Episode 29 - Five things an agent can do if they HATE cold calling!

**Title:** How to Succeed Without Cold Calling - Episode 29

Welcome to Episode 29 of the "If You List You Last" podcast with Bob Mangold, the listing coach. In this episode, Bob discusses:

#### Previous Topics Recap
- The importance of planning your business according to your own goals, not just market trends.
- Encouragement to create a business plan and use mind mapping tools.

#### Upcoming Events
- Introduction of a new certified real estate asset advisor program.
- Invitation to join the Facebook real estate asset advisor group for live streams and discussions.

#### Main Topic: Succeeding Without Cold Calling
- Addressing the challenge of real estate agents who dislike cold calling.
- Five alternative strategies to build a successful real estate business without cold calling.

#### Strategies Discussed:
1. **Paid Lead Generation**
   - The changing landscape of buying leads due to new FTC guidelines.
   - Benefits and costs associated with services like Zillow and Realtor.com.
2. **Door Knocking**
   - Effectiveness and real-life success stories.
3. **Open Houses**
   - How to maximize traffic and convert leads from open houses.
4. **Building a Social Media Brand**
   - Utilizing platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to attract clients.
5. **Developing a Referral Network**
   - Building local, national, and global referral partnerships.
   - Leveraging past clients and business service providers for consistent referrals.

#### Mortgage Market Update
- Analysis of recent durable goods numbers and their impact on the mortgage bond market.
- Insights on new home sales and the influence of inflation and deflation on interest rates.

#### Final Thoughts
- The importance of scripting and practicing conversations for success in real estate.
- Encouragement to develop a structured business plan and referral systems.

**Connect with Us:**
- Visit [realestateassetadvisors.org](http://www.realestateassetadvisors.org) for more information.
- Join the Facebook group: Real Estate Asset Advisors for live streams and discussions.
- Schedule a call with Bob at [brainstormwithbob.com](http://brainstormwithbob.com).

**Don't Miss:**
- Bi-weekly Elevate Business Briefings every other Wednesday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Register at [elevatebusinessbriefings.com](http://www.elevatebusinessbriefings.com).
- More details and podcast episodes at [ifyoulistyoulast.com](http://www.ifyoulistyoulast.com).

Join our Facebook Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestateassetadvisors

Visit our website to watch replays of our Wednesday "Elevate Business Briefings" at: www.RealEstateAssetAdvisors.org

Download a copy of my book, "If you list, you last!" at www.IfYouListYouLast.com

Transcript

 Hey, welcome fellow listing agents Bob Mangold, the listing coach here with episode 29 of the If You List You Last podcast. As always, thanks for listening, sharing, and downloading. Now, over the last couple weeks, I talked in two different podcasts about setting the foundation for your business. To actually develop the business that you want, not the business that your company or the market dictates to you, but the business you want.

So here's my question. Have you done any of that planning? Have you sat down, thought about it, and put your ideas to paper? Because listening to a podcast is great, but if you don't do anything with the information, then how helpful was it? Now, over the weekend, I actually created a mind map, they have software for that, yes, of what this process looks like, and I'm actually working on putting something like that together for a certified real estate asset advisor program.

So be on the lookout in the next few weeks. I'll be reviewing it in an upcoming Facebook live stream. So make sure you jump over to our Facebook real estate asset advisor group so you can join the conversation, share your thoughts, comments, or questions on any of the topics that I discuss right here on the podcast.

And I'm going to start doing more and more Facebook live stream. Classes, they could be five minutes, they could be 10 minutes, they could be 30 minutes. So jump on over there and become a member. Now, this week, I wanna talk about a huge problem for real estate agents. How to be successful in real estate if you absolutely hate cold calling and you won't do it. 

More importantly, I'm gonna share five different ways that you can still build a great business. Let's get started on this week's podcast. This week's mortgage market update. Durable goods numbers came in late last week. And again, the numbers being reported are being completely skewed by the markets.

While the numbers came in relatively flat, it's only because the numbers were adjusted again from last month. So we're in this vicious cycle really for the last 18 months of every economic new number that comes out  is always skewed. They give these really great numbers. And then over the next two or three months, they start to skew them back and actually report them numbers and start to cut them back so that the number that gets reported every month looks better than it really is when in fact it's actually pretty terrible. 

