Welcome to our newest monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
In this episode Chris Linsell from TheClose discusses how real estate agents are adjusting to working from home during our global COVID-19 pandemic. Chris provides tips about how to structure one’s day so that you’re able to be productive and still keep your business growing. His tips are timely and perfect for anyone wanting to stay active during this slower time.
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
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the best social media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country. And her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. She’s so confident there’s a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose keeping it real listeners receive a special discount, so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast in the country made for real estate agents. And by real estate agents, my name is DJ Parris, I am your host, and guide, I was gonna say ghost, but I’m not a ghost. Although I have been pretty sick recently. So I probably look a bit pale like a ghost. But I am your guide and host through the show. And this is our new monthly feature with partnered with the close.com. So when I started this podcast, we were focused mostly here local Chicago market, featuring local Chicago realtors, which we still do. But as we’ve grown, over the years, our audience has expanded thankfully, and now we have listeners really from all over the globe, but certainly also from all over this country. And now that we really are nationwide, we want to focus on nationwide news and trends that will really help real estate agents know what’s going on in the industry. And we’re excited to announce this partnership with the close.com. If you’re not a reader of the close, let me tell you a little bit about them. The close is a new kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead gen 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 them at the clothes.com and subscribe to their newsletter. Add them to your RSS feed readers, you can get notified each time they publish an article and on the show from the closed Icom. We have crystallin Sal, he’s staff writer and a real estate coach. Let me tell you a little bit about Chris. Chris is one of the closes resident experts on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead generation transactional best practices and everything in between. As a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been a part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing you’ll find Chris fly fishing the trout streams of Michigan or on the stage at his local community theaters latest production, although maybe not right now because the theaters are closed. But Chris, welcome once again to the show. We’re so excited to have you.
Chris Linsell 3:09
DJ thanks for having me. Glad to glad to be chatting with you and glad to see you’re feeling a little bit better. I’m really good vibes right now. Really good to help vibes
D.J. Paris 3:20
I had I had really funny timing. Thankfully, it was just food poisoning, but it was still just don’t food poisoning. And that happened last Thursday. And it wiped me out for about four or five days. And even yesterday, I had to take a day off six days later. So I’m thankfully fine. And I believe Coronavirus free. But also I’m not puking from feud food poisoning any longer. So I’m grateful for that. But anyway, glad to be with you. And you know, there is a lot going on. Right now I know we have 660 brokers that our own firm, we’ve closed our offices. I’m here in the office along with our owner just getting some work done. But you know, most realtors are just like everyone else working from home, you know, these days? So I imagine the same thing going on with you.
Chris Linsell 4:09
Oh, yeah. Just about every local office in my community is closed. I think I think like you there are a couple of people who are kind of sneaking into to get a couple of things done. But the vast majority of people are planted at home and have been encouraged either nicely or not so nicely to stay put and to not leave. And it’s a serious situation we’re dealing with here. But you know, real estate agents are resilient. We’re a resilient crowd and adaptive. So I know a number of agents who are who are trying to figure out how to make it work from their from their now home office, instead of the office down on Main Street there. Yeah, we’re
D.J. Paris 4:54
even doing a thing at our own brokerage where we have so many brokers where we’ve now assigned some of our support personnel to reach out individually one by one, it’s a bit of a bit of a grind to do, but just to reach out, let them know we’re thinking about them, let them know that that we care and hoping that we can give them some tips on how to stay busy. So that’s a good focus today, because I know a lot of our agents are going to be tuning in to this one as well as agents from all over the country to sort of get your perspective. Yeah, so So let’s talk about that. What What are, what are some some thoughts you have about, you know, what brokers could do? And I say, by the way, I should preface that I live in Illinois, we only have brokers here. That’s the only type of sale of Real Realtors I should really should just say. So when I say broker, everyone listening, please understand, I’m really saying realtor, if I have, I’ll try to keep that the phrasing to realtor, a real estate agent. But I know Illinois, it’s all we have our brokers, but what are you seeing? As far as agents in your state? What What are they doing to stay busy?
