the first 90 days you’re going to have to be strict on yourself and follow the schedule. When I talk about self-help and skill set a lot of that can be done at the gym right, you’re on the treadmill, the Stairmaster so you’re doing two things at once so that’s awesome. So no matter what you are going to get those two hours a day in before nine o’clock and this is just my schedule you don’t have to do that some people are night owls which I can’t believe but it’s true.
And then from nine to eleven you’re prospecting and if you look at the clock and its ten o’clock and you’re doing something else you know you’re off schedule, that’s why it’s just so nice to have the schedule. From eleven to twelve I like to do some follow-up and I like to do some lunch, I typically do those at the same time. I don’t go to lunch unless it’s going to be with the client, I’ll have lunch but it has to be with a client or somebody that I really enjoy like if it was you Kevin I would say hey let’s go to lunch otherwise I’d tell most people no I don’t want to go to lunch with you so I can get my follow-up done. And the big thing about follow-up is we need an hour a day and sometimes when we’re doing a lot of deals it’s two hours a day but you can schedule that, so from 11 to 12 and then maybe from 3 to 5, 4 to 5 in the afternoon is follow up with not only emails and voicemails but follow up with past clients.
So the thing I want you guys to remember the most is follow up is not prospecting, follow up is calling the people that you prospected yesterday hey this is Mike Bjorkman I found an off-market home are you still dying to go see those with me, perfect so that’s follow up. Prospecting is finding new people and the reason there’s a difference is at some point you’re going to run out of a pipeline because you’ve prospected or you followed up with them all and you’ve sold them all homes, but the reality is if you don’t find the new ones you have nobody to follow up with, so you got to really understand that difference between follow up. And follow up and I mean also 150 becomes easy this year probably 200 and it takes 20 to 30 minutes to follow up, we don’t need to say oh it takes me more time to follow up it really doesn’t. So I get pushback on that a lot and if we can do our follow up in an hour a day anybody can unless you’re doing five-six hundred deals and you’re probably in the REO or stuff at that point.
So there’s your schedule so we have an hour a day of self-help, hour a day of skill set, two hours a day of prospecting, two hours a day of previewing property, an hour a day of follow up and then you have [00:12:00.03] appointments after that. So what I say with appointments if you absolutely have to have a listing appointment during previewing time that’s fine, but make up for it. So if you said man I was working with four buyers today on Friday but I didn’t get my prospecting in that means you need to prospect tomorrow, because if you don’t if you fall behind on that prospecting your pipeline will dwindle. And the reason agents have two deals open two deals closed, two deals open and you live that rollercoasters is because we say oh no I got four or five buyers we’re good, then we get the four or five buyers in escrow now we’re really feeling good and we’re pre spending our money and then they all close then we go it’s time to get back to work and that’s where we’re like oh man, that’s when we start hating this business. But to consistently close 10-15 homes a month like we do it’s a nice feeling because even in December we’re getting the same paychecks as July or April, that make sense Kevin?
Kevin: Totally, makes perfect sense. And so some of the people on the call might be thinking well okay well who do I call, who do I prospect to like we provide leads to people on our team and those are there those are available. Beyond the leads that are provided who else can we be calling, so I mean in terms of…
Mike: Yes your sphere is really easy, take out your cell phone and work your ABCs daily. So in my phone for example I might have I think 120,000 people in there and you can go through the A’s the B’s and C’s and just go through it and text them right, say hey what are you doing call them say hey it’s Bjorkman I just drove by your neighborhood, I know you lived in the area I wanted to tell you about an off-market property we found and just start texting and calling texting and calling and just go through that a couple hours a day. And then tomorrow start with the B’s then the next day the C’s and just keep track of it and notes in your phone, but as you do that make sure you connect with them on social media too, so now you have another way to connect with them. So if you text them one week and the next month you email them and the next month you Facebook them or Twitter them or whatever they do, but you just do a search for them and see how they like to communicate on social media.
So if you’re not texting or calling or emailing you’re at least nurturing that relationship through your social media, so when you go through that for a couple weeks now it’s time to go to your social media, go through there and send messages and look at their timelines and find some really unique life events that they’re concerned about or been posting, and talk to them and interact with them that way. And then after that now you got to go talk to the people you really know that you’re not connected, maybe it’s committees, maybe it’s organizations you’re part of maybe it’s just business owners locally that you know and now we just want to make sure we get them all on social media and get them all in our database so they could be the ABCs next month all right.
