We practice our phone conversations. We practice our listing and buyer presentations. We practice overcoming objections and challenges throughout the transaction. One of the most overlooked areas that we could be practicing is with our CRM.
No, it’s not as exciting as pretending to be a frustrated house-seeker on the phone, but ensuring that your team knows how to effectively use the database will accomplish a lot. It will help you keep your data integrity high so that everyone can know exactly where each lead is in the process. It will prevent leads from falling through the cracks. It will help you identify areas for improvement so that you can better coach and inspire your people to achieve their goals.
By keeping the basics in front of your team regularly, it allows them to have short reminders of what they should be doing and avoid a major overhaul by letting things go for so long that no one is rowing the boat in the same direction anymore.
Use our curated playlist to help you cover these basics with your team by reserving a spot on your sales meeting agenda for training and watching one of these videos together as a group!
It’s the worst feeling to hear that your phone number is coming up as spam. You aren’t spam, you’re calling because you’re the best person available to help this person buy or sell their home in a 100-mile radius! How dare they do that to you?! Well, they dare and they are doing it to the best of us right and left! While there is no way to completely eliminate this challenge, and if I’m wrong please reply to this and share with me so I can learn, there are some strategies you can use to reduce your chances of getting the big S on your number.
📱 Avoid cold-texting or cold-calling leads. Ensure that they have opted in to receive these types of communications from you.
📱 If someone has opted in for texts, send them your contact information right out of the gate by way of introduction, including your phone number. Their phone’s technology will likely pick up that information to be someone they may know rather than something it should block as spam. For example: “Hey! I just received your message about my listing at 123 Beach Street. I’ll be happy to send you more information on that home and others like it! – Kris McDonagh, Amplified Real Estate, 555-555-5555”
📱 Add the number you use to prospect to your phone’s v-card, your email signature, social media, and website. By having your phone number readily available online when searched you will improve the credibility of its connection to you, a real person, and one hell of a real estate agent.
📱 Request for your new contact to save your contact information to their phone. Most will, just in case you turn out to be somebody they do need, and it will increase the chances that they will answer the phone the next time you call to help them further.
📱 Check the reporting within Follow Up Boss to check for red flags that signal to carriers that you are spam. You want to avoid having too many calls that don’t connect, unanswered texts, and a high number of opt-out responses. Reflect on your prospecting efforts and adjust so that your efforts are resulting in longer quality calls and responses to your texts. To find this: Click Reporting in the top bar, then Calls and filter from there.
📱Research and test any new phone number you get before you order anything with the number printed on it or begin using it widely in case it was used previously for something you don’t want to be associated with or it has already been marked as Spam.
📱 To clear the spam flag from your Follow Up Boss number, visit https://www.freecallerregistry.com/fcr/#submitform and fill out the form. You can include your team’s numbers on the form and submit it once for the whole team as well.
When the form asks for the “Service Provider,” type “Twilio.” Once you submit the form, the carriers will review it and reset the Spam label for any numbers that were flagged. Each carrier’s spam provider will email them as they respond to the form. It’s worth noting that numbers can be flagged as spam again after being cleared, so be sure you are following FUB’s calling and texting best practices to avoid being flagged as spam again.
Example:
Phone Number: Enter FUB number
Click Send Verification Code.
I believe my calls are: Real Estate
Contact Name: First Last
Company Phone: (555) 555-5555
Email: name@business.com
Note: the verification code will go to this email
Calling Company Name: Your Business Name, LLC
Calling Company Address: 123 Main Street, Anywhere, US 12345
Calling Company URL: www.businessname.com/
Service Provider(s): Twilio
If you have any other tips that you’d like to share with the community, reply to this email and we will add them to our guide and give you credit!
The good news is that you are having this challenge because you are doing the work and calling the leads! Keep going, continuity is the secret to success.
The most successful agents have an executable plan for their business. As leaders, we often overlook that an agent’s livelihood is a business inside a business or, in most cases, a brokerage. Just because we have a plan for the overall business and assist them in setting goals, that doesn’t mean that they know how to achieve those goals. By helping your agents to develop their own personal business plan it not only helps them take ownership of their work and efforts, it aids them in having clarity on exactly how to accomplish the goals they need to hit in order to reach their personal success and maintain the overall health of the team or brokerage. Set up a workshop with your agents with a clear outline on how to develop a business plan and watch them flourish as they achieve their goals with ease in the new year.
Below is our guide to creating a business plan for your real estate business for you to add your own tools and inspiration to!
🎁 Step One: Use a goal calculator like this one from our pals at SISU to help you determine exactly the effort needed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in order to reach your goals.
🎁 Step Two: Map out the specifics as to how you want to go about doing the things prescribed on the calculator and break it down by each month and week. Remember, there are many ways to achieve your goals and using a variety of tools will help you get there!
Questions to ask yourself to aid you in completing Step Two:
How many hours do I need to set aside for prospecting each day? Each week?
How much vacation time will I take this year? Factor this into your plan.
How many open houses do I want to commit to doing each month?
How many listings vs buyers do I want to work with?
What is my niche and what are the necessary steps to improve my visibility with this audience?
What community events should I plan to attend or sponsor this year?
What networking events do I need to attend?
What promotional materials should I be utilizing?
How often do I send them and how much do I budget for them?
Where are my boundaries going to be for my personal and family time?
Where does my self-care fit into my business?
Exercise, rest, and play should all be factored in
🎁 Step Three: Put your plan down on paper by mapping out in writing what is necessary for you to do each quarter, month, and week in order for you to reach your goals.
Do this in such a way that your actions are specific and measurable so that you can hold yourself accountable and your mentor or coach can assist you.
