Real Estate ISA Radio

Nate Joens: Welcome everybody. My name is Nate Joens with Structurely, coming to you live from my bedroom, on this fine Wednesday morning. We are currently in the process of moving offices, and ours is under construction, so just easier this way. But, excited to welcome Robby T to our recap, our final conversations with the top ISA, with one of the former top ISAs himself.

Nate Joens: Robby is going to give us a rundown of what we've learned from the last six sessions with some amazing ISAs. Robby, just give an intro, I'm not going to try to pronounce your name again. [crosstalk 00:00:40]

Robby T.: Yeah dude, my last name sounds like a pharmaceutical drug with all the problems and none of the money, hence me being on the webinar today, right? Hey, Robby T here. Good to be back as always. It's been fun, right. We had, we started with Jim, who is like a brother to me, and it's funny, because a lot of the guests were either, I was good friends with, or became good friends with afterwards.

Robby T.: But I'm super excited to kind of walk through the main things that I really learned from some of them, and then I want to kind of talk today about some of my thoughts and my ideas, as well, on what it takes to be a really great ISA and so forth. But, I think we gotta start here.

Robby T.: I think the, we'll skip right into the meat of it. The thing I wanted to break down, what were the five key themes that I heard from all the different guests? The great piece is that, what I noticed is that a lot of them were, and Nate, feel free to chime in, from a ten thousand foot view, every guest, they had their own the flavor.

Robby T.: But they were saying a lot of the same things. There was a lot of consistent themes that were coming through in the calls. And the five habits that I'm going to go through, I think, really reflect those five key themes. Am I describing that well Nate, from your perspective?

Nate Joens: Yeah, I think that each one of them brought a different perspective, which is definitely the case. Everyone was from a different market too, which, [crosstalk 00:02:26] was interesting,

Robby T.: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Nate Joens: I think, weren't they? Yeah, so I think that that played a lot into the role. And I think everyone, every ISA just comes from a totally different background. You came from politics, Jim, I don't really know where Jim came from.

Robby T.: We don't know either. We're still trying to figure it out. (laughs)

Nate Joens: A different planet. But yeah, everyone comes from a different background and I think that that plays a role into how they take on the role.

Robby T.: Yeah, that's a very good point. They've all had different stories. Let's start here, let's start with the first habit, and I'm just going to talk about my point of view, Nate, and I want you maybe to chime in on your thoughts from what you've heard from other people.

Robby T.: Is, I would say this, the number one habit I've picked up on, from, and just to recap the guests, right, we had Jim on, Jim Renfro from Ash Realty, my brother, Holly Faulkner, she's from North Carolina. Heck, remembering all the companies and places can be tough. We had Dan, we had Alex, we had April, and we had Tyler Spraysner. I think I got all of them. Hopefully I didn't miss anyone. I got em all, right?

Nate Joens: Yeah, that's all right.

Robby T.: And the first thing was this, is, every single one was hungry in some way, shape, or form. And I think that is the first habit that was consistent, is they all had some reason to inconvenience themselves to pick up the phone and do the work. Whether it was, you know, we heard stories of, you know, I'm a single mom and I had to provide for my family, or I'm massively in debt and I need to get out of that and I need to crawl out of it, or frankly, I want to change my life.

Robby T.: I grew up, one person shared this story, I grew up watching my mom live paycheck to paycheck and I wanted to change my life. What they really showed and demonstrated was some form of hunger, where they were willing to inconvenience their lives, put in the work, and frankly, just pick up the phone.

Robby T.: And this is number one, because I think it's the most important from my perspective as well that you can't convert leads if you're not willing to pick up the phone and have the conversation. Right. Even if they utilize technology like yours, Nate, with conversational AI, using your product.

Robby T.: If you don't hop on the phone and convert the lead, because those opportunities come in at all times of day. If you're not hungry enough, if you're not willing to do the work, you're not going to have success. But, I'd love to hear your thoughts, Nate.

Nate Joens: Yeah, I completely agree. Our product is there to augment the role of the ISA and replace it. Our product doesn't have a chip on its shoulder. It puts in the work so that's why one caveat to your first point, but I see it time and time again. It's frustrating to me that when our product takes up a conversation as far as it can go right, still requires agent to follow up.

Nate Joens: And I can't tell you how many times I've seen a message come through after we've qualified the lead saying, "Hey, I didn't hear from your agent." Four times, and that's just, it's sad to me because I know that there's a team leader on the other side who spent a lot of money on that generating that lead.

Nate Joens: They've spent money on our product to qualify that lead to tee them up. And then it's just for a lack of hunger that that agent isn't pulling the trigger on that lead when they need to. So you can't really coach that. I think you can and that's something that hatches I think done so well. You can go down the line and tell what each one of your ISAs chip on their shoulder is, and why they're here and why they come in and make as many dials as they do every day.

Robby T.: I love that. That chip on the shoulder definition is really good. But the thing that was so fascinating was to see the different chips, right? And hunger is like this buzzword, and I probably shouldn't even use it, but the chip on the shoulder, it's fun because everyone's story was different. They were all that that chip look different but they had it. And that for me was just hands down. The number one thing is these people are proven something or they have something that are pushing towards.

Robby T.: And another big piece is their self realize and they understand that and they've had conversations about it, and they're putting at the forefront of their mind and it's a focus. And that's another piece is it's not just some uncovered why, it's something a lot of them are most likely talking about in their businesses, another thing and it's a primary source of their motivation.

Nate Joens: I come from this in a different perspective than you who's the one in active human coach, the most successful ISA teams in the country. But I think there's a big piece of accountability even in there you chip, if Jim shares his chip with you and the rest of the ISAs why he's doing this, why he comes in and grinds every day than you poke him with that you can say, "Hey Jim, I know you want to provide for your dad. You didn't make as many calls today." Why not? Do you still want to do that. And I think that that's a big piece too.

Robby T.: One of my former coaches, he told me once, and I think it's like quote worth writing down is, "If you to hold somebody accountable to your own goals, don't resent you, but if you hold them accountable to their goals, they'll thank you." And really that just the hun...

Nate Joens: Welcome everybody. My name is Nate Joens. I'm the CEO of Structurely and welcome to the... What are we on, the fourth episode of the top ISA series?

Robby T: I think we're actually on... Is it six?

Nate Joens: I can't even remember.

Robby T: A lot. We're on a number. We're on some number of the ISA series.

Nate Joens: Yes, whatever number it is, we're excited to be here with Robby T from Hatch, as usual, joining us today with Tyler Stracener from the Novak team at eXp Realty in Everett, Washington. Robby, give us the intro to him, or Tyler please introduce yourself.

Robby T: For sure. So, obviously I go by Robby T for one simple reason. My last name sounds like the pharmaceutical drug and I joke that it sounds like that with all the problems and none of the money. So I have no qualms with calling Tyler, Tyler S. So Stracener, Stracener, whatever your crap is, I'm just going to call you Tyler S though this whole interview. If it [crosstalk 00:01:06] undo it.

Tyler Stracener: Yep.

Robby T: Anyways, super excited. We were supposed to have Chris on today and something that came up, a family emergency, and, frankly, super excited because I reached out to Tyler. I've had the privilege of coaching him now for a while and although he is somewhat new to the game, not been doing this for years yet, his skills are unparalleled for being at this level of the game. And he naturally gets it.

Robby T: It's deceiving, but he's a tall man. If he were to stand up, he'd kind of disappear on us. And is a former basketball coach and fell into the ISA world. But I've said enough about you. I would love for you to kind of share about yourself Tyler.