And so it's one way of manipulating, call it the media, if you will. is hey, I give you a really great number. Then over the next three months, I make those adjustments because nobody pays attention to the adjustments. They just care about what you hear it referred to as the headline numbers. Same kind of thing happened with new home sales for the number of signed contracts in April of 2024.

The reason I share this data with you, folks, is it does have an impact on the mortgage bond market. which has an impact on interest rates. So even though you go what are new home sales have to do with that? The bond markets react to these kinds of data and this kinds of numbers, right? So again, another reason that it's bad when they report numbers that look like they're better than they really are because the bond market then gets afraid of inflation, raises the rates on it. 

So let's talk about new home sales. So the annual sales pace is 634, 000 projected for the remainder of the year. It was down 4. 7 months month over month and 7. 7 year over year. But again, what did they do? They revised the numbers from last month and with that we would have been down eight and a half percent month over month.

So they subtracted away a bunch of closings from that. And if we would have used that number, new home sales were actually down eight and a half percent month over month. That's a pretty terrible number. Now the median home price was 434, 000 for a new home, which is down 1. 4 months, but up 3. 9 year over year. 

Again, folks, remember, median price is different than average price or list price. It simply means that as many homes are being sold above 434 as below. And at the end of the day, folks, that median price home will come down. You'll see those numbers come down because people are having to buy a smaller or a lower priced home because of the interest rates.

It doesn't mean. that housing prices are going down. It simply means people that could have afforded, let's say a 500, 000 house a year ago can now only afford a 450, 000 home. Make sense? So it does have an impact on interest rates. Now, total inventory in the month of April was 480, 000. The sales pace is 53, 000 a month, which means we have a 9.

1 month supply of inventory, which is up over March. But remember this folks. That number that we report is totally bogus  because while there's 480, 000 lots available for sale, only 98, 000 homes were completed.  So unless a house is completed, there's not a chance to sell it. It's a vacant lot. A builder releases, let's say, 100 lots.

That shows in the total inventory that home is available, but nobody's able to buy it until they finish building on it.  So the number of completed homes were only 98, 000 of which 53, 000 got  put under contract, which means there's an actual month's supply of 1. 85 months of new home inventory.

Now that is up from 1. 64 in March using the same mathematical formula. As you can see folks, things are starting to slow down. The economy is slowing down. Inflation is slowing down. The reality of it is, again, a series of numbers where released last week and the two things that are affecting inflation the most  are insurance and housing and rent.

If you took those two factors out of the equation, inflation would only be rising at seven tenths of a percent. Folks, that's an issue, right? So you have inflation, which isn't good, but now you can get into deflation, which is even worse. Jerome Powell is really walking a very tight rope right now And as long as the government continues to spend money like a drunken sailor, it's not good for any of us.

I don't care what your political persuasion is. You can't have the government spending two and three times the amount of money that they bring in every month. Make sense? So that's where we're at on mortgages for this week. So let's get into, what do you do if you hate cold calling, right? You're absolutely hate it.

You're scared to death of it. You simply can't bring yourself to do it.  What do you do? First, let me give you a few cold hard truths. Number one, you have to learn to talk to people anyway, whether it's on the phone or in person. There's no scenario in real estate where you can be successful without talking to people. 

Imagine going on a listing presentation and not talking to them. That wouldn't work out well, right? Or you go I'll work in open house, but I don't want to talk to people.  At the end of the day, folks, if you're in the real estate business, you have to learn to talk to people. So here's what that means for you.

You have to spend time thinking about what you'll say And trust me, there's a ton of scripting out there. In the Real Estate Asset Advisor program, I script out all these things. And then we play with them, tweak with them, or tweak them. We use them in real life. And then we come back and make changes to them.

So you have to figure out what you're going to say. Then you're going to have to figure out how you say it. If I was to call somebody or let's say at an open house, right? And you said welcome in. Thank you. Is there any information you'd need to know about the house? Folks, that sounds like you need a cattle prod to be, shocked alive.

How you say things is almost as important as what you say.  And then once you've done that, you have to practice it and practice it some more until it becomes part of you. If any of you have seen me speak live, typically what I do is I answer objections on stage and I let people throw them at me  and I make them some kind of bet that they can't beat me or stump me with those objections.

