S4 E2: Secret Strategies Show!

Ren Jones (00:00):
Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a powerful agent taking lots of listings each month, and we have an exciting guest today. In fact, today is the Secret Strategies Show. We encourage you to take notes, apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone that we are also simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook. Lead Gen has over 50,000, almost 51,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. We’ll be pausing for a commercial message during the show, so thank you to the Lead Gen folks. Let me welcome our guest today from Cincinnati, Ohio. Hope your flight was good. Maryann Ries, welcome to the show.

Maryann Ries (00:51):
Thank you.

Ren Jones (00:52):
You moved here not knowing anybody and built the business from scratch.

Maryann Ries (00:57):
Correct.

Ren Jones (00:57):
That is awesome. That is great. And I understand that this month, is it this month? Is it the month of August?

Maryann Ries (01:05):
Yes.

Ren Jones (01:05):
Number one year to date. Number one in Keller Williams in our area here, Cincinnati, number one in Keller. That’s quite an honor.

Maryann Ries (01:13):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (01:13):
That’s huge. Because you were talking about our very big franchise, so that’s exciting. Well, now some people are going to watch this and at the end of the show they’re going to go, oh, I have somebody moving to Cincinnati, or I have somebody moving to Northern Kentucky. You can handle that?

Maryann Ries (01:28):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (01:29):
Absolutely. Because this is two million people around here. Mason, Ohio. So just like southern Ohio, Northern Kentucky. And then call her. How do they reach you?

Maryann Ries (01:40):
Telephone is 513-470-0564. 513-470-0564.

Ren Jones (01:48):
Perfect.

Maryann Ries (01:48):
And then my email address is my name maryannries@gmail.com.

Ren Jones (01:51):
Okay. Maryann spelled M-A-R-Y?

Maryann Ries (01:56):
Y-A-N-N.

Ren Jones (01:56):
Okay.

Maryann Ries (01:57):
R-I-E-S as in Sam.

Ren Jones (02:00):
And then is there a team website or anything like that that they could learn more about what you’re doing or reach you?

Maryann Ries (02:06):
We are developing a new website as we speak.

Ren Jones (02:09):
Okay.

Maryann Ries (02:09):
But if you Google Maryanne Ries or Steve Ries, you’ll find us.

Ren Jones (02:14):
She and Steve work together and have a great, fabulous business that built out. I mean, that’s like seven, 800,000 a year in income. It’s huge. It’s awesome. What a great life.

Maryann Ries (02:26):
We’re highly motivated. There’s lots of tuition bills.

Ren Jones (02:29):
Good. So we’re going to have some fun. The whole purpose of this show is to try to have a lot of people watching the show who, maybe you’re taking only one listing a month, maybe you’re doing one buyer sale, maybe you’re doing two transactions a month and get to where you take it way up without working 90 hours a week. So we have a list of strategies we’re going to go over. And if you apply a lot of these strategies, because honestly there are people that work as hard as you do that make much, much, much less. So it’s not how long you’re working, it’s what you’re doing. So hopefully you can make a nice list, get your yellow pad out, or if you don’t have yellow, use your laptop or iPad or whatever you want.

(03:11):
Make that list. So I wrote down some notes. You wrote down some notes. I put at the top, I think we both thought consistency. It’s a key piece. Because a lot of people, there’s no consistency. They’re either busy. And tell me what you think, how does this work? You take a bunch of listings and then you’ve got to work on them and get them sold, and then you’re working on inspections and pendings, then you’re working on closings. You stop catching fish to fry the fish. That’s a big problem. So how can you be consistent?

Maryann Ries (03:43):
Well, I think for new agents it’s much easier because you don’t have bad habits already. By the time, I think the very first thing that I would do if I were starting over in real estate is to get a coach right out of the chute.

Ren Jones (03:58):
Yeah. And you didn’t do that, did you?

Maryann Ries (04:00):
No. Oh gosh, no. I definitely took the hard road.

Ren Jones (04:02):
Okay. Don’t do that. And honestly folks, this show is not about getting you involved in coaching. It’s just what we have found that everybody that’s making a lot of money is involved in coaching.

