Show Notes
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 hunger is... and as a leader to play on that point. You have to know not just, I want to make money, right? That's not a hunger.
Robby T.: And that's the thing. If you were going to watch all the episodes, I don't think anyone was, I just want to make money. There was so much more depth behind that. And if you're leading ISA through, you're leading anyone in any business, you can't just settle for that service. You've got to know the depth behind it because as you just, you showed a good example.
Robby T.: If you can hit on those more emotional pieces of the why behind what's motivating someone, what they need, want or desire in their life, you can help them get to where they want to go. And when you first hold them accountable, I guarantee you they're going to be frustrated. We just went through that. In our ISA department, we've got super focused on a really massive goal.
Robby T.: Basically, going from May to September to get caught up on our goals. And Jim, I want to speak for him. We were on a quarterly and we were talking about this, Jim held them accountable because they were falling short based off of what they've all bought into. And he's like, "Guys, we got to change something." And at first they all said that they were frustrated with him, that they were a little bit upset with him.
Robby T.: But then at that quarterly, they said, a couple of days later or later that day, it clicked up. No, no, no, no. But this is for us. And then it was really, they were thanking him. And it like being a parent. You don't always want to do what's most popular, but you got to do what's right. But knowing that hunger is so key and finding hungry people.
Nate Joens: Yeah, absolutely. So if you're listening now, if you're an ISA, please tell your ISA leader, your team leader, someone on your team, what your hunger is, what your chip on your shoulder is, why you come into work and you grind every day.
Nate Joens: And if you're a team leader or an ISA manager or just someone on an ISAs team, please hold them accountable and they can tell you their chip and understand what their goals are and see if they're meeting it and if they're not a light a fire under them a little bit.
Robby T.: Truth. Exactly. So number one, hunger like a chip on the shoulder. I love that phrase a lot. Here's the second one that I noticed Nate and I'd love to hear your thoughts and I'm going to pull this term from a book by the same name called Grit. And I think that's something that really was self evident among the top ISAs was they were gritty people. And really what in my mind, and I read Grit by Angela Duckworth and end to plays right into it.
Robby T.: They push through the tough stuff. And despite resistance, they push through the tough stuff, and they're willing to delay their satisfaction and they are willing to not focus on all the nodes. Instead they view the no's as being something that's getting closer to those yeses. So grit, just being relentless in their pursuit of those yeses despite the no's was another huge common theme that I noticed.
Nate Joens: And I know, I think it was the last episode with Tyler that we talked on this. And you preach it all the time, I know with your coaching clients. I think one of my favorite stories for how to onboard an ISA the right way, it comes from grit and it's the whole, you can't give a teenager a Range Rover and not with the 1992 camera. Or I'll say they get a spoiled more or less. And I think that that comes from a place of building grit.
Nate Joens: And so if you are a team leader or an ISA, anyone listening and you're looking to hire an ISA, but good way to build grit early on is to get your new ISA hire really bad leads, it bring them push through those because it's not going to be easy and they're not going to get used to it or they will get used to it, but they're not going to like it.
Nate Joens: And then eventually you can start to give them the golden Apple leads, the Zillow leads, the low hanging fruit where it's you pick up the phone, you call them and you set an appointment. So I think that building that grit, some of it obviously comes from the number one point, their hunger, their chip on their shoulder, a lot of grit can be coached and should be coached. So I definitely consider that.
Robby T.: Yeah, and I agree. And I think another major, major piece of it is there's a lot of times where you're going to essentially get kicked in the face in this role. And what I mean by that is you're going to have the person you've been chasing for 18 months, and you're going to have these great conversations and you're going to call, and they're going to say something like, well, I decided to go with X. And you know that that person is just not good at all.
Robby T.: And some people, it's so easy to fall into this trap and let something like that be a de motivator. And those that are the most successful, that lights a fire underneath them and they go on find another person. And one of the things I've noticed, and it was dear in my heart and I've noticed this tendency even in top bottom stays as well, is that they have this passion and they take it personally when somebody has chosen to work with somebody else, and then they do everything they can to avoid that again.
