Show Up, Close Deals

Welcome to the Leading Lane podcast for Real Estate Pros by Real Estate Pros with your hosts, Ashley Frederick and Steven Burch. If you're looking for an honest, authentic and raw perspective, you found it. Welcome everyone back to Leading Lane. We're happy to have you here with us today. Remember, you can check us out on LeadingLaneo.com or on our Facebook page as well. Today we're going to talk about showing up. And I think that we can take that in all kinds of aspects of our lives and how important it is to show up. But one interesting thing that Steve and I were having a discussion about is how showing up, at least in our local markets, tends to affect the actual closed business of an agent. So likely what you're putting in is what you're going to get out. So, Steven, let's jump into kind of what you are seeing on your end as far as agents showing up. Yeah, so like, for me, when I say show up, I'm, I'm meaning like actually showing up into the office and showing up into your business and your career in real estate. Obviously, we're entrepreneurs, we're independent contractors. So of course we're going to have freedom and flexibility. And I guess I should first say, when I first got into this, I got roped into the freedom and flexibility aspect of things and not showing up. I would much rather go out to the lake and hang out or go, you know, screw off or whatever because I can work from my phone and I never really was in the office. But then that turned into me not making enough money, then having to get side jobs and then, you know, it's just a spiral effect. So when I made the choice to come back into real estate full time, I was giving it my all. I said, this is going to be my everything, my. I'm going to be the first one in, last one out. I'm going to treat this like a full time career. And so, you know, I get frustrated when seeing other agents, you know, bitching, you're complaining, oh, I, you know, the market's slow, oh, this is happening, or whatever is going on. But real estate is still being sold. You're just missing out on opportunities. And I think the easiest cop out, if you will, is that you're, you're not showing up. And so therefore you're going to place blame everywhere else. And, you know, we can't lie. We're kind of experiencing this a little bit in our office. And it's summertime, you know, kiddos are off from school. I totally get all of these different things. But just because you have other obligations or it's more fun to go hang out at the pool or whatever you're doing, like, does not mean that it's anybody else's responsibility to ensure that you're getting the business to come over to you. Right. So what I did is I actually just pulled numbers for the last 12 months for my, my agents and put them into three different categories. The first one is people that show up all the time. And this is, you know, into the office. This is investing into different community events or company events. Then the second category is those who are kind of iffy. You really don't know what's going to happen and when they're going to come in. And then the third category is those who don't really show show up at all. Like the numbers, the numbers don't lie. This is why I love numbers. Right. The average for the people that show up, and this includes people that haven't sold, you know, much at all whatsoever. They just came over to our company or new or whatever the case may be. The average there is 40 units. 40 Units by just showing up. The next category down, I believe was 1212 units and then not showing up at all is three. Now I, I think that this goes. When you, when you look at the NAR statistics of what the average production per agent is, is three. Like that's where I mean, so you're. An average across the board is just three. And you know, I, I just am just kind of just in awe with the, these numbers by, um. If people would take the mind shift and we can't make them. Right. We can't make them because they are independent contractors. We can't make them because it is their mind shift that they have to go through their mindset. But if they were to be able to see the next jump, I mean just going just a little bit more gets me to 12 units. That's one a month. And then just a little bit more gets me to 40. That number of what your gross commission income and what you actually take home in your pocket. Take, Take home. Would. It is just way more than I think anybody could even really imagine. You know, just with like a W2 aspect of not showing up. Like it's mind blowing. So it's frustrating for me. But also that's the, the industry that we're in. Some people think that's acceptable. I don't. Right, right. I think that, you know, when you said that I, I took a quick look at our numbers and we don't have nearly as many agents. But it is when I look at like the people that are in the office every single day have the highest number of closed transactions. And then kind of, I think for the most part, like, we're pretty lucky. It falls into like the middle. And we really have. We have floor at least in our office. So people have to at least be in a little bit. There's really not anyone that I can say that doesn't come in, which I'm thankful for. But there are definite everydayers, probably three to four days a week. And then kind of the floor ish type of people. And I think where it just gets lost is that, you know, there's not necessarily a quote unquote point to come in. Right. Is how I think that people might understand that. Or I don't have any business to work on right now, so I don't need to come in. And when I started in real estate, I didn't have any business either. But I still went to the office every