Todd Bates: Hoss Pratt: Hi. Welcome everyone out there. It s Todd Bates here with the Mega- Producer Program Sales and Conversion Training Call #2. We try to do these once a week doing the Mega-Producer Program just to give you an idea how to convert people better over the phone, face-to-face, what questions to ask, what not to ask. I ve invited Hoss Pratt back on this phone call. Hoss, are you out there? I m here. Thanks, Hoss, for being on the phone call. I call Hoss my Prospecting King. We ve interviewed him before on these calls and Hoss is a prospecting king. He does $20 million plus a year, primarily on FSBOs and Expireds. He knows how to handle just about every objection. I ll get through those top five objections that I want you to do through here in a second. Just as a reminder on this particular call, when it comes to sales and conversion I want you to keep in mind that if you re trying to sell over the phone it s not going to work. If you re answering questions over the phone it s not going to work, primarily because you re losing control of the conversation. Then if you re looking or sounding too much like a real estate agent or a mortgage broker it s not going to work, because quite honestly we don t have the best reputation out there in the general public. Real estate agents and mortgage people are not the most well-liked people because again, quite honestly, 85 out of 100 of us don t know what we re doing. That s why we re in this program. We re the 15 out of 100 that do know what we re doing. That s the reason for the Mega-Producer Program. As you re listening to the different objections on today s call, take some notes, write it down, read the transcript, listen to this call over and over again, but I want you to get better at being the doctor. Remember when you go to the doctor he or she asks you a hundred questions then gives you the pills. That s it. It s not their problem if you take the pills or don t take the pills. It s not their problem if you like their opinion or don t like their opinion. They re going to give it to you flat out, very direct, no-bs kind of approach. Then when they re done, here s the kicker. Ready for this? When they re done they re not emotionally attached to your illness. They re on to the next patient. As that applies to our real estate and mortgage business it s not our problem if they re upside down in their home. 1
It s not our problem if they re unrealistic about the price of their home. It s not our problem if they want someone to come and sell their home for a half of one percent commission rate. Not our problem. We can t be emotionally attached to it because our job every day is to go out and find new business. Again, keep that in mind as we go through this. Serious Buyer and Serious Seller Scripts Now I ll start out this Sales and Conversion call with a couple of reminders on the Serious Buyer and Serious Seller scripts. The Serious Buyer script is obviously when you re talking to a buyer. Now as you all know, buyers are very fickle people. They re much very a waste of time unless you qualify them up front. Now the Serious Buyer and the Serious Seller scripts are both on the Underground Coaching Club Web site. Please go download them off the Marketing Systems link. The Serious Buyer script always goes something like this. Serious Buyer When a buyer calls you up and asks for the price of the home or the location of the home or something about information related to buying a certain home, what you want to do is pause them, stop them in their tracks and say, Hey, great. Hold on, I ll grab that information; but would you mind if I m direct with you? They re going to say yes. Then you re going to go through the Serious Buyer script. Hey, you know I ve figured out over the years that serious buyers don t want to see just one home, they want to see 20 homes. Serious buyers have no problem getting qualified. Serious buyers only want to work with one agent and be represented by one person because they understand the importance of that. Serious buyers, and here s the big kicker, they want to buy in the next 30 to 45 days. Given that fact, do you fall in to the serious buyer category or justkind-of-looking-around category? And 85% of them will say, No, I just wanted to find out the price of the home. I m just looking around. Thus, that s your way off the phone. We re not information people. We re not in the information business. We ve talked about that before. You are in the qualifying business. I can t spend time on the phone with people that are not serious buyers. 2
Serious Seller Now on the Serious Seller side, I just added this script again to the Underground Coaching Club Web site last night. You can go download it off the Marketing Systems link. But when sellers call you up what they re primarily going to be asking you, and they want an answer from you over the phone is, what do you charge, what s your marketing plan, have you ever sold a lot of homes in my area before, what company do you work with? All of these things if you answer them over the phone will absolutely, positively kill your chance of conversion. As with anything else, we don t answer questions over the phone. If you call up your doctor and say, Hey, Doctor, I ve got a headache. Just write me the pills over the phone, what would your doctor say? Better make an appointment. Okay, so here s the Serious Seller script. When they ask you, "What do you charge or how much marketing do you do or have you ever sold homes in my area before? Who s the big company that you work with?" here s what you say. No problem, I ll get you that information in a second; but Mr. Seller, I ve done this for a long time. Would you mind if