Tyler Stracener: Yeah. Right there. I come from a huge basketball background. Lots of coaching, lots of playing. Plenty of injuries, which ended my career. And a lot of that just kind of translates into what I'm good at now, and that's relating with a lot of different people. But then also just the personal competition with yourself 24/7 and the performance aspect has always been something that's been there in my life and has been a motivation for me to keep pushing forward.

Robby T: I love it. And you guys have a pretty large ISA department, don't you guys, Tyler? It's how many ISAs now?

Tyler Stracener: Well we've got three ISAs now.

Robby T: In addition to you, or three total?

Tyler Stracener: Three total. So I'm one of those three.

Robby T: Awesome. And you oversee that department, correct?

Tyler Stracener: Correct, yeah.

Robby T: I love it. Good, good. So I think one of the coolest things I want to make sure we hop into today is you talked about how you were a coach for basketball, and I'd love to hear, how is that coaching of basketball translate into coaching and leading your ISAs?

Tyler Stracener: Well, I really believe that coaching is coaching. It doesn't really matter what you're coaching. Early on in my coaching career, I started off coaching third grade boys and went all the way up through high school coaching boys. And then I made the abrupt change to be the varsity head girls coach at my old high school.

Robby T: Ahhh.

Tyler Stracener: One of the questions that I just... For some reason it just kept coming up, of, "Well, how are you planning on adjusting from coaching boys to coaching girls?" And my answer was, "Basketball is still basketball." It doesn't matter who's playing it. It's the same thing. But then making the switch to being an ISA and leading our ISA squad, I've really found that coaching is just coaching. It doesn't matter what you're coaching.

Tyler Stracener: So everything that I do now is still things that I did when I was a basketball coach. From putting trainings together, what people will need to work on, observing every single day. That's kind of one of the biggest things that I do as a coach. One of the habits was watching the players as they're walking in the door. Are they sluggish, do they have a hop in their step, what's their gait like, are they excited? Do they come in together, do they come in separate? There's so many things to watch. And I still do that with the ISA squad now. And how they walk in the door is kind of that immediate, "Oh, today's going to be a good day." Or I might need to throw in some motivation into the day.

Robby T: I love that. Good, good. So, I mean if you were to summarize, you said it a couple of times, coaching is coaching. And what is coaching? And obviously you've coached boys, you've coached girls basketball. There is one difference between the two, by the way. The balls are slightly different in size.

Tyler Stracener: Slightly.

Robby T: Slightly. That's all I know about basketball. Let's be real. Anyways, what does coaching really mean? If you were to break that down, what do you think coaching really is if you were to summarize it?

Tyler Stracener: Yeah. Really, the act of coaching, I really think it's one, building the relationship, and if you don't have the relationship, the trust, and the respect, no matter how good of a coach you are, the technique, it won't be heard. So that's really the first step, is really building that relationship with whoever you're coaching. But then past that, you have to know them so well that you know exactly how to coach them. I'm sure that you can relate to this Robby, is how you coach me isn't necessarily how you coach somebody else. You have to take a different approach. And understanding really where the person comes from. And sometimes knowing them a little bit better than what they know of themselves. Sometimes pulling out those harder things that they kind of ignore or just neglected along the way. But really, the act of coaching, I really don't think it's the telling them what to do, it's... this will resonate. Asking the right questions to lead them to figure it out themselves. Because that's really where people learn best.

Robby T: I like that. So, one's relationships, two's taking a customized approach, and then three, as opposed to telling, I think that the phrase I always use is, you help them self-discover. And the funny part is that being an ISA, frankly, we can just call ourselves coaches. That's really if you think about what ISAs do in the real estate process, is they're just coaching somebody and one big ah-ha that's really played into this, is if you're coaching someone stories change naturally over time, right?

Tyler Stracener: Yep.

Robby T: And when we're having calls with leads or you're coaching somebody, the reality is that the story should be changing, new information should be coming to the table. That means you're doing your job well. But maybe we'll just petition to change it to ISAs are coaches. That's the new label.

Tyler Stracener: Yeah. Yep. And, when talking with a basketball player, really figuring out why they play this sport. Why do they love it, what's kind of their motivation, is the same thing when you're talking with a client. Why are they really wanting to do this? And so now, once you have that, you know how to continue forward and keep coaching them through the process to achieve what they really want. If you don't know that, you might be leading them in the wrong direction.

Robby T: I love that. Nate, go ahead.

Nate Joens: Yeah, no. I'm just taking it in. That's pretty interesting. Could you just give the listeners a little bit of a high level about your team set up? Where are you getting leads, some of the tech that you're using, what's the day-to-day process look like for you and your ISAs?

Nate Joens: Welcome everybody. We'll get warmed up a little bit slowly here because I can still see people coming in. My name is Nate Joens, I am the CEO and co-founder at Structurely. Structurely is an Artificial Intelligence inside sales agent, we help you qualify, nurture and respond to your leads. This is our interview with Top ISA. Today we have Holli from Donna and Team, New Bern Keller-Williams out of North Carolina as well as the usually Robby T. from Hatch Coaching and Hatch Realty.

Robby T: The usual, that's what I am now. The usual. I love that.

Nate Joens: But, yeah I'll let you guys kind of introduce yourselves, Robby how about we go ahead and start with you.

Robby T: Yeah, good to see you all again. I'm glad that I made it in this time, and know that you can see my face and hear me. We, first off thanks to everyone for switching over to Zoom. We switched publishers, we were just having some other problems so glad we did that and this is a lot smoother, I think and I'm excited about it.

Robby T: Robby T here, what do I do? I'm just a nerd. Total nerd who likes to geek out about lead conversion, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, throw it at me we can talk about it. But, you know I'm excited today because one of the first, you know when I got into coaching, one of the first teams that I actually helped out was Holli and Team New Bern. Holli, that was over two years ago? When was that?

Holli Faulkner: 2017

Robby T: 2017 so awhile back. And I have the privilege of going out there and meeting them, and they run a solid, solid crew up there. Donna's great, you guys have a fearless leader as you well know. I'm really excited for this episode because Holli's not just a rock star, but she's got some cool stories to share with us, and yeah, I'll turn it over to you Holli, tell us a little bit about you.

Holli Faulkner: Okay, so I'm Holli I live in New Bern, North Carolina and I've been in ISA since August of 2017. I think Robby you came in maybe, 30 days after I had started, and I was brand new, I had no clue what I was doing. I was the only ISA not only on my team, but pretty much within like 200 miles of me, I mean, the only other team I think closest to me, was the Harlow Group in Greenville, South Carolina. So I really didn't have anybody to shadow or to really talk to. I didn't know all the things I know now, as far as like the Facebook groups and all the ways to talk to different people. So, I kind of figured this out on my own. And our team was kind of trying me out, as far as, "Do we need an ISA? What is an ISA? What does that look like in New Bern?" We're kind of the last to jump on any bandwagon in the whole world. You know, it feels like we're kind of going around an island sometimes. But, it was pretty cool to become that person and kind of pave the way, in my own way.

Holli Faulkner: So, that was the way I got started. I came from time share sales, actually. I sold time share for four years prior to that, and I think that's really what gave me the grit that I have to be the ISA. Because if you can sell time shares, as far as I'm concerned you can sell anything.

Robby T: Truth.

Holli Faulkner: That is a tough business. When you're 24 you don't really care, you're just like whatever. Give me the role and I'll do it.

Robby T: I love it.