Robby T.: But again, it's that grit, it's persistent, it's relentless, it's delayed gratification. And that's probably one of the biggest things to tie and put a bow on. This is none of the ISAs that we interviewed, said I had success, you know, month one. Usually they all talked about how this was a long term play. It was a longterm game. And for some reason a lot of people talk about how it's about a year in where the game, the light turns on and the games much easier.
Robby T.: And that requires grit to push through that year because you're making the calls, they're shooting the texts, you're getting a heck of a lot of notes. And of course, you got to be focused on I'm building my pipeline, I'm going to find those yeses. And it's almost like remained optimistic despite the pain you're going through. But that grit is huge, especially in this role. And obviously this applies to really any sales role that you'd get into as well.
Nate Joens: Yeah. And one point I didn't make up on the whole start a lead an ISA out with old leads and bring them on to new leads, didn't want to link to was in on four week onboarding schedule. So I just linked that in the chat. It's definitely pulls from some of these points that we learned from the top ISAs on what does the first week look like, second week, third week, fourth week.
Nate Joens: But like Robbie said, none of them were having extreme success in that first month. They're not making a whole lot of money that first month that delayed gratification is really what should keep them around. And that reward should be that much better over time. And that's a huge piece of retention too. Making sure that they do eventually get that gratification in a really, really big way.
Robby T.: I like it. So anything, excuse me, anything else you want to add to that one, Nate?
Nate Joens: No. Number two was a grit. Number one was hunger. What's number [inaudible
00:16:27]?
Robby T.: Number three is the innovators. And here's the simplest thing I can say about innovators is they are constantly trying new things. And I coach them on some of the best teams in the country. And this is one of the biggest things I preach all the time, is don't rely on me to tell you what to do. Go out and try new things all the dang time.
Robby T.: And really, I think the reason people haven't done that is intrinsic in innovation is we're going to fail and you're going to make mistakes. Jim told a really, I don't know if he told that on this episode when we did it, but he's told a story of one time when he was trying to send a message. He actually sent a message out to 2,500 people and he didn't mean to. And some people discouraged of failures like that.
Robby T.: And I'm like, nope, that's awesome. We have to make mistakes. We can't live in fear of, we're going to mess up. And you got to be willing to try things all the time and what inherently that means you're going to get kicked in the face. You're going to do something wrong, and what you have to do is adapt. So innovation to me was, and that's why you see somebody different strategies among the ISAs, and what they were doing is they're innovating in different ways.
Robby T.: And I think it's so key in this role, especially these last five years. I go back when I got into the game as an ISA, nobody was texting leads. Like that wasn't normal. You were calling and you just dial, dial, dial. And then the game shifted, right? The game shifted and emails, but it wasn't a big deal then it shifted to we were dialing and texting.
Robby T.: And for us as innovators, we weren't on the front edge of that is frankly the only reason we were switched to commission Zinc or one of the main reasons was commissioner Zinc was a first platform that really allowed us to mass message and auto message leads. Now of course, they've slipped backwards, I guess you could say with that.
Robby T.: But even today, the game keeps changing, right? And now texting just with words isn't enough. Then turned into texting with emojis. And I remember once that I requested of commissions Zinc like, "Hey, when can you guys put emojis in these text messages." And people laughed at me. I'm like, "Dude, all I do, anytime I want to innovate is I go look at what other people are doing."
Robby T.: And for me I go look at my brothers, those are five, six years younger than me. And they're just, it feels like a generational way and they're doing things, tic talk and stuff like that then I don't even know of. But the point is that I'm looking at them, saw that they were doing emojis and now it's gifts. Like we're seeing stupid response to gift messages and it's because we're innovating.
Robby T.: And don't get me wrong, we have some stuff that the bombs, I have sent some messages that I thought would be great, didn't work, but you got to be innovative and you got to be trying new things. And what that means is, trying new things his as a company on new processes, their systems and procedures. And I think innovators, we fail a lot. But number two, you consistently break things a lot.
Robby T.: And it's funny because the Global Leadership Summit was just, I think it was last week, right? Last week. And there was one talk that I just watched the recording of, I couldn't attend live, but I got access to the recordings, and what she talked about is there's really four stages of learning, and I'm going to walk through those real quick. Nate could you type these into the chat box for me?
Nate Joens: Yup.
