Real Estate Inside Sales Agent – ISA Scripts & Systems
hi this is Brian Icenhower welcometoday I am here with a good friend alarge deacon from PhiladelphiaPennsylvania Dale welcome to the showthanks Brian I appreciate it love beinghere hey Dale I mean we’re all pros thatDale on the showDale’s team did 250 million inproduction and about six hundred unitsper year pretty excited about thathe they have four is A’s the Dale workswith we’ve been working together forover a year and a half nowDale himself coaches team leaders insidesales agents directly and and evenagents that just want to convert leadsin that right Dale that’s right yeah sothis is gonna be awesome trying to pickyour brain about about some of thetopics we got today yeah you know it’sfunny as usually people come to methey’re like hey you’re really good atinside sales and my agents aren’tworking the leads I’m giving them so wewant to hire an inside sales agent andI’m like wow that’s fantastic book Idon’t know if we’re gonna fix yourmarriage by having a baby so let’s let’swell let’s do some marriage counselingfirst with your agent boy I’ll tell youa men on that one that’s actually agreat point yeah there’s there’ssomething something not in place ifwe’re having that problem we got to fixwhat’s not in place well you know whatis funny and you I’m sure you’ve seenthis all the time Brian yourself is thatrunning inside sales requires thehighest level of accountability right inorder to make it profitable and make itworkit requires the highest level ofManagement the highest level ofaccountability that you can that you canbring to the table right it’s justanother level that you have to go to andif you don’t it you need to have thesame level of accountability for youragents to agreed and so if these agentsor these people are calling and say heyI’m you know my people are not followingup with the leads I want to go way backto the to the basics here for a secondokay so a lead comes in right all leadsare not quickequal correct correct so tell me what’sthe first thing we’re trying to do whena lead comes in do by way of classifyingthat lead right yeah so first offeverybody should understand thedifferent lead types that we have rightthe different lead sources so typicallythe less you pay for a lead sourceunless it’s referral or just spherebecause you’ve been in business for 40years the less you pay for the lead themore of them you’re gonna need in orderto get a conversion right correct thetypically hopefully the more you pay forthe lead the fewer of them you’re gonnaget but the better quality they’re gonnabe one would think one would hope yesthat’s what we got to keep an eye on thebudget so typically you know you wantyour agents and is a is to understandwhat lead source is this because youwant them to have the right mindsetaround it so if you’re getting a ton ofwebsite registrations or responses toyour facebook ads or whatever it may beyou want your agents and isas to havethe right mindset that listen we’regoing to we’re gonna kiss all thesefrogs the same and one of them is gonnaturn out to be a prince and that’s justthe way it’s gonna work so let’s not getupset and disregard them because ifwe’re gonna convert three or four orfive percent of them we don’t know whichone of them the three or four or fivepercent is going to be yeah and I thinklike letting those numbers be knownbecause if you don’t let them know thatit’s quite it’s considerably a losingproposition right I mean people if youhave a favorite baseball player and hegets up to bat every single time youknow that you can make the all-star teamif you bat 300 which means you hit theball 30% of the time which means 70% ofthe time you fail yes you can say wowthat guy’s terrible because he’s onlyhitting the ball 35% of the time yeahhe’s gonna be the MVP of the league ifhe does that though so we have to setthe right expectations with the peoplethat converting the leads or what’sgonna happen is they’re going to followup and immediately assess all the leadsis terrible and get discouraged rightexactly so if you’re not will it tellthem basically show them get them tounderstand if you’re not willing toinvest that 70% of strikeoutsthat’s 70% of failure you will not getthe 30% right you know no all-star teamthat’s right it’s not gonna happen sothat’s the first place to start we wantpeople to be in the right mindset rightwe want them to be on the right pagethen when these things come in whenthese leads when the leads when thesepeople human beings right when they giveus their information and when we get intouch with them we really just want tostart out with finding out about themand it’s not about these you know what Ikind of break with most of the trainersand coaches and everything that’sstandard out there in the industry it’snot about having a clever conversationit’s not about tricking somebody intosomething it’s not about fooling themit’s about having a legitimateconversation with another person and Ilike to break I like to break down theconversation that you have with somebodyinto three critical elements and if youfollow these three critical elements andjust remember in my conversation am I amI tracking toward any of these threeyou’re going to be on course forconverting this person and that would bemotivation their motivation do they havemotivation right do they have abilityand do they have the willingness to meetwith us