day. And I think it's probably for me, I've always known to work. Right. Since I was 14. Right. Like mowing lawns. And then I always had a job ever since then. And out of college it was a 8 to 5 job every single day. So there's part of me that feels weird to not work during the day. So I think it's just part of some work ethics that people have built into them. Sure. And I think that too, it is easy to fill your time with going to the lake or working on the yard or, you know, those types of things. But at the end of the day, it comes down to like, how hungry are you? I guess is how I feel about it. So when I would go into the office, it's amazing what would happen when you're in the office. So there would randomly be no one else in the office and a floor call came in or someone was a walk in. And nine times out of 10, I was the only one there. So by default I happened to get business. And I might have been working on something else that had nothing to do with real estate, but here I got that walk in. And then, you know, it's just funny. Like I think about 11 years in and these repeat clients that I have, and it's so funny to me to think that they were a walk in, you know, 11 years ago. And here they've followed my company changes. I've sold them two or three homes. So it's just so amazing how, you know, that was me putting in Three hours, one day. And now I've had four transactions out of that one person. But it to me also was, you know, even if you're a new agent or a seasoned agent, we can always all learn. Every single day something happens. I have one now, like, never had that happen before. I feel like I say that more and more as of recent. But if you could be a sponge and soak all that up so that when that does come up in your transaction, you know, you could be like, oh, I remember they were talking about a situation like that in the office and they did this to solve it, right? They're light years ahead of the other agents that have never heard of those types of things. So I think there's a lost concept of what actually you can just learn by being a sponge and hearing it. Sometimes if I'm really busy in a day and someone in the maybe I'm on floor, but I'm just so far, far behind, or I'll give it to whoever's there. So, like, say other agents there, and I'll be like, great, I just don't have time today. If you can take it like, again, you're kind of rewarding who is there. But I think it's really funny. I know we've talked about it a lot of times too, but if you were to talk about or look at how many. How much time someone's spending on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram versus sitting in the office for three hours and you never know what's going to come up or when. I like to sit in the office. When I started, I just, I would try to find anything I could on. On real estate. I would watch webinars, I would come up with mailers. And that was my time. So I think that's where it is, is just you have to be willing to pour yourself into it, even if it's like three hours a day. Like, imagine if you just went to the office from, I don't know, nine to noon. I mean, you still have the whole entire day to go sit by the lake. But you had that morning that you put yourself into it and showed up for yourself and the office. Well, I think that, you know, the, the part here too, like, let's be real, you can scroll Facebook while you're sitting in the office, right? So. So get your off. Off of your ass off the couch and go to the office and scroll the same social media that you're going to scroll at home and get a chance to get somebody walking into the office. So that Makes it just funny. Sorry, but makes me think of a guy that, not in real estate anymore, but when he came to the office like every day and he played solitaire on his computer, it was like an ongoing joke. But guess what? The guy did plenty of business because lo and behold, he'd be the only one in the office. Somebody walked in or whatnot. So no lie, I'd go downstairs and he'd be on his solitaire. But the guy did like 30 transactions a year. Hey, by playing solitaire. Right. Like, I mean, compounded together. But you know, I this agents and you know, people are always looking for an easy button and people are always looking for leads. You know, that's the hot topic. Any different forum that you go into online, everybody's like, what's the best lead source? What about this? What about that? Blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, at least in our market, when, when you look at this, you know, your conversion on online leads, you know, we're, we're averaging, depending on where it's coming from, 12% of a conversion. But if somebody is physically walking into your office, I don't know how much of a higher percentage of a conversion rate you could possibly have with somebody physically walking into the office. Then the next level, the next channel coming in is a phone call that's like somebody legit just googled. You. Called the office because of marketing. From the office perspective, like, what is the freaking percentage of conversion there? I mean, and I know that on online and just in general across the board, the seller, excuse me, I believe it's a buyer is going to choose the first person. There's a 70% chance the buyer is going to choose the first person that they speak to. 70% Chance. So imagine you have these online leads coming in. Yes, your conversion's not high. You have the walk in coming through. You have the call ins coming through. You're doing those mailers. You're now doing your outreach. Like, there is plenty of things that can be done in a day span. And it's the consistency. If you show up every single day and if you. You know, I