Holli Faulkner: That's where I started and now, almost two years later, I've moved into director of legend position for my team, recently in January. And we have just hired our other ISA so now I'm coaching a little bit and helping him work through that and so, I'm slowly building my own team, within my team.

Nate Joens: Sure. Awesome. So tell us a little bit about the team in general. How many buyer/seller agents? Is it just the one ISA right now? And kind of just a little bit about your STAT's when you were practicing it as a ISA as well.

Holli Faulkner: Okay, so we are a team of 19. We have two buyer agents currently, we are looking for a few more of those. We have four listing agents, we have two ISA's. One of those being new starting in April, and then me has a hybrid. We have one director of sales, we also have one listing manager and she has an assistant. We have three admin, and then we have three field care, who run our signs and do all the day to day, kind of you know that stuff there. Those people are so important. They save us so much time.

Holli Faulkner: And then we have a director of sales as well. So, we have our Rainmaker, so we're a pretty large team for our area for sure. We're the largest team in the area.

Nate Joens: Awesome.

Holli Faulkner: I would say that when I was, let's say last year, as the full-time, that was my role, that's exactly what I did every single day, I had 108 closings. So I count my first three months as a ISA kind of like in 2017, I don't really count those. I roll all of that into 2018, when I was really digging in. And so, I had 108 closings, don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, or if I was hitting the mark or not. I was just happy with it, just to have a closing.

Holli Faulkner: So that was me. To date, from January to now I've about 8,000 dials and I have about 3,000 contacts [inaudible 00:05:58] 150 [inaudible 00:05:59] so far. That's just being kind of hybrid and part-time, and I've had 42 closings year to date.

Robby T: Cool.

Holli Faulkner: So, pretty proud.

Robby T: Absolutely. So, what's the total number of deals that your team is roughly going to do, give or take, this year Holli? What's your team looking at?

Holli Faulkner: 500 is our goal.

Robby T: 500 is goal. You guys treading pretty close to that, you think?

Holli Faulkner: Yes, definitely. We had 418 closings last year. Closing families that we helped, and I think we're going to exceed our goal. Our fourth quarter is our strongest, and so I think that we are definitely going to exceed our goals this year.

Robby T: I love it. And how many people are in the New Bern area? How many, what's the total population, just so we can get perspective here.

Holli Faulkner: Our population for all of Craven County is roughly about, I'd say 102,000.

Robby T: 102,000. I think that's one of the biggest things I hope people take away when we're talking with you is, if you're in New Bern, like your team is the, you guys have built a cornerstone in real estate. Is that fair to say?

Holli Faulkner: Yes.

Robby T: Do you know, like your market share percentage roughly, by chance?

Holli Faulkner: We're on either side of the transaction or both sides of the transaction of about one out of, I believe, it's one out of two now. So, we're about 40%, 50% we're up there.

Robby T: Sure.

Holli Faulkner: Keller-Williams as a whole is most of the market share, then of course we've got our boutique shops and whatnot, but Keller-Williams is probably the largest in Craven County, along with our surrounding counties as well.

Robby T: I love it. Nate you're up, I asked two questions, your turn.

Nate Joens: Yeah, no that's pretty incredible, and I hope that kind of sets the stage for why we have you on as a TOP ISA. So, can you tell us just a little bit about when you got started, which wasn't too long ago, what was that like for you? What was, you know, what was difficult for a new ISA just getting thrown in the fire? Just kind of set the stage for what you might have done differently, you know now looking back, that you could potentially teach to the new ISA that you're training, and that other people in similar ...

Nate Joens: All right. Welcome everybody to our third interview with the top ISA. We're really excited about this one today with Alex Vincent. Robby T is, of course, joining us from Hatch Coaching after one of their very successful webinars, it sounded like, of their own. Again, for all of you watching, my name is Nate Joens. I'm with Structurely. We are joined today by another top ISA, like I mentioned, Alex Vincent of the Simone Group.

Nate Joens: This is going to be another detailed discussion about how she's running her ISA team, how her practices might differ from other practices of ISAs that we've had on the prior webinars in this series. And with that, Robby would you like to introduce Alex?

Robby T: I love it. First of, if any of you don't know, I only call Nate, Nate Joens like the rapper Mike Jones. And if you want a funny laugh, just go look up who Mike Jones and it's going to be the worst song you ever heard. Some every time I see Nate I think of-

Nate Joens: Not very good.

Robby T: Not very good. Anyways, Alex, super excited to have you on today.

Alex Vincent: Thank you.

Robby T: I first had the pleasure of meeting you... Was it about a year ago now?

Alex Vincent: Over a year. It was December 2017.

Robby T: December of 2017. It's been far too long. And we were doing in-person league immersion trainings, and Alex came up here with a team member, correct?

Alex Vincent: Courtney. Yeah.

Robby T: Yep. Yep. I remember you... Too many names, faces. You know how it goes. But what I loved is... Alex is, I believe, one of the most talented ISAs I've ever met. And I think, when you were up here, you just naturally showed that you get this role. And I think we have a lot of the same core beliefs. What I was most impressed about is: Alex is not afraid to share her opinion. And we had about 30-some people in the room, and I love it. You were very direct, you gave your thoughts. And more importantly, if you didn't agree, you named something. And that was really cool.

Robby T: So, super excited to bring your perspective to the role. In a moment I kind of just want to have you start off by telling us about you and who you are. I'm disappointed that baby Elliot isn't in the webinar right now. And I was kind of hyping that a baby would be involved. In crisis of leadership. But I get it. I get it.

Robby T: Anyways, Alex, tell us about you. How the heck did you join the Simone Group? And just give us the 101 on Alex Vincent.

Alex Vincent: Yeah, so. Commenting on Elliot not being here, she would've cried. It would've ruined the whole thing. So I definitely want to be [inaudible 00:02:55] of that. But yes, normally she is with me. I bring her to work every day. And... All day long. And it's actually a really great conversation starter. I think it's giving me an edge, not going to lie.

Alex Vincent: So joined the Simone Group back in 2017. And this was with the intention of building an ISA department, helping build up the team in sales. And it's been so rewarding. Our director of operations, Zach, was actually a close, personal friend of mine for years. And when he was kind of talking to me about our brokerage and the team, and the goals and kind of vision, really, it definitely drew me in. The ability to build something and have this kind of start-up feel, but with the support of a team that's been around for years. And the leverage and the money, which is a big part of startups. It's a big sore spot for some people.

Alex Vincent: It just... It really elevated me and brought me into some high level conversations. So I'm really excited to be here. I love Mondays. Not many people can say that. So yeah, we're just... I'm really excited to be a part of the team.

Robby T: I love it, I love it. So, every team in brokerage... We kind of talked about how that drew you in. What are some of those key things, like... There's a buzzword, right? Culture. And culture's just a placeholder in my world. It's a word that has so much more meaning than just culture. Give us some insight, like what drew you in? You said you wanted to build something, the startup feel. But if you were to say, "This is why this culture is really great," what would it be?

Alex Vincent: "Why is this culture really rare?" Well, you know, we are all workaholics, if you will. And we all like to play hard.

Robby T: Sure.

Alex Vincent: And I think that's been really awesome to be a part of over the past couple of years. You know I'm also, like I said, I've known a couple of teammates before I even joined. So, you know. Opening day, baseball season's a huge day for us. We all take off, we all go out, we all cannot remember the next day.

Robby T: Yes.