Robby T.: Awesome. These are not my ideas. I'm sealing these on what's her name? I'll find it in a moment. But there's four stages of learning. And the first stage is unconscious incompetence. Basically this is, you don't know what you don't know. You're oblivious, right? That's every one of you when you first start day one does, you have no dang clue what you are doing. And it's kind of blissful, but that's stage one.
Robby T.: Stage two is conscious incompetence. And that is when you realize, ouch, I'm not really good at this. Or ouch, you know what you don't know. You realize, okay this is where I can get better, right? You start realizing I'm not that good at this at et cetera.
Robby T.: Number three is now conscious competence and it's, I can do it but it takes effort and this is like getting to peak stage. Then from here you have a choice, and you have a choice to go down and want to pass and one is really beneficial for you and one isn't. The path that isn't beneficial is when you go into unconscious competence. And this is when you think you're so good that you quit innovating, you quit learning because you think you've got it figured out.
Robby T.: And I see it happen all the time where people get stuck, they think it got figured out. I'm good to go, I don't need to learn anymore. Whereas what really successful people do and what innovators do is they go back to stage one. They force themselves to become unconscious in competencies cycle, loop over. And that's the learning cycle is going through a loop of challenging yourself and really come on Nate Jones, just good. We're really, what it is is going through that and realizing you don't ever have it figured out.
Robby T.: And for me, I know my blood, that's why I'm just always challenging and thinking what's next, what's going next. And I think really great ISAs embrace that mindset and grant.
Nate Joens: What was the fourth? [crosstalk
00:22:30].
Robby T.: Oh yeah, number four, the bad place to get to basically number four. Either start over and to go from three to one or you go to number four, which was unconscious competence. And that's just really, that's when people, you see it all the time, but we all think they got it all figured out. It's wondering ego takes a hole and you're like, I got this figured out. Nobody else is going to catch up to me, it's like the whole idea of the innovator's dilemma.
Nate Joens: Got it.
Robby T.: But go ahead Nate. I talked for a while there.
Nate Joens: Oh, that's really really interesting. I hadn't heard of any of those, but when you spoke to them, I could feel myself thinking through certain scenarios where I was like, "I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm doing and I'm bad at this. Oh, I'm getting better at this." And then making that decision on where to go from there.
Nate Joens: That's a really interesting thing I think you should be aware of when hiring a new ISA for sure is understanding where they're at in picking up how to be an ISA understanding where they're at in their process and making sure that you're tailoring your onboarding content to help them through these four stages of learning. So those are really interesting for me to hear.
Robby T.: Yeah, and the, the lady who, gave that talk, Liz Bo Hannon, L-I-Z and then Bo Hannon is B-O-H-A-N-N-O-N, And she's just releasing a book. I forget exactly what it's called. I think it's Beginner's Pluck, P-L-U-C-K. But yeah, super, super great stuff. And one of my friends here at Hatch Coaching with me and I'm gripped by it.
Nate Joens: That's awesome.
Robby T.: But I think the biggest thing is, this is the reason why I showed those four stages of learning. It's not a matter of once you learn something, it's not a matter of whether you come down from the peak, it's a matter of whether you want to fall or whether you want to purposely go back down and get to the top again. That's the choices you have. You're going to fall on their face and you think you've got there, you've got to figure it out. You going to quit innovating and eventually, what you're doing is obsolete.
Robby T.: And anyone that's just calling today, for example, that's the world you're in. If you ever, for example, only calling leads, it's not going to work. You got to be innovating and trying. And that requires you having the hubris to recognize, I don't got this all figured out. Someone might come along and do it better. What are they doing? And look at it. It's why one of my favorite things to do is go spot-check or competition. Sometimes I'm really happy about it and see some really great things. Sometimes I'm like, hey, we should try something different.
Nate Joens: And it's just from, you're not differentiating at all. If everyone's calling, how would you stand out from the noise? But if you send your leads a message through like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or just some other medium in some other way using a gift that cuts through the noise, that gives them some reason to remember you, even if they're not ready, you're going to try and tie that back to your brand saying, I remember that guy, he sent me a message on WhatsApp with that really funny gift.
Nate Joens: The things that cut through the noise. And if you're just doing what everyone else is doing, not being an innovator, then there's no way you can get ahead, obviously.
