Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
In this episode, Chris Linsell from TheClose.com discusses the withdrawal of the US Justice Department from the settlement with NAR on antitrust. Chris continues to emphasize the importance of being open and having conversations with your buyers/sellers and explaining the processes by being transparent. Last, Chris and DJ discuss how certifications and accreditations can help you better position yourself in the market.
To see NAR’s recommendations on certifications, click here.
To read Tracy Hawkins’ article on the importance of becoming a safety expert, click here.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lynn sell from the closed.com. Now this is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes.com. And let me tell you about the clothes now the clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the closed.com That’s th e Cl O S e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you can be notified every time they publish an article with us as always is Chris Lindh sell. He is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been part of hundreds of real estate transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his community theaters. Most recent production. And Chris Welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re so excited to have you.
Chris Linsell 2:24
Yeah, thanks for having me back. Glad to be here. Summertime baby. Um, last summer.
D.J. Paris 2:30
We were just talking about fishing. So I got tripped up a little bit when I was reading your intro because I went oh, we were just talking about these. What were the names of those giant flies that you were just telling me.
Chris Linsell 2:41
So I spent a lot of time with the Blue Ribbon trout streams of Michigan. And right around this time and the June middle of June two beginning of July, the hexa Genia bugs come out at night they’re these massive insects that are like the size of like a Twinkie from from tip to tail kind of thing. And come out at night the fish go crazy for on that thing, the biggest the biggest crowd out of the water that you’ll see all year. So yeah, I’ve been standing the trout streams late at night catching big fish and drinking adult beverages and enjoying good time with my fishing friends. So other than spending time waxing poetically about the real estate market. That’s where you’ll find me these days.
D.J. Paris 3:26
And have you witnessed a fish leaping out of the water to catch one. Have you seen Have you witnessed a fish actually catching a fly?
Chris Linsell 3:33
And oh, yeah, massive. I mean, most of these had most of the spider come out at night. So it’s pretty dark. Yeah, sounds like give me an example. Picture yourself standing in the middle of a river at midnight. It’s very dark and somebody’s dropping bowling balls around you. That sounds like when these fish come out of the water splashing looking for these big flies. So do the flies.
D.J. Paris 3:55
Do they bother you at all? Do they do they run into you? Or do they leave? They leave humans alone mostly, you
Chris Linsell 4:01
know, I don’t want to say because I don’t want to discourage anybody from this amazing hobby that I have. But yeah, you get bumped into occasionally hear about humans. They’re just right. On their way to do other stuff.
D.J. Paris 4:13
Well, that’s funny. Well, I do love trout. That’s That’s awesome. Well, today we and I apologize for getting a little off topic but I’m so fascinated by by this while you were telling me those those hex I’m sorry, said we’re time hexa.
Chris Linsell 4:29
Yeah, we call them the hex bugs. X bugs. Yeah. But they’re a type of bug. It’s a big mayflies, basically the hexa Genia group, but we just call them hex.
D.J. Paris 4:42
Gotcha. So we have cicadas this year, I believe and and the hex bugs right now
Chris Linsell 4:47
as well. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right everywhere against who know.
D.J. Paris 4:52
Well, good for fishing, I guess. Well, I know Chris and I were talking just before we started about what we would discuss today and hope Uh, by the way, if you’re listening live happy Fourth of July or happy post Fourth of July. But for those of you who are listening on your podcast app likely there’s a few, maybe a few weeks that transpired since. But we wanted to talk about some recent news that Chris has been paying attention to, that has not really received a lot of press over the last weekend, which is when this news hit. So Chris, do you mind sharing that?
Chris Linsell 5:24
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So recently, the US Justice Department has withdrawn from a settlement that they had with the National Association of Realtors, over some investigations of antitrust scenarios. And, you know, I’m not on the inside of this. Nor am I have I spoken directly to anybody with the National Association of Realtors. So my perspective on this is certainly that of an observer is an interested person, as a member of the real estate community. But the longer the short of it is the Justice Department pulled out of the settlement in order to give themselves license to further investigate anti competitive behavior. And most of most of us in the industry that are watching this are guessing that that has to do with both the NAR rules for disclosure of commission rates and commission, kind of the way that commissions are populated in real estate transactions, as well as an interesting little nugget about, in some cases, only allowing access to lockboxes, to members of the National Association of Realtors. So, you know, both of these things are, you know, obviously, they have direct application and implication into our daily livelihood. And the fact that the US Justice Department is taking a closer look at these things could be an indicator that there’s some more news to come on this front.
