Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
Chris Linsell from TheClose.com and DJ follow up on the topic they discussed in the previous episode about Zillow’s iBuyer program. Chris introduces his top tech predictions for 2022. Chris also discusses house hacking and how to use AirBnB to do that. Next, Chris discusses important lessons from top realtors he has interviewed in recently. Last, Chris and DJ discuss about the client experience and how to build a relationship.
To read Chris’ article on “7 Important Lessons New Agents Can Learn From ‘Old School’ Realtors”, 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.
This episode is brought to you by Follow Up Boss. Get your 30 day trial by clicking here.
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 Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show and today we have our monthly series, which is called I’m so sorry, Chris. I just lost our son. I’m gonna do a take two here for everyone watching live. Sometimes that happens. There we go. Once 321 Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, and I am your guide and host through the show today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lindh sell from the close. Now this is a partnership between keeping it real and the closed.com. And let me tell you about the close. A close.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. Now please visit the closes the clothes.com That’s th e c l o s e.com and read their articles subscribe to their newsletter also check out the close Pro which is their subscription based platform which we’ll also mention here shortly. But with us as always as crystallin Sal 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 transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. He also is a real estate coach and he is constantly working with teams and individuals and top producers to help everyone grow their production. But when he isn’t writing or helping coaching agents, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his community theaters production. Chris, welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re excited to have you,
Chris Linsell 3:38
DJ, it’s time to talk about real estate. I’ve been looking forward to this all week long. And yeah, I think you’re gonna get an earful today because I’m a little fired up, getting ready to take a trip cover conference, and I’m just so jazzed to be talking to people about real estate, you’re gonna get the front end of all this fire today. I hope you’re ready for it.
D.J. Paris 3:58
We are we are ready. And we should mention that as this is being recorded, and it probably will happen after this is released. But Chris is gearing up to speak at Inman Connect, which is actually coming up in just a few days, which is a big honor. And we’re very proud to be affiliated with Chris, because obviously he is a well as a renowned speaker. And not only is he doing that, but this will this will come out in time if you won’t do want to meet Chris in person. He will also be at the National Association of Realtors Conference this November and in San Diego and I will also be there just walking around. I don’t get to speak. But Chris does get to speak and so he’s going to be there and he would love to say hi to you. If you are a fan of the clothes.com and you absolutely should be because all their articles are amazing. Definitely consider saying hi to Chris if you’re at the dinar conference this this November.
Chris Linsell 4:53
Yeah, totally. And if you’re an east coaster and you don’t want to make it out. If you’re in New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania come to tripleplay in Atlantic City, it’s going to be in December, I’m going to be doing two presentations there, one of them is going to be for continuing education. So not only can you check something off your list, you can also listen to the bearded wonder kind of rattle on about stuff for a while. So come take a look, I’m excited to talk to everybody. I’m excited to talk to you today. DJ, what are we going to talk about today.
D.J. Paris 5:19
So we are going to talk about a couple of things. And I by the way, I really need to give Chris the credit for all three of these topics, because he always comes prepared. So if you are considering going to watch him speak, if you if you saw him speak this year at Inman, which again, by the time you hear this, you will have already done so or over at triple play, or at NAR, this is why we love having him because he always brings right context. So we really had three things that that Chris was had on his brain. And he has some insight into all three, I’ll hopefully prod him with some questions. But we’ll really we have three things, we’ll just start with the first one now, which is pretty big news. I don’t know that it’s got as much press in the agent community as I sort of thought it would I certainly, I’m sort of in my own little silo here sit at a desk all day not, but I do communicate with realtors every single day, we have 800 of them here at our own company. And I really don’t hear people talking about this, which is a bit surprising. But big news around Zillow, which is they have paused temporarily we believe for now, their AI buying program through the end of 2021. So just a couple of months here pausing, this is a big shift for them. And I you know, I haven’t really been paying attention to the chatter on some of the online forums that Realtors frequent to sort of get a sense of what their thoughts are. But let’s talk about what what’s going on, and maybe some ideas of why we think it might be happening.