Chris Linsell 5:53
Sure, sure. So I’m in Michigan, and but I’m in contact with agents from across the country. And I’ve been chatting about this quite a bit. And, you know, it’s it’s pretty, pretty striking. Actually, the conversations I’ve had so far have really shed some light on the fact that real estate professionals are they like their office, they like to be able to go in and, you know, be around other people who are doing the same kind of work and bounce ideas off of each other and, and collaborate. Even if it’s not a particular transactions, there’s a certain synergy that happens when real estate pros all get in the same room and people are struggling a little bit trying to do it in isolation. Is that the case? In your office right now?
D.J. Paris 6:43
So it’s a great question, we actually my boss, I should have thought of this. But he did, because he’s a little smarter than I am. And he came up with this idea of doing, you know, I’m on I’m on just to preface this, I’m on two different boards for nonprofits, and I serve on them. And we have gone exclusively to zoom meetings for ever since the virus hit. And I should have thought to do that with our own brokers. But he had the idea that, hey, why don’t we do zoom meetings on a daily basis. And we are now doing that, where brokers can come we have an agenda, here are some ideas and tips. So for everyone who owns a brokerage, that’s a and by the way, Zoom is is a free service, you can pay for additional upgrades, but you probably don’t have to. And that’s a way to stay in touch with your brokers during this troubled time. But that’s one of the things we’re doing is having these daily meetings, you know, they’re not super well attended. But it’s better than doing nothing. We’re also doing that outreach, where we’re calling each person and just letting them know what’s going on.
Chris Linsell 7:42
So so I’ll tell your listeners, our listeners here that you know, I work remotely 100% of the time as a writer and and coach for the clothes, the clothes is home operations are based in New York City, I’m here in Michigan, so I spend the vast majority of my working days in my office in the basement of my house or out in coffee shops, you know, I like to get out and especially have coffee or lunch with other real estate professionals and, and hear about what’s going on in their world. So I’m pretty well adjusted to the to the work at home lifestyle, but a lot of the agents that I have spoken to are struggling and I bet you I bet just some folks who are listening to this can identify here, like there are certain issues that are, are continue to come up like I don’t know when to start and stop work at home. Like when do I actually when do I punch in for the day? You know, you think like, that seems like such a fundamental, easy thing. But when you don’t have that natural kind of chronology in your day, it can be a little jarring. And so that’s one thing I always tell folks, like pick a time where you are starting work, pick a time where you are officially on the clock. And make that a dedicated work time. Don’t sit in the seat where you stream Netflix at night, actually take a shower, get dressed, you don’t have to put a suit on but get out of your pajamas, make your day your workday actually start at a particular time and pick an end time on it too. Because that’s the other danger here is that if there’s no real separation of your of your work life and your and your non work life, it all kind of bleeds together and you end up doing everything a little bit less effectively than you would otherwise.
D.J. Paris 9:36
Yeah, the research is really clear on multitasking. It doesn’t work. And and as much as I would love to be somebody that could do it. I can’t and by the way, you can’t either. The research says none of us are better at doing multiple things simultaneously than doing one thing and moving on to the other thing and we live in a culture where we can be constantly stimulated and lots have different ways simultaneously, you know, there’s obviously, you know, on demand streaming, there’s news cycle that’s 24/7. There’s the internet, there’s your phone, there’s social media. And it’s really, really tough to filter out all the noise, especially if you’re working at home, I think I think you’re right is having a dedicated space if possible, but certainly being able to sort of turn off the external, you know, stimuli to be able to then allow you to hyperfocus
Chris Linsell 10:29
Yeah, you know, another thing that I have figured out for my own purposes, and I see a lot of real estate agents around me that are starting to adapt this is when you’re working from home, I go into my phone, and I turn off all of my notifications, except for text messages and actual phone calls. Because you think about like when your phone is, is operating at full bandwidth, you got all your notifications on, you know, Netflix is telling you, there’s a new thing to watch, you got a new Facebook, friend requests, you got Instagram likes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There’s 100 different ways when you are at your house, that that phone is a source of leisure and entertainment. And it’s easy to confuse, work time with personal time, if those sorts of same personal notifications that you would probably just ignore, if you’re sitting in your office with your colleagues, once you’re, you know, sitting alone by yourself, there’s really no, there’s not any of that kind of secondary accountability to keep you from straying off task and engaging in the personal stuff. So you know, when I’m in my office, I have a point where like, I walk in the My Home Office, all those notifications go off, and they don’t come back on until I lead again.