D.J. Paris 7:06
So just to recap, they’re under the Trump administration, this anti competitive or antitrust issue regarding it looks like the big thing is around commission disclosure or the public understanding Commission’s they have reached a settlement. And then now that the the administration has changed to the Biden to Biden’s, you know, regime that that has now been withdrawn. And now there may be further investigation into this sort of these sorts of practices.
Chris Linsell 7:40
Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. And there’s, there’s a lot of moving parts to this. And I think that this is one of those one of those situations where we’re on the front end of this conversation and this story, and there’s there’s likely to be a lot more, especially with Biden’s Justice Department’s focus on antitrust, to follow this sort of thing. But the Federal Trade Commission, recently, a new chair to the FTC, Lena Khan, who is a 32 year old woman who has written some really interesting things about antitrust, specifically with Amazon. And it’s clear that the Justice Department under Biden is not shying away from these conversations. Lena connoisseur is a major proponent of strong antitrust policy. Merrick Garland, who’s now the attorney general is a strong proponent of antitrust policy. So you know, most of the antitrust spotlight is focused on tech companies like Google and Facebook. But you know, strong trade groups like the National Association of Realtors are not going to be immune to that sort of spotlight either. So, you know, DJ and I were talking about this earlier, one thing that realtors and brokers can do right now to be proactive on this topic, is to have thoughtful conversations with their clients about how Commission’s are handled, what what a commission is, how much it how much it likely the dollar amounts will be based on sale prices. You know, where that commission comes from? It’s easy to say to buyers, oh, you know, you don’t pay commission, the seller is the one that’s paying all the commission. Well, you know, maybe on paper, but if you just kind of rearranged the flow of dollars and commissions coming out of the buyers money that they’re they’re using to pay for the house and so there’s certainly an argument to be made that Commission’s aren’t free to buyers, you know that they didn’t have that permission to pay, maybe they pay a lower sale price. So there’s lots of different conversations to be had here. But the bottom line is have conversations with your buyers and sellers. Be open and transparent Do not hide the way that the process works. A lot of antitrust is born out of opaqueness to the process. So be transparent, don’t try to hide how things work. This is the way that the our business and our business operates. So be very clear about that. And then on the other hand, as well have this conversation with your broker and broker or managing brokers have this conversation with your agents, be thoughtful and upfront about the way that your individual business works and say, you know, make sure that the people working under you know, how you operate when it comes to commissions. Because the more people who know about how the process works, the less likely there are for people to have hurt feelings about it. Yeah, I
D.J. Paris 10:37
couldn’t agree more. Here’s a little quick quote from the wall, a Wall Street Journal article about this that happened on on the first of July, which basically echoes what Chris just said, which was that the Justice Department sued the National Association of REALTORS last and had come up with a settlement. This was in last November of 2020. And just to quote the Wall Street Journal, because this really summarizes everything Chris just said, or a lot of what Chris said, the lawsuit accuses the group, the group meaning NAR of maintaining anti competitive rules that created an environment in which there was little visibility for home buyers, about the Commission’s a buyer’s agent would earn. So this is something to think about in your practice, individual practice of what are you telling buyers? Are you telling them anything? Are when they ask what is your response? What is your brokerage firms view on talking about commissions? And as Chris said, you know, talk to your managing broker, talk to your firm, and say, How should I be discussing this, and if you aren’t getting a good response there, go online and start, you know, going through some of these forums that Realtors hang out at, and start having these these conversations or, you know, even Facebook groups that you can chat with, with other realtors. But you know, definitely have, think about how you want to present that to your buyers and your sellers. And, and it sounds like transparency is the major issue here. So if you do your part to be more transparent, seems like everyone, everyone wins in the end, because I don’t and I wouldn’t, I would think as I know, when I was a buyer, and what we’ll move on from this in just a moment, but I know when I was a buyer, it was super confusing, because I know everything has a price, or rather has a cost associated with it on top of whatever the cost of what I’m buying is, and oftentimes in retail stuff that’s just built into the price. But I didn’t know how it worked. I’ve been buying things in stores forever. I understand how how profit and margin works in stores, I didn’t understand how it worked in home buying and it was not really well disclosed to me, and I had to ask questions about it. And I suspect a lot of us probably, maybe we just assume buyers and sellers understand how it works. But I would make I would really challenge that assumption, because I know I was 30 years old, and I was buying my first place. And I had no idea. And I had to ask my agent, hey, how do I pay you something? How does this work? And he did explain it to me, thankfully in detail, but I had to ask it. And so I would encourage you just to be in a situation where you explain it first so that your clients aren’t sitting around after you leave the meeting. You know, a couple might be talking to each other going, how does it do we have to pay this person or how does this work?
