Jennifer has been an agent since 2005 and currently works in the Atlanta market. Last year she was involved in 26 transactions, 14 of which were sellers and 12 buyers. Before her real estate days, she’d held down customer service jobs and cut her teeth talking to customers while waiting tables. During these jobs she honed an attitude that good business focuses around the customer. Everytime Jennifer prospects, does an appointment, goes into a consultation, she has this mindset in her head: “What Can I Contribute?”
So what does that mean? It means she’s always asking herself what is the right thing to do for this client and how can I help them most. By adopting this mantra, she has found that when she contributes to her clients and potential clients, they always contribute back and sometimes 100 fold. At REDX, we would call this dedication of customer contribution a core value, a principle that guides her in all her business efforts. Whether you’re an agent or business, it’s important to have values such as these to not only help give direction but also as something that distinguishes you from others in your market.
Jennifer’s market is like many at this time. There are far less houses for sale than there are buyers. In this seller’s market she’s saying that it’s not uncommon for houses to have 8 offers on them. So again we see low inventory. Can you still work expireds in low inventory areas? Of course. Jennifer does it 5 days a week. 4 mornings a week she calls from 9am-11am and 1 day a week she calls during the afternoons. During these 2 hour blocks, she calls old and new expired leads. But these aren’t the only leads she works. Jennifer spends most of her time on the phone working with repeat business and referrals. She says that she can usually find 1 interested lead for every 50 expired cold calls she makes, but she’ll find 2 interested contacts for ever 12 people she talks to out of her sphere. With numbers like this, why spend time on expireds at all? Well, according to Darlene, it’s for the practice.
When Darlene first got into the industry she found herself hesitant to call her friends about her recent career change. Worried that she would mess up selling a house for someone she knew, she decided to get some transactions under her belt by prospecting people she didn’t know from Adam. She said this experience and the experience of continually calling expireds and FSBOs even today, helps her hone her skills and objection handling so she’s perfected her approach by the time she goes after her sphere of influence.
One last point she made in the call that I thought was worth noting was her ability to prospect to everyone. Using REDX, do to some mix up with the tax records, she once called someone who wasn’t actually the home owner. The person had been getting several calls about a property they no longer owned. Sensing that the prospect was at their wits end with the amount of phone calls, Jennifer went out of her way to contact REDX to make sure we took the number off our list. Jennifer called back later to let her know what she had done. Lightheartedly she said “Hey, I know this sounds crazy, but I’m an awesome agent, and I know you have awesome friends, do you know anyone looking to buying or sell?” At that point the person gave her the name and phone number of her best friend that was sitting down to plan her move that night. It just goes to show that you never know what can happen if you just ask.