Maryann Ries (04:14):
Right. It’s the accountability factor. It’s the getting on a schedule that is workable. When I first started in real estate, my goal was to make $100,000 a year, which was to duplicate my income from corporate America. And so I got my kids off to school and I would get to the office by 10 and then I would work nonstop really hard till 2:15. And then I would get home and take care of my kids until my husband got home from work and then I would go out on appointments, which worked and I had a great business, but it’s not the level that it is now.

(05:00):
And I can understand how people have things that go on in the morning that keep them from doing this. But my schedule now is my alarm goes off at 5:15 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and 5:30 on Tuesday and Thursday and I get up, I go work out. That workout is all about mindset. I listen to morning motivational videos, books, whatever it is to get my head in the right place every morning and then get rolling early. Because if you can get your prospecting done by 10, the rest of the day is always better.

Ren Jones (05:38):
Good. Catch those fish early. Yes. Early bird gets the worm. So is there a schedule where people can get, and it sounds like if you’re going to lead generate, if you’re going to prospect, you got to do it first thing or else it ain’t going to happen. Is that the case?

Maryann Ries (05:52):
Well, actually-

Ren Jones (05:54):
Because some people actually say I can do it at night or I can fit it in here and there. Is that realistic?

Maryann Ries (06:00):
You can. It you just takes all day and it sucks the life out of you. I mean, you can make a few calls in the morning, make a few calls after lunch, make a few calls in the evening, but then it feels like you’re doing nothing but working all the time. And that’s certainly not what I want to do.

Ren Jones (06:17):
So you just start early, look for business all morning, first thing. As early as you can start, look for business.

Maryann Ries (06:23):
If you set an appointment every day before 10 o’clock in the morning, your life will be so happy.

Ren Jones (06:29):
There we go. And then go on with the rest of the day. It’s a way to do it. So that’s like cardinal rule number one. And that way no matter whether you have listings, pendings or buyer. So I guess that creates a second rule. You can’t meet, if you’re a one person show, you can’t meet a buyer at nine o’clock. You kind of have to set your buyer appointment for 11 or one or something like that, which that could be the rule, isn’t it? No 9:00 AM buyer appointments.

Maryann Ries (06:57):
When we got into coaching with Mike Ferry, which was about I think three years ago, that was the first thing our coach told us to do was stop taking any appointments before noon period, no matter what they were. It didn’t matter if it was a doctor’s appointment or it didn’t matter what it was. And so that was a game changer for us because then we had to be doing something productive in the office during that time. And it really does keep you from working, because you can work from eight in the morning until 11 o’clock at night, seven days a week in real estate if you want to. But you’re certainly not going to maximize your income or your life doing that.

Ren Jones (07:41):
And a lot of these people are their own assistants.

Maryann Ries (07:44):
Right. Yeah. That was a game changer too.

Ren Jones (07:46):
Okay, well tell me about that.

Maryann Ries (07:48):
So when I left the previous broker that I was with, my goal was to double my income in the first year. And I was closing about 16 transactions at that time. And I really wanted to hire an assistant, but I was reluctant to take on the responsibility of another person’s income. And so, the manager of the office at that time said, what you need to do is bank six months of their salary, put that in a separate account, just leave it there, and then hire somebody. Don’t pay them out of that account, just pay them out of your regular income. But you always know if there was a dip in the business or what have you, that you have that safety net there for them. And I never looked back and my business doubled for sure. I mean, I went from 16 to 40 the first year.

Ren Jones (08:50):
Awesome. So really in a lot of cases, people don’t hire an assistant soon enough. And when you think about it, someone, a solo agent could find another solo agent in their office and say, let’s both hire an assistant working four hours a day. Now we’re talking about each agent responsible for $100 a week. They could give up Starbucks and have a four hour a day assistant that they share with another agent.

Maryann Ries (09:19):
I don’t think that that salary is, it depends on probably where you live.

Ren Jones (09:24):
Yeah, I guess you’re right. Okay.

Maryann Ries (09:25):
It would probably be double that.

Ren Jones (09:25):
It’d be double, that’d be like 200 they’d each be. They’d each have to come up with $800 to pay a 1,600 for a part-time. So that could work. So they could get into having a system pretty quick.