D.J. Paris 11:49
Yeah, that’s a really great suggestion, I do the same thing. So I work a bit differently. I’m not a Producing Realtor. But I meet with prospective agents who maybe want to join our firm on a daily basis, either in person, well, not now in person, but over the phone or in person, generally. And even if it’s over the phone, I do the same thing, I just turn my notifications off on my phone. So because I also have a watch that is connected to my phone, and I’m getting those same buzzes to my left wrist. And I don’t want that. Really, the most basic thing is I want to give that person my undivided attention and you want to give your business that undivided attention. And now’s a Yeah, now’s a really great opportunity to double down maybe if you aren’t as busy because people are maybe being less active in the real estate world right now is to really hyper focus on what you can do to grow your business. And if you’re constantly being you know, distracted by the millions of emails you might get, or text messages you might get on a regular basis. You know, you can turn those off, and you learn how to use those notification settings on your phone to turn certain ones to allow certain ones and to not allow certain ones.
Chris Linsell 12:59
Yeah, and you know, you brought something up that I think is really interesting. You know, real estate is a very people driven business. But just because our phones aren’t rain doesn’t mean we can’t be productive. Like, you know, you mentioned the millions of emails that you get I am a same way I have multiple email addresses issued by multiple companies or, or partners that I’m working with all of which I have to track the incoming mail on and it gets overwhelming. Like I know, when I go on vacation, and I turn off email for a little while I come back to literally 1000s of emails waiting for me. And one thing that real estate agents, I tell folks, and it’s so liberating. If you’ve got slow time, you should attempt email inbox zero, which is to get that email down to zero unread messages, get everything sorted into the proper folders. You know, I know agents and brokers who live that life of of having literally 10s of 1000s of unread emails up on, you know, in their little icon on their phone, that personally makes my skin crawl. I don’t know how anybody can operate like that. But when you’re in slow time right now, that’s a great task. Getting the email inbox zero really helps keep you organized in the same way that you would want to organize the paper files in your desk. That’s a digital filing system. Like get it organized, make it work for you. You got some time to do that. Now. Why don’t I take advantage of it right?
D.J. Paris 14:32
Yeah, I’m an inbox zero guy myself. Although right now I have I’m looking I have. This is embarrassing. I have 50 emails in my inbox. They’ve all been read, but I normally have one I my personal amount that I keep is 210. I say if as long as I have between one and 10 in there, I can that’s manageable for me. I very rarely ever get to zero but one to 10 is still visually I can look at alternate in one clip. I’m like okay, I’m good. I have 50 in there. now and it’s it’s making me very nervous. And it’s only because I’ve been sick and haven’t been able to monitor my inbox. But I will give another pro tip because Chris has absolutely right really practice the principles of getting as close to Inbox Zero, just Google it. But it’s a pretty simple idea is pushing everything, making sure everything is in the correct folder. And as a correct follow up, there are tools to help you do this. But there are also people that can help you do this. And so if you think well, gosh, I’ve got 60,000 unread emails, what do I do, you know, you might even be able to just mass delete all 60,000 and start fresh. But if you feel like on a regular basis, you just don’t have the time to go in and clear everything out, hire somebody, we live in a global gig economy, you can pay people for very little from countries that would be thrilled to work with you. In fact, they will tell you what they want to get paid. So you’re not exploiting them. That’s what they’re asking for. And I do this in multiple areas, I have people who assist me from from multiple countries who are who love doing this kind of work. I’m not particularly good at it. And it’s also not something I go through my emails because I don’t get 1000s of emails a day. I’m really lucky in that respect, because I’m not a practicing realtor. But I know what Realtors do deal with email wise, you can hire somebody, even if you paid them 30 bucks a week or 50 bucks a week, would that be worth it, to make sure that nothing gets missed? And you can teach them here’s what to delete, here’s what to keep, here’s what to do with. And I will tell you, you know, that will really free up your time. So so if you think well, gosh, that’s such a daunting task. You can hire people for this. So there’s comm just to give you a quick resource go to upwork.com. There’s a guru.com There’s many of these websites where people will bid for your business. So here’s what I need. I need somebody who’s perfect at helping me monitor my email inbox and respond correct, you know, quickly, you can even have them help you respond. But put things in folders, people, you’ll get so many people vying for these jobs, you won’t believe it. So just as a little suggestion there,