Alex Vincent: You know, it's things like that. Some of us are very family-oriented. Me, personally, I was just out for the past four months. Had a pretty crazy family trauma experience with my child being born and being brought into this world. She was in the NICU for 73 days. So the team being extremely empathetic to that and supporting when it all first started happening. And even months later, it was well, "Well how can I help you?" As a response to everything. I think it's just huge and even more of a win for me. And even more of a reason why I try to work as hard as I can. While I plan... Why I will plan on being on this team for as long as I can.

Robby T: I love it. Can you see yourself leaving your team, Alex?

Alex Vincent: No.

Robby T: Is that something that has crossed your mind?

Alex Vincent: I have people reach out to me all the time. It's actually really flattering about... I don't know if you've ever hard of EXP Realty. It's like brokerage... An online brokerage [crosstalk 00:06:16]. They reached out to me. I've had other... Keller-Williams teams reach out to me, which is like a big no-no. But it is what it is. And it's super flattering and the answer is always the same. It's like, there's nothing that will make me leave here at this point.

Nate Joens: Right? Can I ask a question on that? I was just listening to the "Is your culture wrong?" webinar, or was it a podcast that we had done two or three episodes ago?

Robby T: Yeah.

Nate Joens: I think one of the things that stood out quite a bit for me, hearing about the culture at Hatch Realty with their ISAs was... And this is a repetitive theme that we've talked about before, but a lot of people think that ISAs are the lowest on the totem pole [inaudible 00:07:05] organization. What have you done on your team to flip that?

Alex Vincent: That's a really good question.

Nate Joens: Or how is it positioned in your team?

Alex Vincent: That's a really great question. So, an ISA... You know, I'm like one of a very small team [inaudible 00:07:21] in Maryland that have my role specifically. A lot of other teams, what they tried doing, was making ISA a stepping stone to becoming an agent. Where we know and where we've learned from seeing other teams fail at this time and time again, is that this is just not the way to go about it. Someone who's going to love being an ISA probably won't love being an agent. And vice versa. I have absolutely not interest in being an agent and showing houses and nurturing a client outside of the office in that way. I love being an ISA and that's just a personality thing as well. So, just two completely different people.

Alex Vincent: And then also, they're not only acknowledging that it's not a stepping stone and that it's a role in itself. But also acknowledging kind of the numbers and the i...

Nate Joens: All right. What is up everybody? My name is Nate, I'm with Structurely. We have an exciting webinar today that we're getting started finally on this beautiful spring day out of Iowa.

Robby T: Oh, yeah.

Nate Joens: We are joined by Robby T and LeaAnne today. Robby, would you like to kick us off?

Robby T: Hey, first off we got to celebrate the fact that we have no tech issues today. Sometimes tech is a pain. Funny part is as well, I was just on another webinar right before this about snap offers and we had some little tech issues. So major celebration. Other thing is, we have no snow in Fargo so life is fantastic.

Robby T: Hey, excited as heck to have a bunch of you join us today. We have one of the supreme ISAs, not just in real estate. LeaAnne also served as an ISA, and tell me if I'm wrong LeaAnne, but in the car industry. So I got to hear about that.

LeaAnne Ledford: I did.

Robby T: And now you've transitioned into basically being the lead ISA and overseeing your department, so would love to hear about that, but LeaAnne introduce yourself and tell us a bit about you.

LeaAnne Ledford: Hey, so I'm LeaAnne from Johnson City, Tennessee. I have been, collectively, from the car dealership to real estate, in this whole phone conversion thing, for several years now.

LeaAnne Ledford: Started out at [inaudible 00:01:33] Developments. When you say seven years, it's a long time. I mean, that's older than my kid, but obviously I like it so ...

LeaAnne Ledford: I started out business development internet sales in a car dealership. Very high volume car sales. I'm talking 30/40 car sold a week. Sometimes 300 a month. So I was one of two, and then our department with the help of the two that were there slowly grew to about six to eight at all times back there.

LeaAnne Ledford: I came into real estate in 2016. August, 2016 was my first month, and I'll be honest with you, I started out with these high hopes thinking, "Hey, I'm going to go here, and I'm going to crush it." Not only my teams only ISA. I was the only [inaudible 00:02:26] in our entire market. So I had no one around me. No one in our whole area knew what an ISA was supposed to do.

LeaAnne Ledford: These were big dreams and I sucked. I sucked. I almost left the industry altogether and the only thing that saved me was going to Family Reunion in Vegas in 2017.

LeaAnne Ledford: Since then I've been in it. I did my whole first year and went from having three closes from August to December in 2016 to having 74 the next following year.

LeaAnne Ledford: I'm on my own and kind of self trained, built all of our systems and then the next following year worked part-time. So half the hours, half the dials and got 101 closings.

LeaAnne Ledford: So-

Robby T: I love it. LeaAnne that's a good introduction. Lots to hit on there. You have a fascinating story. If you don't mind, I'd love to go back to the car dealership ISA stuff because-

LeaAnne Ledford: I don't go back there, but yeah we could do the talk.

Robby T: Well, we're going to go back for a minute. What's funny is we started this ISA stuff all about being an ISA in the real estate ball game, and I think you probably agree that the skills that we talk about and the skills that you're going to talk about, it's not just the one industry if I had to guess. So give us some insight. You said you were doing 300 car sales in a month?

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Robby T: What does that mean? I don't understand that. Give me some insight there.

LeaAnne Ledford: So our dealership was the number one volume Toyota dealership in all of the east pretty much. We were doing 300 sales a month. Roughly 65 to 70 percent of those sales at all time were coming out of our internet sales department. We, much like an ISA in real estate, we got the leads.

LeaAnne Ledford: We were the first person speed to lead on that in a matter of seconds and then we would nurture them. Not quite long as we nurtured real estate. I was used to the gratification of setting an appointment today, and it goes under contract, they drive away today. So that was the difference. That was the game changer was coming in here and saying, "I'm going to talk to these people for two years? Two years?"

LeaAnne Ledford: Back there it was two weeks or they've made a decision and they're gone, but when you put it together and you look at the role, and you look at what's important, and you look at what it takes to actually help people to their goals that they reached out to you to get help for, it's the same. You can equate it to restaurant industry, car sales, anywhere. It's the same concept of listening to people, coming up with a solution, and making a pathway to get them there.

Robby T: Gosh. Listen, create solution, create a game plan or a pathway.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Robby T: I love it. Okay. So you did that for how long LeaAnne? How long were you in the car sales?

LeaAnne Ledford: Four years.

Robby T: Four years. Okay, I understand why you don't want to go back.

LeaAnne Ledford: I tried [inaudible 00:05:44] to get out of there if James is listening.

Robby T: Yeah, so tell us about that. We have a little back story. It's really cool to hear that a lot of the stuff translates, albeit different time frames.

Robby T: I think the funny thing is most people calling internet leads have the, "If it ain't going to close in two weeks, I'm not going to do anything with it," and frankly that's why most people convert a pay per click [inaudible 00:06:10] at sub one percent if that, and it's because most internet leads, especially fourth registration pay per click is so long term.

Robby T: When we measured it, it's been ... The conversion cycle is 18 to 24 months, and they're long term, just like you said. Up to two years. So it's kind of cool to get your perspective on that. But tell us, LeaAnne, how the heck do you get out of car sales and how did you get into being an ISA in real estate? Give us that background.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah. So it's much easier to fall in then it is to fall out. So I took the car sale job expecting fully for it to be temporary. Went to school for health, could not find a job, and I was like I have to make some money. So I sold my soul to the devil, as they say, and I went to the wonderful world of car sales.