Maryann Ries (09:36):
Yes. And I do think it’s important to hire, especially if you’re splitting it with somebody, to hire somebody full-time. Because if you hire somebody part-time, they’ve got something else going on. They either have some other reason that they can’t work full-time or they have another job, but they’re not going to be dedicated to your business. So I think it’s much better to share a full-time assistant.

Ren Jones (10:01):
They need eight to four, nine to five, something. Okay. All right. Good advice. Very good advice. So these are great ideas to get there faster.

Maryann Ries (10:10):
Yes.

Ren Jones (10:10):
And one of the things we’re talking about is standards.

Maryann Ries (10:14):
Yes.

Ren Jones (10:15):
Standards for a buyer that you’re willing to work with. And honestly there’s a lot of, it doesn’t exist. People are working with people who are looking on and off for six, eight months.

Maryann Ries (10:29):
I think that there are, the lower the price point, the harder the buyer. Because if somebody is looking for $100,000 house, they generally do not have money. So they have to have something that’s totally turnkey because they don’t have money to fix it up. They are going to be super, super picky. They’re going to want to look at a lot of houses.

Ren Jones (10:52):
Because it’s their first round.

Maryann Ries (10:53):
And it’s just not often. It’s not profitable.

Ren Jones (10:56):
So you’re almost implying they should just work some of the higher price ranges to make it a little easier. Well, and a little better check.

Maryann Ries (11:02):
If you’re going to work with buyers, you definitely have to make it worth your while. You definitely want to. And there are plenty of people that will work with, plenty of people in your office that will work with lower end buyers that are buying in the lower price point. Just tip them out, then you’ll get a little mailbox check and it’s just a little bit smaller than the check you would’ve gotten if you showed them 30 houses.

Ren Jones (11:28):
Good. There you go. So it’d be well worth it for darn sure. And then you can pick and choose because, as real estate agents, we meet a lot of people that I want to live way over here and you don’t spend much time over there. Or I want this price range and you don’t spend much time. So you got to do something with the buyers you’re working with. And then there are all the other ones, you just refer them to some agent in your office. Perfect. Good. And then with standards, before you take them out, knowing after a couple trips out, they’re definitely picking something out. What does that look like?

Maryann Ries (12:04):
Well, so let’s say you get a referral from a very good client that you don’t want to turn down and they’re not, and this happened to me one time. So it is P&G Reload. So automatically it’s a 35% referral fee to the reload company. Then it’s somebody that’s looking up to 120,000 and then they send you 35 properties that they want to look at. So in that case-

Ren Jones (12:28):
All in one day, right? Just kidding.

Maryann Ries (12:32):
Hopefully in one day. What if it’s five days? That’s even worse. So you go through these and you know that 25 of them are absolute garbage. They’re either in a terrible location, they’re in terrible condition, this is a single woman, she’s not going to like the neighborhood, blah, blah blah. So then you take the top five and you take them, this is what I do, I’m going to take them to five, in my head I’m taking them to five houses. And the first four are the second, third, fourth, and fifth best houses that we’re going to look at. And then the fifth one is by far the best one. And then after they’ve seen four that aren’t going to work, don’t like, then the fifth one, we got to move on this one today or it’s going to be gone.

Ren Jones (13:21):
And it’s true. You’re telling instinctively from being in the business. The gems, I mean, the nicest homes, the best value, they always sell first.

Maryann Ries (13:31):
But those other 25 houses, you do not need to show them. You should not show them. You are doing them a disservice and you’re just making everybody tired.

Ren Jones (13:38):
Yeah. Do you take them through some questions to find out whether you should even take them out? I know with the Proctor and Gamble relocation, you know they’re going to buy. That’s a different story.

Maryann Ries (13:48):
Well, plus you don’t want to disappoint the person that just bought a $600,000 house with you or sold a 600 that referred this person to you. So you got to be really careful with that. It’s fine to give them to somebody else, but you have to make sure that that other agent is highly competent and that they’re not going to screw up your P&G business. Because that’s important. But what we tell buyers, if we take out buyers, and what we tell them is that we’re going to show you the five best houses and you’re only going to buy one house, right?