I m very direct with you? I found out over the years that sellers fall into two different categories; people that are serious and fair, and then there s the second category, people that are just trying to shop me around. Here s why I need to be direct with you. I found out that a serious seller will have a very direct, no-bs conversation with me and answer my questions and be very fair in the process. A serious seller will absolutely have no problem having me over, even for a handful of minutes just to meet with me and see my marketing plan and see if we have rapport with each other. Serious sellers, here s another big one, serious sellers have no problem because they re planning on selling their home in the next 30 to 45 days. Given the fact that I know all these things about serious sellers, would you put yourself into that category or are you just a person trying to shop me around? Now when you say it that bluntly, that directly, guess what you re going to get 85% of the time? Eighty-five percent of the time you re going to get this. You know, I m just trying to find out what you charge, I m just trying to find out who you work for, and I m just trying to find out how many homes you ve sold in the area. Thus, that s your reason to get off the phone with these people. 3
I promise you, I promise you, I promise you and Hoss, I think you can back this up if you ever answer a commission question over the phone, you re dead in the water. Would you agree with that, Hoss? Absolutely. So think about the Serious Buyer and the Serious Seller script. Now we have Hoss Pratt on the phone here. Let s get started with this conversation on Sales and Conversion. When we talked before, Hoss, I got a lot of feedback, great feedback, from people listening in on the call, giving me their two cents worth on what they thought of the call. All of it was very positive. But they wanted to know the five main objections that you get when you re on the phone. Again, your specialty is FSBOs and Expireds, and obviously normal sellers. But FSBOs and Expireds is primarily where you built your Prospecting King kind of identity here. They wanted me to ask you will you go through your five main objections, and then what you say. Yep. You mean just list them all right now? Yeah. Just go through number one; here s what they say, and here s how I handle it. The Five Main Objections and Responses 1) Commission Objection Okay. The first one I would say is, they say, I don t want to pay six percent commission. Okay. Again, the idea is you don t answer any commission questions over the phone. So I just continue to ask questions. It s kind of funny, Todd, because I m a little bit different, I guess, because I don t ever overcome these objections. All I do is simply ask a ton of questions behind every objection. So if I say to you, Todd, I saw your letter but look; I m not willing to pay a six percent commission. It s just too high. I can t do it. I don t have enough equity; I don t want to do it. What s your initial response to that? Are you a FSBO or Expired? 4
I m a FSBO. Okay. So are you willing to pay a three percent co-op if I brought you a qualified buyer? Yeah, we d think about it. Okay. Well, if I brought you a qualified buyer today who wanted to purchase your property, would you pay three percent? Yeah, we probably would. I mean, I d have to ask my spouse about it, but you know, three percent. We just don t want to pay six percent. Okay, but it s safe to assume you would pay the three percent? Yeah, okay. Okay. Well, how long are you going to try to sell the property on your own before you decide to explore other options? Probably forever. We re in no hurry to move. So you re never going to explore other options? You re going to try to sell this property on your own, either if it sells or doesn t; it doesn t matter. You re always going to sell the property on your own, no matter what happens? Yeah. Look, seriously, I ve gotten 45 calls. I don t want to pay a six percent commission. I understand that. What I m trying to do here, Todd, is figure out if I can find you a qualified buyer. If you re willing to pay a three percent, then what I m going to do is put your property in my database of homes, along with properties in the MLS, that I can show all my buyers that the features of your property match their needs. So I m just trying to figure out what your goal is and what you re trying to attain, so I can try to bring you a qualified buyer. Yeah, we just can t afford the six percent. So three percent, maybe, if it s a qualified offer. But I m not going to give away my home. I m not going to give away the farm just to sell my home here. I m not asking you to give it away. I just want a commitment that you ll pay three percent if I bring you a qualified buyer. 5
Yeah, absolutely. So you just keep coming back to the three percent. You re just asking over and over again about the three percent. I ignore everything you re saying until I get the questions that I want answered, and answered correctly. Notice that I kept going back. Well, I want to know, Well, I mean, if I brought you said, I don t know, I may. I want a yes or no. Will you pay a three percent co-op? And if you say no, I m trying to flush you. That s what I m doing. You re trying to interview them, trying to qualify them. All right, that s objection number one, the commission objection. What s number two? 2) Waiting Objection We plan on waiting till spring. That s what a lot of people are saying now. That would be in the case of an expired listing? Yes. You call me up and I m the seller. Hey, great. We ve got 4,700 calls and 15 stacks of letters here, but we decided just to hold off. We re going to wait till spring to put the home back on the market. Okay. Why do you want to wait till spring, Todd? Well, it s just a better time to sell. It s a better market to sell in the spring. There s not a lot of traffic coming through over the winter. We just didn t get a lot people through the home. We think we re going to fix up the home a little bit and wait till spring. So if tomorrow I had a buyer who wanted to purchase the property, you wouldn t sell the property. Correct? Yeah, if you had a buyer tomorrow. But where s the buyer going to come from We didn t even have our home listed right now. We think if we wait till spring we can get a higher price for it. Here s the deal. May I be direct with you, Todd? Sure. 6