LeaAnne Ledford: Now when I started, I was an extreme introvert, and I had at my previous job that I had actually gotten fired from for not being able to say hello to people when they walked through the door.

Robby T: Wow. I would not have guessed that at all.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah. So extreme introvert. Awkward. Super awkward.

Robby T: Sure.

LeaAnne Ledford: So over the course of the four years in the car industry and just getting beaten down every day, developed a love for talking to people, developed a love for just human interaction and for problem solving, and about two years into that ... A year and a half/two years into it, I had seen an ad for pretty much the same job but just in real estate, and I was like, "Well that sounds more long term. That sounds like a good plan."

LeaAnne Ledford: So I actually applied to work for Jim three times over the course of almost three years, and the first time I was to be considered. The second time they told me that I'm not an ISA, that I'm actually an agent profile and they offered me a job being an agent. I gracefully declined and went back to my cubicle at the car dealer...

April Martin: Awesome. My name is April and I'm with the Dani Blain Real Estate Team. I was a full time ISA for three years. Now I am currently part-time ISA and part-time ISA manager. So, I used to do live ISA-ing from morning until noon, and from noon until the evening, I am managing, training, and overseeing the platform, and our agents, and leads. Currently, my stats are, forgive me they change all the time so I've got to look.

Robby T: That's funny.

April Martin: It's true. I can't keep track of the numbers. Over 113,000 calls made, over 60,000 emails sent, over 47,000 texts. Are you still there?

Nate Joens: I kind of am. Can you see me?

April Martin: No, I don't see you and I see a pan of Robby still.

Nate Joens: I do too. I think Robby has sufficiently broken this.

April Martin: Okay.

Nate Joens: Okay. Well, Robby's just going to be there smiling I guess since I can't seem to get rid of him.

April Martin: Okay.

Nate Joens: So I guess just keep going.

April Martin: I am at roughly 1,300 appointments set, and a little bit over 400 closings year to date.

Nate Joens: Okay. Great. So, can you tell us a little bit about your current role today and maybe how it's changed since you started with your team?

April Martin: Sure, absolutely. I was privileged to come on board with Kevin Blain himself, I was his original ISA, so founder from the beginning. I got the pleasure to go over and travel and see Robby, and Jim, and Eric and train with them personally. They've been a huge blessing in our life.

April Martin: From the beginning, from just not really knowing how to do it, or what to do, or what to expect, to today, I oversee four other ISA and we do currently manage and have managed up to 50 agents and 30-40 taking leads. So, my mornings are pretty busy. I come in at 7:30am, and pretty much do my leads, and my sales as an ISA until around noon. At around noon, I check out and I put on the management hat and making sure our ISA's are accountable. I'm going over current appointments set with them.

April Martin: We're trying to hold a pretty high standard for what the appointments set look like for our agents. I'm taking a look at who's converting. I am also looking at our different agents conversions. So, more of a management role and also providing training for the ISA's, because I've bene in this role three years. And since, the role is pretty ne overall in the industry, I think it's kind of up to ourselves to consistently grow and find new material. We're constantly trying new things and seeing what works. Just constantly providing new ways for our ISA's to get better.

Nate Joens: That's awesome. Could you, first of all, what are come of the tech tools you're using today. You'd mentioned you start the morning with your leads. Where are those leads coming from? Are they different than the ISA leads that they're working come noon? Kind of what's your lead, set the state a little but on your tech scene.

April Martin: Sure, so we have a basic CRM. We use Sync here. I know all ISA's and every team is different, that's one thing I've learned by studying ISA's the way I do. Is that, all teams are different, very unique and I would say some specialize in some things. We specialize in typical online leads such as Zillow, Realtor.com, Facebook, Facebook back at you, Dave Ramsey. Those are some of our traditional lead sources. My day, when I come in, any new leads on the platform, there's typically two of us at all times so, shifts tart from 7:30 until 4:00, and then one comes in from 12:30 until 9:00. All leads are round robin amongst the ISA's so typically everybody is getting a consistent new lead source a day. New leads, fresh leads, if you will.

April Martin: Then we also might have something a little different than a lot of teams. Because of our team size and the amount of conversions we do, we do do a lot of advertising. So, we do have a hotline and that phone does ring. And so typically whomever has that hotline, it's something you usually have to earn because you have to be very quick, because those are coming in live. You've got to be very, I know this is a hard thing to measure, but you've got to be very intuitive, and you've got to be very good with people skills and getting them to talk. Because, that phone can ring up to once every 15 minutes.

Nate Joens: And how may ISA's do you have? I'm sorry if I missed that.

April Martin: That's okay. It's me and four others, so four and a half.

Nate Joens: Okay, and what are their ranges of experience?

April Martin: I have one that's been here two years, and then two that have been here one year, and one that's brand new that we're currently on.

Nate Joens: And so, you know, this is probably a little bit a deeper question that I want to continue to dive into, but you had mentioned that getting access to the hotline is a high privilege. How do you set criteria for them to gain that access, gain that privilege? Is it simply based on experience? What are your criteria for that?

April Martin: Well, that's normally, when a new ISA comes in, they're typically trained for 90 days before they're going to access new leads or the hotline. They are shadowing, they are sitting with us. I do a lot of one-on-one when I put the lead on speaker and let them hear the questions we ask. We typically have a set form of information that we are to do our best to in conversation, get the information from the lead.

April Martin: Our new ISA, her name is Myra, and she said she hears us question so many different ways, just lead the conversation, so that when we come to a point where we dial, and I let her take the lead, it is on speaker and if at any time she gets stuck, she backs away and I take over the conversation in a fluid motion so that way there's no hiccup there. We do that quite a bit until she is comfortable. Even then, I like to listen to them dial, hear them for quite a bit before there's so many different scenarios in real estate that come across the hotline, that she has to be comfortable with taking agent referrals, she's got to be comfortable in the new [inaudible 00:09:00] sellers, competitive listings. Many, many different scenarios on that hotline.

Nate Joens: So, you're allowing those new ISA's to work leads that aren't new to start for the first 90 days. What type of leads? Are they calling? Tell me about what those first 90 days are like.

April Martin: Typically, the first 30 days, a lot of learning, a lot of role-playing, a lot of industry language. Real estate's a whole new language. A lot of listening to us, so there's hours of listening to us. Hour just learning our CRM. There Is hours in learning our agents and what their specialties are, and who's good at what. So there's so much, almost information overload when and ISA first starts, So, then when we actually get them comfortable with the CRM, and they're watching my girls do follow-ups on the dials and everything, then it's time for them to get comfortable with Mojo, and loading Mojo, and that whole dance that we do with Mojo. And so, one they get there and we are actually giving her leads, it's typically the older leads, the ones that maybe we never got, maybe they're just attempted contacts and there's been a lot of dials on them. But just a lot to practice on and with, so they're typically the older ones.

Nate Joens: Okay. I know that's what Robby teaches as well. ISA's don't get the privilege of the new leads until a certain period of time that they get a work through their crappy leads and kind of earn their stripes that way. When they actually do graduate to the new l...

Nate Joens: Hi. Welcome everybody. We're finally going to get this thing started. I was just waiting for a train to pass, so if you happen to hear me ... Hear some loud rumbling it could still be a train. Welcome from the great State of Iowa. My name is Nate, I'm the CoFounder of Structurely - one of your co-host today. I am with Structurely, we're really excited to kick off our conversations with the top ISA series. This is the first episode, starting off right with one of the best in the country. This will be a seven part series with some of the top ISAs in the country. Myself and Robby, with Hatch Coaching will be interviewing them. You can catch all of these on our YouTube channel, we'll be recording them so you'll be able to catch up on them at any point afterwards and also will be available on Real Estate ISA Radio. We're really excited to get this one kicked off today. Robby, tell us who we got here.