Ren Jones (14:23):
Yes.

Maryann Ries (14:23):
So you’re only going to buy one house. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go to the first two houses and you’re going to say, which one would you buy? And then we’re going to go to the third one. And do you like that third one better than the other one that you said you’d buy? And then the fourth one and then the fifth one. And then after the fifth one you said, okay, you’ve seen the five best houses. Are you prepared to make an offer? And if the answer is no, I haven’t seen anything that I would be willing to live in, then we need to regroup and find out why. So, if they say, well, none of them were nearly big enough and I really need something that’s completely remodeled. So, we have to cast a broader net, either geographically, meaning that you’re not going to get this little pocket of area that you want to live in, or we need to cast a broader net price-wise. Which do you choose?

Ren Jones (15:18):
Okay, so I hear a strategy here, I hear a future pace. You’re like, we’re going to look at the five best. And then they look at the five best. And usually that works. And if not, you’re saying we either have to go out further or raise the price.

Maryann Ries (15:32):
Well, and they may say, hey, I sent you 25. Why are we only looking at these five? Okay, let’s go through these other ones and we’ll tell you why we eliminated them and why those aren’t in the top five. This one has a power line in the backyard. This one is on the busiest road in Cincinnati. There’s 40,000 cars that go by it every single day. This one is, whatever the reason is. This one doesn’t have a backyard. You said you wanted a fenced in backyard for your dog.

Ren Jones (16:00):
So they get it that you’re listening. Because they told you that and you’re going through the list.

Maryann Ries (16:04):
It gives you credibility that you know the inventory. You have to know the inventory.

Ren Jones (16:08):
And another thing comes to mind is the old expression. People want to be led.

Maryann Ries (16:12):
Undoubtedly.

Ren Jones (16:13):
And when you take charge, because sometimes we see agents working with buyers and sellers, and the buyer and the seller is leading because they think the agent can’t lead. Somebody’s got to lead and somebody’s got to follow. And shouldn’t it always be where they’ve hired us because we know what we’re doing and we should lead every time.

Maryann Ries (16:34):
Right. Well yeah. It’s just like going to a doctor’s office.

Ren Jones (16:37):
And I hear that leadership piece in there. You’re saying we’re going to either do this or this, or we didn’t show you this because of these things. Leadership.

Maryann Ries (16:44):
Undoubtedly.

Ren Jones (16:45):
Big piece. Put that on your list. Put that on your list everybody. Good.

Maryann Ries (16:50):
You have to know more about what you are doing than the buyer does. We picked up an $850,000 buyer, so they couldn’t come to the open house because they lived in San Diego, they were moving here. But they called us after the open house and we had gotten an offer on that house, but we said, we can find you a great house. And so we went through their criteria with them, and then we told them about inventory that we knew of that we thought might be a fit, some of which they knew about, some of which they didn’t. But they chose us to be their agent instead of the person that was assigned to them by the hospital because they knew more about the inventory than that agent that lived in Cincinnati and they were in San Diego. So you have to earn your money. I mean, just do your job.

Ren Jones (17:44):
Right, do your job. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. So you were talking about, you were talking about tracking numbers. Now, why do you do that? I mean, they do say where performance is measured, performance is gained. Is that what’s going on?

Maryann Ries (17:59):
Well, and if you set a goal, so our goal this year is, let’s see, what is it? 25 million, I think. So if you set a goal for 25 million and you take your eye off the ball even for a week, odds are you’re not going to make that goal. I mean, that’s an ambitious goal. So you got to really put the pedal to the medal and make sure that you’re noticing every week whether you’re on track or not. And if you’re not on track, the beauty of real estate compared to any other business that I’ve been in is that you can just turn up the volume. And you can make up for, if you didn’t get all your contacts. Say you’re, right now, I think we’re 10% behind on contacts, but we’re on track on listings taken but we’re behind on listings sold.

Ren Jones (18:55):
Okay. Do a lot of you track those same numbers? And would you be able to recite that? She knows where she’s off and what she’s got to do?

Maryann Ries (19:06):
Well, we track it every single day and then we have it versus our goal. But if you pay attention to that, you can turn the volume up. I mean, it’s all about contacts, right? So the more people you talk to, let me put it this way. If I did what I am supposed to do every single day, all day, every single day, my business would be double the size.

