“It doesn’t matter how many leads you generate if you don’t know what to do with them" -Lisa Chinatti

Keep your foot on the gas pedal, the year isn’t over yet! In this episode, “Enter the New Year with a Listing Inventory” these leaders in the field of real estate, share the strategies they’re implementing to finish the year off strong and enter 2021 with a full listing pipeline!

Podcast available on iTunes and Stitcher.

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Some of the things we cover include: 

- Working your database to generate more listings?
- Why you should use a multi-channel marketing approach?
- How to have the right conversations with your prospects?
- Speed to lead - the art of following up fast to win more business?

We want to thank Lisa Chinatti, Greg Harrelson, Kevin Mills, and Jeff Quintin for sharing their knowledge with us and the real estate community! It’s important for us now more than ever to band together and support one another through these uncertain times.

Here is a transcription of the entire discussion

Kevin McCarthy:

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the next episode of Keeping It Real. We've got an awesome crew for you this time. Longtime viewers of the show will recognize Greg Harrelson, Lisa Chinatti, and Jeff Quintin. Greg's in Myrtle Beach, Lisa is in Massachusetts, and Jeff Quintin is in New Jersey, and they are all absolute monsters doing tons of transactions with all kinds of incredible techniques and tips to share.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

We have for them first time on our show Kevin Mills. And Kevin works with Greg and I just learned today that he is the number one Century 21 agent for closed transactions in the world. And they're all listings. And so I would love to hear some of his techniques and secrets for generating listing leads. So the topic for today is enter the new year with listings, and I just like to kick off this panel discussion of like, how do you get listing leads? And what are some good techniques for converting them? So with that said, let's jump in. Kevin, how do you get your listing leads?

 

Kevin Mills:

Yeah. So obviously, I'm in Greg's office. So having him as a coach, you must know the answer to that is somehow generating with the prospecting, right? So that's all of my business, comes from outbound prospecting. So it's outbound phone calls I have made. And thankfully when it comes to this year's business, a lot of this year's business came from contacts I made three years ago, and I've just been nurturing and staying up on and talking to them. And now it's producing this year. So I'd say for those that are just now starting in the business or starting building that database, the leads that you're trying to pump in right now that turn into listings might not be listing business until next December.

 

Kevin Mills:

So a lot of it is building that database, and then it starts becoming a lot more reliable and duplicatable when you build that up. I mean, still, I think I've taken four listings so far this month, and three of them came from ones that just came off the market, expired or withdrawn in the last week or two. So I think I'm always staying hungry on the ones that are coming off the market. So I'm still following up with for sale by owners that are coming on the market every single day. So it's really going out there and trying to get it and I send some mailers out not many, but I'll hit some communities. And there's a few other platforms I use to try to get inbound listing leads, but I'm not counting on those. Those are more bonuses for me. I'm basically saying that they're all coming from me outbound prospecting.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, I'll just maybe ask if I can, Kevin, a few questions from Kevin just because I kind of know a little bit more intimately about what he does. So I know a huge portion of the business comes from expireds. But I want to keep the perspective of that. Remember, we're December right now. So there's a lot of real estate agents out there that are saying and claiming that there's not going to be people doing business in December, or people are going to wait till after the holidays, or no one really works and wants to talk about real estate during December. Typically, December for you, Kevin, I think is a really strong month. I mean, how does December, even not just this December, because it's just starting, but in previous Decembers, how many listings would you say you typically would get in a normal December?

 

Kevin Mills:

I'd say between 22 and 25. And typically throughout the year, I'm probably getting between 20 and 30 per month every single month, so it doesn't fall off.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. And so for the people that are going to sit there and... Well, first of all, let me disclose this. No, he's not working with builders. No, he doesn't have anybody handing him anything. No, he does not have a team that he's taking the credit for. He actually doesn't even have a buyer's agent, doesn't have a listing agent. He has an assistant, he has a VA, and he has a father-in-law that puts up sign on lockboxes. That's it, period. So let's just go ahead and cut through the chase for all of you that are thinking he's full of crap. No, he's doing it. He's truly solo. He ain't a team. How are you getting through though on all the conversations where people say, "Well, I'm just going to wait till after the holidays?" Because I know you've got to be getting it with the amount of people you talk to. What are you saying to those people? Or how are you approaching that?

 

Kevin Mills:

Yeah, absolutely. Happy to role-play however you want on this side, but first, it comes into, "Yeah, we're just going to wait until after the holidays to list the property." So then it's, "Okay. I mean, you're saying if I could bring you an offer in the next two weeks before the holiday season, that's something you wouldn't even consider?" "Oh, no, we would consider a property. We just don't want to show it during the holidays." Okay, great. Well, just so you know, we can hurry up. We can get it on the market. We can get it on the market actively and aggressively because guess what? Right now this time of year, a lot of people are taking time off work. They're spending a lot of that time looking for properties. They're on social medium where we're advertising right now. People are able to take more vacation days right now. This is the time of the year where the serious buyers are out there and they're looking on all these platforms and our web activity right now is going through the roof because this is a lot of time where there's a lot of downtime in a lot of people's jobs.

 

Kevin Mills:

So I think I can generate a ton of marketing activity, a lot of exposure. And listen, if we don't get your property under contract the week of Christmas or the week before, we can always put it on a hold, don't show where we can work around your schedule for that week. So I understand with family, you might be coming into town or have coming into town, you might not want to show it. But let's let every buyer that's interested in making a purchase in the next 30 days know that your property is available. And if we get an offer and the closing date doesn't work for you, we can always negotiate that out as well. But I think that you would agree if I could get you a price close to what you were asking for the property and I can make a closing date suitable for you and I can get that done in the next two weeks, you'd obviously entertain that, right?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Sure.

