Episode 58: The four pillars of building a listing and referral-focused business

Welcome to the "If You List, You Last Podcast" with Bob Mangold, the Listing Coach. In this episode, Bob shares valuable insights on how real estate agents can pivot to become a listings-only business. He discusses the importance of focusing on sellers, identifies different potential listing sources, and provides strategies for effective communication.

Key Topics Covered:

• The four pillars of building a listing and referral-focused business.
• Targeting potential listing sources, including For Sale By Owners (FSBOs), canceled, and expired listings.
• Identifying ideal clients and market areas for efficiency.
• Crafting a compelling value proposition for sellers.
• Why you should never compromise on overpriced listings.
• The power of Home Boss in delivering value and results to clients.
• The importance of effective communication and role-playing in your approach.
• Avoiding the negotiation game on commission fees.
• Creating an avatar for your perfect listing client.
• Opportunities for listing agents in mid to large markets.If you're a real estate agent looking to take your career to the next level and focus on listings, this episode is a must-listen. Also, if you're interested in working directly with Bob in the real estate business, schedule a call at www.BrainstormWithBob.com. 

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Transcript

 Hey, welcome everybody. Bob Mangold, the listing coach here with the, if you list you last podcast. Listen, thanks so much for listening, downloading, and sharing this podcast. I can't believe how fast we're growing and I'm really excited about it. So today we're going to talk about.

How do you pivot to become a listings only business, right? So there are four pillars that I talk about in the, if you list you last book, and it's the roadmap on how to build that listing and referral focus business. Remember referrals are a big part of the business. So buckle up. We've got a lot to cover today.

As always, if you want to share your thoughts on any of the discussions I have on the podcast, jump on over to the Facebook group and join the Real Estate Asset Advisors group, where you can share your thoughts, whether they're good or bad, I want all feedback. Systems tab up in the menu, and you can go, you can go and watch who's selling in 2024. And that's where we talked about who is it that's going to be selling in the next year. The number one answer, folks, is senior citizens. In 2022, they represented 65 percent of every listing in the country.

So there's a huge market from there. We have a bunch of strategies built around that and a bunch of referral partners built around that. The other thing I, again, I always hear that people won't sell their house because they're getting divorced, or I'm sorry, they won't sell their house because their interest rate is percent.

What about when people get divorced? Do they really care what the interest rate is on their house? They don't. They just want to get out of that. Now, one of the spouses usually looks to see, can they refinance that loan? And in many cases they can't. So just know these statistics. Of people who get divorced who own a home, 19.

1 percent of them will sell their home in the first year.  Another 48. 4 percent will sell in the next year. So two years. That means 67. 5 percent of all people that own a home are going to sell it within two years. So, Start thinking about how can you get into that divorce market? Do you have relationships with divorce attorneys?

Do you have relationships with probate attorneys? Probate attorneys, one of my agents in Northwest Indiana got 16 listings this year from just one probate attorney. What if he had two, three, four of them?  That's a business in and of itself. So when we talk about  talking to 10 people a day, we have to determine  where we're going to find them to be able to talk to them.

So I can talk to you both sellers or potential sellers, but I can also  talk to referral partners. Does that make sense? One divorce attorney who sends three, four, five listings a month. Cause remember that's all they do is work with. People getting divorced, they all may not own a home, but just one divorce attorney can be good for three to five listings every single month. 

Go out and get two or three of those and you've got a great business. Now, again, we teach a class on how to take and talk to these people, but that's really what we do inside the Real Estate Asset Advisor Group is we actually train, tell our agents what to say, then role play with them, then have, then have them talk to these referral partners because It's great to say, Hey, I know who to talk to now, but I have to determine what am I going to say to them?

Because if you just call, let's say you call a divorce attorney and just say, Hey, I'm a real estate agent. And I was wondering if you could refer deals to me.  And I know you wouldn't say quite so bluntly. But there's an art in a system to being able to talk to these people.  When you talk to a for sale by owner, what do you say?