Chris Linsell 16:58
yeah, absolutely. You know, I’m a big fan of taking slow time and converting it into, into energy that is going to be transferred out into my business, as soon as the market picks back up. So like in the same spirit of you know, you can do the same thing with your CRM. And I know lots of different agents use lots of different CRMs. There’s a ton of great options out there. So whatever CRM you’re using, and you know, I’ll just I’ll just unabashedly say if you’re not using a CRM, you’re missing opportunities. And there’s lots of things we can talk about with that. But as far as your CRM, or just your contacts, if you’re still just using an Excel spreadsheet, somewhere, I don’t care what it is you’re using, take some time to clean up your contacts, fill in the gaps that you’re missing. I betcha you know more about your contacts than you have listed in your CRM. So make sure you’ve got phone numbers, make sure you got current address, email address, put in things like birth dates, and anniversaries, social media attachments, that sort of thing. You know, this is the time where doing that sort of back end work is possible. And it’s gonna pay you huge dividends. Once you know the season really gets kick in. And you’ll have an opportunity to use that information later. Let’s get it in there. Right now. You got some time, right?
D.J. Paris 18:30
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think anniversary is such a great one. Because it’s not something that’s typically shown up on that shows up on Facebook automatically. Birthdays, of course do on LinkedIn, on Facebook and other services, but anniversaries typically don’t. And if you can go that extra step to find out if you’re if you have clients who have partners, or are married, and you can actually contact them. And maybe it’s just a text message. But if you do that, I assure you almost nobody else even knows it’s their anniversary, and you’re going way above and beyond if you know their kids birthdays, if you know where they work. So for example, if you know somebody’s employer, you know, and you guys, you know, I haven’t reached out to so and so in a while, do a Google search, see what’s going on with that employer, maybe there’s a new story. And then you could say, shoot it over to them say, Hey, I was just checking out your company I saw you guys just did this. That’s really exciting hope all as well, you know, anything that demonstrates that you care about them, but you have to first know things about them. So you want to fill up that CRM with all sorts of information. And if you don’t have that information now, give them a call and say, Hey, I’m updating my database. I realized I don’t have your anniversary in here. What is your anniversary? People will be happy to tell you that information.
Chris Linsell 19:42
Absolutely. Yeah. 100%. In fact, it’s that sort of personal touch that really separates the top performing the top 10% of our of our agent and broker market from the rest of them because those are the agents who are providing that personalized service. versus, that really creates customer and client relationships for life. And here’s another trick this again, a little time consuming, but honestly, we got time right now. So, uh, something else I like to do is, every time I close a property with a client, I always get a photo with them, I get a photo, you know, to kind of commemorate the moment, I’ll text it to them, I’ll post it on social media will make a big deal out of it. So I’ve got a little folder in my camera on my on my phone, that’s client closings. And I have started doing started sending physical anniversary cards to people not on their wedding anniversary, but on the anniversary of their closing. Yeah, I will hand write the note, I’ll get a just a blank card. I’ll hand write the note. It’s really simple, really quick, you can do it with three sentences. Hey, I just I was thinking about the you know, this this great day, what an awesome experience it was to work together. And I will go to not so much right now, will I physically go. But you can literally do this online, go to CVS or Walgreens, I’ll order a print of that photo, how often do we actually get physical photos anymore. So it’s a pretty special thing to actually hold a physical photo in your hand. And I’ll put that photo in the card. And just as a memory of that day, and send it off, I can’t tell you I mean, I get more often than not, I get a phone call, not a text message, or an email or a Facebook a phone call, saying, Hey, I got this, this was really nice. And that engages at least a 15 minute conversation right there. And this is, you know, like I said, it takes a little bit of time, but we got time. And this is something that you can do for all of your past clients. Like this week, it doesn’t matter if their anniversary of their property closing is in three months from now, write the cards, order the photos, put it all together, address it, stamp it, put something on your calendar that says put this in the mail, and you got it you’ve got a like a referral generating follow up system that you don’t have to think about for the rest of the year, except just put the cards in the mailbox at the right time. It’s pretty easy.