 

Kevin Mills:

And that's setting the appointment.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Got it. And you and I have done a lot of role-playing in our years. I mean, I tell still people times that you and I would... I'd be sitting at the gym parking lot at five in the morning, and me and you would be calling each other and role-playing before I went in and worked out. And you were doing the same thing up in Jersey. I think one of the things that I think is good for the audience to understand, if you could just almost forget what Kevin just said from a scripting standpoint, and if you'll take this one thing away from what he was just doing is he was not accepting a no one a yes is still possible. And he was not buying into their logic. So no matter what, whether you like his script or you don't like his script, or you think there's a better script, the key is when somebody threw up the smokescreen of, "I'm just going to wait," he didn't stop. That's actually when his conversation really started.

 

Greg Harrelson:

And a lot of real estate agents make the mistake of stopping at that moment and kind of buying into that logic as if it's a truth. He kept going. And if he keeps going and his competition stops, he's going to end up with the listing opportunity. And whether it's in December, or he's going to end up putting them in the pipeline and getting it in January, one of those two things are going to happen. So that's important.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Lisa, let's shift over to you, Lisa. My observation of you, which is I haven't spent a lot of time with you, but my observation is, number one, you're really smart and as meaning very intelligent and very strategic and very organized. That's at least my observation. You're probably thinking like, "Oh, God, I've got him fooled." Maybe that's what you're saying. But you seem to be very systematized and very robotic in the highest compliment, in the way I could say as a compliment. Right? It's like you put things together. What's your approach for listings maybe at any time, but also in the month of December when I know half the audience is probably already checked out and not working right now?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

Yeah, that's a great question. So for us, I think one of the most impactful things that I heard, I follow a lot of stuff behind the scenes, I think in New England, which is where my office is and where my team sells, we're kind of taking the mantra that the spring market started in October, right? And we're looking at it and saying, "Based upon inventory levels and buyer activity and all of that, partly because of the COVID situation, partly because inventory has been so insanely low, we are actually kind of not acknowledging that it's really the holidays, believe it or not, and approaching it like we would approach how do we generate our listings in the spring?"

 

Lisa Chinatti:

So we're doing a lot of our typical lead gen through internet leads. We're really leveraging our agent networks and census data, especially over the past three months with the migration that's happened out of the cities and looking at that census data as to where are the people that are moving into our suburbs coming from? And really forming relationships with the agents in those markets. And then just going deep on educating consumers on why... Kind of like Kevin had just mentioned. Why is now still a really good time to sell? Right? And we can accomplish it without the disruption that I think the typical consumer expects.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I got a question here because I really love that thought that you had. You said that you're not acknowledging that it's the holidays. Now, when you said that, were you meaning like you and your team are acting as if everything's normal? Or is that not acknowledging it's the holidays, is that the way you're communicating to the consumer? So is that a way to keep your minds focused on doing business in December, or is that a conversation that you're having with the consumer to make sure that the consumer continues to do business in December?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

I mean, that's full honesty. Right? I think a lot of the conversations that we have in the office with the team is that all of the work that we're doing now is the stuff that's going to result in our pipeline for February, March, right? We've already filled our December pipelines. We've done what we're going to do to impact January. Everything that we're doing right now is February and March in terms of that. So if we can keep the agents focused on the activities without the disruption of the holidays necessarily, and that is not really a COVID related thing, that's every December, we all kind of need to have that mindset shift.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

This year, we decided in our marketing message, outside of some small things like we did typical Thanksgiving video, give thanks, yada, yada, but we're not putting out a ton of marketing related to the holidays. Instead, our messaging is really going to exactly what our marketing message would have been in a traditional spring market. What are our home values? What are our mortgage rates? Why is now a good time to sell? Right? But not related to holiday decorations like it had been in the past, more related to we're coming into what we think is going to be the busiest time of the year.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I've never heard anybody say that. You're the first person I've ever in all my career I heard that approach. I think it's brilliant because I'm wondering now, it's like when we're putting out a bunch of stuff, "Hey, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and whatnot," we're just actually almost setting the tone for like, "Hey, we'll check in with you next year." I like that.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah. And I'll add on that, Greg, is that... And also, Lisa is doing there. Just recently this past week, we just did our top 20 sales for the year, right? And showing in chronological order from price point, list price, sales price, days on market. And really, it's really a lot of them are like in the last two months, right? And what it's showing is the results of multiple offers and at the bottom and more or less as average days on the market like six days, total sales. We got our sellers out of those 20 sales $186,000 above this price combined, right? So we're going to sell on that story over and over again of the most recent deals. Like seller might say, "We decided we're going to hold off because of the holidays," if they do say that. We're still going to get that, right?

 

Jeff Quintin:

But yet, we're also going to say, "Hey, did you understand that last week? What would it be like today if we can go ahead and get your property on the market, drive a bunch of traffic, create a bidding war and auction effect, get you five offers? And then the result of that all happen the next week and you end up with $20,000 above the asking price. Would that be worth it to you to get 20,000 within a week just to give it a shot?" "Well, certainly, that'd be great." "Well, I can tell you your neighbor just did it. They had four offers. Only one got the property. There's three more buyers out there. Let's go ahead and get it on the market. Right? Let's drive this traffic."

 

Jeff Quintin:

And then if you want to take a break like Kevin's script was, let's go ahead and take a break. But let's see what we can do right now in the next week. Right? And then we have a marketing piece. It's showing that we've done that, just all that recent. So it's just helping that little bit of push to give a little bit of a third party experience of other sellers that are getting that kind of more bubbly scripts.