You and everybody else are thinking the exact same thing. You know, I ve been doing this business a long time, and especially at this time of year everybody s saying they re going to wait till spring. That s because they think that s when all the buyers come out of the woodwork, and that s when they re going to sell the property. Here s the problem, Todd. Everybody s thinking the same thing, so come spring, what s going to happen? The market s going to be flooded with properties. Everybody s going to put their home on the market in the spring, and the market s going to be flooded. So you re better off to put the property on the market now, at a competitive price. With less competition, you re going to sell that property the fastest for the most amount of money in this market, rather than waiting till spring. Do you follow me? Okay. So in objection number two, we re going to wait. You go back to the competition approach. If you wait just like everybody else is waiting, then you re going to come on the market with a hundred other homes just exactly like yours, which brings the price down. You d be better focused on putting the home on the market right now. Does that make sense? That s the answer to objection number two. Yep. I ve got it. It s a good approach. Objection number three. 3) Tight Equity Objection I don t have the equity to pay a full commission. That s another one that we re hearing right now. This is a funny one because it s kind of like where they need me at this point. They don t have the equity and I ve got that magic program out there that s going to help them to get out of the current situation they re in, without them either going into foreclosure or having to stay in the current property. Whatever the situation is they re in. Okay. So let s go through this role-play real quick. Okay. Objection number three is, I don t have the equity. So you call me up and let s say I m an Expired or FSBO. I guess it wouldn t even matter in this 7
particular situation. You know, Hoss, I got your letter; I got your calls. But here s the problem. I can t pay six percent. I don t have the equity to do it. I m upside down in this home. We do want to sell but there s no way I can afford to pay you and get out of the home. Okay. So that s the only reason you re not listed with an agent, just because you don t have the equity to pay the full six percent? Yeah, there s no way I can get out of it. I owe too much on this property. Why do you want to sell the property? Well, we re trying to move to a bigger house. So that s the only reason you want to sell this property, is just so you can go to a bigger property? Correct. Where did you get your pricing? I mean, is this a market evaluation you did on your own, or did you speak with agents? How do you know you don t have the equity to pay the six percent? Well, when we first put it on the market on our own, we looked around, we get postcards, we get updates, and we just picked other homes like ours and picked a price right in the middle of that. Did you look at the actives or the solds? I don t know. We just get these flyers at our home and the postcards at our home, plus we went online. We have all that information and we just saw all the prices and the range they were in, so we put it right in that same range. If I could get you the price that you need to get with the commission, whatever commission structure you decide to go with, are you willing to explore other options? Well, yeah. We re trying to get out of this home, but we can t do it right now. The market s too slow and we re upside down in this property. The answer to your question is yes. You would. So if I have a program to get you out of the situation you re in, you re willing to listen to me? 8
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. But again, there s no way we can pay six percent. We re too tight. I understand. Let me be the judge of that, because I m going to do a market evaluation on the property and I m going to see exactly where you re at. I mean, I don t know if your pricing s correct or where you re priced at. I don t know, but I m the professional. So let me take a look and see exactly where you re priced at, to see if you do have room to pay a commission. We have different commission structures. We ll have a program to get you out of the situation you re in. Okay. So in objection number three, which is they were too tight with equity sort of situation, you re coming back to, You probably don t have your home priced at market value, or priced correctly, because you didn t have the right information up front. You seem to keep coming back to different commission structures, different commission plans. Now here s a question for you, Hoss. Just curiosity here, because I don t know the answer to this. You have three different commission plans? Yeah. It s a menu of commission rates. Okay. It s actually called our Smart Seller Program. Smart Seller Program. In your particular case, what are the three different plans, three different choices? Okay. Well that s the thing though, Todd. I have so many different programs. I advise everybody they should have an arsenal to come back with stuff like this. At our market, we usually get six percent. I take a lot of listings at seven percent. I take some listings at six percent; five percent depending on what they want done; as little as zero percent if they sell the property themselves. If I list a For Sale by Owner and I let them market the property themselves while it s listed with me; then if they sell it, I charge no commission. Okay. They can put ads in the paper, they can do their own open houses; they can do all these things. If they sell it, then I don t charge any commission. 9