So if you listen to last week's podcast, we talked about the cash offer platform and why it's so important to us, because it's very simple to talk to a FISBO, Hey, is your home still available? Yes, it is. Thanks. I have two to three offers. So typically we have three offers. I have three offers on your house.

When can I stop by and review them with you?  So once we determine what we're going or who we're going to talk to, Then we have to determine what we're going to say to them.  And then each one of those will have a different conversation, right? So for sale by owner is going to be different than talking to a canceled or an expired.

Or it's going to be different than talking to a divorce attorney, a probate attorney, and a state planning attorney for the seniors. You have to determine what you're going to say to them. And then the other thing I would highly recommend folks,  once you determine what you're going to say, you need to practice it because I will tell you this, and I think this is way overlooked in the real estate space is it's important to know what you're going to say, but it's even more important to know how you're going to say it. 

So when you call up and you talk to somebody and you sound like a slick real estate salesperson that totally alienates them.  And so when you hear me actually role player in some of the classes, the business briefings that I teach, I'll role play those the way that I actually talk to them.  So if I have a senior citizens, for example,  I would call them up, but I don't talk to them the way you might think it would be like, hi, is this some Jerry, the owner of the property at 123 main street.

Yes, it is. It was like, Jerry, I was looking through the tax records in the neighborhood and I came across yours and I have no idea if it's, I don't even know if it's appropriate for us to talk,  but I was just reaching out to see if you've ever considered selling your home  because if you have, I actually have a group that's looking to buy in your neighborhood and listen, they could  buy your house and Even rent it back to you until you found another one.

And I just wanted to call and see if it would be even appropriate for us to, to even have a conversation.  Notice I didn't sound like a slick salesperson, right? Talked about their tax records. It gets their attention. So you have to role play, not only what you're going to say, but how you're going to talk. 

So again, if we were to talk to an expired listing, it expired, let's say in the last day or two. We don't just call them up, and hi, I noticed this is Bob with eXp Realty, and I noticed your home didn't sell.  That's what everybody else says. Just, hey, is this, is this Jerry? Hey Jerry, my name is Bob, and I'm a local agent, and I'm willing to bet I'm probably the hundredth phone call you've gotten in the last couple days, am I right? 

And they always go something along the lines of, hell yeah.  It's great. Gosh, I bet you're wondering, like, where were all these agents when your house was on the market, right?  Notice how that's not what everybody else says. Notice how I stumble and stutter a little bit. I don't want to sound like that slick  real estate person who's just calling to talk to them about listing their home.

So not only do you have to determine what you're going to say, then you have to determine how you're going to say it so that you don't sound like the slick salesperson. Does that make sense?  The next thing you have to do is determine really why they should hire you.  Because if you just go in and talk about the same thing that every other realtor talks about  and says, you're going to get the same results all too often.

I see agents go in and they have these 30, 40 page PowerPoint presentations, and they walk people through all these things.  And at the end of the day, folks, there's only three questions you have to answer for a potential seller. And that's, how are you going to get me the highest price? How are you going to do it fast?

How And I don't want a lot of hassles and headaches. What are you going to do?  I have something that I call Value to Results Quadrant. And it's basically the more value that you offer, the more results you get. So when it comes to listing the property, what value are you bringing to them other than putting it into MLS and putting a sign in the yard? 

And if you can't answer that,  then you're going to have a  problem listing properties. And if you go in and just take this PowerPoint presentation and spill it all over them  and tell them how wonderful you are and how long your company's been in business, you're going to be in trouble. You're not going to get a lot of those listings.

So. At the end of the day, you've got to figure out, Hey, I know who I'm talking to now, I know what I'm going to say that I'm say to them, but I have to figure out my value quadrant, my value to results, what value am I bringing to them? That's why our agents use home boss, right? Because it allows us to take and sell a house  in 14 days or less, we get the highest market value guaranteed.