 

Greg Harrelson:

You're using data. Yeah, you're presenting data and letting the data influence the decision making. Lisa, when you talk about migration reports, are you... I know internally, it's probably good for you guys to understand that. But do you use any of that in your presentations with people and whatnot?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

Depends upon the personality type of the consumer that we're talking with. Right? For some, it'll gloss them over, and we'll lose them. For others, it's super impactful and it kind of ties into the talk about how we're marketing their property once we sign the listing to get maximum exposure for them, which generates money. But the bigger push is really, how can we leverage those migrations to build relationships with the people who have the clients who are either moving into or you never know, right? Sometimes it originates as a buyer lead, sometimes it originates as a seller lead. And so we know from the city closer to Boston, that they're moving out to the Berkshires. We know that they're moving down to Cape Cod. We know that some are moving down to Myrtle Beach into those warmer climates.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

And so if I can make the relationships with the agents who are going to have one side or the other so that if I don't get it, it eventually comes back to us anyway, that's a huge win.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Before I go on to Jeff, just one other thing because I can imagine the audience might ask this or be thinking this. You mentioned online seller leads. Is there any information you can share with the audience maybe for somebody that would like to kind of get their feet wet and generate some seller leads, maybe they don't want to go out and do what Kevin's doing, which is outbound prospecting. They want to maybe figure out a way to try to attract them from online. Where does somebody start with that?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

So we use a combination of a bunch of different things. We use the seller valuation tool on Real Geeks. We use a company called Prime Seller Leads and another company called Home Value Leads, which are all running landing pages that we advertise through pay per click advertising and put out through social media channels. The cost per lead is more than what Kevin's paying, but I couldn't do what Kevin does. That's not my forte. Mad respect because I couldn't do it.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I want to say it's chocolate and vanilla. They're both wonderful ice creams, right?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

100%.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I like chocolate. You like vanilla. I definitely know Jeff likes sherbert. And there's nothing wrong with that, but Lisa, everybody complains that those leads are terrible. But I know they're not. I mean, what can you share with people because I don't think they're terrible. But I know a lot of people say they're terrible, but you've built a really good business around that being one of your pillars. So why are they not terrible?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

I mean, I think you have to really understand what the nature is, right? Depending on which website it originated on, they may or may not realize that they were connecting with a real estate company, right? But what we have to understand, I'm going to go back to, again, what Kevin said. A lot of what we're doing is the leads that originated a couple of years ago, right? As it enters the research phase and moves down the funnel, our ability to convert those is directly tied to our ability to understand where the consumer is and not go for the quick hit, right? Not go for the, "I'm only going to take the ones that are ready now and throw them away, and then just generate a hundred more and find the half of one that's ready."

 

Lisa Chinatti:

And it's going back very systematically very regularly and really keeping in touch with the ones that we had our first conversation with two or three years ago. And also combining the data with tools like Remine, right? And our understanding the uniqueness of each of our markets, right? For us, despite the fact that you're wearing that coat, you're in a much warmer climate than we are right.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Not even his. It's his wife's coat.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

So we're looking for what we're going to start digging into this week. I've got a very specific task with my team. We're going to be looking for the sellers that are above the age of 70 who are living in two story homes, right? It's so many reasons why those people are probably pretty close to declaring that it's time to get out of dodge, right? Snowy winter coming up, coupled with Corona, coupled with crazy high home prices. And it's just that little bit of market knowledge to be able to then take that data and import it into what we've already got it in Real Geeks through all of these generated leads over the past couple of years. It's a goldmine.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, I told you. I told you. She's smart. I just want to let her keep talking. I'm getting smarter as well.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Lisa, do you guys use How Money Walks? Have you seen that website?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

No.

 

Jeff Quintin:

So there's a site out there guys and it's incredible. If you go there now, it's not up. It's on an older server. And in fact, I messaged them and they're going to be down for a little bit but you go to their Facebook page too, but it's called How Money Walks.

 

Greg Harrelson:

How Money?

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yep, howmoneywalks.com. And it shows you all the taxpayers and all the money and the income that's leaving each person's state where they're going. So where it's going, where it's coming. So you can say right now somebody's going to South Carolina. You could say, "Okay, where's it all moving from?" And then if anybody is leaving South Carolina, where is it going to? And you can analyze it and then you could say if somebody is moving from Boston to the Berkshires, okay, if they've made that move or if they moved from Mass to South Carolina, you put in their income or whatever, as an example, and it'll show you how much you'll save in income tax or taxes. It's a really, really brilliant site setup. It's down right now, but when it comes back up, you guys go check it out. For what you're doing, for migration and so forth, it's incredible.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's awesome. So Jeff, let's talk about you and I know you've really taken on and building quite an operation now and expanding quite a bit. But you're a listing Jedi also. I mean, you know how to list properties. I think that you could fly and drop into any community around America and start listing properties within a week. What are you talking about with your team? And how are you keeping them going? What are you sharing with them? What are you all doing to really just make sure that you don't lose momentum for December and you actually gain momentum at the same time where most people think business is not being done? What conversations are you all having?

 

Jeff Quintin:

Well, I guess the first thing is it's the mindset and the strategy behind when COVID had first hit, right? So we jumped as a team meaning the first week and everything happened, like around March 20th and in that range, kind of saw what's going on. But one of the ongoing themes or strategies we keep telling or we share with the team as far as listing is concerned is is list everything. Okay? List everything.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Now, when I say list everything, I normally previous years would say, "Well, we're going to be a little bit more, have standards of what we're going to list out and how far we're going to go and price points we're going to work in and standards of which we're going to price a property within." If it's within 5% or whatever, maybe depending on the motivation. Today, it's a little bit different. So our strategy now at least is when I say list everything, I'm talking get your hands on as much inventory and list everything as possible. So what does that mean?

 

Jeff Quintin:

It means for our team, it's like this. If they're normally only going to go 30 minutes or 40 minutes maybe max, and then there's an opportunity or a motivated seller that's 15 minutes and they're not familiar with that market, they better damn well go learn that market and go get that listing if it's an opportunity. Go a little further, right? Stretch a little further in their geographic area that they will go. If it's a price point that they're unfamiliar in, meaning that maybe an agent is not familiar with the higher end of a million bucks and there's an opportunity, you better go get it. It's now go get everything you get your hands on. And in addition to that, as far as pricing is concerned, if there's an expired that's expired today and the seller says, "No, no, no, we definitely are firm on our number." And if it's within reason, let's say, not grossly overpriced, it's okay now to take that listing even at the price it was.