or work with us those threecritical things that’s really whatyou’re looking for agreed and what we’relooking to do with those three elementsmotivation ability and willingness whichI love we’re not to do that we have toask questions right we can’t just betelling them we’re not trying tomanipulate them and close them in thetraditional sense we’re coming fromcuriosity here and asking questions tofind out those three things absolutelyyeah and so I’ll demonstrate for youright so if we’re work so we first wantto see do you have motivation right suredo you have motivation if you do greatlet’s move on and ask lots of questionsabout what you’re motivated to do andwhether you’re going to be able to do itokay that’s ability if the answer is noto motivation or not yet why write a kitmake sense to melet me understand your situation the wayyou understand your situation rightwhich is often inaccurate right a lot oftimes yeah they don’t quite know thewhole situation that’s why we are theones with the licenses we are the onesthat have some experience in thisbusiness right so we got and that’s howwe’re seeking to help exactly and weunderstand that through questions rightsure we don’t we don’t understand thatby trying to change your mind or negatewhat you have going on we first seek tounderstand let me understand you likeyou understand you and then when Ireally understand what it is that youwant maybe we can find a faster cheapereasier better way for you to get itright even more of whatever you’relooking for I think that’s the key tojust every about every step in sales iswe have to dig into their motivation Imean it always starts there right andthat motivation starts to determinetheir ability and then their willingnessto move forward if they have the abilityit does tie in because I think the wholepurpose here when we talk aboutassessing the the quality of a lead orthe classification of a lead or personas they come in we’re typically alwaystrying to determine how best we can helpthem which means how best we can followup with them right so don’t we ratethese guys based upon that sense ofurgency on how quick they’re going to bemoving based on our best guess on thatfirst phone call yes absolutely wedefinitely want to do that so talk abouthow you rate and categorize thoseinbound leads when they come inokay so typically you’re gonna have youknow that the standard qualificationslike a zero to thirty a thirty to say 90and a 90 plus or something like thatright okay these are the big bucketsthat you’re gonna put people into justso that I understand and I can sort offorecast and I can look at mine myspread of nurtures right and I can seelike a leaderboard right I want to seehow these people stack up and who I’mgonna be following up with when that’show you really organize your follow upright so we’re talking lie and these getthese get talked about as all differenttypes of names right you’re aleads are often called your zero to 30people your 30 to 90 people will calledyour B leads let’s say your C leadscould be your 90 plus or ninety to ayear or 90 to a year-and-a-half hotleads warm leads cool leads however youwant to name those it’s all based uponthat initial call or that initialcontact where we start to determinetheir motivation ability ability andwillingness so we’re using that like athermometer to kind of take thetemperature to see how fast we thinkthis person is going to be able andwilling to move yes and we’ll ask somequestions about that and not just whendo you think you’ll be moving rightbecause oftentimes you’re gonna get I’mnot sure or sometime next springor some vague answer so other than the Ihave absolutely no idea answer you knowyou may get some kind of inkling of whenthings are going to happen what we liketo do with everybody is ask them processquestionsjust like you would if you wereinterviewing somebody right I’m gonnaask you process questions about okaylet’s work backwards so if you weregonna be in your home by X date whenwould you go out and start looking athomes if you were gonna be moving in inthe spring do you think it’d be morelike March or April or May maybe work wework backwards down that timeline yeahso if there’s longer with when it’sgonna be and then we actually startbacking with okay so when would you beready to that and then we can startgetting an idea of really pinpointingwhich bucket we’re gonna throw them intoyes gently okay and then okay I likethat I like that a lotyes place them in so then and then whatlet me give you one more point aboutthat another reason that we do that weget them to think down the path we canalso uncover where do I insert myselfright into the process and then get youto agree that I should be inserted intothe process at that point and now youand I have a tentative agreement for afuture conversation yeah I like thatit’s almost like we’re getting apartnership to at least help them outalong the way because what happens inthose different buckets right you gotthe a the B’s in the C’s let’s just callthem that okay so that actuallydetermines the amount of frequency ofyour follow up with them correct yesright so if we’ve got a let’s say we’vegot an a lead we’re gonna be staying incontact a lot more frequent because weknow that they’re planning on moving andsome time between now the next 30 daysas opposed to a see lead that it’sreally a little too premature to beblowing them up through every