So we maximize the amount of equity that they walk away from at the closing table,  and on top of that, we only pay.  They only pay a 3 percent marketing fee to us.  And so our value to results quadrant is very powerful.  And so if you want to learn a little bit more about Home Boss, you can listen to episode two of the podcast, or you can go to realestateassetadvisors.

org  and you can click on the systems tab. And watch the home boss replay of exactly what that is, because you're going to have to go into people's houses and figure out what value you're bringing. Because folks, real estate agents are a dime a dozen. Remember, they can sell it on their own. If you're talking to a Fizbo, you figured that one out, right?

They can hire a traditional agent. That would be most of the agents in your market. They can hire mega teams and every market has those, right? They're on the radio, TV billboards. They can hire them. And well, folks, when those mega agents go into a listing presentation, they have a pretty high value to results quadrant.

And it's not so much that they deliver massive results. Uh, massive value, but they have a lot of results to share. I sell 400 homes a year.  How do you compete with that? How do you answer that? So they may not be real high on the value quadrant, but they are on the results quadrant.  And then obviously you, they can hire a discount or a red fin or anybody like that.

And again, go to Google and punch in discount real estate agents in your city. You'll be shocked how many, how many agents there are.  And so you've got to determine why they're going to hire you.  And I'm going to promise you don't go in with this slick  presentation,  talking about you and your company, find out what they want  and then help them get it.

And then here's the other thing that I will tell you. Another mistake I see agents make all the time.  You go into a listing appointment and you're desperate. You need a listing. You need something to do. You need money to come in. So you start talking to them and they say, my house, you know what? I won't sell for a penny less than 500. 

And you're looking at comps that say it's four 50,  then you get to the house and it really doesn't show very well,  but you need the listing. You need a commission.  And what happens is they can sense who's in control. And one of the things that I will tell you is. You have to detach yourself from the results because just as it's okay for a seller to say no to listing with you  It's okay for you to say no to taking that listing  And so one of the things that I always talk about in a discussion  is I always just say, you know Mr.

Mr. Seller I may or may not be the right agent to help you sell the house  What I do is I have no interest in simply listing the property  My only interest is in selling the property You So if you could help me out and tell me what's important to you  and how quickly you're looking to sell the property and let's see if we can work together to get that accomplished for you because it makes no sense for me to only worry about listing the property and if you feel I'm the right agent for you, awesome.

If you don't think I'm the right agent for you, that's going to be awesome too.  I'm okay either way because I have to make the same determination. Do I actually think I can sell this house for you? Because  You want it sold and I don't get paid until I get it sold. So to list it doesn't help either one of us.

Does that make sense?  And what happens is you gave them the okay, you gave them the out  to say no to you,  but you also took back control saying, Hey, I have to determine  if this is a property that I want to take because I'm not here to list it. I'm here to sell it.  And what happens is when you do that, you take their power away from saying no.

Oh, I'll do it. If you could sell it for 500, I had another agent in here. They said they could sell it 500. No problem. And they take the listing at 5%. My  answer because of the home boss system is, Oh, let's just get this commission thing out of the way. It's usually the elephant in the room is 5 percent what you were looking to  pay in fees. 

And they go, yeah, I've got another agent who will do it. It's awesome. Why don't we get that out of the way right now? My fee is 3%. What do they say now?  How does that work? Are you paying another agent? No. The way that I structure our transactions, when I list a property, if another agent brings the buyer pays them. 

Now I have a process that I can go through to make it easy for the buyer to do that. So they don't write them a check,  but we're going to make sure that their buyer's agent fee does not come out of your equity. Okay. And so your max fees that you're paying to me is 3%. Make sense.  What did they say from there?

Folks, you just took all the power away, right? You told them, Hey, I'm not here to, to list your property. I'm here to sell it. And I'm not playing the negotiation game on commission. My fee is 3%,  but that's where the power of the home boss process comes in because it gives us huge value  and it gets amazing results.