Chris Linsell 13:28
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the bottom line here, as far as I’m concerned, from an industry kind of analyst perspective is this the ship has sailed, when it comes to the assumption that our buyers and sellers will just kind of go along with whatever we have to say about stuff that that may be the case to some degree, because they’re trusting us as an expert. But we have to remember buyers and sellers consumers in general have access to more information than they ever have before about how the transactions that they’re a part of work. And, again, for better or worse, companies like Facebook or another example is Robin Hood. These companies that offer essentially free services, their business model has shed a light on the fact that there is nothing in this life for free. When you use Facebook, it’s you’re not getting it for free. You’re paying for Facebook with your information. And this is how Facebook makes money as they sell information to advertisers so that they can better position their products. You are paying for that service with something and same with Robin Hood you’re not trading stocks for free you are paying for the broker fees on Robin Hood with you know buy they sell order flow so that other people know who’s buying what and when and how much they’re selling information. Same deal with real estate transactions. It’s a different exchange. But you know, buyers pay for their transaction in a way that that if it’s not completely clear to them, we’re not doing our jobs. So if you want to get out ahead of this stuff, get transparent, make sure that every party to the transaction understands every fundamental step. And you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about.
D.J. Paris 15:22
Awesome, thanks. What a really appreciate your opinion and thoughts on that, of course. And I wanted to also talk about an article that I read on the close just today, which is the most recent article, as of today is the sixth of July, which really caught my eye and I hadn’t really had any seen an article like it before, this is what I love about the closes, oftentimes, that’s what happens, I see an article, headline and I go, ooh, that that captured my imagination, or captured my attention, rather. And so this one, this is written by Tracy Hawkins, who is apparently a safety expert. And the title of the article is called and you can read this just by going to the clothes.com. But it’s in the title, the article is Ken becoming a local safety expert grow your real estate business. So what we thought we would spend the rest of the time today talking about is different certifications and designations that you may want to consider to better position yourself as an agent that isn’t the same as everyone else that has additional skills that can be developed, or, or can be, you know, accredited. And that will hopefully help you better service your clients and even better position yourself from a marketing perspective.
Chris Linsell 16:36
Yeah, 100%. You know, remember, we get real estate licenses, we are essentially qualifying ourselves to offer the same suite of services that literally everybody else who has a real estate license is offering. And so it’s up to us as real estate professionals to figure out ways that we can differentiate what we have to offer to provide value in a way that our competitors aren’t providing them value so that we can show the, you know, our buyers and sellers that were worth working with, and designation certifications, that sort of thing. That’s a great way to do it, if you’re doing it smartly and strategically.
D.J. Paris 17:17
And there’s the challenge, I think, with designations, and certifications, and we’ve probably seen this, you know, certainly as agents, we work with other brokers, or I’m sorry, in Illinois, we call all agents, brokers, but we’ll just say agents, when you’re working with other agents, whether it’s on a transaction where we’re cooperating to try to close the transaction, or we’re just setting up showings, you know, oftentimes, you’ll see in the signature line of another agents email, just initial sort of initials after initials, you know, sort of at some sort of acronym that, that maybe we don’t even understand. So there’s lots of different certifications. And what we wanted to do was just talk about a handful of them that, you know, not in a lot of detail, but just to let you know, of some of the certifications that Chris particularly finds to be interesting and helpful. In your business.
Chris Linsell 18:05
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And actually, I just want to start by calling out Tracy Hawkins article. It’s like, like, since most recent one published on the close today, it’s July 6, but if you guys, you know, if you’re listening to this after the fact, you can go to the clothes and search local safety expert in the search bar, it’ll pop right up. Essentially, one of the things that, you know, like Tracy’s big message here is that you can grow your business by becoming an expert in things that your clients they may not necessarily know to identify, that are important to them, but they certainly are important to them, and just call out a couple of points that she makes here. You can grow your business by just learning about your clients safety and security concerns. You know, you’d be surprised how many sellers are worried about having showings because they’re worried that people are going to take their stuff? Sure, that sounds it sounds kind of, you know, almost paranoid, but this is something that that sellers, definitely worry about, this is something that we can provide immediate value, just by addressing there. And there is there are there are definitely you know, kind of official designations that you can get on just about any topic within the real estate industry. But just by going through training by calling out your expertise in particular realms, like safety is a good example. You are going to build your business because there’s going to be people who are going to gravitate towards those kind of certifications and accreditations even if they are relatively unofficial, that’s still going to help you grow your business. Yeah, and I particularly
D.J. Paris 19:51
love this local safety expert and for just and again, I always think about it from a marketing perspective and and assuming that At your, you know, working with a seller or rather you’re bidding for the business to work with the seller and maybe they’ve met with other agents. You know, one of the things that if you have the sort of expertise or the certification around being a safety expert, is you can build that into your presentation. To say one of the steps that we take before we start accepting showings is we’re going to talk about safety, we’re going to I’m a certified local safety expert, what that means is I’m going to walk through every home of your house, we’re going to have a conversation about you know, every single room to make sure that it’s secure, and that you’re comfortable with the strangers that we’ll be walking through here. Most likely when you’re not here. So we’re going to do this. And here, here’s the steps that that you know, we’re going to take once we get there, again, you know, all things being equal, that sounds really good to me versus somebody who doesn’t address it at all in their presentation.