really love when we had Maya on when she said that if you're living in integrity, if you're showing up for yourself and your integrity for yourself, then that means that you're going to be integrity for everybody else. Like, so simple. All you have to do is show up and then you'll be able to catch everything else. Like, it's pretty like people that want to make these huge business plans and marketing plans and don't get me wrong, I do think that you need to do other things than just sit your ass in the office. But if you were just able to apply that one thing on top of whatever big marketing plan that you're already going to implement, I think that would be a game changer for anybody to be able to increase their business almost, almost immediately. Well, and I think that, you know, it's such a simple thing. I was talking to someone about this the other day about Real Scout. So it's a really nice, you know, system that we have that you can track your buyers, you can actually see how frequent they're visiting properties. You can put them in there. So no lie, it was a, a floor call that came in and she was looking for a condo, which we don't have a lot of condos. And so I just threw her in Real Scout, put her in the search, you know. Right. Kind of set it and forget it because we don't have that many condos. So seven months later and I'm cc'd on them, it sends her an alert that a condo came up. She emails me, thanks so much for thinking of me. I don't like this one, but since you emailed me, can we look at this house? And no, they bought that house. It's just a matter of using our resources. It's. You have a process and a system in place. Right. So yeah, I mean, like even taking a step further, you know, I, when I was first in real estate, I didn't have a CRM, a customer relationship management system. I couldn't even imagine if every single person that I encounter, and if I would have put them into my customer relationship management system, what my, my business wouldn't, would have blown up to be. Because now we're leaning to technology. All you have to do is like, and I don't want to downgrade what we do. That's not what I'm doing. But I'm talking about the first initial engagement interaction. You're the greeter, you are the brand advocate. Right. Like you're the person that is that they're looking for. You're the professional, you're greeting them and then you start relationship. And just because naturally this is a people business, you're going to build that rapport now. You're going to be able to have technology work for you. And seven months later, you may have forgotten them because I wouldn't have remembered them. I would have left their name number on a sticky note and never probably ever followed back up with them. Yeah, exactly. I Mean, it's so simplistic but so difficult for people to understand. And a little bit of data entry and a little bit of planning and. And if you do that on the front end, it makes sure the rest of your business super freaking simple. And then now you can start really stacking those. And I think that's where you can take those three units per year to now, 12 to now to the 40 or whatever. I mean, 40, in my opinion, I think that's a good production for agents. But, you know, I think that there's even more possibility that's out there because, again, everybody is buying and selling real estate. Everyone has to have a place to live, period. Well, I mean, think about it. So if you're in the office for a while and you make it a goal of adding five contacts to your CRM every day, right? Like, it just starts to pay off. But I think the other part of showing up, which, you know, that I could talk till I'm blue in the face about showing up is just being involved. And so I've talked with other agents that maybe don't necessarily like coming into the office, or right now we're in a little bit of cramped quarters because we're in our interim space. So then I'll say, then, great, go sit at the coffee shop for an hour. Like, I guarantee you that you'll run into someone that, you know or, you know, put your franchises or your company's sticker on the back of your laptop or have your gear on, and I guarantee you someone will come up to you and be like, oh, you work here? Or what can you tell me about the housing market? It's just simple things of, you know, you're right. Those online groups that I'll always be like, what's the best lead source? And every time, I'm normally like, spear, Spear, Spear, Sphere. Because it is. It's just you have to be seen because you know, an online lead, like, there's a spot, there is definitely room for them. But I still think that that's. To me, that's number two. Like, number one will always be being in front of people. So if you don't want to necessarily show up, like, go to the coffee shop and work on your database for three hours. But maybe now you have the chance to run into four people or someone that forgot that you were in real estate. Because I'll be honest, when someone sees me and they're like, what do you do for a living? And then I'm like, what? Why? I must not be doing A good enough job promoting that. Right. But, like, people forget. And that's. What is it. You have to see it seven to eight times before someone actually remembers. So if they keep on seeing you. And like, no lie, I started going to a coffee shop in town just because, like, they're great people and whatnot. And lo and behold, they turned into my clients. Like, that was never my intention, but they'd ask me about the market and, you know, whatnot. And so it just happens by being yourself and being able to have real life conversations with people. Absolutely. You know, I think it's really funny the you talk