The reason I'm able to do that, folks, is I've thought through all this stuff and I've been doing a long time. And then I've practiced it thousands and thousands of times. So at the end of the day, it's not an effort for me to talk to people, but full disclosure, I am a D personality. I am not the guy who goes to a party and go, Hey, tell me about a little Johnny soccer.

How's everything going at work for you? That's not me. It's just not within my personality. I had to practice things to say, to be able to have those conversations. Fair enough. So I just want you to know, at some point you have to talk to somebody. So at the end of the day, what I want to share with you though, cold calling private sellers, we might refer to them as FSBOs.

I'm going to stop referring to them as FSBOs. They're private sellers, plain and simple.  And if you'll cold call a private seller and expired listings, it's the fastest, most efficient, lowest cost way to getting paid.  It's the best there is. Now, I'm going to give you other methods to be paid that to get paid, but none are faster and lower cost than those two tasks.

Now, what we say to FSBOs and expires is a different podcast. But at the end of the day, folks, while I'm going to give you other opportunity or other options, I want you to understand that if you'll cold call and talk to a private seller and understand  that what you can do to help them sell a home, they can't do on their own. 

Maybe give you a little bit more confidence doing it, but it's the fastest way. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to break these five things down for you. The first ones I want to give you cost money, right? So if you don't want to go out and talk to people, then you've got to figure out how to have people come in and talk to you.

So there's two ways. Number one is you can do paper closing leads or simply buy leads. Now, that game is going to change in about six weeks when new FTC guidelines go in about how companies can sell leads. So just be forewarned, that whole game is going to change. And I'm not going to go through it all now because it's going to change.

But just know you can do that, right? You can buy Zillow now and, you can pay 35, 40, sometimes 45 percent referral fees.  What I want you to understand is that's expensive, folks. At that point, I would rather you see you advertise to get your own leads  and put systems in place like that because it's going to be far lower cost.

But I also recognize that cash flow is an issue and you may not have 500 to 1, 000 a month to advertise and get your own leads. But if you do, there's very effective ways and low cost ways to do that. It's one of the reasons that I created our own online digital ad agency for the members of my group.

So I've got agents in 44 states and five countries, and we actually take that burden off of them, and we'll do that. They have to pay for their own ad costs, then they pay a small fee for it, make no mistake about it, but we handle it all for them. And I promise you, the money they spend to do those leads is a heck of a lot less than what they would pay like an Op City or Realtor.

com or Zillow. But just understand those are two options available to you. So let's talk about some free methods because let's face it, if you hate cold calling, cashflow may be an issue.  So  the first thing that I can tell you is you can go and door knock, right? But this is why I prepped you with, you have to learn to talk to people  because folks, again, if you hate the phone, that's one thing,  but the Next cheapest and fastest way is to literally go door knock on a private seller's property or expired listings door and talk to them.

If you can't pick up a phone, go talk to them. Again, you're going to have to know what to say. The problem that I have with saying door knocking is the number one,  if people are afraid of cold calling,  They're afraid of door knocking maybe 10 percent less. I don't know why that is  You're just talking to people and you can do that in a friendly open manner and most people When you are face to face with them are not gonna be as rude as what they are on the phone, right?

We call it phone courage. Everybody can talk smack and be nasty on a phone But if you're standing in front of them, it's a lot harder to do and then again you can strategize about what you say You  to not do that. Okay. So door knocking is certainly one of them. And I think I may have relayed on a podcast a couple of months ago, but actually talked to the agent who sold Ben Affleck's home in LA.

And because he was duly licensed in Florida and California, Ben Affleck and JLo were moving to Florida. So he sold Ben's 31 million, I think it was, or 33 million. in California and sold them a 63 million home in Florida. Almost a hundred million in production.  And he got that from door knocking. Now, I am shocked beyond all belief that Ben Affleck is answering his own door, but he was.

Personally, if I was that famous, I'd have some security people answering the door for me, but nonetheless, that's not how they rolled, right? So almost a hundred million dollars in production from door knocking. Second option, open houses.  Now, again, I'll be the first to admit to you, your typical open house that you do from 12 to two on a Saturday and you put three signs out,  isn't going to be a big deal, but I guess something's better than nothing. 