Chris Linsell 20:53
Yeah, 100% 100%. And, you know, frankly, this is an easy win. This is something that that real estate agents can do without having to adjust the gym of their sale too much. It is just a matter of positioning what you’re already doing, frankly, and then taking a couple of extra steps. That is that is a real easy differentiator that honestly, agents just aren’t doing right now. So those who are taking this extra step, they can really stand out with minimal, minimal extra effort,
D.J. Paris 21:25
right now, in particular is a good time to have a designation like this around sellers, because as most areas of the country, you know, putting a listing up on the MLS is is likely to generate a lot of quick activity, if it’s priced correctly, because of the the, the, you know, limit the limiting inventory that most of us are dealing with. So this is a way to say, Hey, I’m going to put your stuff on you know, we’re gonna get it up and you’re we’re going to probably get a lot of offers. But you know, what’s really most important to me is making sure that this home is secure. While we’re in the during this process. And again, that’s kind of a neat way to position yourself as as a, this idea that I care about your safety is a really interesting take that Realtors oftentimes aren’t thinking about, oftentimes they’re going to talk about I care about your bottom line, I want to get you the best price, I want to help you sell this home as quick as possible. All of those are great, but that’s really common. And if you can add in, in addition to that, some some other sort of here’s what I specialize in. And Chris and I are going to maybe chat about a few of those, in addition to being a local safety expert. But huge shout out to Tracy Hawkins, who wrote this article because it grabbed my attention. And I’m going to bring this one in particular to our, our Realtors here at our firm, because I just think it’s such a cool idea. So thank you for that great article, Tracy.
Chris Linsell 22:48
Absolutely, yeah. And just shout out again to Tracy Tracy is also going to be a speaker at the National Association of Realtors Conference in San Diego this November. I’m excited to also be a speaker there. So if you’re going to be out in San Diego this November, please make sure to check out Tracy. In her session, come on over check out the clothes and my session. There we’re going to lots of lots of important things to talk about lots of good ways that we can grow as professionals and be able to shake our hands and in tell us tell us exactly what you think good, bad or otherwise, live and in living color at San Diego this November,
D.J. Paris 23:25
and how exciting we’re back to doing in person events again. And so for those of you who are thinking about whether you should attend or not, Chris is going to be there. Of course, Tracy, who we’ve been just chatting about, I’ll be slinking around somewhere. And I’d be happy to shake anybody’s hand who might be a listener fan of the show as well. So Gnar is in San Diego this year. So definitely and what I mean what a what a wonderful place to go visit in the fall. In addition, let’s talk about some other designations. And then we should also mention, by the way, I’m going to, there’s going to be a link to this article, as Chris mentioned, right in the notes of this podcast episode. So you’ll see a link there. There’s also a great link on the National Association of REALTORS website, or sorry, a great page that they’ve put together with all the designations and certifications that they recognize. And so I’m going to post that as well in the notes so you can see what what are officially recognizes.
Chris Linsell 24:19
Oh, yeah, perfect. So DJ, I’ve got some we’ve got some other designations. I mean, being a safety expert, certainly there’s some there’s some value prop, right, kind of built right into that. But there’s other designations out there. What do you say you want to you want to kind of pop through a couple of these we’ll chat about maybe do kind of a lightning round style. We’ll talk about, you know, a couple of different designation options whether or not they’re worth it for realtors, what kind of benefit they might have that sort of thing.