about, like, wearing your. Your swag or, you know, name tag or whatever. I'm going to flip the script here and go away from necessarily, like, customer clients. But I went to a. An AR conference in D.C. a few years back. In our franchise, we have a mascot. His name is Luke. He's a little orange French bulldog. And so I don't like necessarily wearing my name tag that says realtor, but I love wearing. When I was wearing my suit, I was on my lapel. I had my lapel pen of Luke, the orange bulldog. Well, there is this group, and it was almost like back in high school type of. I mean, they gave me a flashback of this little click, everybody standing in a circle, everybody talking. And, um, I knew a couple people in the group and went up there, and I was just kind of observing. And then this guy, which you can tell would be the. The person, the bully that would make fun of everybody, he was like, well, what is that thing? And referring to my lapel pen of Luke. And I said, well, that's our. Our mascot. And I explained it to him. He goes, well, that's the stupidest thing ever. I mean, what does a dog have to do anything with real estate? And then I turned around and I said, well, aren't we talking about real estate now? Didn't you just ask me a question about real estate? And, like, everybody laughed, right? Like in. I've had where, you know, I was in, you know, going to the grocery store and wearing my actual name tag. And somebody said something about the color and Luke, our mascot, like the branding. The more that you are out there, you never know what somebody is going to, you know, how they're going to spark up a conversation. It could be something as simple as a little lapel pin, or it can be a name tag. It could be your. Your shirt, your sweatshirt, whatever. Always wear something. I have stickers on the back of my computer. Um, I have a couple of Agents that said, ask me about selling your house or something to that effect. Sticker. So when they go to coffee shops and wherever they're at, like, it helps people start a conversation with you. People are looking to make a connection. It's a human. It's in our human nature that, that we're trying to look for other people to make connections with. Regardless if we love to say that we're. We like working with people or not, we are constantly looking for human connection. So. Well, I think that that's just it. Like, it's so simple, yet I think we're trying to convolute it with like, all these other things. And we kind of talked about it before, like the next shiny thing where if we just do the basics and put the time in and, you know, I was talking with one of my coaching clients and we're really just focusing on back to basics, which are your people. It's your people. It's your database. It's staying in flow. It's asking the questions. It's the easiest way to grow your business and to stay top of mind because there are a lot of realtors in every market. And if you're not in flow, it's really easy for someone to hop on to the next one that they happen to see more or something like that if they forgot about you. And, you know, the. My. My favorite saying, and typically, you know, I talk a lot about leads, and really my first thing when I talk about leads and doing trainings is to remove honestly, the word lead. I mean, let's simplify this. A lead is a person. We are overcomplicating it. A lead is a person, and we are in people business. So the way that I like to be able to explain this, your contacts equal contracts. And the only difference between contacts and contracts, the word is the letter R, which represents relationships. And then relationships turn into the revenue. So it is very simplistic that if you treat people the way that you want to be treated and, and you develop the rapport, it will. It will naturally and organically flow into the revenue that you're looking for. But instead, we're so focused in this industry solely on leads and revenue, we miss out on the. The. The main portion of what is in the middle of all of that, that we have to build the relationship first before we can get to the revenue. Yeah. You know, and I think the other part of that too, which just like looking back in at history, if you will, see if there's like, any agents that are not going to the office because of a way that they feel like when they go into the office. Because I can 110% understand that. That's a really great opportunity, I think, for someone to talk to their broker about, like, hey, I'm not coming in because of this. Or I feel like this when I come in because I think sometimes,. Like,. For me as a broker, like, I'm running around doing 100 other things, and so maybe I'm not out in the bullpen or with everyone else and I'm missing something that that happens to go on. But I think you and I can definitely relate in that sometimes too. We don't necessarily recognize the cancer in an office until it starts to affect everyone else, you know, and so for me, it's a matter of maybe there is a cancer in the office and we've missed it or, you know, the other agents haven't been boisterous about it. I mean, I. At my last place, I mean, I stopped going to the office because of how I felt every time I went in. And to me, that's like a clear indication that either something needs to change within that office or you need to look elsewhere. Because really, at the end of the day, like, you should love coming to work. You should love your people, you should love what you're doing. And if, you know, there's not open dialogues with people as to why is that? There must be something off. Can we fix it? What would make you want to come to the office more? Is there something that we need to address as a whole that's not