Robby T.: Correct. Exactly. I love it. So number three they innovate. That's the biggest thing. The next thing is number four is their systemize. They've got some form of system to make sure every lead has a place. And along with that, that goes along with systemize. And I want to give April in California, some major credit here. She I think their ISA department is the most relentless in pursuing leads. Like they will just keep chasing and huge kudos to them because it definitely shifted my thinking. It's one of the joys of being able to partake in these conversations is I learned a ton.
Robby T.: The way they literally, I know just music going to call back six months later. I think that's what they described is I'm in that Nate, something like that. And they have a system for it. And this is probably tied together grit and persistence and systems, but I think that the put a bow on that idea of what really comes down to is not giving up too easily.
Robby T.: And I think another thing you'll see in our conversations is then we'll give up in their conversations easily either because if you ask someone, almost always, Hey Nate, you just curious or you think about making a move. A lot of people say, "Ah, I'm just curious." I was like, "Right, what had you interested in real estate? I was thinking about making a move." It happens all the time. We're on the second or third question because I mean here is everybody has a garden, right? Who wants to talk to a salesperson?
Robby T.: When you are calling your a random number and you say you're with a real estate company, the lead is instantly going to lump you in with all the other people out there that are trying to hard sell them, push them, get them to do something. And rightfully so, by the way, because it was a lot of that out there. And what you can do differently when you ask questions, you're literally subconsciously signaling to them, hey, this isn't about me. It's about you.
Robby T.: And almost always on that second or third try, despite them saying no, they're going to shift a little bit. And that no might turn into a yes or maybe a not yet.
Nate Joens: No, I think on the systems piece, I think Leanne's was wonderful to hear. So what episode was that? Two or three?
Robby T.: Oh gosh, dude, I don't remember exactly [crosstalk
00:28:41]. It all blurred.
Nate Joens: If you want to hear a great a system on just getting up on leads, listen to the second or third, one of these so it's in our seven part series interviews with the top ISA. That was great to listen to. But yeah, I think it's partially to, you want to give your ISAs the ability to come into the office and know exactly what to do. That comes from a place of having your systems in place.
Nate Joens: You know, you need to call these leads because they came in overnight first, then you need to go to your fisbos, call them and run through this checklist without thinking so they can open up their time to be innovators. They shouldn't have to come through your database every day and say, who do I need to call? Why do I need to call them? What do I talk to them about?
Nate Joens: They should be spending their time thinking, how can I tweak my messaging to get better response rate? I'm going to AB test this set of 50 leads that I'm messaging today with a gift and an emoji and see which one works out. They shouldn't have to be thinking and spending their valuable time thinking through the very basic, mundane system tests that should be defined by an ISA leader, your team leader or the ISA themselves eventually so they don't have to think through those things.
Robby T.: I love that you're hitting on the biggest thing, and the biggest recommendation I can give on that point from knowing it in our world as well as top producing ISAs, if you want to simplify who we should be calling. The simplest way to do it is you need to create buckets that put apples with apples and oranges with oranges. Because what I see happen all the time and it messes up everyone's system and it makes it so impossible for them to work.
Robby T.: And instead of calling leads, they take 10 minutes to plan on who should I be calling every day, many times a day. All you need to do is you just need to take leads and categorize them, and take like leads and put it with like leads. And you should write that down because the more you chew in that is going to resonate and take like leads and you put it in a bucket with other like leads.
Nate Joens: Can you give example.
Robby T.: A great example is you should not have your contacted leads in the same bucket as uncontacted leads. It makes no sense because the way you're chasing a contacted lead that said, hey, give me a call back in a year is going to be drastically different than a lead you haven't called before. And what do you need to do just in systems wise is you need to create tagging mechanism, labeling mechanisms or whatever your CRM has offer.
Robby T.: And what we do is we just basically segment all leads into different pools, I guess you could say. And it's based off of them being like each other. So let's talk follow ups, right? This is what we do with all of our follow ups and a follow up from me because some people get confused. A follow up is somewhat of a nurture.
Robby T.: So a follow up with somebody that I called or texted, we contacted and we determined we wanted to follow up at some point in the future hence this following the follow up, I know a lot of other people have called them nurturance. We're talking to the same game.
Robby T.: Well, what we do is we take those and we actually subdivided and we categorize them as A followups, B followups, C followup and D followups. And the simple reason is is that a D followup is drastically different than an A followup. An A followup for somebody that when that followup time pops up, I need to call that right then and there.
Robby T.: Whereas D followup, if that thing pops up and I don't get to it for a few days, doesn't really matter. So it's really, it's systemizing things for you. And so we're just doing that all the time. On the uncontacted side, all we're doing is we're categorizing people in two different pools, high quality and low quality because when I'm making calls through that, I want to get to have extra time to call leads. I'm going to always call my high quality opportunities every single time.
Robby T.: So it's just taking this and taking your uncontacted, your contacted leads, your appointment set leads, taking your junk leads, right? The people that aren't interested, I could go on forever with this, but it's taking them and having a system that takes like leads and puts them in a similar pile.
Nate Joens: One thing that have been really interested in from a CRM perspective and a followup perspective lately has been a website activity. I think that is a huge indicatorwhen people buy a house, they get really hot and heavy for a certain amount of time. And then they buy a house. A lot of that comes from their activity.
Nate Joens: If your CRM or IDX site is tracking that, definitely recommend breaking your contacted and uncontacted into a last visited in the last 30 days or not last, not visited in the last 30 days. Like that, that prove that they're on your website, checking out properties and more of an aggressive fashion and then calling through that list with a little bit more a tailored content.
Robby T.: And I think why local is this figured out better than anybody? It's the whole idea of just behavioral techs where somebody who's behaving a certain way and that we try to trigger it. Trigger something I should say. And they got that figured out beyond anybody else in this game. And I agree 100%, and then some days like, but they told me they're going to look to buy in a year or two or three.
Robby T.: I have one simple real battle, plans change, things change, human beings stories, not constant. I bought three homes in about four years. No, I'm not going to buy a home for a long time. Next time we come on and I'm going to buy a new house. I'm not going to hopefully plans change, right? The human story is so unpredictable, you have no idea what's going to happen. So you've got to allow for some deviation in there.
Robby T.: With the other thing though is everybody falls into the trap of I want to talk to everybody every single month. And the reality is the top ISAs understand your most valuable resources for your time. And I used to play a lot of poker, right? And if you're good at poker, you understand one simple thing. You think in terms of bets, and what you do is you put more money in when the odds are in your favor and you put less money in when the odds aren't in your favor.
Robby T.: Like end of story. You follow that, you'll play some poker and read some bluffs of course, you're going to be good. And Annie Duke, a former professional or professional poker player wrote a whole book called Thinking in Bets. And really what it is, is this, as an ISA, your bet is your time, your effort you're putting in.
Robby T.: And if somebody says four years out, there's going to be some people that the plan's going to change, but it's going to be nowhere near as many as the AIDS, right? That are hot and ready to go. And you just have to choose to invest your time wisely. And the reason we created that ABCD system was my ISAs is the best more time in the A and B leads. They do their Cs and Ds leads.
Robby T.: What's cool about that internet activity is it can signal, okay, this person told me they were a D, but now they came back to the website and they're super hot and been there for six months. Something's probably changed, which is why Loco I think is genius. I'm not moving on that front.
Nate Joens: So it's implicit indicator saying, I'm actually interested, I'm not going to tell you to do something that [inaudible
00:36:48] that.
Robby T.: I'm going to call you and say, hey, we're actively again. The simplest way to live your life as an ISA is just put yourself to the test as a lead when you call that person and do that or would you just go to the website and you're homeless again.
Nate Joens: Exactly. And that's why I think it's so interesting because that's where technology should be open you as an ISA, that's where, hey, you know, that's probably five years ago you didn't have that. And I don't frankly know how you would know someone's more interested or their plans have changed other than actually calling them. Hopefully you had some systems in place so that you weren't calling all of them and you were hedging your bets a little bit and calling the followup A's and B's.
Nate Joens: But I think that to your point on the followup, not following up with D's and C's so much that just prevents burnout. ISAs can only handle so much rejection. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. So you have to help get them set up in that way.
Robby T.: Truth. Exactly. So systems, they all have some form of system to do what we're talking about here. And they're all slightly different. April's is different than ours. Grants as I took some great notes on Arizona on some things. But there is some system that makes it easier for them to know who should I be called? Excuse me, who should I be calling today? Because that's the biggest form I see is people have analysis paralysis where they freeze and they don't know who to call so they don't end up calling.