 

Jeff Quintin:

I would never have said that before, but what's happening is today's expired price is actually priced right three months from now. Or the old expired six months from now is now priced right today, or one year ago. So we're going back on the old expireds one, two, three, four years ago because the market's changed so much. And so many of the sellers right now, six months or even a year ago, they not only realize this. They know the market is good, but some of the scripting is that, "Mister Seller, I see that you expired for 499. Just curious, if you knew you could get more today, say 550, would you get it back on the market?" "Well, certainly if I knew that, great." 499 then or 550 now, 550 now is priced right in our market. Right?

 

Jeff Quintin:

So when I say like within reason, two things can happen. One is when we went that first week in COVID, we said list everything. We looked at two reasons why. One is either the market was going to take a big dip, right? And the market was going to go way down. And the conversation at that point was, "All right, well, we still have all the inventory." So now that conversation's on reductions. Or we're going to have all the inventory and the market is going to do what it did and we're going to get in here, right? So today, we look like heroes. I've been telling our team, don't think it's because of your skills and you're so great. Now, even though they've got skills, but the market's helping them get what they've gotten. So we have to continue to list everything and we're surprising ourselves.

 

Jeff Quintin:

We're listing things and it's selling like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that just sold and he got four offers. And it's over $50,000 above list," right? So the mindset and strategy is you got to go list everything. And also all the sources, everything whereas before, an agent may only work their past clients. Well, they don't know the expireds. They've got to get aggressive on that now and learn those scripts and learn that market and learn how to have conversations with them. So I guess that would be the first thing right now I'd say, is we're constantly listing everything we can.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's solid. I was sharing with some people a kind of similar conversation like, "Look, don't turn down a listing," and I got a little pushback when I shared that because people were like, "Oh, wait, look, I'm not one of those agents that wants to just take a bunch of overpriced listings." And I get it. That was actually a great comeback to what I was saying, but what's needed to understand is what you're sharing with here and you said it. It's like today's expired is perfectly priced in 90 days from today. So any time you're in a market where prices are rising, then you can take a listing at a higher price as long as that higher price will be reached between the beginning of your listing agreement and the expiration of your listing agreement. In other words, if your property is increasing in value, so another way of saying it is if you price the property at fair market value today in most markets, it's underpriced next week because the market's still going up.

 

Greg Harrelson:

So what you can do is you can say, "Okay, you can compromise a little bit right now." And you can go ahead and take your property, take the listing at a projected price based on the markets trend line for the next 60 days. So you could take it at a future price as long as the future price is within your listing period and is within the expectations of what the sellers want when it comes to having their property sold the timeframe that they want to have it sold. So at some point in today's market, the price actually... The time will reach the price. Now, if the market ever crashes, it's the exact opposite. If somebody says, "I want $500,000 for my property," and I say, "Okay, perfect, let's put it on for 75 then." But now, it's like I want 600 when it's really supposed to be 575. It's like I'm not going to turn that listing down. There's zero.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah. And if the market does decide to correct, which at some point it's going to, if you have the inventory, then it's a price reduction conversation. But I'd rather have that reduction conversation with inventory than not have any inventory. Right?

 

Greg Harrelson:

I do agree, Jeff, that it's easier to get the price reduced. If you've got the listing, it's easier to get the listing to reduce than it is to convince somebody that's not listed to go on the market at a reduced price.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah, and especially in the downward market for sure.

 

Greg Harrelson:

In a downward market. Absolutely. That's why I think you're saying it's okay. If the market was to shift, then all you have to do is change the conversation to price reduction. You'd rather be in that position than the market shifts and you're trying to scurry and get a bunch of discouraged people to list their property.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah. But the key is, like you said, you got to know the market, right? You got to know what the market and the trend, where it's going. And for us, I mean, our inventory is down 50% typically than what it normally would be, right? I mean, we have less than two months' supply in some markets in the areas that we work in. It's less than a month's supply. So universally, you get a listing. No matter what, it's going to sell. It's just going to.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Doesn't it seem like going into the holidays, because folks are reluctant to list, the inventory is going to get even smaller?

 

Jeff Quintin:

For sure, and that's exactly-

 

Kevin McCarthy:

So that would dictate that going into this holiday season, if there are fewer listings, they're going to be even more in demand. Right?

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah. And that's part of the scripting we're using as well, is we're saying to our sellers that many sellers are thinking just like you are. And yet, those sellers, because they're thinking of taking their home off the market or not on the market because of the holiday season, what do you think is going to happen in the spring? Well, they're all going to put it back on, right? There's going to be a whole new bunch that will come on because they decided not to have it on now. And what do you think happens between supply and demand? You get a higher price when supply is up, and you get a better price when supply is down. Right? So it's having that conversation right now.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

This is already a historically low inventory for most places. And on top of that, we're going into the holiday. I mean, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

And historically low interest rates, which can't be overlooked through it all. So it's like the perfect storm.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. You know what? And some people will think about buyers as if the buyer is just like, "Oh, poor buyer, they're having to pay more money." But just remember, lucky buyer because they're actually paying less money to the bank. So the buyer, even though the seller is getting a little bit more money today, the buyer is saving a little bit more money in savings. So it's kind of an offset. What they're having to give the seller, they're not just... It's actually transitioning from instead of giving it to the bank, now the seller is getting it. That's kind of what's really going on.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Let me ask you this question, and I want everyone to answer it. I'll ask Kevin first, Mills. If you didn't have listings right now and knowing what you know and you have a very low inventory, you have no listings, and you're like, "Man, I've got to get a listing. I've got to get some listings right now." What's the first thing that you would do? Where would you go? Where would you look first and what would you tackle first?