Ren Jones (19:31):
Wow.

Maryann Ries (19:33):
So there’s room for-

Ren Jones (19:35):
You’ve got a lot of room.

Maryann Ries (19:37):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (19:37):
You had an extra half a million real quickly.

Maryann Ries (19:40):
But you have to do what you’re supposed to do at least 80% of the time or else you don’t have a chance.

Ren Jones (19:46):
Good. So you’re tracking numbers daily. She knows them off the top of her head. I think that’s fantastic.

Maryann Ries (19:52):
It’s important.

Ren Jones (19:53):
That is exciting.

Maryann Ries (19:54):
I also set goals based on a 10 month year, first of all because the math is really easy. But say you have 25 million, so that means you have to sell two and a half million a month.

Ren Jones (20:08):
Right. Margin of error.

Maryann Ries (20:10):
And that way on-

Ren Jones (20:12):
And when you get in November, December, everything’s a bonus.

Maryann Ries (20:14):
Exactly.

Ren Jones (20:14):
There we go. And that’s a good way to do it off of 10 month a year. So write that down. So we’re going to go into questions. Bayado Estrada, how many transactions is 25 million? She’s got higher price points, at least for Cincinnati, they’re higher price points.

Maryann Ries (20:30):
Our goal for this year’s 75.

Ren Jones (20:32):
75. Good. All right, perfect. Thank you Bayado. Ida Russell wants to know how many contacts per day?

Maryann Ries (20:40):
My goal is 20 contacts per day.

Ren Jones (20:43):
Okay. And you work your database pretty intensely?

Maryann Ries (20:47):
We do.

Ren Jones (20:48):
And you work at kind of a tight geographical area too.

Maryann Ries (20:51):
That’s getting bigger. That’s getting bigger.

Ren Jones (20:55):
That’s getting bigger. Okay. All right.

Maryann Ries (20:56):
And that’s been one of our avenues for growth is a broader geography.

Ren Jones (21:01):
Gotcha. I mean, you dominate some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the city.

Maryann Ries (21:09):
But you can only get to a certain level. You know what I mean? There’s a glass ceiling there. So when you think about growing your business, great ways to grow your business is to increase the revenue, the price point that you’re going after. That’s huge. Increase the geography and definitely work your database, your circle of influence. Past clients if you have them. Past clients are the best.

Ren Jones (21:41):
Yeah, they are the best, aren’t they?

Maryann Ries (21:42):
The person I had lunch with today, four time client.

Ren Jones (21:46):
Four-time client? Wow. That’s awesome. And those are the ones you take to lunch.

Maryann Ries (21:50):
Yeah, absolutely.

Ren Jones (21:51):
And you can keep going out and out and out until you run out of room and then just go up to Columbus or Dayton or wherever or Kentucky. Gary Keller would have you doing expansion, I’m sure.

Maryann Ries (22:02):
Yeah. And I think it just depends on what your goal is.

Ren Jones (22:08):
Five years from now. Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. Tom Horse wants to know, what do you say to your contacts? Well, let’s say you’re calling a past client. What do you say to them? I know you call for sale and everything else, but what do you say to a past client?

Maryann Ries (22:21):
Well, you can use a, there’s great scripts out there that you can download on the internet. If you look at real estate coaching websites, if you look at whatever you want, they’re all over the place. But I basically do a just listed call sometimes when I’m calling my past, my circle of influence or past clients. So Ren-

Ren Jones (22:45):
Because they’re curious, yeah.

Maryann Ries (22:46):
Your kids are 25, 26 years old now, right?

Ren Jones (22:50):
Yeah.

Maryann Ries (22:51):
So we just took this new listing, a great new listing. It’s 1135 Paxton. It’s an absolutely gorgeous turnkey house remodeled from top to bottom, and the list price is 400,000. So I’m sure that if your kids aren’t ready to buy, they probably know someone in their circle of influence that’s ready to buy. So who can you think of that you’ve talked to about settling down, getting their first or second house, or they’re ready to sell their two bedroom and move up to the bigger house?