D.J. Paris 22:21
What a great suggestion. I
Chris Linsell 22:23
love that now. Well, you know, it’s it’s one of those things where we have to in times like this, when business is slow, we have to adjust our lead generation strategies, because, you know, let’s, let’s be honest with ourselves, right now, consumer sentiment, consumer confidence is pretty low right now, you know, like people are, are scared to be making big financial decisions. And the one of the products of that fear is a hesitance to make new connections with people like real estate agents, because they think, you know, I’m not I’m not interested, I’m too, I’m too nervous to make a purchase, or too nervous to consider a sale. It’s not even gonna I’m not even gonna be something I think about. But it’s a little bit different. If the people already know You, the people already have a relationship with you and trust you that you’re going to deliver the best information for them and their lives and their decisions. And so, right now, while while we are dealing with with a national issue like this, real estate agents are smart to turn their lead generation strategies away from inbound lead generation, like, like certain prospecting strategies, or even certain paid services, she can focus more on that sphere of influence referral generation, because you’re gonna see a lot better return on your investment of time, because these folks know you they are building on the trust that you’ve already established with them.
D.J. Paris 24:07
Yeah, and if we’re if our listeners are thinking, Well, what do I say? Well, this is where having a lot of information in a CRM can help. But if you don’t have, you know, a good reason to call somebody, in other words, you don’t have anything to talk about. You can talk about interest rates, right, you could just call first of all, if you call and say How you doing, are you how are you weathering the storm? You know, are the kids you know, how are things with the kids and the family, you should obviously do that to demonstrate that you care because you should care. And that’s obviously the most important thing. But after that, you could say hey, by the way, I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news related to to mortgage rates, but they’ve actually dropped quite a bit bit based on the current situation and I don’t know if a refi makes sense for you or not, but I just wanted to sort of bring that to your attention that right now refi is at an all time high because rates are so low, so you know might be a good time to reach out to your to your mortgage rep and see If a refi makes sense, and, again, what you’ve just done is you’ve you’ve brought some some value to the call in addition to demonstrating care. You know, and that’s another reason to pick up the phone.
Chris Linsell 25:10
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s like the chorus to my favorite song. Whenever I’m talking about real estate with folks, you have to provide value with every single communication, whether it is the value of care and and letting the people know that you’re talking to letting them know that you care about them and their family on a real level, it can’t You can’t fake care. People see through that really, really quickly. You know, if you got to provide some sort of value, whether it’s care whether it’s information, whether it’s access, whether it’s services, whether you know, there are so many different ways that you can provide value to folks. And those conversations, you don’t have to know exactly what to say. And I’ll be the first to tell you that there are scripts upon scripts upon scripts for just about every phone call, you can get on the closed.com. And we have scripts for cold calling, we have scripts for fizz bows for expireds for divorce leads for I mean, literally for every situation you can think of with the lead. And so there’s plenty of resources out there. But you know, the first trick isn’t, is not knowing exactly what to say the first trick is just having, you know, a personal connection to whoever that is and just letting them know that you’re thinking about them. That’s gonna generate a lot of conversation.
D.J. Paris 26:33
Yeah, I always say just have one One thing to mention, and have it not be asking for referrals. Probably not the right right time to do that. You know, it’s funny, I saw a very tone deaf I would I judged as a tone deaf announcement from I won’t mention the company, but a very large real estate company. The CEO sends out a blog post the other day, saying, We’ve been preparing for this day for the last 10 years. And we are we are ready. And and and as I read it, I went I don’t know that people want to hear that right now. What they want to hear is that you care about them as customers, and it was like a self congratulatory, you might have read the same, the same announcement. And I don’t know if people are talking about it, I thought it was a very surprising sort of announcement. But it was the CEO saying, We’re doing great, this is great for us, everything’s fine, we’re great. And it’s like it’s not about you right now. It’s actually about the customer. And I think if you can make it about care and concern, and show a genuine show of affection for the people that you should show genuine shows of affection, because they are your past clients, your future clients, your source of referrals, anything that you can do to demonstrate that is always a win. And don’t don’t. Not now’s maybe not the time to make it about you. Because if you demonstrate care, they’re going to they’re going to fill your your your, your your sphere, they’re going to expand your sphere, because they’re going to say you’re not going to believe my real estate agent just called me to see how I was doing. Yeah, that’s a huge thing. It sounds small, but it’s actually huge.