D.J. Paris 24:47
Yeah, I’m gonna start I’ll start with the first one and this is one I’m not sure that this is recognized by NAR so I do want to make that disclaimer. It may it may be it may not be I haven’t, haven’t looked into it but it’s one from a marketing perspective I like. And that is the certified negotiation expert. And I think there’s a couple of different variations of it. But but that is essentially the gist of it. And what what it, what it does is teach negotiation strategies for buyers and seller or, you know, buyer and seller agents. And obviously, I would hope that most of us hearing that would understand there’s value there in a presentation to a buyer or seller about why you should work with them as, Hey, I’ve been certified in, arguably, to your bottom line, maybe the most important part of this process, which is the negotiation. And here’s what I here’s my training, here’s what I’ve learned, and oh, by the way, only, you know, 5% of Realtors, probably less than 5%, I don’t know the exact number, but very few, you know, a very small percentage of realtors have that particular designation. And I think that could carry a lot of weight in any sort of presentation
Chris Linsell 25:54
100% 100%. And you know, I’ll just kind of point out as well, for most of your consumers, most buyers and sellers here, when they see certified negotiation expert after your name, or in your signature line, that’s, that’s all the information that they need, they’re gonna get value just from seeing that the vast majority of these people are not going to click through to the National Association of REALTORS website and try to find the designation read about what it takes to get it. Frankly, buyers and sellers do not have that kind of attention span or time and they’re just not interested in learning more other than this is somebody who’s certified to negotiate on my behalf. Great, this is helpful. So, you know, do yourself a favor and think about what is it that’s going to give me an advantage in the eyes of my buyers and sellers, if this is going to do it. And if it is worth my time and my effort to get it. This is a no brainer. I love this one.
D.J. Paris 26:51
Yeah, and I’ll just really quickly just to put a cap on on the certified negotiation expert, let’s say that it is valuable enough to increase your clients bottom line by even let’s just say 5%. Maybe, maybe there’s data that people who have this designation, have a certain you know, you know, higher dollar amount that they that they that they foster for their clients. That’s another reason to market right. So there’s probably some some specific objective data, just like they say, Oh, if you use professional photographers, homes typically sell faster. And for more dollar beef, be careful, of course of what statistics you’re using. And be careful to to, you know, make sure that that you’re not promising things that that aren’t necessarily, you know, going to be but again, as Chris said, they don’t need to ask, you know, what is a certified negotiation expert, or they’re likely to understand that, so we’re looking for things that designations that that, that clients care about, or that really help your skill set. And that’s one that hopefully does both. What What else do you recommend Chris?
Chris Linsell 27:54
Well, I mean, there’s a handful of designations that I think just right off the top of my head, make a lot of sense. One of them I’ll call out here is the SR e s designation. This is a certified or excuse me that certified it is the seniors, real estate specialists, seniors real estate specialist, if you’ve got a market where maybe you’ve got a significant retirement community, or a lot of seniors people over the age of 65. This is a particularly potent designation to have because not only do you get some cred from I’m going to just going to call like I see it here from a a segment of our client population that has the most money to spend and the most, the most capital to sell when it comes to homes. Baby Boomers are the largest cohort of real estate owners in the United States, these folks have homes to buy and sell. If you have a designation that is going to connect specifically with that audience, you are making a good decision. And also as an SRTs. designee, you get listed on the AARP website as a as a direct referral. So there’s a lot of benefits for that particular designation.
D.J. Paris 29:17
And I have an additional reason of why you may want to consider again, senior real estate specialist. If you are looking to network and build professional relationships with other professionals that you know work also with seniors. This is a huge opportunity for you to reach out to financial planners, estate attorneys that special specialized with, with estate planning, you know, and having those conversations and saying hey, I’m looking for an estate planning attorney or a Certified Financial Planner, who also you know, works with seniors. Oh, by the way, I am a senior real estate specialist so I would love to connect with you and start sending referrals, maybe we can share referrals to each other. This is a great opportunity not only to appeal directly to the senior that you’re looking to work with, but to work with some of those professional services that also would value that.
Chris Linsell 30:13
Yep, 100% 100% there’s, there’s a lot of different ways you can slice the value of that particular designation. Another one I’d love to call out here is, excuse me, another one that I would love to call out here is for folks who are interested in representing investors or playing in the commercial space, the CCI M designation that’s certified commercial investment member is really the gatekeeper to top producer status in the commercial landscape. Especially in major metropolitan markets. But honestly all over the place, if you have a significant representation of commercial property in your market. If you want to play big in the space, the CCI n is kind of a must have. The other one of the reasons why that is, is it’s actually not easy to get and people who are active buyers and sellers in the commercial market. They know that to get a CCI M, there’s a significant caution when it comes to application fees and class fees, you have to have a very large portfolio of experience in that space. So people who are active consumers in that space, they know that a CCI a member has put their time in and as cut their teeth, they are an expert on this sort of thing. So if you are in if you want to get into the commercial space, a CCIE am is really a kind of a must have if you want to you know get into the the big baller status
D.J. Paris 31:42
in Chris’s right. So this CCI M again, is certified commercial investment member. And oftentimes, I hear that from even the agents that are firms who are mostly doing residential or exclusively doing residential, saying how do I break into the commercial space, and CCM is a really good designation to earn. As Chris said, it’s not particularly easy, it’s a two, from what I can tell it is a minimum of 200 classroom hours. So this is this is a process this one will take some time. But again, if you are working with residential clients who may occasionally have a commercial need, or maybe you’re thinking of switching focus entirely and going strictly commercial, you would for sure want this, but this will really if you’re still staying in the residential space, most agents who deal with residential are not going to have this. So this is a big thing, you’ll probably have to explain it to your clients a bit more. But again, a great opportunity to call all of your clients, even ones that you’ve worked with in the past on the residential side, and say, Hey, by the way, I just completed my certification for commercial and investment. If that’s ever something that you’re interested in, I feel that I can assist you versus having to refer that to a true, you know, exclusively commercial broker.