Ren Jones (23:23):
Well, let me think about that. Yeah. So that’s a great script. That’s great.

Maryann Ries (23:27):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (23:27):
And that gets the ball rolling. Because people are interested in homes for sale in their area or the ones you’ve just sold and you’re looking for.

Maryann Ries (23:35):
Another one that I’ve been using in the past few weeks. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that July, or June, July and August, 2018, our declines versus June, July and August, 2017, we believe that that is the beginning of the next cycle of declines in real estate, which usually lasts three to five years. So we’re calling our past clients center of influence and saying, so have you heard about the interest rates going up?

Ren Jones (24:09):
Okay.

Maryann Ries (24:10):
So a lot of people-

Ren Jones (24:11):
Market stats and people love market stats.

Maryann Ries (24:14):
A lot of people think of when interest rates go from four to 5%, that that’s a 1% increase in interest rates. But it’s a 25% decline in a buyer’s buying power because 1% of 4% is 25%. So the same house, if your house payment has to be the same, so you can have a $2,000 a month house payment, the price point that you can buy at is 25% below what it was when the interest rates were 4%.

Ren Jones (24:47):
So you’re educating them?

Maryann Ries (24:49):
So what we’re telling them is-

Ren Jones (24:50):
And then that’s a conversation.

Maryann Ries (24:51):
Do you know anyone that’s thinking of selling in the next three years? This is the time to do it today.

Ren Jones (24:58):
And then you empower them with that information. They’re talking to somebody else who’s thinking about buying a home, explaining that same thing. And then they’ll say, well, how do you know all this? Well, my agent, Maryann Ries calls me. She calls you? That’s pretty amazing. Which most agents haven’t talked, most people haven’t talked to their last real estate agent in a while.

Maryann Ries (25:17):
Right.

Ren Jones (25:17):
Doesn’t happen.

Maryann Ries (25:18):
Right. Well, and your agent, your clients will keep you honest on that because what will happen is you will see one of your past clients’ houses go on the market with another agent.

Ren Jones (25:29):
Yeah.

Maryann Ries (25:30):
That is nothing but an indictment on you not keeping in touch with your database.

Ren Jones (25:34):
Or you mail them something and you get the little yellow sticker back with the new address.

Maryann Ries (25:39):
Yep. Hurts. It hurts. This business will keep you humble. That’s for sure.

Ren Jones (25:44):
All right. Well, there’s a great real estate agent, newly licensed from Encinitas, California, wants to know, how do you, and you know who that is. How do you handle a potential seller who is unrealistic about price?

Maryann Ries (26:01):
Well, I think one of the things that we believe is that we always do what’s right for our clients regardless of whether it’s the right thing for us to do or not for us personally. And so what we tell our sellers is we cannot help you unless we are telling you what the market will bear. Okay? So we’re going to share with you the market stats. Always question based. So look at these comparable homes for sale. In this one, the lot’s 25% larger. This one’s a four bedroom, yours is a three bedroom. This one has a brand new kitchen. Which do you think will sell for more? Your house or this house?

Ren Jones (26:47):
So it’s all question based?

Maryann Ries (26:48):
Always question based. If you get them to say it, they believe it. If they hear you say it, they don’t believe it.

Ren Jones (26:54):
Or their mind wanders.

Maryann Ries (26:56):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (26:56):
And if you keep asking me questions, I have to pay attention.

Maryann Ries (26:59):
Right, right.

Ren Jones (27:00):
Question based CMA folks. Try that. That’s brilliant. Yeah. That is brilliant.

Maryann Ries (27:05):
So, if they are still saying, I went on one this weekend that he was like, well, mine’s still better, even though it’s 25% smaller, even though it’s not in the right location, this, that and the other. And I said, and his house has been on the market for two years. And I said, we can’t change what the market will bear, but we can help you if you determine that you want to sell for what the market will bear. And I think ultimately what we agreed to is we’re going to lease the house. He’s willing to gut it out for the next five years and then wait for prices to come back up and recoup some of his loss. And I’m like, that is a strategy if you want to own this house for five years and you think that the wear and tear is still going to make this more profitable for you.

Ren Jones (27:53):
That sounds like a lot of work.