But our Home Boss open houses,  I would say is a nationwide average. We probably average right now Two to two hundred and fifty people in an open house.  Oh my gosh That gives you an awful lot of opportunity to talk to people But again, do you have a strategy like if you have that much traffic, do you have a strategy on how to convert that?

We do inside of the real estate asset advisor group. That's what I teach agents how to do. And then we have materials and things like that, that if it's that busy, you go, what do you mean that busy? So one of my agents on mother's day weekend  actually had an open house on Saturday and Sunday and 682 people came through.

It can be so busy. You don't even have time to talk to people. Even when you had, I think he had two or three agents working with them and two LOs working with them and they still couldn't get to it all.  So what's critical is if you're going to do open houses, Like you better have a strategy on getting more people to them than just what the average agent does, right?

So guys if you want to earn average income for a real estate agent Do what the average agent does  if you want to make a lot of money in the real estate business Do what the superstars do so open house is another great way to do it But again, you've got to be strategic about what you're going to say and what materials you have and what that follow up looks like Right?

It's not just I show up at an open house and with my wit and charm, I just wow everybody over to, to sign buyer broker agreements or sign listing agreements if they're a neighbor on the house. It doesn't work like that.  So I'd love to tell you it does, but it doesn't. Number three, build a social media brand. 

Now, again, if you hate cold calling and door knocking, you may not love being out there on social media. You may hate showing up on camera and all those other things, but folks I'm just telling you these are ways to do it  now It's gonna take you a while to do that and you don't just start posting things on Instagram tick tock and your phone starts ringing off the hook I'd love to tell you it works like that Now you can do that with YouTube and it doesn't ring off the hook initially.

It might take a few months But understand that if you do build a social media brand, especially using YouTube you can generate quite a bit of business from that. Okay. And then the last one I want to share with you is one that's near and dear to me because this is how I built my real estate and mortgage business over the years I was in production. 

And it's a little bit slower route than cold calling. Again, I'll give you full disclosure. I've called a few private sellers in my time, but nothing on a normal basis because I was able to take and build a three prong  referral network of people that would refer business to me. Okay. And so I built it in three, three breakdowns.

Number one is locally. Number two is nationally. And number three is globally, right? In Phoenix, Arizona, Scottsdale, Arizona, we have people moving from all over the world.  So it was important for me to have a global network of real estate agents from other countries. Now, because, social media and the internet has changed that guys, like you go where would I find a real estate agent in Dubai?

Go to network, go to LinkedIn, go to Google and start reaching out to those people. So what I teach my people to do is take and utilize LinkedIn and Facebook messenger  and then use Instagram and TikTok to get that message out more globally. Okay, and then we have messages that we send to them that we've scripted that are tried and true.

We do the same thing nationally. We do a little bit of research and we find out where  people are moving into our market from, right? So we could have, let's say, a military base or we could have a like Tucson, Arizona. They have a lot of Raytheon and General Dynamics and military employers there.

And they move those people in and out all the time. Guess what? I find out where those, other facilities are at, and I start to network with other agents in those markets,  because if they have clients that are moving from, let's say, Virginia, McLean, Virginia, to Scottsdale, Arizona,  I would gladly pay a referral fee for that.

And then finally, building a local network of referral partners. So again, this podcast is not about how we go about doing it. It's about giving you some ideas and then I will be covering how to build a local referral network through the Facebook group in the next few weeks, doing it as a live and kind of talk about what we do and I'll show you the structure of how it's mind mapped out and things of that nature.

But guys, the single best resource for you is figure out how locally. you can start getting referrals. Let's be honest, isn't the easiest place to start with your past clients? But what do you say to them?  What do you do for them? Why should they refer somebody to you? Those are the more important questions you have to answer upfront. 

So again, as I said over the last couple of podcasts, sit down and plan out your business. One of those plans has to be, what am I going to do to get referrals from my past clients? Pretty simple thought process, right? And then figure out what that looks like and put the systems and processes in place to do that.