And it’s funny you never run out of people to call ever, like I have met so many people in the last couple weeks that I could call and talk to them and follow up with them it is just [00:15:00.13] a never-ending thing but if you put them on an organized database you can actually successfully deal with thousands of people at one time. We talked about our clients or our agents with our sync database there’s thousands of people in there like we can’t possibly talk to them all well yes you can if you follow the schedule, it’s not a big deal so I hope that answered your question.
Kevin: It does, that’s actually great and I hope you guys are listening there really closely because a lot of times, well what Mike was talking about is it’s a multiplier, so a lot of times we’re reaching out to people in our sphere it’s not just the phone call or the text message we can find them on social media, reach out to them on social media. Interact with them on social media, look and watch what they’re doing within their daily lives and be engaged with them in a positive way. And I think a lot of times too like with our sphere and our people and our database people are sometimes feel some bit of apprehension about like reaching out to people in their sphere and like being perceived as being a salesperson or overly salesy, it doesn’t have to be like a super hardcore sell right, Mike I mean you could just be reaching out and connecting.
Mike: I never talk about real estate with them unless I use the script; I was driving through your neighborhood and drove by your home that’s the only kind of real estate that I talk about. Sometimes I might talk to them about hey listen I’m going to do a webinar on investments and we thought about using your 401k possibly for rental property, jump on Tuesday at ten. So every time I talked about something different, but for the most part it’s not about real estate if you just kind of follow the four-door frog however you say it the family occupation recreation dreams, it just happens to come up and the very first thing people like you to say is how’s the kids, how’s your wife, what’s your husband doing these days, oh man is he working I’m not kidding oh yes he’s busy ah me too gosh I’ve never sold so many homes in my career, so what are you guys doing for vacation in the summer you know and how long do you plan on living in this town, what’s your exit plan do you want to live in Florida, where do you want to go and you just follow that and it just so…
Kevin: Natural, it’s just a natural conversation and real estate is going to come up naturally and that’s where the power I think is in that conversation, so you need to just need to just really pick up the phone and reach out to people and connect with them. So I want to jump into something else now Mike as I wrote down these questions let’s get into like a little bit of like the sales part of it, so let’s say we’re calling these clients, we are calling buyers because we have buyers that we’re working with in our database and what have you, what’s the best way to get from like the phone world the email world and into like let’s go meet and set an appointment, let’s go look at property, let’s go whatever and let’s write some arbors get deals done?
Mike: Okay and that’s a great question too, that’s a real struggle for people like you don’t make a million calls and get some warm leads but I think us as agents we need to be a little bit more aggressive [00:18:00.10] on our questions and say listen if I was to would you, that’s a really powerful statement and most of the people that we are calling and let’s just say they’re what do you guys use to Commissions Inc.?
Kevin: We use up follow up boss.
Mike: Follow up boss okay, so let’s just say there’s thousands of people on follow up boss and you’re leaving messages, sending mass text and everything but the reality is hey listen if I found a foreclosure or short sell not yet on the market would you want to see those with me, if I found an off-market property it’s not anywhere on a website would you see that with me that’s the only question you have to ask people because you’re going to find them right, all of us agents we should be part of network groups, we should be previewing property two hours a day running our hot sheets so we should be able to find these properties for them if we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.
And I only want to work with people that want to buy now, I’ll follow up with them as part of my schedule but I want to work with people I want to get them in my car, so if you say hey if I found these properties would you go see them with me and they say yes and then you look at their price range they’re looking in the town from four hundred-five hundred thousand you say hey listen have you seen these three homes that are in the MLS now by the way the least knock those out so make sure those aren’t properties you want to buy and then I’ll continue my 21-point by your checklist that I use every day, we do things that other agents can’t or won’t to make sure we provide excellent value. Mr. and Mrs. Smith I can’t work with too many people but if you are very serious about moving in the next thirty days and if you found the house that’s right, I’m going to work extra hard for you because we can only work with a handful of those people.