Chris Linsell 28:11
Absolutely, because I guarantee you that that clients, or past clients, dentist, or lawyer or accountant is probably not calling them. And that’s not a knock on any of those professions. But as real estate professionals, we have a unique connection with people on a personal level. And you know, I wanted to add one thing to that list that you just you just gave you listed off your past clients and your associates and and all the people within that sphere. But we also want to make sure that we’re keeping a close eye on our current clients to the people who we represent as buyers or that we represent listing their property because these folks are experiencing some pretty significant stress that we all know, home buyers and sellers experience stress on a great day. Let’s add in this incredible national emergency that we’re dealing with. And these folks are wondering like there’s a lot of a lot of concern about whether or not this is the right thing to do whether or not I should should move in a different direction or whether we should change course. And we know one strategy that buyers and sellers agents and brokers can use here is what I call the as soon as this passes plan. And so if you put together a plan, get some ideas together for exactly what you’re going to do to serve your client. The moment that things move, the moment the clouds break, and things start to kind of roll back towards towards normal. put together some thoughts on that and then I know that this sounds, it sounds a little hokey, but call that person say, you know, I wish that we could I wish that we could get together and talk right now because I’d love to be able to look you in the eye. How about we hyper hop on a zoom call, how about, you know, we do a FaceTime, I just want to share something with you and let you see me and let me see you because that’s a powerful, that’s a powerful moment. And if they do great, and if not, you can do it on the phone, but share with them that plan, let them know that you’re thinking about them specifically, not about your business, but about their best interest and what you have in mind to serve them do you put together and as soon as this passes plan for all of your clients, the moment those clouds break, all of those people are going to be so excited to get rolling with you that that the the next kind of commission cycle after the clouds break is not is going to be a really healthy one for you. And you’re going to have a lot of really happy clients.
D.J. Paris 31:00
You know, that’s a really huge idea, I want to I just want to make sure we don’t we slow down on that one and and repeat it because this is big. So Chris just just gave a great suggestion that I haven’t heard anyone else mentioned, which is to create a here’s what I plan to do when things go back to normal. Here’s, here’s how this affects you, Mr. Mrs. Client, and here’s what I’m doing now to prepare for it. And then you know, I think that’s awesome and huge. And we as realtors can come up with that strategy pretty pretty quickly, I would hope. And then reach out to every one of your your client current clients and say I want to just if you have 510 minutes, I want to jump on a quick call and just let you know what what I’m working on for you so that as soon as things return to normal, we’re going to be ready to go. And and first of all, they’re going to be so perfect not perplexed in a bad weather, it’d be so honored that you even thought to do that. And that you’re you know, it’s funny I, I interviewed a top, a top 10 broker source 46,000 brokers in Chicago, I, this was a woman who was literally in the top 10. So top 1% of 1%. And she I said, What do you think makes you different? From all the other brokers? Why are you in the top 10? And, you know, so few people ever get to that level? And she goes, honestly, I call every one of my clients every single week and let them know what’s going on, you know, and I said, well, and she goes, that’s pretty much it. Now, of course she’s obviously extremely good at her job. And she has and there’s a lot more to it. But she said that was the differentiator. She goes I hate to say that that’s what makes me special because it shouldn’t. But she said that’s what makes me special is I never let a week go by without my without me talking directly to my client and letting them know what’s going on and, and doing it. And now we have technology like Chris says with zoom with Google Hangouts where you could do it in Facebook, there’s a lot of ways to do it for free Skype, a lot of options. And you can do it face to face and say, Hey, if you have five minutes, let’s jump on. I just want to let you know what I’m thinking what’s going on? Because everyone’s getting a million emails about here’s what our company is doing. Yeah. Oh, but And look, that’s all sweet and nice. And yes, that’s great. But you should go the extra step and schedule a quick five minute call with your client, let them know, here’s what I’m working on. Here’s how it’s affecting, you know your situation. And here’s what I’m going to do for you right now. And here’s what’s going to happen when the clouds part. So Chris, what a great suggestion. Thank you for that.