Has that come back to bite you yet? No. Honestly, probably it has twice. But it s made me so much money it s sick. That just overcomes a huge hurdle when you re prospecting FSBOs. Okay. So you have different commission plans, and the most popular in your particular business is between six and seven percent. Is that a fair statement? Yeah. I mean I usually get more commission than anybody else. Okay. Let s go on here. Objection number four. What is it? 4) Bad Experience with Previous Agent Objection They had a bad experience with a previous agent. So real estate agents suck; you re a real estate agent, thus you must suck, too. Yep. Okay, so let s go through this role-playing. Look, Hoss, you re the 47 th caller. I told people in the paper that I don t want to work with real estate agents because the last real estate just put a sign in the yard, didn t do anything for me, never called me. I don t like real estate agents. So what didn t the other agent do that you possibly wanted done? What could they have done differently? Well, that s the whole point. They didn t do anything. They literally put a sign in my yard; I talked to them once a month, if that. After about six months my home wasn t sold; they didn t tell me what was going on, and I can t see what you guys get paid six percent to do. I don t blame you. Try working with a lot of these agents. But here s the deal. I apologize on behalf of the industry, sir, but here s the problem. I m trying to figure out what this agent could have done differently that you expected. Well, they didn t do any marketing, as far as I can tell. You never heard from her? No, I didn t hear from him. As far as I could tell, all they did is put it in the MLS and put a lock box on my door. But they never brought by buyers 10
themselves. They never showed the home themselves. They didn t do any open houses; they didn t do any flyers on the brochure box out front. How many showings did you get? A handful over the last couple of months. We had more in the beginning but it didn t sell, so we got to a point with that agent that it was just one or two showings a month. And what was the feedback from those buyers who came in? Some of the feedback in the beginning was it was too high a price; but all we had to do, in my opinion, is find the right buyer. I mean, they ll see the value of my vinyl floors. They ll see the value of my shag rug. Everyone likes 1970s rugs. Right, Hoss? Yes, of course. Who doesn t? I put on a new roof. We made the deck in the back real nice; we just painted it. We put a fence in the back yard to keep the dogs in. All of that adds huge value to the price of the home, correct? It just depends. I haven t seen the property, so it s hard to tell. What s your time frame on wanting to get this property sold? Well, it was six months ago. We re trying to sell it now ourselves, just primarily because the last guy didn t do anything. I d rather do all the things that they did and save the six percent commission. In the next month or two we d like to have it under contract. In the next month or two? Yeah. Wow. Okay. Obviously it was on the market for six months; you re in a hurry. I understand completely what you re dealing with. That s what I ve built my business on, is working with sellers like you who have been hurt in the past by other agents. That s the reason we have programs like my 89-Point Marketing Plan, the Easy Exit listing agreement, the Smart Seller Program, and so forth. But my goal is to try to figure out why this property didn t sell the first time it was listed. It looks like it s a beautiful property. I m sitting here looking at pictures. The agent didn t do anything. They didn t bring any buyers by themselves. 11
Here s what I d like to do. I d like to do a market evaluation on the property, Todd. Well, we re not listing it because we don t like real estate agents. We re going to do this ourselves for a while. I understand. But I d still like to do a market evaluation on it. You still want to sell the property, right? Yeah, we do, but I m not going to pay an agent to put a sign in the yard, put a lock box on, and then do nothing for the next six months. I apologize that you had a bad experience. But at the end of the day you still have to sell this property and I can help you out in doing it. I d like to do a market evaluation. Okay, let s step out of that conversation. You keep coming back to your benefits. You keep apologizing as an industry leader here, or whatever it is. But the one thing, everyone listening to this call pay attention to this, Hoss has a knack, or a skill, of acting stupid all the time. All of you on this phone call; all of you in this training program need to get this skill. You have to act like you don t know what you re doing. You have to act like, Well, why wouldn t it sell? I mean, what could possibly be the problem? Or when somebody makes ridiculous statements like I did about putting up a new fence, a new roof, painting