you knowphone and email and text message rightso we said that’s true and so Brian theway that we’ve designed and the way thatwe run lead follow-up is that we have weautomate as much as we can and then wehave and then we figure out what you’retalking about as we figure out what thepersonal touches are the actualactivities that I’m gonna do to take outto follow up with you right the the livefollow-ups on top of my automatedfollow-up soyou so in our systems everybody with theexception of that person who I have anappointment with is gonna have the sameconsistent automated follow-up from meright through emails and sometimes textmessages that are planned out in asequence that everybody goes on rightand it just looks like personal touchesthat were sending to you coming directlyfrom me as a person looks like I satdown at my computer and wrote you anemail and just to clarify that everybodyin the same bucket right so the aideleads are all gonna be on the exact sameplan they’re all on the same plan as B’sC’s everybody just different frequenciesthat they’re sent out nope everybodygets the same consistent automated dripsto make our keep us sane got it okaychanges is our active outreach to thosepeople okay tell me about that tell mewhat the active outreach is for each a Bor C if we call them yeah so what we dois depending on their time frame we usethe standard where you cut it in halfright so we’ll take whatever their timeis cut it in half actually first what wedo so you you’re talking to somebody andthey turn out to be a nurturer right yepyou’re gonna go into one of thesebuckets we don’t set an appointment withthem right now and we don’t think thatwe’re gonna be setting an appointmentwith them in the next two weeks okayokay that’s the qualification sure sonow you’re gonna go into our follow-upsystem right so you’re set onto the sameautomated follow-up through with emailsand texts on top of that I’m going totag you in my system so that I know thatI’m gonna take whatever the time frameis I’m going to cut it in half I’m gonnareach out to you at the halfway point ohI skipped over something the reason Iwent backwards I just spoke to youyou’re going into my system the firsttouch is going to be a couple days afteryou get put into my system okay becauseI want to make sure you’re getting theemails that are coming for your homesearch and that my communications arecoming through to you it’s just anothercheck-in to meit gives you a reason to call gives youa reason yeah and make sure you don’tget lost in cold storage somewhere rightright and you aren’t getting this stufffrom us the emails and things you shouldbe fat bucket right right then half wayto whatever your time frame is we’regonna follow up again right personaltouch see where you’re at check in withyou and I what I think is the best thingto do it’s not just hey it’s Dale I wantto make sure you’re still buying a houseI want to make sure you’re still sellinga house are you ready to buy or sell ahouse right instead it’s hey I’mchecking in with you and you’re gonnalook at your notes and you’re gonna readwhat it is that they told you and you’regoing to revisit what it is that theytold you right you’re just gonnabasically paraphrase back then hey lasttime we talked we talked about this isthat still the case we talked about thisis that still the case I want to see ifthings have changed and you’re showingthat you’re listening and you’re showingyeah so you’re giving a lot ofvalidation there too which buildstremendous rapport yeah so that’s greatokay so in a nutshell take me from an aa B or C buyer what is the degree ofyour phone calls the automated point toan a versus a B versus a C like forexample are you calling the A’s everyweek twice a week bees how frequent C’show freaking what’s the norm you thinkit should be okay I want to talk about Ineed to talk about this concept firstsure cuz the vast majority of agents andthe things that I hear out there gosomething like hey when are you lookingto buy a home when you want to be inyour new home oh I have no idea we’rejust looking right now and you know I’lllet you know we’re getting the emailswe’re getting the houses you’re sendingokay great can I follow up with you in acouple of months oh yeah sure yeah thatis not a nurture okay yeah that is wherethese questions come from where it’slike I don’t know when to follow up withthis person I’m just gonna keep callingthem until something happens right yeahwe need to do something there has to besome sort of action plan here right yeahlike there’s a there’s a check pointlike here’s where we were we also haveto say here’s what’s coming nowright so here’s what I want to do I wantto dial back to that conversation thatconversation should dictate when youfollow up with those people right okayit shouldn’t just be I’m throwing dartsof the board hoping that you’re ready tomove forward you need to get the piecesyou need to get their pieces of theirpuzzle right whatever they are becausethat’s going to determine how oftenyou’re following up with this peoplewith these peopleso back to your question if you’re in mya bucket for instance and you’re a zeroto 30 when I’m first speaking with youand I’m qualifying what’s going on withyou I need to understand when you’regoing to take your next action or whatyour next action is going to be I needto ask those questions right and to mein the 0 to 30 day a bucketyou’re