Robby T: Awesome. Well, again Robby T. here with Hatch Coaching. I want to start a fight with you real quick Nate, you would said one of the best and I'm going to say we wanted to do this series right by bringing the best to the table. We got the man, the myth, the legend, Jim Rentfrow. I call him Jimmy. I probably make a nickname out for you every other day and I'm sorry for it. I just want to tell you guys a little bit about Jim before we get into the ISA stuff, stack pro. I have the pleasure of being an ISA alongside Jim. Jim isn't just a top producing ISA. He is this guy with a massive heart, too big a heart sometimes and we've had to call you on that.

Robby T: Jim is truly one of the best people I know. I'm so excited for today because you guys get to hear from his mouth, his approach, what he thinks of this ISA role, how he's been successful? We got a great list of questions for all of you and the ones that we've created. Before we get into that, I always like to start with numbers. We're going to start with this, Jim. Tell us a little bit about your numbers. You started as an ISA, how long ago and just give us [crosstalk 00:02:29].

Jim Rentfrow: I started in July 2014 and I think July '17, was my freedom day, as I call it, the day I came over and started over here. Since then, 331,600 dials, about 43,000 emails I've sent, 49,000 texts. The emails and texts have been since we started tracking, which was what, Robby? 2016 I think when we started tracking those numbers.

Robby T: Yeah.

Jim Rentfrow: I think I roughly have spoke to about 18,000 people and have set 1700, 1800 appointments and I have 706 closings as of right now. I popped into CT and checked it out right before this. My volume is about 155 million since I started. Yeah, I've done right.

Robby T: You're scrub. You're terrible.

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah.

Robby T: Jimmy lumped a lot in there, so let's just make sure everybody heard that. I'm just going to ask directly, and I want you to tell me the number.

Jim Rentfrow: 330,000.

Robby T: Roughly, how many calls have you brought in? 333,000.

Jim Rentfrow: 18,000.

Robby T: Right. How many rough contacts, give or take?

Jim Rentfrow: About 700.

Robby T: 18,000. How many appointments?

Jim Rentfrow: Little over. Seven or six.

Robby T: Then 700 some closings, correct?

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah, pretty much.

Robby T: You're like a real estate team and other yourself.

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah.

Robby T: Awesome. Well, I love it. well, thank you for sharing that. I want to start here. I want to start very 10,000 foot view with this today. What do you view your role as? You're an ISA and ISA is just inside sales agent, but what the heck does that mean to you, Jim? What is your role on a team? How do you describe it? What are you doing every day? What does ISA mean to you?

Jim Rentfrow: I struggle with this because the industry looks us ISA as the starting point, the lowliest of the lowly and the way I look at it ISA is I am basically the coal in the steam engine. If I don't put the coal in, this train doesn't go anywhere, nobody's dreams come true. While that's a lot of pressure, it is also really liberating because whatever I do has impact and that's the reason I came to this job is the ISA is the impact person. It is who drives the ship, it is who makes this whole thing work. Eric and I have talked in its description too of, we're the insurance policy on the database, we're the insurance policy on the money spent, but really the way I look at it is we're the coal that makes this whole thing work.

Robby T: I love it, Jim. That's a great analogy. We've talked a lot about insurance policy. What the heck does that mean? I think we all understand that you guys are really the engine, the steam engine, you're putting that colon and making the whole machine work. When you say insurance policy, what the heck is that?

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah. I mean, when I talk about is that most leads that people go after in their system are called twice. That's it. I think our record ... I think Cody actually just broke our record. I think he broke it and I think it was 383 attempts before he got in touch with someone. We're basically there in order to pick up the phone and make sure that these people are talked to. The other thing is, a couple times a year, I'll go through and I'll play what's called the resurrection game in the database. I did this the other day. I think Cody had posted a blog article on it, and we had talked about it. I just go through the database a couple of times a year for people that have said no, and I see, hey, is it still no? I did this the other day, sent out 1900 texts and basically 38 people that had previously told me no, are now ready to buy. Really, what I do is I go through even the crap, shovel it and find the little pieces of gold.

Robby T: I think that 10% number, the resurrection game is a really funny number because you said you reached out to how many people during that, again? Was it three-

Jim Rentfrow: [crosstalk 00:06:57] 371. Out of that 371, I had 38 follow ups that are ready and I also set two appointments right away on that. Just from sending out a mass temp, got a couple appointments on it.

Robby T: The insurance policy really means ... What I'm hearing you say, Jim is, you guys do everything you can to reach out to these leads and have conversations. It's not just you call once, twice, maybe shoot one off text. Even when people tell you no, you're eventually going to follow up and attempt to convert them again, because we all know just because of no now it doesn't mean that they're going to be a no forever. [crosstalk 00:07:36].

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah. I think I can count about 25 times where someone has literally told me no, almost, and someone has told me to F off even, and literally have called me back 10 minutes later and said, "Hey, I was just really upset. You caught me in the moment. I do want to talk here's what's going on." Even when you hear no especially in today's society, no one wants to talk right now. Nobody can talk there. Everybody is busy. You hear no and you think, they're not serious. No just means like, hey, you caught me at a bad time, usually.

Robby T: For you no is often times not just no, it's not yet.

Jim Rentfrow: It's not yet. Exactly.

Robby T: I love it. Awesome. That's great, Jim. Now that we've established that you're a terrible ISA and you've no clue what you're doing. Just kidding. I would love for you to share a little bit about what your conversations actually sound like. We know that you're taking these proactive measures to generate these conversati...

Nate Joens: [00:00:03] Welcome everybody. My name is Nate Joens. I am the CEO and co-founder at Structurely we've got a really exciting episode today of the ISA radio with our friends at Hatch coaching Hatch realty Erik Hatch Robby Trefethren guys. Can you tell us a little bit about your business. Robby I I'm very bad at pronouncing your last name Colorado everyone is you crossed it and there's a reason I sort of go by Robert T. Yep. It's the first time I've actually tried to pronounce it live. So we did you that well and the guy's house as he says it.

Erik Hatch: [00:00:38] His last name sounds like a pharmaceutical drug trial here. I've heard that one. It's great. So thank you for the introduction.

Erik Hatch: [00:00:46] And it should be known that Robby and I are huge fans of Structurely you're not even paying us to say that we just simply like you guys a lot and we think that what you're doing in the ISA and artificial intelligence world are game changing. So really elated to be partnering with you on this here at here in Fargo North Dakota. We have a couple of different ventures that are rolling out and it all started with Hatch Realty. We run our real estate company as a team. So our team consists right now of 35 people that includes three expansion markets. We run a different model than most people do even that are running teams. In 2018 we did six hundred and sixty foreclosed transactions just a hair under 5 million in volume 5 million of GCI and just over 150 million in volume. So we've had a fun run of things so far about three and a half years ago I had been getting coached and I was doing some coaching on the side and really felt like we had a unique voice in the market and it was different than what other people were doing and so especially with Robby by my side and I'll let Robby share his story and his journey. But what happened is we saw that there was a need and an opportunity for us to try to influence an impact in the best possible way. And so that's We curated Hatch coaching now. We we catered to some of the top coaching clients some of the top realtors in the country and we are honored to be a part of it. So Robby Your journey has been similar but different.