 

Kevin Mills:

I'll go for sale by owner probably first because they're the ones that actively have it basically on the market. So I'd go Craigslist, Zillow, Facebook marketplace. I'd round up on like probably 10, 15 of those, however many I could get ahold of first. I'd call them all. Now I would basically just use this script and obviously they're still trying to sell. Obviously, the holiday season is not affecting that. But what if I could sell your property and put just as much money in your pocket as you're currently doing right now? Because where the market is and because the market's rising, you priced yourself in the rear-view mirror. You priced yourself of where we were a month and a half ago. And we're pricing our property through the windshield of where they're going.

 

Kevin Mills:

So if I can share with you how I'm doing that, I can take over behind all the marketing of it, make sure the buyers are pre-qualified, have proof of funding. Obviously, that makes sense for you. Right? And I think you could probably scoop up quite a few.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Another thing about the for sale by owners is most human beings, at least in the United States, they start reevaluating in December thinking about the New Year, right? Whether it'd be a new diet plan, or a new exercise plan, or financials, or relationships, or they just... We tend to just naturally start thinking of what worked and what changes do we need to make? And a for sale by owner who's a for sale by owner in December thinking they're a human being in the United States, so they're probably thinking and reevaluating things. So a for sale by owner is likely reevaluating whether or not they should continue for sale by owner or not. Okay?

 

Greg Harrelson:

So I think in the spring, they're not reevaluating. They're like, "No, this is the time. We're committed. We're going to see this out." But after the fall and going into the winter, they start saying, "You know what? Maybe we should... Nothing's going to happen in December. Why don't we just kind of reevaluate and see what we're going to do?" And they start thinking about making changes in January. You need to be in the conversations before they're making the changes. You have to be in the conversations when they're thinking about making changes. And if you get in there and establish that rapport now, not only will you end up with a few listings now, you'll build a heck of a pipeline for January.

 

Jeff Quintin:

I agree.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I don't know. There's a little bit of background noise there. Okay. So what about you? Lisa, what about you? If you were just kind of like something happened and you started out fresh, knowing what you now though, you still have your wisdom, where would you go if you needed to pick up some listings fairly quickly? Where would you tackle approach?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

So if I had to pick up listings really quickly, my go-to would be a service like Remine, which is looking for sellers who have the qualities that we know make sellers in each of our own market. And it might be different in your market from my market, right? Like I said, for me, it's those older sellers who are getting ready to get out of dodge, in two story houses in particular, which is a lot of our housing inventory, right? Another could potentially be looking at those... And I hate to kind of bring it up because of where we are in society with COVID and stuff. But looking at folks who might be in a position where they need to capitalize on the equity in their home, right? And approaching it with a soft conversation that allows them to understand that it's not their fault, it's the safe way to do it and better to do it before the equity decreases through late payment fees or backlogs, right?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

But I think if you can get in touch with those sellers and not have to force them to do the reach out, which can be embarrassing and not comfortable for them to do but offer them options, I think that that's a huge opportunity given that a lot of homeowners have massive equity right now to be able to take advantage.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. You would identify those like you said with Remine. Now, do you call them? Mail them? Do you custom audience in Facebook and try to get them to landing pages? What would be your more immediate activity based on, okay, I'm trying to get something to happen before January?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

I mean, honestly, it's all of that, right? The best way to do it is a phone call, no doubt. But the phone call is followed up with a letter or a postcard, which is then followed up with some of the custom audiences and the branding stuff that goes on behind the scenes. Minus COVID, I'd say door knocking those sellers, but clearly, that's not really on the table right now. So I think it leans in heavily to the phone calls and some really strategic mailing.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, I like how you're bringing multi. It's kind of like a multichannel approach.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

It's got to be, right? Because the thing that I've learned over the years is, look, we're good at what we do. All of us are, right? Everybody watching this takes the time to invest in their business. But I guarantee you, there's somebody from each of our marketplaces who's also watching this and who does what we do. Right? And so I think I find where we kind of excel is that some people will just do the phone calls. Some people will just do the mailings. Some people will just run some custom audience social media ads, right? And part of the magic is because we have the ability to put all of that together at once.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, it's such a great thing. What about you, Jeff? What would you do, man? You're kind of like me. You probably look at your team every once in a while or I look at my company and I'm like, "Guys and girls, we need to get some lessons." You go in and we kick down the door and we start yelling and screaming and thinking that's motivating them. But at the end of the day, when we do all that, what are you telling them? You need to do what right now?

 

Jeff Quintin:

We have the conversation where basically, you literally have to get a listing by five o'clock, or you're turning your real estate license in, right? That's just what it is. Or you play the contact game, right? If you had to make one contact to get a listing, if you didn't get a listing today, turn your real estate license. One contact, one contact only. Who would you call? I don't care if it's your mom, your dad. But you got to get a listing. Right? But that's the mindset. How am I going to get it? I'm going to be determined.

 

Jeff Quintin:

So it starts there, right? Yeah. If you could literally do that. I guess I'm going to say, obviously, for sale by owners, we know that they are for sale by owner. That's obvious that there is a listing opportunity outside of that. I'm going to go for the old expireds. I'm going to really go with the old expireds because they were previously on the market. They failed the sale with a realtor that they had before. And we know that most cases, they probably still want to sell. We know the old expired eventually will come back on. 70% of them will reenter the market at some point. So the old expireds 12 months ago or nine months ago maybe thinking of getting it back on the market after the first of the year at this point.