the deck, putting vinyl, the shag rug, blah, blah, blah. Sellers actually think that does increase the value. Sellers actually think that we re there to sell their home, which we all know is not the case. We don t sell homes. Homes sell homes. But on these phone calls, being too in-their-face about it, You know, your home is probably a piece of crap and it s overpriced, is not going to get you anywhere. You d better get this skill. Hoss, you have this, and don t take this personally. You have skill of acting stupid and vague all the time. I mean that in the best possible way, Hoss. Yeah, of course. No but you re right. The thing I always say is, Well, I m looking at this property. It looks beautiful; why did it not sell? I need to do a market evaluation on the property and figure this out. Okay. I mean really, you re acting ridiculously stupid just to play into their empathy, their sympathy side of things, just to get your foot in the door. It s a good point. All right, that was objection number four. How about objection number five? 12
5) Not in a Hurry Objection I m not in a hurry. Not in a hurry, don t need to sell it right now. I want to touch on this, because this is kind of like the one waiting till spring. But some people I know, as you talked about earlier, say, I don t care. I m never going to sell. I m not in a hurry. I m not in a hurry to sell this property at all. I want everybody to know that when it s like this there s always a time frame. What I try to do is I try to get that time frame out of them. Okay? Okay, so let s do this real quick and I ll say it. Hey, Hoss, thanks for the call, but I don t have to sell this home. I m not in a hurry. I don t need to sell this whatever. As long as it takes is as long as it takes. Okay. Well, let me ask you this. If I brought you a qualified buyer, Todd, would you pay a three percent co-op? Yeah. I may look at that. I don t know. I mean, I don t know. I m not in a hurry. Why do I need to pay a three percent co-op when I can sell this thing two months from now and be happy? Because all the other sellers are paying three percent. If you re willing to pay a three percent co-op then I m more than happy to bring a qualified buyer by to take a look at your property. If I brought a qualified buyer today to purchase your property, would you pay me three percent of the sales price? We would consider it. But again, three percent of my sales price is going to be $12,000. What did you do for $12,000? You d pay $12,000 if I could sell your property today, though, wouldn t you? I mean, you d be done with it. I may. I don t know. If it s a qualified buyer, I may. Okay. How long are you going to try to sell this property on your own before you decide to explore other options? Like I just told you, I don t have to sell it ever. I mean, it s a luxury sort of thing. I don t owe a lot on this home. I have a lot of equity in it. We re 13
moving up to another home. We d like to get the kids in by school of next year, but even that s not urgent. Where are you moving to? Down to the south side of the city. Okay, and are you building a property, purchasing a property? What s your plan? No, we re not building. We re going to purchase something down there. We have some friends down in that area. We ve looked down there before but again, we don t have a home picked out. Oh, so you don t have a home picked out yet? No, not yet. So you re not in a hurry? That s a good situation to be in. Let s say in six months if you still haven t sold this property, obviously, the kids are going to be in school. Is that too long? What is your time frame? What if it s on the market for two years? Well, I m not going to keep it on the market for two years. I want to get the most out of this property and I m not going to sell it in a fire sale. This isn t an urgent sort of thing. So what is it you do? Why would I pay you if I don t need to rush through this thing? Because the sales prices are declining in your area. The longer you wait and you re not in a hurry, the more equity you lose. Okay. Are you following me? I understand what you re saying, but still, I m going to give it 30, 60, 90 days until I figure out what I m doing. Okay, so you are going to give it 30, probably 60 days, and then you ll explore other options? Yeah. That s probably a fair statement. 14
Okay. Well, here s what I d like to do. I d like to stay in touch, Todd. I want to send you some information that will help you out in selling the property on your own, and I want to stay in contact with you over the next few months. If you have any questions, you feel free to contact me at any time. How s that? Fair enough." Now let s jump out of that conversation. What is the stuff you re sending to them after that kind of a conversation, where the guy is not motivated to do anything right this second? Just letters with powerful headlines, just to keep my unique selling propositions in front of him at all times. Your guarantees, your Easy Exit, your 89-Point Marketing Plan; all that stuff just over and over and over again, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yep. But here s the problem though. What do people say? But you told me you weren t in a hurry and what I did was I kept asking you questions and I got that time frame out of you. Never once have I ever been prospecting where I could not get the time frame out of them. Every seller has a time frame. Notice when I say, So if it s been on the market for two years, you don t care? They re like, No. I don t want it to be on the market for two years. Well what s the time frame then? You ve got to get their time frame out of them. You do that by asking questions. Just nonstop, over and over and over again; questions, questions, questions. Questions, questions, questions, questions. That s how I overcome objections, by asking other questions. Okay, here s one for you. Are you ready for this? 15