Robby Trefethren: [00:02:24] Yeah I started up a team back. Jeez it would be January of 2014. Does that sound right. I mixed up all the years a while ago and I started on the team as an as an ISA which is why we created this whole of the ISA radio and everything goes along with it. And when I came into the game I remember my first day I walked in and Erik kind of gave me a remember the script book right and old school script book filled with I would refer to it as a bunch of junk because it was all focused on I like to say manipulating and coercing and really trying to take advantage of the other person.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:05] And what I found was I wanted to create a way that really put the other person first because I think that's a better way and a more sustainable way to do business. And in my heart it felt right. So went down that route and now we had some major success. We have an ISA Department now with five full time ISAs of course.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:26] And they were featured on one of the other podcasts as well. And I have the privilege and honor of coaching most or a lot of the top teams and ISAs teams throughout the country. So that's awesome.

Nate Joens: [00:03:41] Yeah. For everyone listening. Definitely check out the sixth episode of the ISA radio so you can hear firsthand from from these ISAs with hatches as we referred to them on the episode. The actual rainmakers.

Erik Hatch: [00:03:56] Thanks for that. Yeah I agree 100 percent man.

Nate Joens: [00:04:00] Yep awesome. So we're we're switching this one up a little bit today not necessarily ISA focus not necessarily script focus but kind of giving you the inside look into the culture that has been built at hatch from the rainmaker himself. Mr. ERIK Hatch I want to do a rainmaker or I may go. We'll just get everyone's kind of a rainmaker right now so we're gonna kind of dive into culture and how you can build culture successfully.

Nate Joens: [00:04:47] Like the guys that Hatch have they might not agree that they have had it had it figured out from the start.

Nate Joens: [00:04:55] But as we like to say every time here we've kind of fumbled forward and figured out the right culture to attract and retain some of the top producing talent in the industry. So guys can you kind of tell me a little bit about the culture at hatch and kind of how you got there where you're at today.

Erik Hatch: [00:05:13] So let me interject first if you are watching live right now I encourage you to ask some questions in the comment section. We would love to answer any questions that you might have. As we go through this and if we can't answer during this we certainly will answer afterwards. So please make this interactive instead of just a one way conversation. Here's the story. Nate Jones as best as I can articulate it is I got into real estate full time in 2011. My previous life was involved in ministry. I worked at the local church that I was baptized and raised in and I spent eight years out of college pouring into kids love the gig hated the pay and my family really was at a place where we needed to make some financial moves in order to actually be parents. We had some major infertility and I had to pay for it out of pocket. So I jumped into real estate full time in 2011. I sold 52 houses on my own with a part time college student as an assistant. 2012 I started the teams we were four people as of January 1st and 13 people as of December thirty first. I had expanded into the commercial world and across the state of North Dakota. We sold one hundred and ninety two houses that year. I was one hundred and thirteen of one hundred and ninety two. So I was 60 percent of our production as well as running in every direction.

Erik Hatch: [00:06:34] And in 2013 I was given the wonderful opportunity to start over as my company kicked me out and and what happened in that Nate's is I was so egotistical and cocky and I thought my crap didn't stink and I was in a place where I thought we had a great culture because we just preached culture and we use that word culture and by the way the word culture is completely watered down it is overused and the fact that having a culture conversation here gets me fired up and also diluted at the same time. But what happened is when I thought my culture was great and after I got kicked out my 13 team members turned into myself and two other people just three of us overnight because I thought my culture was creating an environment that everybody wanted to be in and it wasn't. It was instead creating an environment that everybody ran from except for two people. And so I realized that something I was doing was wrong and what I was doing is I was creating a culture where everyone was a sidekick a crony. They were riding my coattails essentially and when given the opportunity they ran from it pretty quickly and so I realized that we had to get intentional with our culture and it wasn't about the number of transactions that I did it was about the number of transactions they could do. And it wasn't about the life that I could live. ...

Nate Joens: [00:00:02] Welcome everybody on this fine and freezing Tuesday morning out of Fargo and great state of Iowa. I am Nate the CEO Structurely these fine gentlemen or with Hatch coaching we're about to start our what is this our fourth webinar. Fourth or fifth team 18 20 18 eighteen hundred webinar which is how to build a bench. Erik in Robby are gonna be leading this one giving us some insights into really frankly they lost two thirds of their sales team at Hatch Realty. Guys give us some background. Let's get this thing started.

Erik Hatch: [00:00:58] So people used to ask me how much do you bench. My answer would be most of the game. And so it's fun to talk about benching once again. And so here we find ourselves dive in and I'll give you a brief synopsis in twenty seventeen. At that point that was our highest year of production for our team. We we had thirty eight or thirty nine people we sold six hundred and fifty two homes in Fargo North Dakota which is a city of one hundred and twenty thousand. The counties we serve in total are about two hundred and fifty thousand but are our main metros one hundred and twenty thousand. And we did. So we had grown exponentially and our team members never left. The people that we started with five years ago and four years ago were basically still with us and our agents were like the top of the top producers are our average listing agent sells anywhere from what is it Robby 90 or 100 homes for a listing agent and a floor is about 75 80 ish up to 1 10.

Robby Trefethren: [00:02:01] So yeah average in 90 95.

Erik Hatch: [00:02:03] Yep. And then our buyer agents were averaging you know the floor was probably thirty five for our bottom producers and ninety five for our top producers we were averaging about 60 transactions on the buy side. Now right away if you're B.S. meter is like mind you say how in the world can each agent produce so high and it's it's the leverage that we give them we have we have shown partners we have ISAs we have great admin and so the agents and their actual tasks that what they have to do on a regular basis is maybe different than most people's. And we had a group of people that had never left our turnover that happen annually was only coming from us removing people from the business. Occasionally somebody would move to a different part of the country or what it would be or we would help them find their way out the door if they weren't the right fit. And so we had 90 percent plus retention year over year. Robby what am I missing here and kind of our background.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:03] Yeah I think just to emphasize the point of a lot of people think 90 60 homes per person that seems like the essence of valid thought I want to re-emphasize the amount of leverage and specialization that we have built in.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:18] When you say our team was thirty nine people at peak that includes you know we have three full time ISAs as well. So there's a lot of leverage to bring temps. There's a ton of love to bring to the table as a value proposition to our team frankly and to our clients right.

Erik Hatch: [00:03:39] And so obviously the topic of this of this webinar and for us to dive in is to really understand how did we lose everyone and how do we continue to sell more houses because I told you in 2017 we sold six hundred and fifty two homes in twenty eighteen we did six sixty four we sold twelve more houses while losing five of our eight buyer agents by losing two of our five ISAs by losing a couple of admin. And here's what happened. Let's rewind the clock and I'm gonna have maybe flashbacks here. So if I start twitching you know why in February we had just an issue with the team member that didn't go so well and we had to remove him from our business when that happened. This was a friend of mine a good in fact a great producer a hard worker charismatic as the day is long and the guy who was like one of the founders of the company he was ingrained in the fiber of our business and we oftentimes allowed the little things to be ignored. And if ever we're a trigger for anybody listening right now I think that if you ever have a statement that says oh well that's just Robby that's just the way Robby is that that's just Robby if that's something that happens in your organization.