And we have to ask that question so many agents are like I don’t want to scare them away because I work all week long just to pull them out of the database and they’re almost a hot lead right now and if I get them into the car I could learn more and build rapport with them and that’s all fine but I like to ask the question. Hey if I found you that home this week would you buy it, and if they’re like oh no then I go why wouldn’t you buy the home rates are going up obviously you’ve been watching the news and let’s try to protect your buying power. Oh well you know I don’t get this bonus from my down payment till the end of September at my job, okay fantastic we’ll keep looking at what I’m sending at you and you hit the next one. Because if I’m going to spend two hours with the buyer and get him out of the database into my car they’re going to be motivated because I’m going off my schedule, and if I go off my schedule I know my next month is going to hurt unless that person buys a home.
So I think making sure they’re willing to see property and not willing to see property but actually buy property or put their home on the market of course that’s absolutely crucial, and if we’re agents trying to do our job we’re not freaking chauffeurs, we’re not supposed to drive people around and show them the areas and get to know them, no they could do that on their own they have their own cars, they could rent a car it’s our job [00:21:00.04] to sell them a house. So if we’re not like being very strict about that you’re just going to be in this world of hurt where you’re just endlessly driving people around, they are meeting strangers that are never going to buy. It’s kind of fun to see houses and people don’t get to do it like we do so they’re willing to go see houses with you even if they don’t want to buy and we need to make sure we’re not working with those people.
And in today’s market with low inventory they go well I’m just going to meet them at the house they didn’t even get my car anymore, well that’s fine but you got ask them if I meet you at that house and it’s the right house which I’m pretty sure it is, will you buy it today, and if we don’t ask those questions if they say no even if it was the right house we wouldn’t buy it, I say maybe we shouldn’t go see the home now until you are quite ready or quite serious. So it’s that seems so frustrating to have to really truly ask those questions and stick to it, but at the end of the day or we’re doing ourselves a favor because we’re not wasting our time anymore. Does that answer your questions?
Kevin: Yes it does and it’s a kind of a process of elimination, we want to weed out those people that are not serious and focus on the ones that are serious. And I think one thing you mentioned in there that was interesting and I use this a lot is, pointing out specific properties like you said earlier hey there’s three properties that I think you should probably check out, at least to takes them off the list if they’re not the right ones. So a lot of times we’ll send them listings and we’ll say like hey here’s a list of homes let me know what you think.
Mike: Yes, you can’t do that.
Kevin: Because it’s not going to get you anywhere right.
Mike: So you can see if they’re logging into the system, I mean that’s just to see if they’re playing around but you got to call them a very specific properties, every other agent says the same thing, their own Red fin are agents calling them every day with properties to see better too.
Kevin: Totally, so having a unique list of one two three four whatever number of properties that you think are really the ones that they should check out and really creating a compelling reason for them to get out there, and then like Mike said breaking down like their level of interest. So what was the thing that you mentioned…?
Mike: If I did would you, so if I found you the home would you buy it, you have to ask that question and you pointed out or you were getting alluding to something extremely important we should probably point out, when you have those three or four homes and you call them with them but some of these people on this call might be gone there is not three or four homes. But as an agent if you are working with a qualified serious motivated buyer, we need to still call them daily and say hey Mr. and Mrs. Smith I don’t have any new properties for you today here’s what I did today to look for them, I went to the network group, I door knocked in the neighborhoods that you wanted, I send out a mailer an email, I’ve blasted on social media, I’ve done everything, I’ve called all the agents in the area and talk to as many people as I could I couldn’t find you at home today but I’m going to go back to work at it tomorrow.
And every day that person’s going wow actually [00:24:00.11] at least so they’re really working hard for me and they’re actually doing things that other agents can’t or won’t do. So if something was to fall in their lap or another agent might call them and they’ll go you know what Billie Babcock has called me every single day and he’s told me that he is really looking for some properties I think I’m going to be committed to that little billion I’m going to call him. But if you’re not talking to your buyers every day you’re screwed, I mean they’re going to be talking to other agents, so if you call them every day and say I know I’m bugging you I just don’t have a home but I wanted you to know I worked my tail off today to find it.
Kevin: And what you’re saying there is really important because part of our job is to be marketers and part of our job is to stay top of mind with our clients and although you don’t have anything like you’re saying you’re reaching out and you’re kind of like just reminding them that you’re there, so when the time comes they’re going to remember you and that’s really important.