Be sure to break everything down into as small of pieces as possible. We all know that quote about eating an elephant! (And where the heck did that come from?!) If you are just looking at “I need to sell 25 homes next year” without small steps in between, your plan will not motivate you or help hold you accountable for the items you need to accomplish.
🎁 Step Four: Don’t put this plan away! Creating the plan is to use it regularly, not to think about it once. Revisit this weekly to ensure that you are following the steps that you laid out in order to reach your goals. Add to your task lists and calendars the items that you have prescribed yourself so that you are setting yourself up for success in actually accomplishing them.
Below are additional resources that aid in making business plans for you to use. This is YOUR business and there’s not a one-size-fits-all recipe for success, so take the information above, from the links below, and anything else you can find and put together what works best for you and your real estate business.
Objections are the biggest driver of an agent being reluctant to prospect or pick up the phone. And why wouldn’t it be? If everyone we called, texted, and emailed responded with “I’ll be there in 30 minutes and I’m ready to buy a house,” then we wouldn’t even be talking about this, much less have the need for scripting coaches and seminars on how to prospect and what to say on calls.
You can learn lots of specific things to say in response to common real estate objections, but the way to drive the needle forward on real progress is to re-frame the way you think about objections altogether.
Change your mindset about objections
If you can wrap your mind around how to embrace the objection and look forward to it, rather than viewing it as a negative event, you will WANT them to spit out their objection because you’re going to be SO ready for them.
The path to embracing the objection is to ensure that you re-frame the fear surrounding it. Are they really objecting to what you have to say, or are they merely asking for more information in an unusual way since you are strangers and they feel a teensy bit defensive as a natural human response to a sales call?
For instance, if a future client says, “I’m not willing to sell right now because I have no idea where I will go. There’s nothing on the market that I’m interested in. I don’t want to put my family in a position to be homeless or moving multiple times.”
Woof. Although they clarified that they will be buying AND selling with you, they just told you that they’ve been looking, haven’t seen anything they like, and gave you a really understandable reason as to why they are a firm STOP on the process.
They are expecting this to be the end of the conversation, as that’s likely where it ended with the last five agents who rang them up. When someone hits you with a doozy, smile and say, “I am SO glad you said that! Let me share with you what I have been doing for other clients that will make this less of a challenge.”
This wasn’t an objection to what you were saying, it was an opportunity to show this person your value, to teach them what you have done for others in their exact situation (social proof, anyone?), and give them specific guidance on how you can confidently guide them to the top of their real estate transaction Everest.
Most of us feel that friction and negative energy through the phone and we get defensive and nervous, leading us to end the conversation early without even a chance to connect. By practicing viewing an objection as an exciting thing, you can smooth the conversation over and move forward easily. You knew it was going to happen, and you were ready for it because you are well-educated about your market and you have experience and solutions to share.
Remember, if they didn’t want to talk to you and hear what you have to say…they would have hung up already.
Facts vs Feelings
For many people, buying a home is a huge, scary thing to wrap their minds around. AND most people aren’t emotionally aware and mature enough to say, “I don’t know where to start with this and I’m scared, can you help me learn?” to the agent on the other end of the phone, trying desperately to help them.
You ask them if they are considering buying or selling and those gut feelings arise and, as a result, they say the worst things they can think of about it to move on with their day, doing the comfortable things they prefer: “I can’t do that! I’ll be homeless! I’ll lose money! I’ll get stuck with a house I don’t like! I’ll pay too much, the prices are inflated!”
New view: They aren’t objecting, they are asking for more information. This is your time to shine. Educate them on why they won’t be homeless. Why they won’t lose money. Why they won’t pay too much for a house, and what you have done for people JUST LIKE THEM in similar situations.
They are operating very much in their feelings and that often isn’t based in reality. Hear them first (NEVER skip this step!) and then educate them on the facts to move them out of that mental space.
Be proactive about the objections you are hearing
As an agent, you are really in tune with what people are concerned about in your market right now. Having this information will allow you to build your toolkit around these potential challenges for your client and allow you to really address the objection head-on in a kind, stress-free manner that will disarm any friction.
Lead the conversation by asking if they are worried that this isn’t a good time to sell or buy and then listening to all of their perceived knowledge about the market. This will assist them in feeling understood, and lower their guard a bit. After you hear about their concerns, you can then offer them facts to support why now is actually a perfect time to buy or sell and how you can help them.
Remember though, THEY think that what they heard from their neighbor or read in their favorite opinion news source is 100% true. Don’t approach this with an air of “I know best so I won’t listen to you.” Listen, acknowledge THEIR truth, and then share your truth along with your very reliable, factual sources.
Don’t offer them this energy:
Listen to truly understand, not impatiently waiting for your turn to speak
This is incredibly important and the best way to get good at this is to role-play, y’all. Get comfortable with talking about these challenging topics so you aren’t clinging to your script.
The more comfortable you are talking about these subjects, the more you can listen to what the lead is actually saying and respond thoughtfully instead of being on your heels and just waiting for your turn to talk and shout out the next thing you’re SUPPOSED to say to move the conversation along.
Scripts are important to get you started, but the more you can have a natural conversation about real estate, the higher your conversion rate will be!
Listen and ask open-ended questions so you can help them work out what the root of their objection is. Is it time? Is it money? Is it needing more information?
Once you have a direction, provide them with information and resources to sort out how to make a decision.
If you can’t resolve it right then, tell them you’ll get back to them with answers soon…and then do it!
They want to feel heard and understood by you. If they don’t think you are truly listening and helping them meet their needs, they will find someone who will fit that role for them!
P.S. Did y’all know that Steve Harvey has a courtroom tv show? I had no idea until I was putting this together for you.