hot lead bucket we should betrying to think about meeting to methat’s that that’s that’sperson-to-person we’re moving them intoeither with a lender a buyer consult alisting appointment or meeting or we’reshowing something we’re trying to get inperson there so that’s a lot of contactreally trying to look for reasons tohelp them to go if they want to movethat quick there’s work to be done rightyeah and if you exit a call if you exitthat first call with what you think is a0 to 30 and you don’t understand whenthey’re gonna talk to a lender whenthey’re gonna look at homes when they’regonna figure out the finances whenthey’re gonna talk to the spouse whenthey’re gonna look at their lease as towhether they can break it yeah we haulthem back and find those things outright that’s your next callyeah because they’re not going to getwhat they want 30 days if we don’t knowthat so we’re not helping them okay sonow go to our B’s our bees are so giveme an example of what that processmoving a B that which is a 30 to 90 daybuyer let’s say what type of processwhat type of moving forward to the nextstep are we talking about there okay sothe same with A’s do not get off thatcall with what you think is a B unlessyou understand what their process isgoing to look like or without getting anagreement from them that together you’regoingto start some piece of the process at acertain time in the future hey if youcan can you give me some examples ofwhat that might look like like whatwould what would that conversation looklike where you’re trying to secure somesort of commitment or agreement to thefuture yeah so I’m not getting them toagree to work with me over the phoneokay I’ve never met with this person I’mnot getting them to agree to anythinglike that right what I’m getting them toagree to is when will you start to lookat the finances if I can’t get them totalk to the lender yet right when do youthink you’d go out and start looking athomes when do you think you’d be able todecide whether to stay in the house orto move forward when do you think you’dbe able to decide – when do you thinkyou’ll start making the repairs on yourhome when would you like to speak withan agent in order to find out whatrepairs are the best investment for youto make in your home see I think that iscrucial Dale you ate every one of thoseas a question every every one of thosequestions started with a when verytime-sensitive everything is trying tofind out when and we’re probing to lookfor because if we can find somethingthat’s in range then we can actuallyhelp them we can start moving themtowards that objective so I really likethat you’re not trying to overcomeobjections you’re you’re really nottrying to manipulate anything you’re nottrying to win an argument here that theyreally need to do this now instead oflater you’re just asking with that faiththat they are going to give us somethingthat’s in range where we can starthelping them towards that goal yeah theycan put you to work basically betweennow oh yeah and if what you keep gettingis I don’t know I don’t know I don’tknow that’s a legitimate answer thatyou’re getting from this person theydon’t know they haven’t thought about ityet right which is good do you ever getthem to finally think about how to dosomething in 30 to 90 days exactlyyou’re gonna have to at some point soyou can help them work backwards in itright then you can say okay well greatcan I can I tell you how the typicaltimeline works from when you do decidegreat nowhave permission to educate you yeahanother question right right is amazinglet’s talk about the long-term right sothe C ones let’s say 90 days plus yeahwe don’t call them cold we call themcool cool they’re eggs right or positiveyeah so those people you’re gonna hear alot of I don’t know there’s gonna be alot of I don’t know right it’s justthat’s okayso what you’re gonna do with them is thesame thing you’re gonna try and what welike to do is we want to get themtalking about their ideal future righttalk about the ideal scenario and seeingthemselves in it and then if you can tryworking it backwards and saying whenwould you like to get started on thatright right give me an example give meone hypothetical so let’s say somebody’ssaying we’re you know we’re recordingthis in the fall right now okay winteractually I guess and if somebody saysyou know what I’m just I think we’rethinking we’re probably gonna move likenext summer we’re not really sure wherewe’re gonna go or you know how much oreven what our budget is we just knowthat maybe we would like to get a biggerhome something like that right just putit off right they got a they have avague idea of what’s gonna happen okaydoes it makes let me ask you this fromthe perspective of lead does it makesense for us to get together right nowno does it make sense for you to driveto my office and sit across the tablefrom me a strange salesperson no okaythat doesn’t make sense so let’s havemore of a conversation to help make itmake sense if we can and if not that’sokay what we’re gonna find out is wherealong the line could could a real estateagent help you and when would you liketo to start that processfind out from them yeah yeah I love thatI love the confidence in doing that toobecause you’ll be surprised so let’s sayso say you asked me that question and Isay I don’t know probably you know Iguess sometime in the spring sometime inthe spring great