Mike: They have to know you’re working for them, if they think that Bjorkman guy hasn’t called in a couple days I bet you he’s working with somebody else or doing other things, maybe I’m not so submitted to Bjorkman but if they go Jesus Christ that guy calls me every night at 6 o’clock to tell me how hard he’s worked today to find a home, that’s a really big difference and buyers agents don’t do that stuff when they get to you.
Kevin: And there’s probably if you don’t call them somebody else is going to call them, so you need to stay in front of them, so here’s another question for you staying with this sort of thread with kind of converting and selling and what happens, so let’s say we’re now showing properties we’re meeting with clients and sometimes we kind of get stuck in that world where it’s just showing after showing after showing after showing, what’s the best way to go from like showing property to like all right we’re going to write an offer now?
Mike: I love that too and I have a video and I posted in the group the YouTube video and the podcast, both of those places are where we need to look but I have a buyer mastery class that I talked about it’s about an hour long but it goes through just that, but I’ll try to focus on the theme of it and you never go out looking at property to see if they like it, you go out looking for property to see if they want to buy it. So I always tell people look I’ve worked hard, I know the market better than anybody, I know exactly what you’re looking for based on what I’ve gotten to know about you and what you’ve looked at online and what you’ve told me, there’s three properties that we’re going to see I’m going to show you the first one I think that’s the right property for you, it fits all your needs your criteria your price range and I’m going to ask you to buy that property at the end of the day and I’m going to show you another two because I might not know everything in the world, I’m going to show you these three but remember I’m showing you the best one first.
So when you show the best one first you got to ask him is this the home, is this the dream home, have everything I’ve done and all the market research this seems or this is the best home on the market today for you and if you don’t want to buy it I understand it, but this is everything you need. And if it truly is everything they need you got to ask them what don’t you like [00:27:00.16] about this house, why won’t you buy this home today and don’t use those words and as gruffly as I am but you got to understand this is the best house, I need to truly know why you won’t buy this house.
And if for any reason at all I need to know about the next house I show you if I don’t want to waste your time, if they say you know what we just can’t do this yard it’s just not big enough for the pool and the trampoline like we really want for our kids, and you say other than that is there any reason you wouldn’t buy this home is the bedroom count perfect, bathroom count perfect, condition perfect, price perfect all this stuff perfect okay. Then legitimately you could say okay we got to find you a bigger yard, but sometimes they’re just nervous they just need help making educated decisions, so if you go through that checklist with them and say okay I just want to make sure all this stuff is perfect then you can ask them truly, then this might be the right house for you it’s got the room for the pool, it’s got the room for the trampoline, it’s got everything what is it why won’t you buy this home. And then you got to really listen to their answer because if they say I don’t know, you say this is the home for you and you know it, then use some of the pricing techniques well this one’s listed at $5.99 if somebody else bought this home at $5.50 would you be upset?
Kevin: That’s a good one.
Mike: And if they say yes well why don’t we try to get it at $5.50 and if they say no find that number that makes sense to them. But you got to say look I can only help you so much but if you’re not willing to buy this perfect home I found you, what do I need to do to find true motivation again. So a lot of my agents and so you guys know there’s 300 agents that work for me I’m smart and these people are serious and they really want help but they call me every day asking that I just can’t get this person off the fence, I can’t get first about the fence I show them property every week nothing is ever right for them and I don’t know what to do. And then I say ask them, tell them this is the right what is really truly going on and find the reason, there’s no reason to work with somebody more than once or twice once you know what they want, there’s not that much inventory out there we all know that, so that’s it it’s simple after that. It’s not like back in the day where there’s 3/4 times amount of homes that are there are now we used to drive people around for three weeks just to try to show them all.
Kevin: And we’re almost out of time so if you guys have questions please ask now because we’re going to wrap it up here pretty soon, so feel free to fire away Mike’s really good at questions. But I wanted to ask you a couple of quick things before we wrap up, well one thing is what you’re doing there when you’re asking hey is there anything wrong with this home, what is it about this one that you don’t want, why do you not want this home you’re doing again the process of elimination, you’re now finding out the problem. Like if they say I just don’t want this backyard, I cannot have a back yard at this size you can’t have it this way okay so the next home we look at that has everything else and has the backyard that’s got this space, [00:30:00.05] is that something you would go for at that point yes right. So you’re basically eliminating, basically you’re not wasting more time. So and one thing I do have a question on Mike is you mentioned earlier three properties we’re going to see, do you always show the best one first or is that just…
Mike: Yes, if you show the best one last they’ll think then that tomorrow’s going to be even better, you have to tell them this house is the best don’t even think about another better house because they’re going to say I like these but I need more. And this is the exact reason you don’t work with the husband and wife separately or parents and kids separately because they will say you can work with them for weeks and you’ll find the perfect house and the wife goes yes okay I like this let’s now show my husband and the husband will go yes I love this house but what else do you got, it’s just a never-ending battle.