Chris Linsell 32:59
That’s true. And you know, the one thing that I will call out here, the one crossover that makes a lot of sense is, especially right now as as what I’ll call retail investment in real estate is becoming more popular. Having a CCI M is going to be a significant leg up. If you are looking to land clients who are purchasing, say income properties on a regular basis, like it’s a dream to have the client who’s like, yeah, you know, bring me you know, bring me residential properties that I can convert into Airbnb s and if they’re within, you know, these certain parameters, I’ll just write I’ll write an offer sight unseen. Like that’s what I’m looking for right now. These are the clients that we want. These are the sorts of like recurring revenue sources, frankly, as as real estate agents that we can really build a business on. If those are the clients that you’re you’re surfing after right now. SCCM is going to be the wave you need to be
D.J. Paris 33:53
great. What else?
Chris Linsell 33:54
What else? How about this? Here’s what here’s what I think that again, it doesn’t apply to every market. But be surprised how often this gets used is the MRP designation, which is military relocation professional. If you’re not familiar with this designation, it is honestly it’s really pretty easy to get there is no volume requirement for it. It’s like less than half a day in a classroom. It’s all I say classroom it’s a it’s a webinar that you have to watch essentially comes from the National Association of Realtors. This designation is like 200 bucks to get and it’s really pretty reasonable. And it is specifically it’s training for agents who serve as military communities. That experience you know, relatively high turnover in their, in their, their populations. And this is pretty, pretty typical when you’ve got like military bases, military academies, Coast Guard academies, that sort of thing. These folks kind of rotate in and out every few years and they often want to purchase homes rather than rent because it makes more financial sense. If you get the MRP designation, you become the front of the line for recommendations from the military establishment that is in your community, as far as who you know who they suggest when they need to buy and sell when they’re when their service members need to buy or sell. You know, I live in relatively rural part of Northern Michigan, we have a Coast Guard facility here, the couple of MRP designees here in our area clean up, I’m postcard business every year, because there are people who just it’s a reliable source of turnover every single year, there are people who are moving in there are people who are moving out. So if you live in a community and active military community or have a military installation nearby, the MRP designation, this is this is a no brainer, easy to get, it’s going to be an easy source of income for you.
D.J. Paris 35:56
And again, thinking as a marketer, this allows you to reach out to some of these if you have a base nearby, or if you have friends that might be serving in the armed forces, and say, Hey, by the way, I’m not just a realtor, I’m a military relocation specialist. And I would love to, you know, speak to some of the people in in that you work with in the military, or I’d love to do, you know, webinars or seminars, I would love to be introduced to more people, this is one of my specialties, that that is a great marketing tactic to then get in, you know, the inside of some of these, these places. So, great, great idea, Chris. I love that. And I know we had one more, which was around a very hot button topic right now, which is around the idea of being green and going green. So if you mind chatting about NARS green designation,
Chris Linsell 36:50
yeah, so na has a green designation that again, it’s really flashy, this is a really great one to have at the end of your email signature. Yeah, it’s super easy to get in. Honestly, this is the reason that I want to call the specific one out is this is a fantastic conversation starter. Because the NAR green designation, like I said, it takes like a day to get it total. And it’s actually free for the first year, you can get this designation for nothing. It’s like 100 bucks a year after the first year, but it’s free for the first year. And if you have conversations happening in your community around energy efficiency around sustainability, if you have conversations around maybe renewable energy or building standards, spoiler alert, these are conversations that are happening in communities everywhere like this is not isolation are not isolated conversations. It is the exception that these conversations aren’t happening, you can put this at the end of your name and you can mark it on top of it. You can say I am a Grenada green designee, an expert in the National Association of REALTORS green fundamentals, that’s going to get you conversations happening. And per deejays point earlier. This also starts conversations with other local service providers in your area that are going to build your network. And I’ll give you a great example of this. We have in my local market. There’s a fantastic green infrastructure company, full disclosure owned by a friend of mine, but he does incredible work on like green roofs on eco friendly landscaping, his company is called inhabitat. He does product projects all over the state of Michigan and all over the country for large developments. And he is hooked up with and refers regularly real estate agents with the green designation because that’s the business that he’s in. So if you’ve got the sort of designation, you get to hook up with these other places in your community that are all working on the same ideals, there is just nothing bad that comes from expanding your network. It’s all upside and it is super easy to get and it’s free. So even if you get it for a year, you realize I don’t get anything out of this. You literally have only lost, you know less than a day of a virtual classroom might as well give it a shot and see what it can get for you.