and so when you startedworking with an agent what do you thinkthe first thing is that you would dowhat would youthe agent two together where would yoube at in the process a lot you know I’mgonna disagree with what they’re gonnasay but I’m gonna say we’d be looking athouses look at houses great so how willyou do you have you figured out howyou’ll determine which agent is gonnaprovide the most benefit to you in yourhome search know I mean we got a fewfriends we do have a few friends thatare agents my nephew just got hislicense oh that’s great congratulationsthanks yeah it’s good he’s a great kidsix will you be using one of them oh Idon’t know I mean he’s our nephew but Idon’t know I you know I don’t know mywife you know she may have her friendsor I don’t we I don’t think we’re atthat stage yet got it got it so what Iwould do is I would progress with askingyou more questions about what’s mostimportant to you about your homepurchase right I want to try to push theconversation and what I would love tofind out from you is that you don’t knoweverything about the home purchaseprocess you’d love to find out how youcan save more or avoid risk or get agreat benefit from your real estateagent order that you would want to feelreally comfortable and confident withthe person that you worked with rightright I want to find out if these I wantto elicit those as outcomes from youthings that you want and then I wouldask you when you’d like to start thatprocess so if I can’t get a face-to-facemeeting soon sooner with you then whatwe’ll do is we’ll set a tentativemeeting for you said starting in thespring right right you already said thatso now we’ve dialed that back fromsummer to spring sure so I can shoot forthat I’m gonna keep asking you questionsto see if I can even bring that back alittle bit farther as close as I can getit so that I can get a face-to-face withyou yeah you’re really trying to get meinto the B category you’re trying totake that C and make me a beer or atleast make give me close enough so whenI know you can that’s kind of what we’retrying to do here is move C’s to B’s andbees to A’s throughout the whole processif we’re trying to move up a timeline sothat’s why we’re always I love howeverything you’re saying has a winattached to it everything you’re doingis according to time sensitivity hereand I think that’s where we need to andyou do that just by asking questionsabout it and asking them questions aboutthe process they don’t realize I meanclients never do they never realize allthat goes into you know if they want tomove in the summer they got to get on itthat they want to list in the summerthey need to get on it much earlier thanthat so we’re just kind of playing thatout to them by asking questions all theway through about the process exactlynow let’s presume because this happensall the time right let’s assume that youaren’t gonna buy until the summer you’redefinitely not gonna start looking oreven working on this until late springokay so we understand that so we’veestablished that now I can’t move youany farther up I can’t get aface-to-face with you can’t get you tocommit to it so what I’m gonna do isinstead I’m gonna commit to sort of ouronline relationship right so the theinformation I’m gonna be providing toyou or questions I’m gonna be asking youor questions I’m gonna be answering foryou we’re gonna agree I’m gonna get usto agree that we’re gonna have anotherconversation at a certain time in thefuture even if it’s just over the phoneor what it would have you right couldyou tell me how that looks could yousureso hey Brian you know I hear that youand your wife really aren’t going to beworking on moving forward until you knowsometime in the future you know nextspring I totally get that would it bebeneficial to you if we had anotherconversation say you know like lateFebruary where we just get on the phoneanswer any questions that you havebecause at that point you’re gonna bemuch farther down in the in your processand you’re probably gonna have somequestions you want to answer would thatwork for you yeah and I think anybody’sgonna say yes you just put me out a fewmonths yeah yeah that’s pretty much itright yeah and it’s that isn’t it thatis it as an agreement between the two ofus versus oh I don’t know oh okay wellcan I follow up with you in a few monthsrandomly right right yeah you can I callyou out of the blue randomly when you’reand catch you off-guard which youabsolutely hate and you know indon’t want like that’s just that doesn’tfeel good for anybody yeah I agree Iagree you do secure a commitment thatwe’re gonna have future conversationsand that you’re gonna help them out Ilike that a lot some of the bestsalespeople do it to me and I hate itright yeah yeah they’re like okay greatso Dell can we talk again two weeks fromtoday on November 17th and like fineexactly because now we’ve agreed to it Isaid I would do wise you’re going intowe’re breaking up script which isexactly no I really like this Dale andthank you for really outlining how wehow we look at leads and how wecategorize them and the rightexpectations how we talk to him you knowI think that’s important how we do treatthem like people they find out theirneeds all the way through excellentstuff there today Thanksyou bet all right Dale everybody thanksfor being with us today Dale I’ll betalking to you soon my man sounds goodthanks again Brett you bet