Kevin: Well then you’re going to be repeating yourself.
Mike: And that house is going to be gone and every time that house is going to be gone by that time the husband gets ready to go.
Kevin: Okay, looks like do we have a question here okay wait.
Mike: What do you do to get buyers to come up and offer price?
Kevin: Want to answer that?
Mike: Yes, Derek thanks for the question. Quite simply there’s a couple different steps you have to make, the biggest process is us as agents sometimes we don’t want to take the time to do comps with our clients, when you’re selling a home there’s no different than when you’re putting it on the market for a listing, they have to look at the comparable to understand how the market is going. Luckily we’re in a market right now where the homes will always got up in price, so it’s like one of these things were here’s the reality these last five houses in this neighborhood have sold to full price are above, we’re going to be lucky to even get this house. So you got to start off with the comps and then you can say okay let me ask you this, if somebody else out there is sitting down negotiating a higher offer and they got it for $10,000 more how upset would you be and this is the reality there’s probably a really good chance somebody else is out there negotiating for this. But typically verbally I’ll ask them alright fine I’ll write this offer but how realistic is that, if I show you here everything’s going at full price, if they counter us back at full price which is typical in this market are you okay with paying full price, you got to just be upfront with people and be super transparent.
If you try to be quiet and you’re like I don’t want to scare people away, they think you’re weak, they think you’re non communicative, they like the transparency, they like to be led around by the nose and they don’t know what else to do. But if you show them the comparable and they understand everything, has got multiple offers and has gone up they’ll come up in price and you got to just be very as a matter of fact yes we’re so lucky to even have an opportunity to write an offer on this house, I busted my butt to find this house. So here’s the price maybe we can get something else, maybe we can do a little bit longer [00:33:00.01] escrow or shorter escrow maybe we are going to go shoot the full table find other bargaining chips besides price what else motivates them. So in the buyer mastery course we talk a lot about negotiating and offers so you can watch that in the podcast too.
Kevin: That’s a really good answer, see another question here what do you do with buyers that say they want to stop looking for a valid reason?
Mike: Then you just put them in your database and drip on them, if they want to stop looking for a valid reason then you just got to keep them in your database and follow up with them and remember this is follow-up not prospecting, so there’s differences. So when you schedule them for a call and just remember if they say call me in a month you call them in two weeks, but I think there’s nothing wrong with calling them when the properties is still on the market because it shows you’re still looking, I know you said you wanted to wait a couple of weeks but this is a good house you just never know but it’s at least a reason to call. And I always say don’t call people unless it’s something of value and that’s value, at least that guy is still looking for me even though I told him that we’re not looking right now.
Kevin: I’ve even had situations where clients have told me hey you know what it’s not working out, I want to go work with another agent, we’ve all had that horrible conversation and I’ve continued to follow up like what you’re saying, like hey I know you guys said you’re working with someone else but here’s a couple properties that I think you might want to talk with your agent about whatever. I might take 10 seconds to do that and guess what I’ve had times with people that come back to me because they see that I’m working for them and their agents dropping the ball, so never ever stop following up and staying in front of your clients. Here’s another one what should I do if I’m new to the area and have a relatively small sphere of influence, where should I spend my time prospecting?
Mike: Another great question so follow that daily schedule you need two hours a day at prospecting what we talked about before, so the best thing to do is get highly involved in things that make you passionate whether it’s the chamber, maybe it’s a good charities you need to meet people all day every day, you need to talk to 50 people a day. So if you’re new to the area you’re going to be talking to everybody at Starbucks, everybody at Home Depot, everybody at the chamber and just introduce yourself, there’s nothing wrong but one of the benefits of being part of the Chamber of Commerce’s you’re allowed to ask for business cards and business, so you can just say hey guys my name is Justin I am a chamber member too I just want to reach out and say hi and notice you have cake shop, would it be okay if I referred clients to your cake shop maybe I give them a cake sometimes for closing gifts and I would stop by and introduce yourself to them.