Chris Linsell 6:46
Yeah, so So this is important. This is an important story and not enough people are talking about it and almost nobody is talking about it in the correct context as far as I’m concerned. So here’s just a quick bit of insight. You know, if you’re not if you’re not hip to the IBM program, essentially Zillow is buying properties, they do kind of forced appreciation for some provement on it, and they resell them, they collect a fee on you know, any opportunity they have to collect a fee if you know like we all do. Zillow, love them or hate them is like so deep into this industry on so many different levels. It just makes sense that this was a natural step for them. So there are a lot of folks who are feeling kind of perplexed, a little concerned that Zillow is pausing this because they think maybe this is indicative of the real estate market at large that there might be problems here. But let me just kind of call out a quote I read from Jeremy Waxman, who is the CEO of Zillow. He has essentially said, we have not been and I’m speaking as Zillow, we have not been exempt from the market capacity issues that the economy at large has been facing. And we have an operational backlog for renovations, for closings, and for all the different things that it takes to get these transactions across the finish line. Right? So Zillow is not is not saying anything really specific here other than we got work, and we don’t have people to do it. Right, which is not uncommon across the the economy. Right now. A lot of people are finding these sorts of labor shortages to be a problem. We are interrupting this, you know, the supply chain of human capital here, across our economy in a lot of different industries. This is not a shocker to me. But what I think people need to keep in mind here is that AI buying as a whole has accelerated by, I mean, it’s on a magnitude it’s like multiple magnitudes through the through 2021 is in is expected to continue to crush in 2022. Just because Zillow is not doing this doesn’t mean we should think that this is going away that this is the ship is changing direction here. Open Door. Another really big IBM Platform has one poked fun a little bit at Zillow on this just sending out a tweet that says we’re open for business come on over and to the estimates for ibuyer inventory for 2022 actually went up last week. So don’t read the tea leaves too hard on this, if anything. I think Zillow is just being strategic here. They are covering the bases there. They’re cashing in the chips that they’ve got right now. They’re gonna regroup probably q2 of 2022 and see what the landscape looks like. I’m not reading anything into this other than this is this is normal economy effects happening here.
D.J. Paris 9:51
Yeah, I would imagine not being as knowledgeable about the industry of course as you and many other experts have But my intuition is telling me and having visited Zelos, New York headquarters, and having met with with some of their senior leaders, not not the very, very top, but but people who seem to know, sort of the direction of the company. I know that that it is their corporate maximum. And I used to work in in technology, so I can appreciate this. And I was able to sort of see that I believe it was a very authentic sort of conversation, where were we, I sat down with them. And they said, our customer experience is everything, it’s beyond everything, if we don’t provide a great experience for the customer, then they’re never coming back to our site, which of course, is sort of, you know, just tech 101 for customer service, but in user experience. So if that’s the case, where the ibuying sort of processes jammed, because of a labor shortage, or for whatever reason, in that sort of chain of processes, they’re going to pull it because that’s they have they have that top spot for online, you know, real estate, public access, and they don’t want anything to disrupt that. And it probably makes sense for them just to pause ibuying If they’re not going to deliver that, that top experience. Again, that’s that’s a really sort of obvious thing. But But But I suspect there’s a lot of realtors that go, hey, they’re they’re listening to us. And we don’t you know, a lot of realtors don’t like Zillow for various reasons, and maybe some are celebrating thinking, Oh, now they want to put more focus back on on the agent partnerships. I’m not so sure if that that factors in it, I read that same article or that same quote from from Jeremy Waxman. And it seems that unless he’s not being fully transparent, it appears that a labor shortage would make sense. I know a lot of restaurants are dealing with that. Even here in Chicago and across the country. We just had a top pizza place one of the very top pizza places in Chicago, on all the lists of best places to to eat for pizza, it’s a nice place, and they put out a they had to close down temporarily. And the guy said, I’ve never in my life put out an ad for a server that we use, we even pay more than most places. And I got one response in 30 days. And so, you know, that’s just a one little example. But there’s labor shortages going on all over.