D.J. Paris 39:20
Yeah, and we know that clients in particular younger clients tend to ask for I really want a property with green features. And this designation will suggest that you have the ability to fit fine those properties maybe more so that someone who doesn’t I’ll give this is kind of a personal example. So and I truthfully am ignorant to why this is but the way it’s been explained to me is I or I’m sorry, I haven’t explained what it is. So I live in a in an eighth, eighth floor building, I guess you’d maybe call that a low rise to maybe a mid rise. And there’s some rule here and we’re in Chicago that To buildings of a certain size or story, certain number of stories have to have a certain amount of green space on their property. It’s usually on the rooftop is where developers put it. I don’t know if it has to be there. So on our rooftop, which has areas for us to sit and relax and enjoy ourselves, we can go up there and and relax. Half of the rooftop is actually an official designated green space. And I will tell you that that is without question. The first thing that anyone ever asks when they come up to a rooftop is well, that is really cool. What is that? And I say, Oh, it’s you know, the city has some sort of ordinance where there has to be a certain amount of green space. Had I had maybe gone through this designation, or even looked into it further. On, by the way, my point was saying this all is everyone goes, That is so cool. I wish my building had that. So this is something that people are thinking about whether they know it or not. And if you have this designation, you can have a better conversation, I can’t have any conversation other than I think it’s a city rule, but I don’t really know. So it’s something to really consider learning more about because I will tell you, people, their eyes go go big when they see this particular thing on my river. But not all of us live in urban areas where we’re going to have greenery on top of roofs, but it’s something that people are thinking about in every part of their life, right recycling now, for example, is pretty much the law, I think, in every state. So you know, we’ve adopted this green mentality is, as I don’t need to explain, we all know that. But to have this designation will certainly not hurt in any possible way, your ability to market to specifically even younger, skewed clients.
Chris Linsell 41:40
Yeah, I mean, the bottom line here, and I think this just goes for all of the designations that we’ve been talking about is there is the time has passed, frankly, the time has passed, that you can just get your license, hang out in your office, wait for your phone to ring wait for your broker, or your managing broker to hand you referrals. successful real estate professionals, if you want to make a career out of this, you need to be constantly looking for ways to differentiate the value that you provide to your buyers and sellers and your community at large. These designations are a great way for you to continue to separate yourself from the pack. And the best, the best way to kind of think about all of this, I guess this is kind of like my summation here is I don’t know if anybody else did this when I was a kid, I love to play blood play catch with a football with my friends. And I want you to picture one kid standing at the end of the field. And he’s just throwing the football back and forth between me and this other kid is just a one on one sort of thing I have got, I’m the recipient of this football. Now I want you to picture 10 of my friends also standing around me. And when the football goes up in the air, we’re all trying to catch it. Guess what we are in a scenario as as real estate agents, where we’re all standing trying to catch this football. And every single time you have a chance to differentiate yourself from all the other kids around you, you grow by three inches. So the more you can stack, your differentiators. And I’m not saying you want to get 12 different designations, but you want to find ways that you can provide value unique to your community, every single time you find a way to provide that unique value, you grow by three inches. And wouldn’t that game be easier if you were a foot taller than all of your other friends, because frankly, that’s what’s happening right now. So find ways to grow, find ways to get taller, so you can catch that football more often.