Maryann Ries (27:55):
It sounds like a lot of work.

Ren Jones (27:56):
Shannon Hodges, she wants to know, she’s got like four little questions in a row here. What do you say to your past clients that you haven’t talked to in a while? When you’re asking for business, how many past clients do you contact before you get a referral? How do you convince them to give you the person’s contact information, where they say, oh, I’ll have them call you. So she’s got, that’s a three-parter Sharon. But let me see what, I mean, Shannon, let me see what we can do. So what do you say to them? You haven’t talked to somebody, you haven’t been able to reach them for one reason or another and you reach them. It’s been a year and a half since you’ve talked to them. What do you say?

Maryann Ries (28:31):
How are you? No, they don’t know it’s been a year and a half. They think they talked to you a couple months ago. People do not keep track of time. And so I wouldn’t do it any differently.

Ren Jones (28:43):
All right, just get over it, huh? All right. Just call them. Just call them Shannon. Call them Shannon. How many? Do you know what your numbers are with past clients? How many conversations with past clients do you get a referral?

Maryann Ries (28:55):
Well, I know that statistically it is far more efficient to call past clients and center of influence or what we call mets than it is to call people that you’ve never talked to before. And I think, if I remember right, I think the numbers are one in 50 when you don’t know them and one in 12, I think, when you do know them.

Ren Jones (29:19):
Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Maryann Ries (29:20):
You should be getting a lead or a contact or something from about one in every 12 people if you know them.

Ren Jones (29:31):
Good. If you’re in rapport, if you’re good at it, if they knew you as a great agent.

Maryann Ries (29:35):
Yeah, that’s important. It’s important to tell them about-

Ren Jones (29:37):
Yeah. You have to give them great service. Yeah.

Maryann Ries (29:38):
It’s important to tell them about your successes too. We just sold the one down the street from you in two days. Did you see that?

Ren Jones (29:46):
Perfect.

Maryann Ries (29:47):
And who else do you know that wants to sell? Because inventory’s so short right now and interest rates are going up, so the market’s not going to be better for the next three years.

Ren Jones (29:55):
Yeah. And I heard the way you worded that. You didn’t say, do you know? You said, who else do you know? It’s sort of like, you do have an answer for me.

Maryann Ries (30:02):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (30:06):
And the age old question, and I’ve been searching for years. A lot of times people are hesitant to give out, they know somebody’s thinking about buying or selling. They’re hesitant to give you the information. Do you have a little technique that you use? I’ve never been able to figure it out to where you can get them more often to give you the number?

Maryann Ries (30:26):
Not really. I mean, I think that you, and I just had this conversation with somebody that called me and she goes, now, I’m going to give you my phone number, but I don’t want you to keep bothering me. And I said, well, we’re going to sell 75 homes this year, and believe me, we only want to work with people that want to work with us. So you can give me your phone number and if you call me and say, we’re not going to sell, I will never call you again.

Ren Jones (30:54):
There we go. That’s a good deal. That’s fair enough. And that’s a good story to give them too, so that’s great. Do you do Facebook ads? Tom Horse wants to know, do you do Facebook ads for landing pages?

Maryann Ries (31:07):
I do not know what that means.

Ren Jones (31:08):
Okay.

Maryann Ries (31:08):
We do advertise our open houses on Facebook and we do boost them, which costs money, so it must mean send to more people. But I don’t take care of any of that.

Ren Jones (31:20):
You get some traffic off that? You get a little bit of extra traffic?

Maryann Ries (31:23):
Yeah. Yeah. We had an open house at the development that we represent recently, and we boosted that to all the geography around it. And we probably had 50 people.

Ren Jones (31:34):
And in her geographic market, if you hold an open house, you get a wealth of people. And you get some deals off this.

Maryann Ries (31:43):
Well, this one was in Sayler Park. The other side of the universe. Very remote area.

Ren Jones (31:47):
Okay. So you needed to boost it.

Maryann Ries (31:49):
Yep. Yep.

Ren Jones (31:51):
Lee Unger says she’s in the business for six months now. How would I tell my seller to decrease the price without getting into a long conversation? Maybe it’s reduced price.