Chris Linsell 12:26
Yeah, it’s so wild. And you know, it’s not, it’s not a shock to think that this would we’d start to see the effects of this in our industry. In fact, if you really think about it, seeing these ancillary kind of orbital businesses and business models to the traditional residential real estate transaction, that makes sense that we would start to see these effects in those orbital industries first. So you know, the only thing that I think real estate agents should be kind of perking their ears up about this is, if this is a systemic thing, meaning it’s not just a temporary blip in labor. This is becoming a systemic availability of resources. Here, we may see the eye buyer model shift a little bit at least when it comes from Zillow. And because Zillow really is the sun in the sky when it comes to online real estate presence, that could have some downstream effects for how I bind has done in general. But at this point, I am not crying, you know, the sky is not falling at all, when it comes to AI buying real estate agents should expect that I bind will be present and happening into 2022. Certainly, and frankly, I think it’s going to be a memorial day where we see Zillow announced, hey, by the way, we’re back I bind and by the way, we’re going to be doing it in 15 more markets. So I guess we’ll you know, only time will tell but I think it’s a little too soon to be crying wolf on that just yet.
D.J. Paris 13:53
I almost wonder too, if it would be interesting in a future episode, if you and I did some digging to see if there are any sort of reputable studies or estimations on what an AI by the profile of an eye buyer looks like. And we can determine whether there’s any opportunity there for realtors to, you know, step in. At least if Zillow is temporarily pausing, there may be some action steps there to make sure you’re having conversations with your clients about what ibuying is the pros, the cons, obviously, for realtors, there’s there’s a, that’s a really easy conversation to have around, you know, what I buying is, which is really no different of a transaction than working with a realtor except it’s a little faster and possibly the you know, the the profit to the to the seller might might be less, but to have that understanding so that they don’t accidentally find themselves in, you know, browsing websites, you know, maybe they have a parent that passes away and a home is left to them and they don’t want it and you know, now they’re searching around for how You get rid of a house. And I’m not going to call my realtor because they’re here, they’re not in Arizona, and I’m in Michigan. So they might not even think to contact their realtor to ask about different options. So at the very least, I think it’s a good opportunity to talk to your clients about, hey, you may have seen some, some information in the last few years about AI buying, and I just wanted to give you again, it’s a great reason to pick up the phone, I don’t know that most of your clients will necessarily be that interested in that conversation. But it could be an article you send them it could be, you know, a text or something. But I think most of the public has no idea what ibuying is, I would say, unless you’re in this industry, I don’t know why you would even know about that unless you were exploring it. So it’s a good thing to bring up and educate your your clients about
Chris Linsell 15:40
100%. And you know, I think to me, that’s that’s the real value call out if I’m an agent is working in, you know, every town USA, looking for value to provide my clients. This right here is one of the three key pieces of evidence that is, you know, that successful top producers consistently deliver. This is evidence of the three key pieces are evidence of knowledge, evidence of activity and evidence of success. When you send a little article like this to your clients, you know, add two lines of your of your of your own kind of, you know, commentary and thought on this, you are in about 30 seconds demonstrating evidence of knowledge and evidence of activity, you know, what’s going on, and you’re actively, you know, investing in conversations that happened with your clients, or your past clients or your prospects. These are the sorts of things that move your relationships down the pipeline. So, you know, find there’s a great article on market, watch on Wall Street Journal on CNBC, copy it, paste it dropping into a text message, or an email or a Facebook message, add two little sentences about what you think about this, you’ll be shocked at how the conversation starts there.
D.J. Paris 16:54
Great, well, let’s let’s shift gears and talk about tech prediction or your top tech prediction for 2022. And I do want to just say that, I have always had, again, just read it read articles over over the over many years. And it seems in about the last five years, I kept reading about this tech real estate bubble that was ready to burst. I never totally understood what that meant. But it seems to be that maybe the idea was that there are so many service providers in the real estate industry, a lot of tech service providers, and they’re all competing, just you know, for our listeners, you know, just think about the number of emails you get around CRMs, for example, or lead gen providers, or you know, advertising companies that can help you with your advertising or marketing. Boy, it’s it’s, it’s almost endless and infinite, it seems but if there has been a tech bubble burst, I certainly for real estate, I certainly haven’t noticed it, it seems to be as strong as ever, and almost maybe more players enter the space. So I know maybe we haven’t seen a huge bubble bursting yet there. But let’s talk about your number one pick for what what you think is going to be most impactful to realtors and the public for 2022.
Chris Linsell 18:06
Yeah, you bet done. And you know, I’m just gonna go on record saying right now, this is a presentation that I’m just gonna tease you a little bit, I’m gonna give you some of the top level. And if you want to hear the really juicy bits, you’re gonna have to come see me at NAR because I’m going to I’m going to be presenting on this but my prediction, my number one prediction, for, you know, what’s going to happen in 2022, from the from the desk of a real estate technologist. That number my number one prediction is that the company that will leverage the biggest impact on the residential real estate market in 2022. It’s not Zillow. It’s not some CRM, it’s not some it’s not even a real estate brokerage. The company with the biggest impact on the real estate market in 22 is going to be Airbnb. And let me tell you why. The rise of invest in civilian investing on platforms like Robin Hood, or Publix, or Fundrise, or AR or weeble. These have fueled the momentum that people have in the thought that I can be an investor. And it’s not just in the stock market companies like Airbnb, make it so we can be proper we can be real estate investors. You don’t have to work on Wall Street, you can live on Main Street, and you can be a real estate investor. When you own an income property. And Airbnb has they have not just greased the skids they have dumped the grease all over the ground and now they’re swimming in it to get from to get every day Mom and Pop property owners to become property investors. And there is a significant onramp to Airbnbs growth in 2022 and I’m going to give you one stat to prove what I mean. Buy this. First of all, I guess it’s two stats. The first stat is Airbnb projects that they’re going to add nearly 25% new inventory in the next 18 months 25% You think about there’s going to be, there’s going to be for every listing that you for every four listings currently on Airbnb, we’re going to see a new one in 20, the next 18 months that’s doing
D.J. Paris 20:25
do we know if that’s just us? Or if that because I know certain certain other countries have been slowly being rolled out to Airbnb, so I didn’t know if we knew if that was just us, or if that was across the globe?
Chris Linsell 20:39
That’s a good question. I don’t have a specific confirmation one way or the other on this, but I don’t believe it is the way that I read this stat. It was not Airbnb is entering new markets. Yes, Airbnb is building their inventory in existing markets.
D.J. Paris 20:57
I mean, it makes it makes perfect sense. My sister has a property and investment property that she bought, she is not a big real estate investor. In fact, this is my ticket back she has they have two properties now but but but this again is not their primary job they her and her husband have have traditional jobs and the Airbnb thing made so much sense for her because with where she lives in this property is about a mile from where she lives in Tampa. But But regardless, she’s able to cover her monthly nut her mortgage, and, you know, various expenses within and again, it all depends on how much you put down and what your what your loan, you know, you’re you’re borrowing and all of that, but for putting a pretty minimal investment down, she was able with Airbnb to pay that month monthly, not off it and I think it’s six days a month. So even though it would be a lot less work, although it really isn’t much work, she has a cleaning crew and and, you know, basically just goes and takes a look at it every so often. Other than that, you know, runs itself, essentially. And she doesn’t even have to keep it fully staffed or you know, fully occupied. So for her, it makes all the sense in the world to continue to do Airbnb versus long term renters. And I suspect there’s a lot of people that are wising up to that sort of same situation.
Chris Linsell 22:20
100% 100% You know, and like, let’s also add to this mix, the fact that in 2022, we are expected the world you know, travel organizations across the world are expecting travel to return to near pre pandemic levels in 2022. And the website hospitality tech.com rates, the current consumer confidence in hotel safety at sea minus guess what the rating is for private vacation rentals,
D.J. Paris 22:54
that’s got to be 90% plus, or I’m sorry, a or whatever.