D.J. Paris 43:46
That’s a really great analogy perfectly summed up and if you’re listening or watching this right now thinking, oh my gosh, there’s so many different designations, where should I start? My advice would be survey your previous clients and say, Hey, I’m working on my professional development right now. And I have a number of designations that I want to, to earn over the next year. I was curious out of these three or four, you know, which one do you think would would have made the most impact on you as a client? Meaning what what one of these do you think relates most to to you? And that I think will help give you a sense of what do your clients what are they looking for? What are they interested in? And Chris is right we can we have seen people who they get a ton of designations, and then it just looks like gobbledygook after their name on their signature line in their email, because it’s just acronym after acronym, you know, in some sort of, you know, long string of nonsensical characters. So talk to your talk to your your clients and say, Hey, I was thinking about doing this do you think that would be would that have impacted how you felt about me? I As an agent you think that would have made you think I was had you know, these additional skills that were important to you. So serving your clients to find out what they’re interested in, because boy, there are a lot of designations, Chris and I really just scratched the surface with five or six of them. There’s certainly dozens more. So talk to your clients find out what’s what’s important to them. Chris, what a great conversation as always, Chris is is just one of my favorite guests that we have on every month. And really, before we go, we’d be remiss to not talk about the clothes.com. And to mention the clothes dot the clothes Pro. So this kid kreski first let’s talk about the clothes and then quickly talk, of course about the close Pro.
Chris Linsell 45:39
Yeah, absolutely. This is this is an easy conversation to have the closed.com is the internet’s best resource for real estate strategy, best practices, technology, reviews, you name it, if you’re a real estate agent, you want to be on the close because we provide you with content nearly every single day practice and just about every day now, new content that is going to level up your real estate business. My my mission, as the senior writer on the close, is to provide new answers to old questions every single day. We’re always asking how do I generate more business? How do I connect, but it was my clients, where can I get new listings? How can I be more effective as a buyer’s agent. These are just examples of the sorts of things that we talked about every single day on the close. So if you’re active in real estate, come over to the clothes.com We have a ton of value that we can provide you right now. You don’t need to pay for anything, please come and just check out the clothes. If you want to know more about what we’re doing and you want to go even further. We have the closed Pro, it’s a subscription service. With the clothes pro, you get access to exclusive courses, including six simple systems to transform your real estate business survive and thrive in a shifting real estate market. generating leads to build long term business. That’s actually a course that is currently in session. Our expert Beverly Ruffner, the conversion queen is her nickname. She is teaching this course right now, with some fantastic results including fantastic live cold calling, if you want to be if you’re a fan of cold calling, or maybe you’re just a voyeur and you’d like to listen to other people do it, come take a look, we’ve got all sorts of cool stuff happening on the close Pro, including this ridiculous resource library that is chock full of literally dozens and dozens and dozens of templates, scripts, strategy guides, you name it, there’s just anything you want to up your business, we’ve got it in the closed pros resource library, you can join the closed Pro, it’s 35 bucks a month, or you can sign up for an annual subscription, that breaks down to just $25 a month. If you were to look at that as a per month cost, really great opportunity, you can you can check it out for a month $35. See if it’s worth it for you. If it is sign up for the annual we’d love to have you. And, you know, we have opportunities for just about everyone, whether you’re single agent, whether you’re a real estate team, whether you’re a brokerage, come to the close Pro, we can provide some value to you and to your agents. And ultimately, our job is to make your job easier. So come take a look at what we’ve got. We want to help you out today.
D.J. Paris 48:18
Awesome. And if you haven’t ever visited the clothes.com, please put that on your to do list. It’s it’s you know, I know. We’re all familiar with inman.com, which is a great source for real estate news. But you know, they’re really prior to the close to my knowledge, I was always searching for a news organization that specifically talks about growing your business, which is part of what this podcast is about as well. So I couldn’t find one and the clothes.com has given birth to that. And there are the best resource that I found online for so make that part of your regular browsing sort of experiences go to the clothes.com. Their articles are awesome. It’s all free. And if you want to participate in the clothes Pro to go deeper, of course, they have that that option as well. So, Chris, Oh, and before we go, please tell me just we asked every one of our listeners to just help us grow our podcast. So visit the clothes.com and also tell a friend about our podcast. Just think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing this kind of conversation that we have with Chris every month and send them a link to our show. Easiest way to do that. If they are not a podcast listener, just send it to our website keeping it real pod.com They can stream every episode right from the browser. They don’t have to download a podcast app. But if they are a podcast listener, just have them pull up their podcast app and do a search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button and we’ll be sending them all of our episodes as they’re released. Chris thank you so much. Once again we love that love having you on the show and excited to see you in person this fall at NARA and hope the listeners and viewers consider joining as well and going to watch Chris speak at at National Association of Realtors in fact, Chris speaks all over the country so he is likely coming to an area near you anyway, but if you want to come to dinar this this fall, you can meet us both.
Chris Linsell 50:08
Absolutely. Always a pleasure to be here. Can’t wait to come back.
D.J. Paris 50:11
All right. Thanks, Chris. Thanks to everyone for listening and supporting our show and we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Linsell 50:18
Thanks
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