I want to return for a minute to the Billionaire Kool-Aid post.
This idea of speaking to 5000 people in one week.
In the real estate game we track how many people we speak with each day. And we always are meeting new people. Our job, as a real estate agent, is not helping people to buy and sell homes. To say that, to say our job isn’t buying and selling homes, that seems totally counterintuitive to say that.
Don’t get me wrong. Helping people through the buying and selling process is definitely a part of the work, but the house and transaction is more of a side effect of what we really do.
David Greene’s Sold: Every Real Estate Agent’s Guide to Building a Profitable Business, one of the best little books on real estate I’ve read, puts what we do pretty succinctly: The job of a brokerage is to find more real estate agents and the job of the real estate agent is to find more leads. And what is a lead? Technically speaking, a lead in business is a consumer interested in what your company has to offer.
In real estate, a lead is a warm body. And they are not interested in buying or selling a house. Eventually, though, maybe. Or maybe they know someone who is ready. I’m not sure where I heard this number, or if the statistic is currently accurate, but 1 out of 6 people are ready to be transactional.
If you have 100 friends that’s about 16 people ready to buy, sell, or invest. That number is probably enough to sustain you for a single year? However, the problem for the Realtor is that we don’t know exactly who those 16 people are. We have to find them. Once we do find them, we then must find more.
This makes everybody a rube and me a collector of people. As I started down this career path, I thought a few things. Being a Realtor must be really lonely. Everyone is a customer. No one is a friend. At least I had my family—except my parents thought about selling and moving into a condo so I talked to them about how they could make this move, and they live in Ohio. I’m not even licensed in Ohio! I do, however, know real estate agents in Ohio. I’d earn a referral fee off my parents.
Let me pause for a moment and brag. I was stupid enough to turn down a full-ride scholarship to Wright State University if I changed my intended major from Comprehensive Science Education to English. Went to Bowling Green State University, majored in Comp. Science-ed. Immediately flunked all the science courses. Re-enrolled at Wright State for English. And oh yeah, they did not give me that scholarship. Since then, I earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with a concentration in creative writing from the University of Iowa, a Master of Arts in English Literature with a graduate minor in Native American Studies from the University of Wyoming, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. For the last ten years, I’ve taught writing and public speaking and social media skills.
Notice a theme? I can write. Boy Howdy, do I know how to write. I’ve made people cry because what I’ve written. I’ve made people change minds because what I’ve written. I’ve always inherently known how to communicate.
Here’s what blows me away about real estate. You do not need a high school degree to practice real estate—you need a required 40-hour test prep course, which takes about a month, and you need passing scores on two standardized tests. What blows me away: I have all that communication experience underneath my belt. I can whip out a close read and explain in 3000 to 5000 words the meaning of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s eyeballs. I can unleash a Shakespeare sonnet and tell you all the places the ol’ bard missed the meter. I can make you cry over a Thanksgiving party.
And yet.
It was Keller Williams Coastal and Lakes & Mountains who taught me how to listen.
In the Undercover Billionaire, when Elaine Culotti searched for a building that she could create a business around, she listened to Russell Stone’s problem and proposed a solution.
Yes, I’m a collector of people. But no one’s a rube.
A lot of talk in real estate floats around the “value added proposition” or always “come from contribution.” People in my business will go door-knocking with a flyer that has a list of local events. The idea is that letting people know what’s going on around their neighborhood provides value. And I did that—made a little calendar and knocked on everyone’s doors. That did not work. I mean, people were nice. What value is in a calendar when we have Facebook Events and other online sources of information? Knocking doors annoyed the people and the dogs who were home. That’s not to say I no longer door-knock—I just door knock in a very different way.
But what I was doing in that moment was telling people. That’s what I do when I teach. I tell people things. That’s what I do when I write, I tell people things.
My business coach—yes, I have a coach—raves about Michael Maher’s book The Seven Levels of Communication. This is a horribly written book, Mr. Maher. I have never grown to hate the word “cockamamie” as much as I did through reading Maher’s book, but a ton of good ideas. When you get to the end of Seven Levels, Maher suggests there is one more secret forgotten tool for generating real estate transactions that he did not reveal in his book. He implores you to visit his website and sign up with your email.
Yeah, I did that. Here is the secret conversation weapon:
- What’s your biggest challenge right now?
(it’s important not to provide advice—they are smart people you are talking with, they don’t need advice) - What have you tried so far?
- What else have you tried?
- What are you going to do next?
- What is the first step?
- Who can help you with that first next step?
- By when?
- How would you like me to follow up?
- Do you have any questions for me?
Normally, according to Maher, when you ask Question 9, the person eventually gets around to asking if there’s anything they can do for you. Your response 100% of the time should be referrals.
Well, that script is kinda ridiculous. I shortcut Maher’s sales strategy because honestly, I don’t think about referrals. And I don’t think about real estate and I don’t think about money. I think about the person across from me and I ask two questions.
- What is your biggest challenge right now?
- How can I help?
Then. This is key. Follow through and expect zero compensation for what you do. My goal is to be the most helpful individual you run into. When you need something done, hopefully, you are calling me.