Chris Linsell 22:58
Because B plus, yeah, people feel significantly more safe in private vacation rentals than they do in hotels and then traditional travel, which is going to drive the profitability of these short term rentals up even higher than it is right now. We’re gonna see incredible demand, we’re going to see continued reasons for property owners who are in the Airbnb system to never even think about selling why in the world would you sell a like your like your sister a near set it and forget it money making machine? In fact, you would be silly. If you are in a market right now, where you’re making money with Airbnb, you would be crazy if you didn’t consider the idea of like, okay, well, what if I took my Airbnb profits from this year, and I use them for a down payment for a second, Airbnb, all of a sudden, I could be making twice this, why stop there? Why not get four units or 10 units or 20 units. And the fact is, there is an incredible subculture that exists online that is all about Airbnb hacking and growing like crazy. And I don’t want to I again, I’m pretty fired up about this. I’m going to be speaking at length about this at both Triple Play and at NAR. So if you want to hear more about this, you want to argue with me and tell me I’m wrong. And I’m crazy. Please come do that because there’s a whole bunch more to the story. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg here.
D.J. Paris 24:28
And if you aren’t really that familiar with real estate investing, whether it is long term or short term like Airbnb, take a look at what house hacking is because this is primarily being learned about online. This is you know, regular consumers hearing about this watching discussions online, watching YouTube and Tiktok and Instagram and really under trying to understand what this process is and it’s it’s probably not spoken enough of About from realtors to their clients predominantly because we can understand that Realtors may feel that that is outside of sort of their daily sort of, to processes for working with clients, but it’s something that your clients will likely find on their own. This is just my guess. And he want to be the person that maybe has that conversation with them first, before they start getting that information elsewhere and maybe not think to ask you that professional about it.
Chris Linsell 25:28
Totally true. Totally true. This is an opportunity for clients, for consumers right now there is this new wave of consumer empowerment, the knowledge, the information, the strategies, the step by steps are all out there. And they’re being produced by more and more savvy people. You know, this, this content has been produced by more and more savvy content producers who frankly do a better job of telling the story than most real estate professionals, because you I hate to admit it, most real estate professionals, they know their contracts back and forth, but they’re shitty marketers, I’m sorry, I didn’t know if I was supposed to swear. But I just so fired up about this well allow most most real estate, I mean, let’s let’s look at most real estate agents. And I’m not talking about the top producers, who who have all of their stuff figured out perfectly. I’m talking about the other 90% of real estate agents, they have a pretty good knowledge base of the real estate industry. But they’re crummy marketers, because we’re not marketers, we’re real estate agents. And so most of us don’t know how to produce this content to give our clients the education that they need. Well Guess who’s stepping in and talking about Airbnb savvy marketers savvy production, people who are we’re putting this information out there, it is up to real estate agents. And this is my this is my call to action here on this particular tip. It is up to real estate agents in this moment. And in this scenario, to demonstrate your value to your clients in a real and tangible ways. Don’t wait for them to go to YouTube and learn about how they can produce income from a property they already own. You talk to them about that. You talked to them about the strategies they should be learning and they should be using because guess what you are their real estate adviser, not Johnny on the spot on YouTube who has no license, no liability, and absolutely no accountability, if his advice is crap, and it you know, sends your client into financial ruin, I hope that that doesn’t happen. But you have the chance to step in and be the expert here. Airbnb is going to happen, and it’s going to boom in 2020, to get ahead of that right now.