Chris Linsell 33:25
Well, you know, like, the last thing that we want to do as real estate professionals is add to the noise in people’s lives right now there’s so much noise. And a lot of it is negative negative stuff that that is really drags you down. And especially in a time of social isolation. I truly, I mean, I have not started my car in four days now. And I don’t remember the last time that that happened truly the in a time where we are separated from other people, and we’re getting so many messages. And a personal outreach means a ton. And there’s something else that is really cool. That happens as a byproduct of that plan. And it is the fact that once you share that moment with that client, they now know that you spend individual time thinking just about them and about what’s important to them. And there is this level of trust that you can’t get unless somebody is now aware and acknowledges the fact that they are personally important to you there is something about what’s going on in their life that matters to you. And that creates a pretty awesome connection, one that forges that client for life sort of mentality. And the second thing that happens is after you share the as soon as this passes plan, inevitably the conversation is going to turn to okay, well what are we going to do in the meantime? and it gives you an opportunity to kind of cool the Jets a little bit, let them know it’s okay. Your anxiety is totally understandable. But we’re gonna get through this, there is another side to this coin, we’re gonna make it through here. Here’s what we’re going to do in the meantime, and they’re going to leave that phone call, feeling excited about the future, feeling comforted about the present, and knowing that they’ve got an advocate. I mean, this is the sort of person that is going to be your cheerleader, that is going to be your referral source for life. And all it takes is 20 minutes on a Wednesday afternoon.
D.J. Paris 35:36
Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. I’m thinking about all the service providers that I employ accountants, financial advisor, you know, attorneys, lenders, insurance, excetera, dentists, things of that nature, how many of them have reached out individually? And I’m not. And look, I love my service providers. So this is not a knock to my particular service writers I love you guys are great. And I understand I’m not that important to you. But you know, how many have reached out to me zero. I’ve gotten a lot of emails not know, but I haven’t gotten even one text one phone call. So think about this, you can. And you’ll also make people feel maybe a little bit less alone right now, you know, as as sort of an intangible thing. It’s nice to reach out, right? So yes, we’re getting a little bit more on the touchy feely side, or I’m talking about more of the touchy feely side, but no one’s reached out to me in that respect, none of my service providers, and I’m not angry, that’s perfectly fine. But it would be extra special. If they were to, and you get the opportunity to do that right now.
Chris Linsell 36:37
Yeah, that’s the truth. You know, I am during during slow times, during times of even potential recession or a national emergency or times when the real estate industry really hits the pause button. I tell real estate professionals that they need to be thinking about their business at like a football game. Now granted, I’m from Michigan, so the Detroit Lions are not a great example of this. But during times of challenge, where you’re not making much progress advancing down the field, that’s okay. You don’t spend your time like, you know, running into the defense and not making any progress, spend your time on the sideline drawn up the plays, because eventually, you’re gonna find a break, eventually, the clouds are gonna part the defense is gonna get distracted, and you’ll have your opportunity. And if you’ve got all your plays drawn up, it’s it’s a clear path to the endzone here for you. So take some time and be okay with the fact that progress means not moving backwards. Progress means holding fast to what you have, and drop some of those plays. Give yourself some opportunities for future success, because the work you put in now is going to make such a difference later.
D.J. Paris 37:56
Well, we should also remind our listeners that Chris is a staff writer, and a real estate trainer from the clothes.com. Chris, tell us a little bit about the clothes as we’re wrapping up.
Chris Linsell 38:06
Yeah, absolutely. So the clothes is a fantastic resource for real estate professionals all over the country. And really all over the world we have readers from most of our readers are here in the United States, but we have audiences in South Africa, and South Korea, and Canada and Mexico all over the place. And we provide a free resource for real estate agents who want to level up their business. We specialize in content that is largely focused on best practices on strategy on tech reviews, I spent a lot of time trying to answer old real estate questions with new answers because our business is always changing. And we demand as a profession to stay up to date on the best ways we can serve our clients. And that’s what I do with the clothes I write about that stuff. And I talk with agents, one on one or in groups, whether it’s webinars or coaching calls, or just via email about how we can serve the real estate profession by providing top notch content.