Robby T.: And that doesn't sound like a big deal. What if you spend five, 10 minutes a day doing that? That is hundreds of hours wasted in the year. Somewhere around there and especially in the lifetime of an ISA, they're systemized in some way, shape or form. Anything else you want to add to that one Nate?
Nate Joens: No, what's number five?
Robby T.: Number five is they are service focused and this is probably the hands down the most common theme. The biggest one. And I'm saving the best for last is I don't think any of the ISAs we spoke to, viewed themselves as being sales focus, being salesy, which is really funny because they're probably the top producing ISAs and lead converters out there. And I think there's... we're going to talk about that in a bit, but the really service focused, and let me provide depth behind that.
Robby T.: The great ISAs aren't focused on one, two, three main street. They're not focused on making that sale. They're 100% hyper-focus on who is this person, what are they potentially looking to do, what are their needs, wants, and desires, and how can I serve them? And that was probably one of the biggest things, despite being, we had someone from Washington, we had somebody from California, we had somebody from Fargo, North Dakota AK the middle of nowhere.
Robby T.: And then we had people from the South. And I just realized that we covered like the whole, basically the whole United States. And then we had somebody from the East coast, the Carolinas, and the theme was they were focused on that service and they were focused on putting that leads, needs, wants and desires far below or far before the sale. What are your thoughts Nate?
Nate Joens: Yeah, I always come back to when I was at the Hatch Summit last year at this time I think, or was that the conversion? I think it was the summit where we had the breakout session. You drew the picture of a house and a person.
Robby T.: Yeah.
Nate Joens: And I think the old ISA model was focusing on the house and in the new way is simply focusing on the person. And that's always struck home to me from a product perspective. I've learned a lot from you about, from structurally, way back in the day, early on we thought, can our product integrate with MLS data? That's a whole nother story. It would have been miserable to do, but we didn't.
Nate Joens: A lot of that was because of you had told me the story of a lead will come in and say, how many beds does this property have? And they haven't told you how many they're looking for. And you say the wrong number, you say two and they're looking for three, they're going to be like, all right, thanks. See you. Then probably goes to you.
Robby T.: The ghost.
Nate Joens: But you didn't ask why you're looking for a three bed house? That's the question that you need to be asking. And that's the non salesy question. There's a point where you do need to provide information on the property, but following it up with a question is the model that all of these top ISAs are employing now.
Robby T.: 100%. I think it seems so counterintuitive. It's cool that that is becoming the normal finally. And I just put myself in the shoes of a consumer. Again, it's how I have played this whole game. And I think that's what these other ISAs have done as well, is they treat that lead in the sense of they would want to be treated.
Robby T.: And for far too long in this dang industry, people would call the end sales in general. They would call people with the intent of pushing somebody to do something they don't want to do, of manipulating with the intent of getting him to do something that's not the best for them. And it comes from this mindset of I don't have enough. And it comes from this mindset of being attached to an outcome of being dependent on this sale.
Robby T.: And I had somebody today that said something really funny about this. You basically said, it comes across as like desperate breath, and it stinks and nobody likes it. They can tell, they can hear it. When you're being very pushy and salesy, when you're really signaling to them as, "Hey, I need this next sale." And the thing my brain goes to is I would never want to work with somebody that was desperate for the next sale.
Robby T.: I'd want to work with somebody that truly took the time to understand my needs, wants, and desires at a deeper level that would help me process information. Because when you're in a sales mindset, what happens is this is you only talk about the surface, and the reality is this is that if the lead you were talking to, if their story isn't changing throughout the conversation, you're doing something wrong.
Robby T.: What should be happening is you should be asking questions like, get them to think differently. Because when you do that, you're getting to the depth of who they are and what they want. And when you don't do that, this is why almost everyone says buyers are liars is because they heard the surface response and then that person had a trigger that came up, and they didn't tell you about it because you never asked about it.
Robby T.: There was a trigger and now they're like, I got to walk away from this house, and they're not telling you why because you didn't ask. We never took the time to understand it. We have so much less of that because we take the time to find out what they need, want and desire. Not on a surface level. Like it's not just when I say that I'm not finding out that they want five, but as three garage stalls and three bathrooms.