D.J. Paris 27:37
And also you just let you really never want your clients to be you’re talking about buyers, for example, you don’t want your buyer, or really or seller. But but certainly your client, you don’t want them at a cocktail party talking to their friends, they just bought or sold something. And they said, You know, I was going to do that. But my agent talked to me about city of house hacking or short term rentals and the other, your client then goes, Oh, really, I don’t know what that means, like what it tells me about that. And then all of a sudden, they’re now hearing it from a non expert source. And so I would say before you work with, especially with your buyers, definitely have that conversation before you go show them property say hey, I know we’re looking at a single family home and in a suburban neighborhood that you guys are going to live at for the next 20 years. But just in case you’re not familiar, are you are you aware of what you know, this idea of house hacking is and I just want to make sure you’re aware of it. And then you know, you guys can tell me if you want to learn more about it. But I would say that you’d be doing your clients a huge service so that they don’t feel like oh, my agent never mentioned that. That sounds kind of cool. So anyway, little extra stuff there. Before we get to our last topic, which is going to be in about an article Chris recently published on the close about seven important lessons from top producers. I want to do a quick shout out to our beloved sponsor, we are so grateful to have follow up boss supporting our show. But let me just tell you a little bit about follow up boss know after interviewing hundreds of top producers in the country. Do you know which CRM is used by more of our guests than any other while it’s follow up boss and let’s face it following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time with less effort. Don’t take my word for it. Robert slack who runs the number one team in the United States uses follow up boss and he’s built a one and a half billion dollar real estate business in six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 different systems. Also, this includes lead providers so you can keep your current tools and those lead sources also, they have seven day a week support, which we know is important as a realtor because you’re you know Saturdays and Sundays tend to be pretty busy for agents and if you need to get that support, you can do that from them and get this follow up boss is so sure you’re going to love their CRM that for a limit time they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial. This is twice as much time as they give every other person that signs up for a free trial. And oh yeah, no credit card required. Don’t you love free trials without credit cards, and they’re, they’re just so confident you’re going to use them, they’ll let you try it for 30 days, and you’re going to end up giving them your credit card because you love it so much. But only if you use the special link which is follow up boss.com forward slash real again, follow up boss.com forward slash real visit there for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up, boss. Thank you, Chris, back to our show here. What is uh, what are some of the lessons that you have? You just recently spoke to some top producers big and these are not these are top producers that have been top producers for some time. So these are agents who are didn’t just, you know, ride some sort of wave in the last year since COVID has obviously propelled most Realtors business. These are people that have weathered some of these ups and downs. And so tell us a little bit about what you learned.
Chris Linsell 31:05
Yeah, definitely. I want to I want to tease this a little bit. Definitely kind of the kind of the close dad comm check it out. There’s an article seven important lessons new agents can learn from old school realtors. And there’s a couple of insights I just want to share. But before I do, I just want to say follow up boss, I like you guys, I really am a big fan of especially if you’re reporting your audit your your agent, accountability, your collaboration tools. i This is not a plug follow boss is not paying me to say this. I genuinely like this about them. And so I just want to throw this out there. Follow up us. Call me man, send me a tweet or something. Let’s talk a little bit because I’d like to look into what you guys are doing a little bit more. You’re doing some cool stuff. Okay, so back to back to the important lessons. I talked to some some, some top producers from across the country. I really just wanted to ask them if you had a new agent sitting in your office and you could give them one piece of advice, what would you give them. And there’s a couple of cool things that that I heard. And the first one, honestly, it kind of everything kind of starts and ends with this particular piece of advice. It’s from Eva Lin, who is a broker in Pasadena. She’s got her own boutique brokerage there. And her advice is be obsessed with your clients experience. And I just loved the words she chose here be obsessed with your clients experience, don’t just care about it. Don’t just put it on a spreadsheet somewhere where you can check a box yes or no positive or negative, be obsessed beat beat, get up at night occasionally thinking about your clients experience. Because as real estate agents, we’ve made a commitment to put our client’s needs before our own before before others we are their fiduciary here, we are shepherding them through the some of the most financially important and impactful moments of their life, you should be obsessed with the experience that they are having with you. I really thought that that was that was valuable. And it actually kind of led into another piece of advice. A guy named LINC Moser who founded a real estate group called experience home group, excuse me experience homes group in New Hampshire. He told me that if he could give agents one piece of advice it would be to base your business on relationships, and not on technology. And these two pieces of advice felt so organic with one another because I’m gonna be honest with you, I love technology. I love the tools. I love all the bells and whistles. I love platforms like you know, follow a boss and all their automation and, and analytics tools and other CRMs and email marketers and predictive analytics. This is a table I eat at and frankly, I catch my paychecks based on these guys. So I like all that stuff. But if you’re basing your business, on your tools and not on your relationships, you are only going to last so long. Businesses that are built on relationships last forever. These are the businesses you can hand down to the next generation. If you are building your business based on the you know Zillow premier agent or based on a particular CRM or on MailChimp. If that’s your business, you only have so many transactions and you know but if you build your business based on relationships, your business lasts forever.