I think going straight to the owners or managers are really good things to do and those people will become your sphere of influence very quickly. If you’re new to the area and you have kids in school make sure you’re super involved with that, maybe you need to join a country club or a boating club or a yachting club something like that and just don’t go to bed at night until you’ve talked to 50 people, that’s just the bottom line and I don’t care how you got [00:36:00.09] to do it but you got to do it. So work an hour a day in Kevin’s database or whoever’s database you have and then work an hour a day on that, if you go to a meeting and shake hands with 20 people you’re doing good, just continue doing that every single day.
Kevin: And the thing is this stuff doesn’t happen overnight, a lot of times we feel like okay I’m going to go sign up for a Chamber of Commerce meeting and go to one meeting and expect to close ten deals out of that. No, this stuff takes time to build you need to be consistent with it; you need to have a routine. Another thing that I like is going in and partnering with lenders, you’ll go in and connect with a lender and like in a branch that has a lot of foot traffic, a lot of our agents that work in our office talk about this a lot, go to an office that’s got a lot of pedestrian foot traffic, connect with a lender, let them know you work with lots of buyers, you want to work on a referral partnership kind of thing, start sending them referrals they’ll refer you back and then you could do some like maybe some first-time buyer seminars, first-time seller seminars, 10-31 exchanges, so there’s a lot of opportunity there so yes really just getting out and connecting with as many people as possible.
Mike: I think the last thing you just said is I’m focusing on them for the next 90 days and at least in the summer when I start saying take more time off, those first-time homebuyer seminars first-time home seller seminars are awesome to do just like we’re doing on this too. Just put a nice PowerPoint presentation together and talk about 10-31 exchange, talk about no money down programs, talk about how the markets changing and the interest rates are going up and how that affects your buying power.
And now you have something to put on your social media and then ask people that you do know to share that to build your sphere of influence as well, and I think if you market that properly through the business page and anyway you possibly can, you could actually have twenty to thirty people on your webinars nightly or daily and split size I think that’s a really huge thing to do. People are blown away when you actually have the guts to really put yourself out there as an expert, talk about Melanie, talk about how to negotiate your offer to really excite get it accepted every time and why you’re different. I think that’s cool I’m really passionate about that right now so that’s why I was like yes do that.
Kevin: Yes, it’s a really great way to get out there, so man we went ten minutes over and this has been such an awesome call.
Mike: No worries man.
Kevin: Thank you so much, looks like we have let’s see one more question here, we do one last question then we have to let Mike go because he is a super busy guy, so how do you handle clients that they are interested but stop responding?
Mike: Okay, that’s a good question I get that all the time too and that’s probably the most common question, if they’re not responding there’s only a couple of reasons right they don’t want to buy a home, [00:39:00.11] they hate your guts and are working with another agent or whatever I guess that’s the only other reason, those are the only two reasons. So I’m really aggressive with that I just say hey dude listen I am calling you with properties that I’m working very hard to find, I only have time to work at the handful of serious motivated buyers, can you at least respond to me and say f off or stop looking for homes because I’m looking and then you remember you shouldn’t be looking for homes anyways for people unless they ask you to.
So if they’re not responding just say hey I’m still working for you if you’re not working with me just at least give me the courtesy to let me know and then you’ll get that random text yes we already bought a new construction with somebody else or just let me off the hook basically tell them and that’s it. And if they’re not truly motivated that’s fine, you don’t worry about them move on to the next one because they’re not a real buyer anyways.
Kevin: And you might get that text also that says oh I’m so sorry I’ve been really busy thanks for reaching out, yes I do have something in mind, yes I am interested in the next three months thanks for the text messages.
Mike: Yes, but keep in mind anybody serious about buying a home is going to respond and ask that question too okay so you’re not ready now, so I don’t want to find you your dream home now if you’re not ready, so say if I did would you.
Kevin: Awesome man, alright guys well hey Mike thanks again thanks again so much for this call, all the data here, all the info that was shared we’re going to put on a slack channel, we’ll share with everyone and man thank you so much Mike I really appreciate it.
Mike: Alright, go kill it have a great weekend it looks like our rains gone so it’s good money-making weekend, have fun.
Kevin: Alright guys thanks Mike, thanks everyone.
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