So. That's how we do it. But if we have people that say, no, I don't want to do it that way. And I want to price the house at 500, even though it's four 50 and it doesn't show very well, and I'm not, they don't, they're not willing to do anything to the house folks, it's okay to walk away from those.  So part of figuring out what value you bring to them,  you also have to create an avatar  of who is your perfect client?

Who is your perfect listing client?  And that's what you should target because the minute you start to lower those standards and say, I'll take any listing, right? You hear that all the time. So take any listing and even if it's overpriced and then 30 days later, you start dropping the price  folks. Here's how that works.

People in the neighborhood drive by that listing every day for let's call it  three months  and you've lowered the price a couple of times, but now you're chasing the market.  Your listing expires. Another agent comes in. Now they understand that they should have listed it at the other price, at the price you recommended, the 4.

50. So a new agent comes in and listed at 4. 50, and a week later they see under contract on the sign.  Every neighbor that drove by that sign for the past three to six months seen you didn't sell it, and some other agent came in and listed  You think you're gonna ever be able to build market share in that community? 

Not really. You'll never do it, folks. So if you have a habit of doing that, saying, Hey, listen, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the old fashioned 1950s way of listing a property, just take anything and then convince them to lower the price.  The longer those people drive by in the neighborhood and see that sign up there and you haven't sold it, the less they think of you. 

And then they see the sign come down and a couple of days later, they see a new sign come up and another agent listed it. And a week later, it's under contract. What does that say about you?  What you did is you allowed the agent that followed you in  to look like a hero.  And you look like the goat.  So at the end of the day, just don't take it. 

Didn't do you any good.  So let somebody else fight that battle. Figure out who your perfect avatar is. Where do you want that business? Right? If you live in a large market like Phoenix, you could travel from the, say the Northwest part of Phoenix to the Southeast part, and it'll take you an hour and a half without traffic. 

If you live in the Northwest part of Phoenix, do you want to be traveling to the Southeast part?  So not only who do you want to work with, but where should they be? Because it's not efficient  for you to do it. Now, if you're taking a listing and you get skilled at doing a listing on Zoom, like we teach our agents, our certified real estate asset advisors, where they do their listings on Zoom, it doesn't matter where you live. 

You just have to have buyer's agents to work the open houses for you.  So at the end of the day, you've got to determine  who are you going to talk to?  Where are you going to find them?  What will you say? And then why should they hire you?  And determine who's your ideal client. Okay. So those four things, if you want to get more detail on that, you can certainly visit realestateassetadvisors.

org. Watch those videos or simply guys go to, if you list your last. com, download the book. It might take you an hour to read the book, but I go into a lot more details from that. So, hopefully that helps give you some ideas about how you take and structure your business and the things that you need to work on going forward and how you structure that business.

Fair enough? So, one quick note, I am hiring listing agents in mid to large markets. So if you have any interest in learning what opportunities are available to you and how I could help you,  just schedule a phone call with me at www.  brainstorm. com. You can also go to if youlistyoulast. com and click on the link and schedule a call.

So if you have any interest in pivoting your business and working directly with me, then I've got some opportunities for you if you want to be a listing agent. So just go ahead and schedule a phone call with me at www.  brainstormwithbob. com. So. That's it for this week, folks. I hope this helps you out,  get into practice, doing those things, put a business plan together for yourself to do that, watch the who'll be selling in 2024.

I talked real quickly about doing a zip code analysis so that you can determine where are the best markets to work, right? It's great to say, I'm going to talk to sellers, but don't you want to talk to sellers that are in markets where homes are turning, both that people are putting them on the market and then people are buying them. 

If you target an area and they sell 10 homes a year, is that going to get you the volume of business that you want? So there's a lot more to this  than everybody thinks. So download the book. I showed us a sample of the zip code analysis. You could create your own in there. You could just follow that guideline.

It's easy enough to do.  We just have to start thinking about our business and getting strategic and tactical on what we're wanting to do. 

Have an amazing week, and we'll talk to you on the next podcast.