Maryann Ries (32:03):
Well, two things about that. One is that whenever we take a listing, we tell every single seller, one of three things is going to happen when we put this on the market. We’re going to put our best foot forward. We’re going to have great pictures. The house is going to be staged, great. It’s going to look great. One of three things will happen. We will get a contract, which is what we expect to happen.

Ren Jones (32:26):
Notice she nods her head.

Maryann Ries (32:27):
And they nod back. Or we will put the house on the market, we’ll get lots of showings and no offers. Or we will put the house on the market and we won’t get any showings. So if one of those other two things happens, what do you think that means?

Ren Jones (32:46):
That means nobody came to see it and nobody liked it. And maybe, I don’t know what that means. Does that mean we’re overpriced? Notice how she made it a question. Lee Unger, she makes everything a question. Isn’t that great?

Maryann Ries (33:00):
It means that the market has rejected your home at this price.

Ren Jones (33:04):
Write that down. I like that. The market has rejected your home at this price. That’s good.

Maryann Ries (33:10):
So what are we going to do when that, if one-

Ren Jones (33:13):
Notice she asks that again as a question.

Maryann Ries (33:15):
If one of those last-

Ren Jones (33:17):
Because if they say it, they’re more likely to do it. Now, what did they say? Telling isn’t selling?

Maryann Ries (33:21):
No.

Ren Jones (33:21):
And you’re just asking me questions?

Maryann Ries (33:24):
Right.

Ren Jones (33:24):
Look at the power there, folks. There’s a reason she’s number one in Keller Williams in Cincinnati, Ohio right now. Number one, ask questions.

Maryann Ries (33:33):
So if one of those last two things happens, Ren, what are we going to do?

Ren Jones (33:38):
Notice she asked the question. I love it. All right, I’ll lower my price.

Maryann Ries (33:42):
Are you still moving?

Ren Jones (33:43):
Oh, that is, yeah. To find out, oh, I’ll just stay here. And then you have to say you’re serious? And then you say, well, there’s no reason to put it on the market.

Maryann Ries (33:51):
You definitely need to find that out. But if it doesn’t, the best time to get a price reduction is when you list the house. So you say, we’re going to be on the market for two weeks. The average time on the market for this product is what? It says right here.

Ren Jones (34:04):
You do that in writing?

Maryann Ries (34:06):
The price reduction? No.

Ren Jones (34:08):
Okay.

Maryann Ries (34:09):
We have during the recession. I would get them to sign for a price reduction during the recession.

Ren Jones (34:14):
That’s kind of what you had to do then. Yeah.

Maryann Ries (34:15):
Yeah. Because during the recession, I would say prices are coming down like this. And how do you catch a ball that’s rolling downhill? You have to get below it. So we need to, if we’re not aggressive enough to get an offer out of the shoot, then we have to get below that ball. If it still doesn’t work, then we have to get below it. But we give them, we say two weeks. If the days on the market in a given area is 10 days, which is pretty normal right now. 10 days we’re on the market, two weeks we don’t have an offer, what does that tell you?

Ren Jones (34:47):
Yeah. Yeah. It means we missed the mark.

Maryann Ries (34:49):
Right?

Ren Jones (34:49):
Yeah. Well, good. This has been exciting. This has been powerful. It’s a great list of stuff. I’m going to watch this several times. And a lot of them want to know what your real secret is, and I have it right here. A lot of people want to know what is Maryann Ries’ secret? Well, every time she’s done making her call contacts, she gets delicious Greater’s mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Maryann Ries (35:11):
To match my dress.

Ren Jones (35:11):
You get to match her address now. It’s the only one for listing property. If you’re working with buyers, there are several other flavors that you get to help with buyers. But if you’re listing property, you want the mint chocolate chip. I have to read our commercials. And if you’re watching on Pumpkin seven, you want to get involved with the Lead Gen Facebook group, they are at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. Also, I want to thank Aaron Wittenstein who runs that. He’s a real giver. He has a little program called expiredmasteryelite.com. And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not involved with Vulcan7, make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for a special deal. Thanks everybody. Thanks for being on this exciting Secret Strategies Show with Maryann Ries, number one in Keller Williams in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thanks again. See everybody next week.