Today I will share with you one of the key strategies that allowed me to be able to sell 50 homes my first full year in the business and has also been a key contributing factor to my continued growth today. I was reminded of this strategy recently as I sat down with an agent I was interviewing. One of the common questions I ask during the interview process is “where are you getting your business from?” In other words…what sources of business are you pursuing? This particular agent I was interviewing was selling about 10-12 homes per year and she gave me what I would consider to be a very typical response….
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“I am doing open houses on weekends, calling FSBO’s, farming my neighborhood, taking some phone time, and I just got my facebook business page set up also”. She felt like she had a solid strategy and seemed very excited about her plan of action. I say this is a typical response not because of the types of sources she selected to market to but instead because of the number of sources she was pursuing at the same time. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest errors among agents today. Have you ever heard that old phrase Jack of All Trades, Master of None? That phrase labels a very large percentage of real estate agents today and is responsible for the lack of production of many of them! This is what I want to tell you today…
It is nearly impossible to master multiple lead streams at the same time. You will end up stressed out and you won’t end up highly profitable on any of them. In fact…there is a greater likelihood you won’t be profitable at all! Master one lead source at a time and then move on to the next one!
Duplicate what successful people do….
Look around your office at the top producers and I believe you will notice a common denominator. Most of the top producers became known for dominating one specific source of business. I’m not saying that they are still only dominating one source of business. At this point they may have added other pillars in to the mix. But I bet if you ask them about how their business got launched in the early years you will hear about how they absolutely crushed the FSBO market….or how they dominated the REO arena….or maybe, like myself, how they blew up their business by mastering expired listings. It always tends to be one specific source that put them on the map! They absolutely mastered one thing!!
This was my story…
I became known in my office as being the agent who was dominating the Expired and Cancelled Listings. I sold 50 homes my first full year in the business because of this one source and went absolutely overboard in my aggressive approach. I threw all my eggs in that basket every single day. This philosophy enabled me to become better at it than anyone else in my market in a relatively short amount of time. What do I mean when I say I went “overboard” with it? I mean that I was up every morning at 5-6am so I could look up the phone numbers and data and be fully prepared to be dialing the first digit at 7:50 am. However, before I started dialing, I frequently did “role play” with another agent from 7:15-7:45 am so that I could work on my phone skills and objection handlers. You might be wondering why I started calling at 7:50 rather than 8am? I started calling at 7:50 because I knew that all other agents started calling at 8am and I wanted a 10 minute head-start! My calling session to new expireds and cancelleds would usually last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on how many there were on that particular day. When I was done going through all the lead cards I would typically turn them over and go through them again. I believed that there were probably moms who were dropping their kids off at school or in the shower when I called at 7:50 and that now they would likely be available to pick up the phone…and they were! Maybe they would pick up the phone this time because they have now seen my number twice on their caller ID. After my second and sometimes third round of calling the new expireds for that day I would then do my lead follow up from the previous contacts I had made from previous days. I would typically do 1-2 more rotations of calling through the current days leads sometime in the afternoon and I would do 1-2 more rotations in the evening between 6-9pm at night as well. I would call the expireds and cancelled listings 3-5+ times on an average day! I always got to the office extra early on the 31st and the 1st of the month because I knew I would be bombarded with new leads. And I took as many opportunities as possible to call on weekends and holidays. Why? Because I knew my competition wasn’t!!!!! And therefore my odds of success went up during those times! No other agent in my office would even think of calling these people that many times, but I had made a firm commitment to this revenue stream and I knew the potential. I love the following quote from the movie Lone Survivor…
“Whatever is worth doing, is worth over-doing
Moderation is for cowards”
I love this quote because I believe it sums up one of my core beliefs about life. If something isn’t worth over-doing than there is a good chance it may not be worth doing at all!
So where should you go from here?
My recommendation is to take a serious look at the possible sources of business that interest you and make a difficult decision to focus on mastering just one source at a time. You can become the agent who is known around town as the “OPEN HOUSE KING/QUEEN”. You could become the master of social marketing. You could build a massive builder program that generates on-going referrals. Maybe you will choose to do nothing but focus on your sphere of influence. I honestly don’t believe it matters too much which source you choose. The key is your commitment and strategy. You have to go absolutely and unequivocally over-board with your approach. You have to be radical and excessive about it! You won’t get anywhere by dabbling in multiple streams at the same time!