Robby T.: Now we're finding out that they want that fence back yard because they have kids and a dog. And then I'm asking another question just to show an example of this. And I think the other ISAs kind of demonstrating this as well, is asking questions like, okay, but if your wife were on the call today, what would she say she would want in the house? And do you think people always agree on what they want in a house or do you think there's confliction there?
Robby T.: And then I'll even say, well, what about your kids? Sometimes I'd say, all right, roughly your dog. What the heck do they want as a joke? But for someone, their dog is their child, right? And really what it's doing is it's slowing down, asking questions to see, to help them think differently. And when you do that, you're going to provide some so much better service.
Robby T.: You will actually move much quicker with people because you won't have the hangups, you won't have the subconscious stuff that's not being aired slowing you down. So I think it's when you focus on that service side, it makes the sale like secondary and become so much easier.
Nate Joens: That triggered an action item and a curiosity point for everyone listening and for you to do Robbie, I would be curious to know in everyone's database, yours is a good place to start since it's so well organized. How many of your leads that were once responsive that have now ghosted you, that you're following up with, have provided you more or less a reason as to why they ghosted you?
Nate Joens: How many people are out there that are currently ghosting you that you could re-engage somehow by bringing that up. And I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but I'm thinking about it from a software company perspective, we'll cancel our product. And we always ask why it always makes us sad, but it's a similar reason.
Nate Joens: Well, it's because you don't have any integration with boom or you don't have script customization. You don't have a reason. And eventually we'll probably have that reason. And a really good way for us to bring those clients back is simply tailoring a very personal email to them saying, hey, you canceled because we didn't have script customization. We're releasing it this week. Do you want to sign back up?
Nate Joens: They're really likely to do that. Could you do that the same with the leads that have ghosted you? Hey, you had mentioned that you were thinking about making a move in the next year because you're waiting on a settlement, has that settlement closed, I'm really tailoring those messages to reengage your ghosted leads. Seems like a really interesting opportunity.
Robby T.: It's funny that you say that because my brain went to two places. We have two different types of ghosts. One would be the one you just said where they're waiting for something and granted, don't get me wrong. Out of probably a 100 people that say that, usually one gets a settlement from my experience. Yeah. But still that one is worth it.
Robby T.: I'll come back to that a little bit. There's maybe a story, I'll share that. But the other one is we have a message that really plays into that and calls them out on them. Go see us. It's our aliens in that and texts and basically says, "Hey, we've been trying to get ahold of you, did he get abducted by aliens?" Long story short, that's what it says.
Robby T.: And it says that it gives like three options and a lot of people will respond to that and say, no, no, I'm sorry. I've just been super busy. So acknowledging the ghost piece because it shows that, hey, I'm not super, I'm not trying to sell you out. I think if it's coming from a place of, I'm just trying to reach out. And frankly I love your perspective on that. I think just acknowledging that ghost can be the first step in it.
Nate Joens: You're right. Yeah. And I think that ties together all your prior points nicely that thinking about your database in that organized way comes from a place of innovation and systemization. But then also thinking, how can I service this person comes from your service focus point number five, so time is all in together. That's really what being an ISA is all about.
Nate Joens: That's kind of creative side of being in ISA is, look, I've got this job to do. I've got this database of leads that are look all different. It's my job to simply put it on the calendar as an appointment for my agents. There's a pretty clear path from point A to point B. And so I hope that a lot of these points helped cover how to go in a straight line from point A to point B and not a diagonal or whatever, a curve line. So I think these were all great points.
Robby T.: Yeah. I love it. I think to put an end on this, right? We talked about those five habits are, they're hungry, they're gritty, they're innovators, they're systemize and they're service focused. And I like to basically say that we overthink this ISA role a lot. Those five things really play into this, right?
Robby T.: I break up the ISA role into three core components. And the first is this is you've got to create conversations, right? To be an ISA, you got to create conversations. Whether you're paying to use a structurally to help generate that for you. You're making the calls, you're using automated texts, you're shooting texts or emails. Number one is you've got to create conversations. And we're asking people to go along with this by the way, is they'll make dials, make dials. The whole point of making dials is to create a conversation.
