Pat Fenton, real estate coach and Tim Green, top listing agent share insights on creating a winning system.

Patrick Fenton, speaker, coach, and mentor has been in the real estate industry for 18 years. Pat has presented live at over 800 events to over a million agents. Recently, Pat has partnered with Rap Success Systems (RAPSS) to help lead training and coaching strategies for RAPSS’ Real Insider Pro division.

Timothy Green has been a top real estate agent out of Fort Wayne, Indiana for over 20 years. Tim specializes in listings, luxury properties, first-time homebuyers, and staging. Tim has used RAPSS services for the past five years to help build his successful practice.

Whether you’re an agent who is holding strong but wants to kick it up a few notches or one who is struggling and needs to make some changes, the insights shared by Pat and Tim will have significant implications to your bottom line. If you’re an agent looking to become an elite listing agent and increase your sales volume by 10x or more, then these Real Insider Pro insights are critical.

The fundamentals of real estate needed to optimize your business never change.

You can probably think back 20 years ago and see that agents are handling the same seller objections they face today. Some of the marketing, technology, and resources may change; affecting where and how the consumers show interest. But overall, how agents sell and convert on opportunities, pretty much has been static for many years.

Pat calls it “getting belly-to-belly with your clients.” You can have tons of leads flowing into your inbox, but you’re not going to see the conversion until you’re engaging those leads, giving them value and doing something for them.

How do you address the client’s concerns and objections?

Tim puts it this way:

“I try to make sure that I’m not just answering just to answer I’m really listening to what that objection is. You have to slow yourself down to really understand the objection. I always restate, their object or issue so I can really get a handle on their concern. That also gives me time to prepare my response. So, I slow down and even write down the concern to be sure I get it right.  Now I’m ready to say to the homeowner “okay would this make sense?” or “would this be helpful?” These questions help me get buy-in from the homeowner as they’re responding with “

Yeah, that does make sense!” If it doesn’t make sense, then I want to understand why.

When you’re overcoming objections, how do UVPs come into play?

The reality, with the number of agents getting their license and entering the marketplace and the increasingly competitive the landscape, you must have a differential; especially when you’re working cold leads. Those are your Unique Value Propositions (UVPs). It’s not as critical when you have a high-quality referral with built in trust. Although, you never want to take any prospect for granted. But especially when you’re working cold leads, marketing-generated leads, etc.

Tim explains how his strategy includes:

1. Unconditional cancellation guarantee – gives them a warm feeling that this guy understands us he understands the fact that if we have any problems we can always cancel.
2. If I can’t sell your home within a certain timeframe, I won’t take a commission – that gives them a warm feeling like “Oh WOW! This guy is gonna stand behind what he says!”
3. I will buy your home if I don’t sell it.

(Note: have the conditions and structure behind this guarantee to make sure you’re not buying 20 homes.)

It’s important to customize the value proposition based on the particulars of the climate you’re working with to determine what makes sense. Focus on the things that can help you overcome the objections raised and help them see that you’re a professional who knows how to get their home sold. There’s really no risk to working with you.

Specifically, weave your UVPs into the conversation like “one of the reasons so many people choose to work with me is because you know I guarantee that I’m gonna sell your house within 39 days or I’m gonna work for free.”  That’s not a throw-away tactic; it’s a strategy that works for a lot of people. Equally powerful, those UVPs put the pressure on you to perform and do all the things you say you’ll do in your marketing plan. The good part is that it’s not a risk to you if you do your job.

Many agents don’t recognize that most objections that prospects throw out there are just smokescreens. Prospects are stalling you; they’re testing you. It’s just human nature not to want to appear easy. Most people are just fearful of making a bad decision. They think they can save money by not using a real estate broker, especially when you’re dealing with FSBOs. Our job is to reassure them and provide information that makes them feel like they made a good decision. They also want to feel like they made the decision; not that I made the decision for them. It’s the same with any major purchase; people are afraid of making the wrong decision and having buyer’s remorse.

Pat has many years of experience as a sales trainer. In that role, he finds that when a salesperson doesn’t lock in the words to handle the objections, then they really can’t say them with enough conviction to put you in a position of leadership on that phone call or in person. It’s clear where many salespeople fail is the point where they don’t simply look at bullet points. It’s not that they’ve never seen the scripts before. To be the best, you’ve got to look at your marketing plan and associated tools and resources to get the leads at the top of the funnel. Then after that, look at the strategy tactics and processes at the bottom of the funnel. Then it comes down to implementing, not just knowing, the best practices.

Fewer than 5% of real estate agents take the time to get a flashcard and say here’s my intro script, boom, go to the next card, here is my not-interested objection script, boom – repeating that process through the entire script for every objection.

Pat used to coach football for 16 years, and he says “as part of state championship teams, we used to tell our kids – listen we’re not gonna practice these five plays until we get them right we’re gonna practice them until we can’t get them wrong!”  That level of internalization enables you to focus on how you’re saying things, not simply on what you’re saying. That is what makes all the difference in the world. With few exceptions, if you’re confident, and you’re sure then your prospects are going to be sure.

Pat is working with Isaiah Colton to take every best practice they have about lead generation and lead conversion and put it into their soon-to-be-released Ultimate Listing Machine Playbook. The ULM Playbook will describe strategies for the marketing plan, lead sources, detailed scripts and develop the full game plan. Real estate agents will get all the scripts they teach, and the top agents use to convert at the highest ratios in the industry. That’s why there’s a lot of excitement around the release of the Ultimate Listing Machine Playbook. You can add your name to the waiting list to be among the first notified when it becomes available here, Add me to the list.

Follow up is critical.

Even when a lead seems to be warming to you, even if it’s a referral, it’s not guaranteed until the papers are signed. So, you must do the follow-up work to convert on your leads. Ask yourself, “how often do I personally talk to a prospect?”

Do you have teams and the proper CRM systems to help you follow up consistently? Do you leverage different types of communication methods such as email, social media, video?

Using those methods consistently, help you stay engaged, build relationships, build trust, and demonstrate your expertise with your prospects.

Like Michael Gerber says in the book The E Myth Revisited, “if you create a winning system now you can simply hire and train people on that system – the system already designed to produce results. That’s the biggest message we wanted to share. To hear the full conversation from the Real Insider Pro Mastermind video with Pat Fenton and Tim Green, watch it here.