More Objections 6) Too Busy Objection Mega-Producer Program I m too busy. I don t want to meet with you. I ve got 400 things going on. We re trying to sell our home. We re trying to get moved. I don t have half hour to meet with you. I m not interested. I m too busy. What do you say to that? Too busy for what? Too busy to meet with you. You re asking for an appointment, correct? Well, yeah, but I just want to come by and take a look at the property after I do my market evaluation. I want to see exactly what you re looking at, because you told me you are willing to pay the three percent co-op, right? Correct. Okay. Well, all I m asking for is five minutes to come by and take a look at the property. I know you re busy. I m busy as well. That s the reason I m just going to swing in, take a look at it, sit down with you, go over a market evaluation, and be done with it. Okay, so let s jump out of that real quickly. A good reminder on that particular objection handling is that you never ask for more than five minutes on the phone. For anybody out there listening to this, everyone has five minutes. Now, obviously I don t even need to say this, but I m going to say it anyway. Five minutes could turn into an hour and five minutes pretty easily. But over the phone, all you re asking for is five minutes. No one wants to go through a full listing presentation. When you say the words listing presentation, sellers think that they re going to a timeshare sale presentation, and no one likes presentations. So avoid the terminology of presentation or even appointment. Just, Can I get five minutes? When are you and your spouse home for five minutes? That s a good reminder that Hoss gives us. Now Hoss, you work with Keller Williams, an obviously well-known company. What is the advice for someone that isn t a well-known company, or maybe somebody on these phone calls is newer than you are. They re not doing $20 million a year. 16
When they say, I m going with a bigger production agent, or, an agent that works in my area. What do you say to that when they say, I m working with somebody else because they re a bigger company? They ve been around longer. They sell more homes in the area. What s the objection handled there? 7) Bigger, Better Known Company Objection It all goes back to your unique selling propositions. No matter what company or who you re with, you will always have three, four, or five unique selling propositions that you can throw at them. So are they offering you an Easy Exit listing agreement? No. Are they offering you the 89-Point Marketing Plan? I have no idea. Okay. Well, are they going to guarantee to sell your property or they ll sell it for free? I don t think so, but they are with RE/MAX. I saw the commercials. RE/MAX sells more homes than anybody. Uh huh. Well, RE/MAX is a great company. They have a lot of agents, but keep in mind that all agents are different. The company is just the name. All agents are different. It s like insurance agents. Everybody conducts their business differently. But it just concerns me if they don t offer you an Easy Exit Listing Agreement though, Todd, or the 89-Point Marketing Plan. What are they going to do to market your property? I don t know, but they do have a big company name behind them. I understand. Is that important to you to have a big name? Well, there s a reason why they re the biggest sales company in the world. They must be selling a lot of real estate. 17
Yeah. Wal-Mart is quite a big company, too, but they don t always have the best quality products, do they? Just because it s big and you see the name, it doesn t mean that the quality of the agent is there. That s the reason we offer you things like my Easy Exit Listing Agreement, because if you don t like me, you can fire me at any time. So let s jump out of that conversation. When they come up with something along the lines of, How many homes did you sell in my area? or, Do you work with a huge company? or, What is your market share? or, How long you been in the business? or anything along those lines; then your comment back to them is, Do they offer you 89-Point, Easy Exit, all your different marketing messages. Correct? Yeah. And over and over and over again. 8) Don t Want to Work with an Agent Objection What if somebody says this to you? "Hoss, look, I m just not interested. Stop calling me. Stop bothering me. You agents are all the same. What are you not interested in doing? Well, I don t want to work with an agent. I understand, but you want to sell your property, right? Yeah, but literally, you re like the 52 nd caller this morning. That s good news. Do you know why? Because all the qualified buyers are with us, so it s good that agents are calling you. I would encourage you to work with them. And you told me you re willing to pay a 3% co-op. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, we re trying to sell our home, but we re just getting bombarded with agents. I understand. It s a competitive market. How long are you going to try to sell this property on your own before you decide to explore other options? Probably a month or two. 18