 

Jeff Quintin:

I would hammer them pretty good. I would go and I'd call them obviously. I would text them. I'd voice broadcast or leave them messages. I would use different contact junkie, for example, different sources to be able to use some automation to get to them. I would be all over them right now. And we're texting right now these lead sources, and we're using little trigger text, very simple. That would be something that would say, "If you know there was 100% chance that you could get your price today, would you be back in the market?" Right? Or something like, "We just sold another. Your neighbor that may have affected your price, I'm curious, at what price makes you a seller?" Right? So getting them to raise their hand and do that. If you had 2,000 expireds in the last year or two in your market, or three, whatever it may be, and there's a lot of them out there that have not come back on and you go after them, I think there's some listing opportunities today you could start to convert or appointment set that you can go on right now.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's awesome. So old expireds. That's a good one. I want to just touch on FSBOs one more time and that is this, is I think as agents, we need to stop thinking that FSBOs are selling on their own to save the commission. I truly don't believe that's why they're selling on their own. I truly believe that they're selling on their own because they don't see any value in the agents that they've talked to. So therefore, they're just going to do it on their own and save the commission. So the whole commission thing is really whether or not they see that the agent is worthy of the commission more so than they don't want to give up the commission. I see you're nodding heads. Lisa, what are your thoughts on that?

 

Lisa Chinatti:

100%, right? The only reason they don't use this is because of an absence of value. Right? And the folks that they've met with haven't been able to prove to them that they can get them more money, save them time and hassle, or whatever it is that is the pain point that could come up through the process, right? But if we can prove our value as an industry, we're set. It's when we can't prove our value as an industry that we have problems.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, I agree. Kevin, any questions? I don't know. We didn't really tell the audience or suggest to the audience or welcome them, invite them to answer or to ask questions, but I hope that some will start asking some questions. Is there any questions there now?

 

Kevin McCarthy:

We do have a few coming in. Yeah, throw in questions on YouTube on the chat and we'll bring them up for the panel. We've actually had two, ask Lisa, can you share your Facebook marketing ad verbiage? Lisa, I'd love to see some of your Facebook ad marketing pieces. I don't know if you've got that ready to go. But maybe we could do something. You could send us a couple screenshots and we can send it out afterwards to the list.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

That's perfect. Yeah, I don't have them pulled up, but I'm happy.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Everybody's very interested in what-

 

Greg Harrelson:

Can I add something to that, Kevin? Because I'm sure a lot of people that are on podcasts and recordings like this, we get questions like that and I really want to just give a little bit of a tidbit on, and I think Lisa will agree but if she doesn't, I sure would like to hear her opinion. Lisa and all of us could share with you our latest and greatest ad and I can assure you that that latest and greatest ad is not going to perform the same way in you're market or even in our own market in two weeks from now. Because when we run an ad, and we've got this great lingo and this great picture, and it's performing very well analytically, then let's say Facebook is going to, at some point, say, "Hey, look, so many people keep saying the same verbiage and the same picture and the same this," that all of a sudden, they start to bury that because they want you to change it up. Because they don't want to bore the audience with the same old repetition over and over and over again.

 

Greg Harrelson:

So yes, it's great to share and to give some perspective and some ideas, but just understand that we got to be careful. We're constantly having to recreate these ads when we see them accelerating, doing well, then we see them dropping off. Then next thing you know, something brand new has to be created again. So just wanted you to know.

 

Kevin Mills:

Just probably her nurturing campaign, I would ask more than that. I feel like people are asking the wrong question. Obviously, you can get people to raise their hands pretty easy, but what are you doing once they raise their hands?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Lisa is not going to tell you that. I don't even know.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

I can tell that. I will tell anything.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Just kidding. I'm just picking on you. I'm just picking on you.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

Well, Kevin's 100% correct. It's all about the nurture campaign. We can all generate leads. And it doesn't matter how many leads you generate, if you don't know what to do with them, which is kind of why I said earlier. Are we going to focus on the one that's going to be the quick hit, and then just generate another hundred leads to find one? Or do you have the plans in place to look at the ones that were generated two, three, four years ago and turn those into the listings today? Right? And that's where the money is. That's where all the profit comes from and the inventory, but that's what pays the bills at the end of the day, is the longer term nurture.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

More questions rolling in now. A couple of them said, "Hey, you all are teams. What if you pretend that you were just an agent just starting out?" Here's someone, Claudia, "I'm a new realtor in Denver. Have you got any new advice if I was a new agent or if you were a new agent, what would you do today?"

 

Lisa Chinatti:

But I don't think it's different. So Claudia, I think everything that we're all talking about, you can do all of the same things. Right? And it's just a function of we might do it for larger teams on a much bigger scale, but you can take everything and still do it on a small scale on the one offs that work. But I think one of the most important things as a brand new solo agent is starting to build your brand. Right? Working on the who are you and what makes you special and why would a seller work with you?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Jeff and Kevin, why don't you all take a shot at that one too? Because I think that's a great question and there's probably a lot of people in Claudia's position.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Well, I guess a couple of things. I mean, a new agent, I guess one of the easiest things to do right now is we always talk about your center of influence and building your sphere or however you want to call that, center of influence, sphere of influence of people that know you, right? And you got to make sure that you build that database. So that's from all your Facebook friends, all your LinkedIn connections, everyone that's in your cell phone, download them, create a spreadsheet because all of a sudden, you can come up with a thousand pretty quick, and you got to get in touch with them.

 

Jeff Quintin:

One of the scripts that we're using for new agents right now and which I think is kind of simple is the fact that you want to call all the people that know you and simply say, "Hey, I'm thinking about getting in the real estate business. And if I was to get in real estate business, would you do me a favor and give me an online review? And if you're willing to do that right now, that would be great. I'm going to send you my Zillow link. Would you give me an online review?" Start building your reviews up because that's going to give you online credibility where the consumer today is going to go. So you could get to... I mean, if you had a thousand people in your sphere and you call them all and could you get to a hundred reviews pretty quick? I think you can.