Erik Hatch: [00:05:03] I'm guilty of it. Across the board where we've just said well that's just that person and we haven't allowed them to necessarily be coached exceedingly well or maybe they're just stubborn and they don't want to be coached and we just ran into some problems where we had to agree to go our separate ways with this person because we had said that's just Robby for far too long. And we needed to look out for the betterment of our company and our agents. We knew that he was tied directly to another agent and so we expected that person to go and sure enough they did. Those issues happen and the mistake that we made is that it was never a big thing. It was just a whole lot of little things. And it started to impact our our culture and our energy and we didn't realize we didn't realize that this person will be better off without us we'll be better off without them. But I'm so thankful for the time that person put into our organization because it has been a huge gift. So we had to let somebody go because of culture and they just didn't necessarily fit anymore.

Erik Hatch: [00:06:09] They had another agents attached to them so there we lost two of our eight buyer agents. So now we're down to six. We had a gal blind side us. She again was part of the original group. We never thought she would leave. I thought that she was a lifer and I thought that she she was gonna be with us until the end of days and she came to me blindsided me a few weeks after we had left that previous person go. And what happened is she said I want I want to work less and I want to make more and I can't do that here. And so I'm going to go out on my own. And I just I was flabbergasted she didn't talk to me about a compromise or a way to build it a way to grow and just totally walloped me. She then was connected to another agents on our team really well we knew we would lose that person and we sure did. Robby you. You posed some really great questions as we watched this gal leave. What some of that insight that I think some of the people listening and tuning in right now can maybe absorb so they can avoid some of these pitfalls.

Robby Trefethren: [00:07:21] So I'll simply say this that when it came to losing that person what really hurt about it was we were traditionally a place that prides ourself on connecting with the people in our world and helping build a runway for them. And what really stung was we didn't hear if you wanted a different one way until she walked into your office right there and literally said this isn't right for me and it and that wasn't on her. It was on us because what we realized was the person that she was expected to be connecting with. That was the leader in the organization was the person that we had to let go and that person wasn't necessarily the best fit to dig in to the people that they were leading and try to find out what their needs wants and desires. And what really happened in all of this. And I think upon reflection is she slipped thro...

episode6-isa-best-practices.m4a

Nate Joens: [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to the ISA radio. This is Nate Joens your co-host with Structurely we're excited today on our sixth episode to be joined by Robby T and the ISA team at Hatch coaching. Robby, could you give an introduction to these fine gentlemen.

Robby Trefethren: [00:00:42] Absolutely. Hey super excited for today. Unfortunately we don't have Eric our rainmaker the man but we replaced him with three of the real rainmakers in our world. We got Cody Meyer one of our fellow lead geeks.

Robby Trefethren: [00:00:59] Cody is a phenomenal ISA Who who's really excelled in some system pieces and I'm excited to hear his thoughts today. He was also recently named by our team as the sales manager. We got Cody we got Eric Hegg who is the ever talented ISA who seems to speak like three or four different languages. I still don't know why he works with us but he is one of the up and coming and blooming ISA. And I know that we look to him a lot when it comes to texting lead. So I'm excited for him to share his stories his thoughts his ideas today as well. And then I have the man the myth the legend here too we got we got Jimmy Rentfrow and Jim without a doubt the best ISA in the country over the last three years to do days from here to hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of deals. I'm not going to say the exact number because I get it wrong and Jim would correct me instantly. But we got some stellar ISA some of the top producing ISAs in the country and I'm excited for them to share their stories about you know what the world looks like especially in regards to how we use texting it can convert leads.

Nate Joens: [00:02:14] Awesome. We appreciate everyone being on here today a little bit of a change in topic. We're really focusing on how to text your real estate leads today. We've got the best in the business who know the ins and outs of everything you should or shouldn't say and when and when not to text your lead. So with this sixth episode of Real Estate ISA radio we're covering how to text your real estate leads. So with that I really just want to want to jump into the first question how often and for what percent of leads are you guys typically texting in your pipeline regularly.

Robby Trefethren: [00:02:54] Jim that's all you brought up. You go ahead.

Jim Rentfrow: [00:02:56] Yes. So I'll start us off as far as the percent of leads that we are texting. It is 100 percent. So we've built out our system to automate text every single day. So what's a lead comes in. We get to it in five minutes. We call and then we'll send a text immediately after if we don't get a hold of them. And then the next day through the first 10 days are getting one text one email and multiple calls per day. And then it's built out basically for the next six months every 15 days afterwards until they respond to us.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:30] I love it. I'll get back to that. So Jim is there any any leads in that we don't text any leads that we don't text period.

Jim Rentfrow: [00:03:40] Yeah. The only leads we don't text are the ones that have unsubscribed in our system will allow that and technically we want to do that anyways because it's a good way to get fined. So I love it.

Robby Trefethren: [00:03:52] Good good. Cody Eric what what are your thoughts. Know. You want to add to that

Eric Hegg: [00:03:59] As far as the recurring what's in our pipeline that we're texting. For me I have about 600 in my pipeline at any given time and usually every day I'll start out the day by texting 20 to 30 of them. And that's first thing when I get in in the morning. And then as they start you know some will respond some won't but as they respond I'll take a break at like 10 a.m. noon 2 p.m. and then right before I leave work in the evening just to spend 10 15 minutes replying to those texts and keeping that conversation going. So that's overall about 5 percent of my pipeline every day that I'm texting. Mm hmm.

Nate Joens: [00:04:38] That's interesting. Great. Can I jump in there. One follow up question on there do you. Do you set a recurring. Task every time someone responds to respond back to them. Or how do you stay on top of you know an extended conversation after you get someone on the hook.

Eric Hegg: [00:04:58] Yeah it's a good question. I'll have a task reminder for that first thing in the morning and that's where I'll start the conversation. And then as they reply they come into our CRM. It'll just show up in my communications tab as unread text messages and I never try not to go to bed with any of those left unread. So if I'm even watching TV or reading a book in the evening I'll usually just take 10 minutes set that time aside and just reply to those people at night and a lot of times they will reply and I'll just keep the conversation going when I get back to work. At 8:00 a.m. the next day.

Nate Joens: [00:05:38] Got it. And that makes sense.

Robby Trefethren: [00:05:39] Cool cool. Anything to add on it. I want to ask the following question. And I think Cody that maybe you can answer this one to get you to chime in and add some stuff as well. I'm a lot of people ask me what times a day are you texting leads. And if I were to ask you guys when are you guys texting leads. What would your answer be When are you guys texting these leads.

Cody Meyer: [00:06:06] I think I kind of concur with Eric as far as you know setting some time aside in the morning to be going through a portion of the pipeline. But honestly it's it's all day if I've got the phone on me and you know I get a text I'll text him right back right away. You know it takes all of two seconds and you know for some old leads you can re-engage them if they you know got a drip texts or are finally responding back to one of my texts and we've got him on the hook there. You know I text any as long as I'm awake and I've got the phone in my hand I'll play that game all day.

Robby Trefethren: [00:06:36] Okay. Have you guys ever seen like do most of your attacks happen between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. 10 to noon or is it fair to say that texting is something that has really been in all the time from 8:00 a.m. until 9 p.m. type game.

Eric Hegg: [00:06:53] Yeah it's it's all the time. There's definitely higher response rates I feel like over the lunch break time and then at like 5:00 p.m. as people are getting off work but a lot of people even when I'm making calls and I'll be like I can't chat right now I mean I'm at it they'll just I'll just ask them like hey would it work better if I texted you and nine times out of ten. Yeah absolutely. And then you could just continue that that phone conversation the attacks.

Nate Joens: [00:07:25] I'll say one thing from Structurely it's perspective being that we get Thousands of messages a day. We definitely see. The highest engagement rate during during the daytime hours. But I think the numbers between what we consider after hours which I t...