D.J. Paris 34:43
You had so true and just to to for our listeners. Obviously we know this but I want you to think about how we absolutely know that this idea of authentic communication and authentic sort of vulnerability which really, we’re talking about intimacy here, it’s trying to try to build intimacy between you and your contacts and your clients. And here’s some evidence that this is really super prominent now in at least American culture, which just looked at the state of advertising, advertising has finally figured out that what people what what consumers want is authentic, intimate communication as best as possible between these big corporate, you know, you know, product and service providers. So you’ll see it in the advertising, you see a lot more sort of less selling and more sort of connecting and or trying to connect the Superbowl is a great example is ads tend to which the Superbowl is coming up in about, what, three or four months, and you’ll see a lot of funny ads, and you’ll see a lot of really, very sort of intimate and vulnerable ads. And those are the ads that people talk about are the funny ones and the vulnerable ones. So this is an opportunity for you to move, not necessarily away from the technology, but to realize that personal phone call, which nobody does anymore, right phone calls, I mean, realtors still do. But this idea of picking up the phone and just checking in seeing how your client or your, your previous client, call them on the home anniversary and say, Hey, remember when we first saw this house, and then a year ago, you actually closed? That was a cool day. And hey, I have a picture of that day, let me send it to you. Right, these are some really fun opportunities that technology has a hard time replicating that you can step in and do yourself. I also had one other point, Chris, I wanted to make the client experience, which was the first tip that you had from from Evelyn. That is, you know, if you’re thinking, Well, how do I get obsessed about my client experience, my suggestion would be to find some realtors in your local market, especially if you’re a new agent. And this this advice is for, of course, all agents, but specifically, the article is sort of tips from from, from experienced producers to new agents, find people that are experienced, and if it was me, I would grab a notebook. And I would say, okay, you know, there’s seven steps in the home buying process, or however many steps you’ve identified and same thing with home selling. And I would talk to these experienced agents and say, what are the most common questions, concerns and feelings that people hit on every one of these steps? And what do you recommend that I say to preemptively sort of address these so that the client isn’t laying at night, worried about this and maybe embarrassed to ask me or just doesn’t think to ask me, because if you’re obsessed with your client experience, you’re obsessed with what they’re going through every step of the process? And so if you’re new, and you’re like, I don’t really know, well, of course, you don’t know, ask people who are ask your managing broker, ask, you know, Shadow somebody, but just sit and get take some notes. And if you can know that, then when you hit those particular stages in a transaction, you can just literally follow the script that you’ve created and say, hey, at this step, a lot of my clients start to get a little nervous about XY and Z, or they start to feel a certain way. And I want to just go through, you know, and you can kind of go from there. But just having that conversation means you’re obsessed with the client experience. And it kind of goes back to that same quiet suggestion that about telling your clients about Airbnb and house hacking, like if you’re not doing it, they might be experiencing it on their own, and then you don’t have control over how they experienced it.
Chris Linsell 38:27
Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt, without a doubt. It’s, I mean, honestly, this conversation starts and ends with with this point here, there’s a lot of other stuff we can talk about in between. And you should definitely check out the article. There’s a lot of good information here from really cool people who are doing really cool stuff in their business. But at the end of the day, the best advice that that old school agents have for new for new Realtors is be obsessed with that client experience, build your business around those relationships, and you will your business will last forever.
D.J. Paris 39:00
And I should mention too, we have a link to this article in the show notes. So feel free to to find it there or just visit the closed.com. But I will mention in this article. This is particularly interesting because Chris said that this article idea came from a conversation that that Chris had with one of the close pro members and with it’s a really good place to talk about what the close Pro is and why our listeners should consider checking it out.