Then, what about referral partners that I send people out to? My mortgage people, home inspectors, insurance agents,  things of that nature. 1031 exchange companies. What about them? And then what I was best at, right? So the way that I refer to that, I refer to that as our Rolodex of business partners.

Those are people that I come across all the time  that I need to refer people to get transactions closed. Included in that Rolodex  would be what I would call service providers, right? How many times has somebody called you up and said Hey Bob, do you know a good plumber?  Hey Bob, I need to get the house painted.

Hey Bob, I need somebody to do flooring. Those would be in my Rolodex of business providers because Think of it this way guys, those business providers, painters, landscapers electricians, plumbers, people that are going into houses to do work. Isn't that what people who are getting ready to sell their house start doing?

Carpet cleaners. And having a relationship with multiples of each of those businesses and let them be the bird dog for you, but at the same time create a system. where you're referring deals to them, right? So it's called the law of reciprocity. It's giver's get. When you give out referrals, the best way to become a referral based agent is to become a master at giving out referrals. 

So I created systems and put that in place where I could actually count and monetize how much business I would send to a local business. And then I met with them once a month and sat down and reviewed those numbers. Hey Bob's Bakery, over the last month,  we've had 47 people take advantage of my referrals to come in and introduce themselves to the business.

Just say it's 40, the math is easy. 40 times 12 would be 480 customers a year that I would present to them.  Do you think it's unreasonable for me to expect two transactions from them a year?  And they can refer them to different events that I do, right? We do an online webinar once a month on www.

TheBusinessProfessor. com how to use a government rebate to pay a home off in 10 years or less. So they could invite him to that. They could invite him to other events that we do. But the main thing is, I found a way to create a hack, if you will, to hack their databases. To make their customers become my customers and have my name out in front of them.

somewhere between three and 10 times a week. And then I'm always able to use those value propositions that I have about, hey, let us help you pay your home off in seven to 10 years using a 30 year fixed rate loan. Hey, give me a call and we can talk about how we can do it and how much money we could save for you, right?

We're always in front of them. Or thinking of selling your home?  Hey, let us sell your home for the highest market value guaranteed in only 14 days, paying only half The cost of an old fashioned listing. Hey, call, text, or DM me to get an idea of how we can help you do that. So now I'm able to take and go into their database of people and get in front of them.

Now does this process generate cashflow as quickly as cold calling? It doesn't, but it can also happen relatively quickly, especially if we start to focus on your past clients. Again, do you have a system for that? Do you have a process for that? That's what the real estate asset advisors are all about. We have those processes in place for agents to do it.

You don't have to think about it. Just do it. So you can start to generate that business. Here's the good news. That local national and global network of referral partners  works for years and years. Once you put it in place, you have a business that consistently generates income and closings  from referrals, no cost, right?

Unless it is from an agent from another place at no cost. It pays dividends for decades. One of a friend of mine, she's a KW agent. She did 29 transactions in the last 13 months. Just short of 8 million in productions. 100 percent from real estate agents in other markets across the country. So building that network of referral partners can provide you a huge source of revenue consistently for decades.

So again, my goal today, I'm not going into the details of how we do that. Go join the Facebook group, Real Estate Asset Advisors. I'll be doing a live stream on that. It's what we teach and have systems in place. for agents at the real estate asset advisor group. If you want some information on that, just visit our website, www.

realestateassetadvisors. org. Go there, check it out. So I wanted to give you some ideas on things you could do that  don't cost a lot of money, may take time, but don't cost money, or ways that you can spend a little bit of money to do it, or a combination of all those things, folks. So at the end of the day, I hope that helps.

Thanks. Hope it takes away some of the fear of getting out there and putting business in place. But again, folks, sit down, put a business plan in place and figure this stuff out, or schedule a time with me. You can go to brainstormwithbob. com  and schedule a call, and I can talk to you a little bit about how you might want to look at putting these things in place.

Now don't forget to jump on our bi weekly Elevate Business Briefings every other Wednesday at 1 p. m. Eastern time. You can register at www.elevatebusinessbriefings.com. And if you want more detailed information on the whole Home Boss process and how we use it, downline by book at www if you list you last.com. 

And don't forget, you can connect with podcast there too. So that's it for this week's show. We'll talk to you next week. And remember if you list you last, talk to you next week.