 

Jeff Quintin:

But that's kind of the script. I'm in real estate now. Or I'm thinking about getting in real estate. Could you do me a favor and just give me an online review? It's a really simple script, and that's just building up them to endorse you, which therefore leads into, "Hey, who else do you know that wants to buy or sell? If you hear of anybody would you refer them to me?" Right? So it's an easier way asking for an online review. That's where I would start, start to get used to talking to the people that know you, and as you're doing it, build some reviews.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Now, what about you Mills?

 

Kevin Mills:

Yeah. I mean, I would say, "What are you willing to do first?" And then at that point if their answer is anything, like most of you are going to say, "I'll do anything." And the first thing that I'll do on that end is I would learn the conversations. I would understand how I want to build my business and whether I wanted to work the buyer side or the listing side, or work both of those sides and understand what I'm most comfortable and confident. Like Lisa like she said from the beginning that she's not making the outbound prospecting calls or kudos me for doing that, but she's doing it a different way. She's all in on that method.

 

Kevin Mills:

I think you need to figure out what kind of agent you want to be. But I think more than anything, you have to know the conversations. So getting familiar with those conversations. And I love what Jeff said, it's exactly how I got started as well. I reached out to the people that I knew, and it wasn't that many people. So let's just imagine that she was in a similar boat as me. I didn't know anybody in Myrtle Beach when I started other than my wife and her family. And her family owned property an hour and a half away, so I wasn't doing any business with them. So first thing I did was learning the conversations. I listened to other people having those conversations. And then I started role-playing those conversations. And then I just started calling people and started building that database. So I think you have to be comfortable building a slow and steady foundation so you can build a really great business on top of that.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Kevin, I'll give one answer to myself if I can, and that is I don't know how big the market is of the person who asked the question, but if they were in my office, I would say this. Go to Zillow. Go look up all the for sale by owners that are on the Zillow website. There's probably hundreds and start from oldest to newest, not newest to oldest, oldest to newest. And I would call every one of them and ask them if you can actually just come over and do a 15 minute tour of their property.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Just go preview it. Yeah.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Just go preview it. And here's the reason why I would coach this way. Number one, I'm coaching you right now on how to get comfortable with making a call. But I didn't tell you to ask for the listing. So I'm not trying to get you to sell anything or to convince anybody. I'm just trying to get you to get in the door for a tour. So now you're getting more comfortable making a call. Number two, you're getting more comfortable actually driving up to a stranger's house knocking on the door and walking in. Number three, you're getting more comfortable talking to people, and you'll start developing the skill of developing rapport. They'll start asking you questions. You'll figure out that you don't know the answer. So then you'll go back and learn the answer. So the next one you go on, you'll know the answer.

 

Greg Harrelson:

And you repeat that process around five to 10 times a week for the next four weeks and you will be on your way to doing a ton of business in real estate. It's really simple. But you have to be willing to take those steps. And I can already say that I know what people say. Well, what did you say? It doesn't matter. It's okay if you don't even know what to say. If you'll just follow those steps, it'll be a natural progression that you'll grow, you'll learn, and you'll actually really, really do well in real estate.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

I think those are all awesome answers. Claudia said thank you so much. We got another, a couple questions coming in. I think these are great questions for this panel. So here it is. "Hi, all. I'm in a big second home community or resort community. What's the best way to get listings there?" So I don't know if I know already, but a lot of our folks here on the panel are in community like that. And also talk about a little bit about working today in a resort market where sellers and buyers aren't face-to-face as much.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Jeff, why don't you take that? Lisa, you're not in a resort market, I don't think.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

I'm not. Nope.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Why don't you talk about it a little bit, Jeff?

 

Jeff Quintin:

Well, I think that we have a little bit of an advantage sometimes ultimately that we can do a lot of this. A lot of what we do is over the phone. So that's always good. For us, we're not doing anything different than what somebody would do in a primary home market and just maybe that our approach is going to be a little quicker maybe over the phone as far as presentation on price and future-pacing them a little bit there. I'm going to say that the resort market, what we're doing is just recalling all of our past clients or calling expired listings or calling for sale by owners. We're doing a lot of just listed, just sold calls, which it's surprisingly, the just listed, just sold calls which is typically more of a colder type of call is actually panning out really well more than ever and we're seeing it right now.

 

Jeff Quintin:

And so we're doing that. We're informing the owners that are living in Philadelphia, which is our market, our feeder market more or less about the values and what's going on. Especially this time of year, there aren't a lot in our market, visiting here in November and December. September they are but they've gone home and they've come back in the spring. So we're not really doing a whole lot different. We're making just the phone calls over the phone. We're not obviously door knocking as much because you can't unless it's in a community where it's a primary home community. So we're just making sure we're making this context. Really, it's over the phone.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, Kevin, I think a lot of times because I've had this question at least a hundreds of times about resort market, okay? And my gut tells me or my instincts tell me that when somebody asked that question, a lot of times they think that maybe they're at a little bit of a disadvantage because they're in a resort market and they can't really meet people face-to-face. I know Kevin and I and Jeff would say, "Oh my gosh, we were some of the luckiest people on force." Because we can do four or five listing presentations in a day without ever leaving our office.

 

Greg Harrelson:

So what I'm doing is I would be going in. I know Jeff and Kevin would do the same thing, is I'd go look for all the old expireds of people that are in the resort properties that are absentee owners because you can call them. You can present over the phone to them and you can DocuSign the list of papers out, never have to even go see the property until you meet the photographer over there. So there's some real good advantages of that. And the reality is you'd call old expireds. You would call expireds. You'd call FSBOs. You would call your centers of influence. You would call your just listed, just sold. You would do custom audience Facebook posting. You would boost those posts.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Every single thing you would do in a traditional market, you do the same exact thing. The only thing is instead of getting used to dialing your area code in your city, you dial in an area code in a different city. I know so many areas because like somebody says, "Oh, you're three, three. I'll see a number 330, oh, that's Ohio. 702, that's Las Vegas. 914, that's Florida. It's like I know these area codes all over the country just like most people know their local area codes. That's the only thing different, is the area code you dial. Other than that, everything's the same.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Do you think that today in the pandemic market, a lot of normal real estate is now working the same way a resort real estate market would work? Because there's less face-to-face. There's more people moving from the city to the suburbs or that sort of thing?