Chris Linsell 39:30
Yeah, absolutely. If you are new to the clothes, welcome. Come on over the clothes.com super easy, but all sorts of great information there. tons of content that’s going to help you level up your real estate business. If you want to take that to the next level. You can check out the clothes pro the clothes Pro is our premium subscription service. It’s 35 bucks a month, or the equivalent of $25 a month. If you if you go with the annual package. And with the clothes pro you get this incredible resource library that is packed full of dozens of scripts and templates and long form strategy guides, you get access to all of our most popular courses, like six simple systems to transform your real estate business, our most recent course, which is extraordinarily popular, we’re getting a ton of awesome feedback on our Facebook and Instagram Crash Course. Get in there, learn about Facebook and Instagram and figure out what you’re doing wrong. Get started all together. There’s so much cool stuff. And this particular course, is taught by by two women, Sophia and Sarah. And these two, their their energy is literally so infectious. I watched the recording after they did this live. And I was pumped up just from the recording. I mean, there’s just so much really high quality stuff happening in the close pro 35 bucks a month, you get access to all of this stuff, come try it out for a month or if you’re ready to dive in, make that annual that annual commitment. And we are adding new courses, new things to the resource library. And of course on demand, and live coaching sessions with me with other real estate other coaches that we’ve got at the close Pro, there is so much happening there. So if you want to take your business and your clothes experience to the next level, come check us out on the closed Pro and we can’t wait to see you there.
D.J. Paris 41:28
Awesome. Well, everyone who is listening, if you are heading out to triple play on the East Coast, or to the NAR conference in San Diego, this this November, definitely look up Chris, he is one of the speakers at both of those events, both those conferences, and I will also be roaming around as a participant like you like our listeners. So if you want to meet me and say hi, I will be available as well just shoot us shoot us a message. And we would both like to say hi to you. And on behalf of our listeners we want interviewers, I want to thank Chris As per usual, he’s been with us for many years. Now, I think a couple at least. And he always brings amazing content to our show, we are super grateful. And clearly he provides great content because again, he is speaking at three conferences here in the next month and a half or so. So we’re super honored to also have him giving up his his valuable time to be on our show. So thank you, Chris, as per usual from myself, and of course the rest of the audience. And on behalf of Chris and myself, we want to thank the audience for continuing to support the clothes by visiting, subscribing to their newsletter, checking out the clothes, a pro and just reading their articles. They’re so incredibly good. They’re really from our from my perspective, as a marketer. They’re the best, you know, sort of marketing branding. And it’s not just marketing and branding. But that is a good chunk of what they do is really designed around you building your business and a lot about customer experience as well. They just write about everything that’s important to know, as a realtor, and they’re really I think, are really the best resource out there. And it’s free, like 99% of it is free. So go check it out. So on behalf of the audience, we think Chris, and on behalf of Chris and myself, we thank the audience. And by the way, please also help support our sponsor, follow up boss by checking out that free trial that’s keeping sorry, that is follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. And check out the clothes.com and we will see everybody on the next episode. And if you are heading to Nar just let us know we’d like to say hi. So thanks, Chris.
Chris Linsell 43:35
You’re welcome DJ, I forgot to mention we have I have a special offer that I wanted to throw out there. If you are interested in the clothes Pro, we just got this set up on Friday. Sorry, I forgot to mention that before. You can go to the clothes.com/chris. And you can get $50 off an annual membership. It’ll give you give you some more information about the clothes pro clothes.com/chris CHR is 50 bucks off an annual membership. This is something we want to do for for you here at keeping it real and anybody who comes to comes and checks this stuff out, talk to me about it, come use my promo code, get 50 bucks off on me.
D.J. Paris 44:17
And that’s like a month and a half free so or close to a month free. So basically even even better deal. So yeah, and we will have that link in the show notes. But again, that’s the close.com forward slash Chris for your $50 off annual membership. So check it out, guys. It’s worth it. It just is awesome, Chris. Well, thanks so much. We thank everyone for listening and watching and we will see you next time.
Chris Linsell 44:43
Thanks, TJ. See you soon
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