Then what are you doing in a month or two? Well, then we ll look at, Do we really have to sell? Are we going to sell? You know. You don t have a close friend or family member you feel obligated to work with at that point, or are you going to be up for interviewing some of these aggressive agents? I have an aunt that works at RE/MAX. I see her every Thanksgiving. I d probably have to talk to her first. Okay. And that s it. So you just ask those questions. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, just over and over again with the same questions. Over and over and over and over, ask questions after questions, after questions, after questions. It will get you out of every single hole that anybody puts themselves in with their words, when they re prospecting. How did you get over this fear of not knowing what to say next? You have the 20 or 30 questions that I trained you on. And by the way, everyone has these same 20 or 30 questions. You can get the CDs. You can read the transcripts and you can do the same studying that Hoss has done. That s how he s gotten to that point. But how did you get over that fear of, Okay, what s the next question? What s the next question? It doesn t take very long when you make 200 calls a day. I would imagine. It happens really quickly. It happens pretty much in the first week or two, I would think. What if you have somebody do the old standby method, the standby comment? Hey, look, let me think it over. I got your information; now let me look it over. Let me think it over. I ll get back to you. I d probably say okay; then I d follow up with them. I m just working off flushing people and going to the next call; flushing them and going to the next call. I would call him in one week if I haven t heard from him. 19
Let me throw out something for anybody that hears the Let me think it over message, whether it s from a buyer or a seller. If you re working with a buyer and you show them a property, then they pull the Let me think it over thing, the problem there is the up front commitment from them. If you re hearing that a lot from sellers or buyers, the one step that you re missing that you need to put into play is, you have to set down your rules up front. When you first start working with, let s say it s a buyer. You re sitting down for that initial consultation with the buyer. You need to tell the buyer, Look, Mr. Buyer, here s how it works. Here s how I work. I will show you, typically, X number of properties. Once we see X number of properties, we re going to narrow it down to X number of properties. Then we re going to go see that second group again. After that second group, we should have a pretty good idea of what our top one or two or three choices are. At that point, we need to make a decision. You need to make a decision on which property you re going to make an offer on. That s how it works. It s just like going to the doctor. Once I ask you a zillion questions, eventually I m going to send you out for surgery or give you the pills. In this scenario I m the doctor and here s how it s going to work. Once we look at these homes two or three times, once we finalize our choices, I expect you to make an offer. One of your choices isn t to say to me, Hey, I m going to think it over for a couple of weeks, or Hey, I m going to put this off for a month, or Hey, I m going to call you back on Monday. That s not going to be one of your choices. That s not the way it works. When we re working together, you re taking my time. I m taking your time, and giving you advice and expertise. You have to make a decision at some point. That s typically how the process works. You can put that out for sellers. You can put that out for buyers. You could put that out for anybody; but if you constantly hear the phrase Let me think it over or I ll get back to you, all you ve done there is screw up the initial process. Make sure your initial process is a lot firmer, a lot more direct, and a lot harsher. 20
9) Talking to Other Agents Objection What about the objection, Hoss, when someone is saying they re talking to other agents? Great, Hoss. I got your 39-Day Guarantee. I got your 89-Point Marketing Plan; but hey, I m talking to four or five other people about the same thing. So we ll get back to you. Are these agents who contacted you or are these referrals? How do you know these folks, Todd? A couple are people that I know; they re in the business. Then a couple are people doing the same thing you are, calling me every other day. Okay, perfect. So you re interviewing five agents? Yeah. You, plus four others. Right. There s no way I can make a decision when you come over, because I ve got four other people to interview. I understand. When is your last appointment? Well, we re going to try to do it this week. My goal here with my spouse and myself is by Friday; getting it done by Friday. My appointment is on Wednesday. What I d like to do, with all due respect, Todd, I d like to be the last one that you interview. The reason is that obviously you ve gotten my information. You have my 89-Point Marketing Plan, my Easy Exit listing agreement. What I d like you to do is I d like you to sit down with these other four agents and take notes. See how the other agents work; and whenever I come out there, I m going to show you how I work is completely different than how they work. I m going to blow your doors off and I m going to show you exactly what s going to be the benefit in working with us over the other agents. But I want you to pay attention, take notes, be a student, and just understand exactly what they re going to do to market your property. Then I d like to come out there on Friday afternoon, the last one; and we ll go over it and we ll talk about it. Let s jump out of that conversation. Now Hoss, what is your success rate? Obviously I told you, and for anybody listening here, you have to go last. If they re interviewing other agents, you have to go positively dead last. That s because no matter how good you are, if they re talking to two or three other people, you re not going to walk out of that listing appointment with the listing contract signed. 21