working? So I think, you know, just remembering how important communication is between everyone so that, I mean, I think for the most part, everyone enjoys coming to the office. We have a lot of fun. I mean, thankfully, a lot of my agents show up, you know, for our office meetings, etc. Have lunches and, you know, drinks together and whatnot. And there is a part of that, I think that if you. You really do feel that way, like, that's how you continue to have people come. And I think sometimes when people start to not come in for a long time, it's not that there's anything wrong, but we all like to paint stories in our head that there is something wrong or you start to feel left out because, right, we're all human and, oh, so and so went to coffee and they didn't invite me. And, you know, that's just like the stories that we tell ourselves. There's. There was a situation and, you know, like, I created this huge story in my head. And it was the exact opposite. And like how much time did we waste with that story? So I think, you know, if you can just remind yourself, you got to stay in touch for me too. Like there's also being present and producing. So those are like kind of two of the things I talk about when in our reviews that's you know, kind present producing. And there are also people that might not be producing, but they're trying. Right. And they show up. And when they show up, they do bring like a sense of calm to the office or, you know, sense of leadership or quirkiness, whatever that might be. So I think that there is that happy trade off that other people, I'll tell them, like, maybe they're working through some life changes and so their production might drop, which is fine, but they're still showing up and they're still being a part of it. And to me that means something. The fact that you're still showing up, even though your sales might not be reflective, if you keep on showing up, it will catch up. Yeah, it's committed or non committed to me. Right. Like, I mean, when I. Production is not everything. Yes, numbers don't lie. But we all started from somewhere. We all started as a, a brand new agent with a big old goose egg next to our name on that production board. Right. Like my goal is to increase that. As long as that's what you want to be able to increase as well. And you made some very valid points. Like I try, like I feel that I am extremely open and honest and have an open door policy. As much as I hate that, that phrase with all of my agents, because I understand that, you know, there may be conflict amongst other people or they, you know, might not feel comfortable coming in. Um, we don't have offices for our, our agents. It's more of an open war room, laptop bar type of concept. So, you know, I, I understand where there's some of these, you know, limitations and maybe not feel so comfortable. But also we can't make changes and we can't try to make corrections or pivot, you know, what is happening until you actually say something. And if you're not showing up, then how are we supposed to have that conversation with you? You know, so it creates vicious cycle all the way around. But yeah, we all make our own. I mean, we're on our own worst enemy. We make these stories, these limiting beliefs up in, in our brains and we tell ourselves that, you know, X, Y, Z is the reason. And really once you just have the conversation and get down to really, the, the what the issue is, a lot of the times it's not even what this big production you just created in your own mind. So it always goes back to communication. Right. I think everything that you can do in, in real estate and life, it, it starts with communication and comprehension. Then you'd be able to, to grow from there and be able to figure out what the, the next plan of action is going to be. Well, and I think you make a good point as far as communication, right? Because if there is something that is bothering someone or, and you stew on it, right, for a long time, it just piles up and it becomes a mountain. You know, maybe it was a molehill before, now it's a mountain, but it's like a mountain that you created where had maybe you just put a nip to it right away, wouldn't be a mountain, everybody would have moved on. So I think that that's one of the huge things with communication is just being open and not letting it get to you so that you can move on and focus your time and energy where it serves you best. Right? Right. And you know, at the end of the day, you're your own CEO in this, right? In life and in business and you're, you're your own CEO. And would you want to be working with a CEO that's going to allow either this toxic behavior or people not showing up to your, your company like you? When you really change the mindset and look at yourself as a whole other entity, as a CEO, I think that you're. It's a little bit easier to be able to quote, unquote, look into the mirror because now you have to have that realistic expectation for yourself and then that then again goes into that integrity and once you get live in that integrity, then you start showing up for other people. But when we try to put other people always first and make our decisions based off of others, we're not, we're not getting anywhere. We're only just following the followers. So great combo. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for listening in today. Please go like our Facebook page, check us out our website leadinglaneco.com and tune in next time. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like subscribe and share with others. Stay connected for more genuine insights and strategies to boost your real estate career on Facebook or check out our website. We'll see you next time.