Robby T.: So hands down, number one is create conversations. Number two is form a connection. And you're not going to do that if your sales focused, you must be service focused. You got to be focused on them, their needs, wants and desires. And then number three, you got to book appointments. You can't forget about that last piece because we want to build connections.
Robby T.: We want to absolutely do that. But the reality is that as an ISA, you have a job to do. And we're focused on doing it. And honestly, some people are like, that feels girls. It really shouldn't because if you don't do it, these people are going to go work with somebody and they're probably going to work with somebody that sells six homes a year that writes our offer on carbon copy paper and now that's your fault. So one create conversations, two build connections and number three is book appointments.
Robby T.: And the top, ISAs that we interviewed, they're doing that, they're doing all three stages. They're hungry, they're gritty, they're innovators, they're systemize and more importantly they are service focused. And what that means is they're willing to... if someone is not wanting to do something, they don't care. They're not attached to that. So that's kind of my on bow on all this.
Nate Joens: No, that's been great. This has been a really exciting seven part series. This is the seventh episode in the series. You want to dive into each one of the six prior, they are on the structurally YouTube page going to hopefully make it up to the ISAradio.com podcast. And I'm working through that. There's a lot of content to dig through there. So yeah, if I check those out. I think we covered a lot of those points that in this episode.
Nate Joens: So I think Robbie and I are starting to think through our next series, which sound like it could be stories with an ISA. So, right, Robbie?
Robby T.: Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing for you 22 people that are on right now. Give us some feedback on where you think we could take this. One thought I had was obviously up until now, this has been very 10,000 foot view, the habits and what I say is due. I want to zoom it. I don't know for sure what we're going to zoom in though and I want you guys to help getting there.
Robby T.: And one thought, whether they want to reach out to me or shoot me a message, throw it at us. Reach out to Nate is having really successful ISAs come on and talk about, some of the conversations they've had with people. The most challenging conversation they've had. The most impactful conversation. They've had things along those lines.
Robby T.: They'd probably be a little bit shorter episodes, but I think that could be really valuable and really learn some cool insight into how they're doing it. But that's just one thought. That I came up with. Obviously, I'm not tied to that.
Nate Joens: A playbook that you can steal from in certain scenarios. That's a lot of people learn a lot of different ways. This was high level. I personally love to learn from examples. If I was ISA, what does Mr Eric Hatch always say, watch you go and do, we've been talking about the watch me and the watch you, but not really getting into the go and do part would be a really interesting aspects that we want to bring in to give all the ISAs listening, all the team leaders listening the ability to use real world examples from outside your market, maybe in your market. Just from all over that you can learn from.
Robby T.: Truth. Exactly.
Nate Joens: Well, I appreciate it Robbie. I appreciate it. Everyone listening Hannah, yeah, I'll share that four week onboarding with you. It's above in the chat the resources link or I'll have easy reach out. But again this episode was our seventh and final of the top ISA interviews with the top ISA series. This'll be live on the structurally YouTube channel shortly. As well as emailed out to everyone listening.
Robby T.: Awesome. Nate, can I give one quick plug real quick?
Nate Joens: Yeah.
Robby T.: In about a month of September 11th through 13th. We're doing our Hatch Summit and you brought it up with spark my memory here in Fargo and would love if you just go to Hatch Coaching.com. We would love to have you guys attend. Nate will be there. Andrew, the other co founder, we got a really cool group of people come in. I'll be there. Jim will be there. I think he posted the least peaks about that.
Robby T.: All of our ISAs would be there. We want some firsthand exposure to all of this because, you've heard it from Jim, you've heard it from myself, but if you want to see our team and you can come and learn from us our summit is like, it's basically our version of fam or union that KW on and more poorly than anything. We focus on having a good time and we'd love to see you guys.
Nate Joens: I can speak for structurally, we were there last year and I still come back to things that I learned there as I did on this episode. I'm sure the content will spark another year of learnings for me.
Nate Joens: So I would love to see everyone there from structurally behalf and on behalf of your business I think it's a phenomenal decision you can. With that Robbie, thanks for the time, we will see every one soon on our next series, whatever that maybe.
Robby T.: Whatever it is.
Nate Joens: Take care everyone. Bye.