My question for you, Hoss, is what kind of success rate do you have when you say, I have to go last. Do people buy into it? Do they say, No problem? What s the bottom line? I know that if I go last, and to answer the question, my success rate is in the 80% range. No, I mean in terms of sellers letting you go last. Or do they give you a lot of grief? Oh, it s every time. I don t go unless I go last. There you go. If they don t, then I won t go on the listing. But at that point, Todd, you have leverage. If I m the last one and I know that they re not interviewing anybody else, I have leverage. I know that if I leave that appointment without them signing the listing agreement, I m not going to get the listing anyway. I can do things that you normally couldn t if you were first, where you could walk out to your truck and tell them to think about it. You re leaving and you re not going to come back type thing. As opposed to when you re first, second or third, you couldn t do that. Everyone pause here and really think about this. There are certain parts of a top agent s process, when it comes to sales and conversion, that are absolute deal breakers. This is one of those parts for Hoss. If he does not go last, it s a deal breaker. He won t even go on the appointment. Now there are other parts that he probably can bend a little bit, in terms of time frame, or how long they re going to meet, or any of that kind of stuff. But this is one those deal breakers that if they don t let him go last, he won t go because he knows his odds of sales and conversion goes way, way, way down. So keep that in mind. What are your deal breakers? What do you absolutely, positively have to have? What can you live by? What can t you live by? 10) MLS Discount Broker Objection Here s another objection for you, Hoss. FSBOs and Expireds get sick of real estate agents, obviously. We talked about that the last 40 minutes on this call. 22
What happens when somebody tells you, Look, I can get someone to put my home on the MLS for $995. Why would I pay you six percent? MLS is what sells all the homes. Okay, so you re looking for a discount broker? I mean, I have 15 discount brokers calling me and I can get the thing on the MLS and in some cases for $500. But the one I m looking at is $995. It s a different business model though. If you re looking for a discount broker and that s what you re looking at doing, obviously you re not in a hurry to sell your property. Can I be direct with you, Todd? Sure. Here s how discount brokers work. I want you to know this before you sign anything with a discount broker and your listing s on the market for six months. This is paramount for you to know this before you go into it. A discount broker s model is different than my model. I sell houses. I sell listings. I market listings. I have an 89-Point Marketing Plan. The marketing plan takes one percent of my commission. It costs me a lot of money to market properties; therefore I sell listings twice as fast as the average agent. Back to the discount brokers. What they do is put their sign in your front yard. They charge you $500 to put it on the MLS. They have an administrative person put it in there, or whatever. That s not where they make their money. They don t want to market your property anyway, because they don t want it to sell. They want that sign in your front yard because they are buyers agents. They put the sign in the front yard to generate buyer leads. Whenever the sign calls are coming in, they re selling those buyers properties. They re not in a hurry to sell your property. It does cost $500. It does. But they don t market the property. In this competitive market, you have to have a marketing plan or it will expire. In six months, we will be talking if you sign with one of those discount brokers. That s fine if you re not in a hurry. But agents are going to be generating leads at your expense, while your property is sitting on the market collecting sign calls off their sign in your front yard. 23
Okay, that would be an objection to discount brokers. We deal with a lot of that. That s one approach to getting over that. The next objection. You don t work with any buyers though, correct? I ve sold one buyer in my history of real estate. How was that experience? It was a close friend of mine, so it wasn t too bad. But I ve never done it again. Okay. Yeah, I just don t work buyers. Okay, more leverage. We talked about that on other phone calls. I wanted to get down on a recording for the Mega-Producer Program just some of your responses over a 40-, 45-minute call, which we ve done here. It s on objection handling, how to handle it, how to be direct. I hope everyone on this particular call, this recording, really understands the importance of questions; the importance of not trying to sell them but ask them a lot of questions over the phone, controlling the conversation; acting like the doctor; really laying down the ground work; asking for permission to be blunt. Did you notice how many times during this conversation here today that Hoss asked me, Hey, would you mind if I m direct with you? That s probably the greatest phrase of all time, because the answer to that is always, 100% of the time, Yes. When they tell you yes, you can be as direct and rude and blunt as you possibly can, and that gets through a lot of the BS that goes on in this business. So go back and listen to this. I ll have this recording transcribed for you and we ll have some good study material. Hoss, I want to thank you again for being on the call. Everyone else out there, have a phenomenal day and we ll talk to you all real soon. Bye-bye 24