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah, yeah. No, I think for sure, we're doing virtual like this face-to-face listing appointments right now or consultation type. Or still, a lot is still just over the phone, not so much through Zoom. A couple rages are, and we've done that a lot. Whether that's primary home or resort, I think that the primary homes are doing it just as much. And for us, it's just a different... I guess everything is different is that the scripting part is that, "Let me go ahead and take a look at your property. How do I get in? Is it vacant?" Obviously, it's vacant. What's your lockbox? Or do you have a key hidden or does another broker have the key, a rental company have the key? Whatever. And sometimes it's a matter of us having to look at it. Other times, it's cookie cutter, we don't need to look at it, which is great. Again, saves us some time.

 

Jeff Quintin:

But if it's a matter of looking at it, let me do some homework and research and then we'll get back to you and send them a CMA market analysis and listening agreement. Everything is our marketing packet over the phone or over by email. Back in the day, we used to do it by fax in those days. Right? We used to fax everything. And then if they didn't have a fax machine, we made them go to the local Costco or whatever it was at the time.

 

Greg Harrelson:

FedEx.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Yeah, that or we-

 

Greg Harrelson:

Kinko's. It was Kinko's.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Kinko's, that's all right. Yeah. The greatest story is we should take listing agreements and fax them to their local pizzeria and then order pizza for them and have the delivery guy deliver the pizza and the agreement. Right? So anyway, it's just the opportunity is you can do it over email now instead having a face-to-face with all the technology. Same thing.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Kevin, what other questions? I know we've got a few more minutes left.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

A few more coming in. Someone on here wants to shadow Kevin one day from 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM. Or is the right hours, Kevin? And how could they get in touch with you?

 

Greg Harrelson:

He just left.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Actually, you guys you better show up around 4:00 AM some days on the expired.

 

Kevin Mills:

[crosstalk 00:53:56]. Obviously, I can appreciate that. Just imagine somebody standing home for 10 hours.

 

Greg Harrelson:

I would say this. It's pretty boring to shadow Kevin. It's entertaining to listen to Kevin but it's pretty boring because guess what he does? He stands there. He makes outbound calls over and over and over and over again. Sets multiple listing appointments and then shows up at 4:35 in the morning the next day and starts the same process.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Thoughts on prospecting realtors for referrals. If you were to move from one region to a new area and start up shop from scratch in the new area, do you call the realtors you used to work with?

 

Greg Harrelson:

Lisa, you're on mute. Yeah.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

I'm a huge agent to agent referral person. That's one of my main pillars of business, I wouldn't necessarily cold call an agent to build a referral network. My mantra is it's much like anything else, that you've got to give, give, give so that you're always thought of. And that you're not going to know me, trust me, and like me unless I'm continually adding value to your life as an agent. Right? So that's how I think of it for agent to agent referrals. Build the connections based upon giving without expectation of return, right? If I can constantly put out content or share with you tips and tricks, and every agent could add something. I learned something from anybody who will share with me at any time, right? And that's the stuff that I think is more impactful as you tried to build an agent to agent business.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, that's awesome. That's good.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Most important question of the night that's rolling in here, Scott Bluth and Joe Carideo both asking, "Jeff, who does your hair?"

 

Jeff Quintin:

That's a secret. That is a secret. I can't give that out. There's just no way.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

I was like, "Good." Whoever, you're good.

 

Jeff Quintin:

If I put this hair and Greg's jacket together with these eyes, oh my God.

 

Kevin Mills:

It's not his real hair. That's the answer. It's not his real hair. It's just something that he slaps on top of his bald head.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Look at that.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Jeff's hair is awesome.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, he's coloring it. I'm sorry I'm going to call you out. But your hair wasn't that color before. Final question. Kevin, final question. You got two more minutes.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

Let's see. Jeff, are you still using scripts?

 

Jeff Quintin:

Every day. Every day. I don't know not how to be scripted, I guess is what I would say. Just at this point, I don't even know what's a script. It's just the way that it is.

 

Greg Harrelson:

And by the way, those people that don't use scripts, that's actually their script.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Everybody has a script.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah, everybody's had a script. It's just a matter of whether or not you're going to invest a little bit of time to kind of polish it up. So if you're not polishing up and you're not using something that you would call a script, you're actually using a script because I can tell you, if you go to 10 different appointments and we were to observe those people that say, "Well, I really don't like scripts." If we were to observe them on 10 different appointments, we'd see a lot of similarities and duplication of what they're saying, which tells us they're on script. So really, we're all on script. The difference is whether or not we're actually investing time to perfect and polish that script.

 

Jeff Quintin:

That's 100% for sure.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Kevin, we're right at that time. So I think that's a wrap.

 

Kevin McCarthy:

I'll wrap it up. And thanks so much to each and all of you. Someone called you real estate superheroes in the chat. And I think that fits perfectly. Thanks to each and all of you superheroes for participating and sharing, and I hope some people learned something from this. We're going to send this email out to everyone who's on our mailing list. If you're not on our mailing list, go to keepingitreal.com and you can sign up and we'll notify you every time there's a new one of these coming out. You can also go to our Facebook page or the realgeeks.com blog, and we'll put up some additional material there. So thanks again for all of you and I think this has been really fun.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Yeah. Thanks, everybody. It's good to see you.

 

Jeff Quintin:

It's our pleasure.

 

Lisa Chinatti:

Bye guys.

 

Greg Harrelson:

Have a happy holiday. Oh, I got to stop saying that. Have a wonderful Christmas. Bye, everybody.

 

Jeff Quintin:

Thank you.