D.J. Paris 39:14
Yeah, and it is top notch content. I’m a huge fan I read every article. What I love about the clothes too is they don’t publish 20 articles a day where it’d be hard to manage it’s it’s several articles per week and they’re really in depth they’re long articles they’re detailed they’re specific around helping you grow your business and best of all free I’m we every single article they we’ve been doing this before Chris and I even started doing this podcast every single article they publish we post on our keeping it real Facebook page because they it’s one of the best places we’ve ever found for content of helping Realtors grow their business so it’s it’s it was natural for us to reach out to them and say Hey, we love you guys so much you want to be on our show, but that’s that’s just really the truth. They’re their contents incredible. Chris has come attend in particular is incredible. The other staff writers are great as well. Everyone should visit the closed.com subscribe to their newsletter. You know, make sure you’re staying on top of the it’s only, you know, three, four articles a week maybe. And they’re excellent. And I promise you, they’re short. They’re not necessarily short reads, they’re good reads are worth, they are worth your time and you will get at least one good actionable strategy on each article they send. And even if it’s a tech review, by the way, I love the fact that you do tech reviews because realtors are getting bombarded over the last 10 years with you know, new tech players who come into the space disruptors. And realtors are often confused, like, what is this? How does this actually work? You guys obviously do address those needs as well. So everyone who’s listening, please do Chris a favor, subscribe, go to their website, subscribe to their email newsletter, read, bookmark their website and check it every couple of days. And you’ll be so so glad that you did. Because it’s just, I don’t know that there’s any other website quite like it, I’ve not found one.
Chris Linsell 41:03
Well, that’s, that’s really kind of you today, really appreciate it. And for those of you who are stuck at home right now, and looking for things to do, the article that was just published today is 13, real estate, email marketing tips and scripts that actually work in 2020, you’ve got your email, email works the same way as it does in your office, from your laptop. So this is a great time to get in there. Spend some time learn a little bit about that. And for those of you who are already followers of the clothes are now going to be a follower of the clothes. Right now I am working on a couple of articles. One about operating a business in social isolation, how you can be a real estate agent from your couch. And two, how to recession proof your business, you know, always want to be optimistic about the future but want to be realistic too. And there’s a way that real estate agents can continue to be profitable and, and build their business, even in a downturn economy. So we’re working on lots of different stuff right now head over the clothes. Like I said, it’s all free. You don’t have to, you don’t have to enter any of your information. You can just read the content and get better. If you want to get on our email list and get our weekly updates. We’d love to have you. This is about growing your business and understanding that we’re all in this together. So let’s help each other.
D.J. Paris 42:25
Yeah. And also, you know, want to ask, so everyone go visit the clothes.com become become a repeat visitor, a regular visitor read their content, it’s excellent. In addition to that, we want to also remind all of our listeners to tell a friend, tell a friend about this particular podcast with Chris and myself, anyone who’s a real estate professional, I even have we even have listeners who write us and go, Oh, I’m a financial advisor. I’m an insurance agent. So I’m, I’m surprised but also pleasantly it’s very sweet that that they get value from these as well. But if you know another real estate agent in particular, who could benefit from listening to Chris, and myself have these conversations, please let them know about our podcast, shoot them over to our website, which is keeping it real pod. So think about keeping it real podcast without the cast at the end, keeping it real pod.com. And also follow us on Facebook. So we’re streaming this live right now video on Facebook. If you’re listening via podcast app, that’s great. We’re thrilled to have you. We also do these live on Facebook, so you can follow us@facebook.com forward slash keeping it real pod. Not only do we stream these episodes live and post links to all of our future episodes, but we also post daily articles that we find online from places like the close. It’s actually actually our number one source of content. But we post articles every day that we find online to help you build your business. So right now is a great time to head over to Facebook and hit that subscribe or like button. But Chris, thank you on behalf of the audience. This content is so incredibly valuable, especially right now. So thank you for being on the show and we will we’ll see you next time. Looking forward to
Chris Linsell 44:08
it. Have a good day and everybody stay healthy. Wash your hands
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify