By Jefferson Snow
I guess the title above is a little misleading. There was no basketball talked on this past Tele-Seminar but there were definitely some kernels of real estate wisdom you need to hear. Maria Barr is averaging one or two listings a week prospecting with REDX leads and aims at taking on at least 50 by the end of the year. Below we’ll highlight some of our top takeaways from this REDX All Star.
Expireds: Why and How?
Maria likes working expired leads for two reasons. First off, she likes it because the seller knows the agony and pain associated with trying to put their house on the market. If they are willing to brave all that a second time, Maria knows they are committed. Secondly, Maria likes working with expired leads because they’re more realistic. They’ve already fought about price with the last Realtor and now it’s out of their system.
Well now that we know why she hunts expired leads, let’s hear how she does it. Maria calls for about an hour, five days per week. Her goal is to make 25 new contacts a day and to set five appointments each week. To make 25 contacts (defined as a live person who she’s never spoken with whose capable of making a decision) an hour, she has to use a dialer. Once she makes contact she’ll go straight into her Mike Ferry scripts. She admits that she was weary of scripts back when she first started, that they were too cheesy or brazen, but know that she has internalized and practiced them it has paid off tremendously. Once you’ve got the script down, the key becomes consistency.
Listing Appointment Tips
Maria also gave some great advice about the importance of pre-qualifying your appointments. There was an expired listing in her area priced around $875k and she was super pumped to go out for the listing appointment . . . until the owner rescheduled . . . and then rescheduled again. After a couple of rainchecks, they finally got another time set to meet up but by then, Maria felt some of her initial energy drained. Negative thoughts began creeping in – “They aren’t going to list. They’ve already been through other Realtors. Is it even worth going out there? . . .”
Thankfully she decided not to blow it off but to call and pre-qualify. The key question she asked though was “If what I say makes sense and you’re comfortable with me and you believe I can sell your house, do you plan to list your home with me when I come out this afternoon?” When the guy said “yes,” she was instantly pumped again and went out and had a great appointment. Moral of the story: Pre-qualifying not only saves you time, and helps get contracts, it can get you excited about appointments.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria Does?
One of the last things Maria related in the call is something every agent needs to hear, especially agents who are on the fence about making phone prospecting a steady part of their business. She said something along the lines of “I truly believe that massive prospecting can solve 90% of your business’s problems.” She says that she sees agents all the time around the office who sit around waiting for business to come to them, waiting for the market to get better, waiting for some secret to be told to them that will be the solution to all their problems. Maria knows that if you pick up the phone and prospect to expired leads, you’re going to drum up something. She admits that it’s scary to call, that it’s not always the first thing she wants to do, but in the end, it’s something she can actually control.
