What to Do as A New Agent in A Coronavirus Crisis

Summary

Just when you’re getting started in real estate, the pandemic suddenly hits.

So, what do you do as a new agent to win through this corona-crisis and beyond?

Decide. Are you in to win? Only those who are committed to succeed will make it through this crisis, because your commitment to success will protect your head from all the fear and uncertainty around you.

Prospect like crazy. Now more than ever is the time to talk to people and build relationships. Who do you prospect?

A. Personal Circle (people you know)
B. Motivated sellers (FSBO’s & Expireds) and NOD’s Notice of Defaults
C. Investors (connect with them on Meetup.com). They’re ready to find properties when the market drops.

Role play 1-2 hours a day like a professional athlete trains for a championship. Prospecting gives you the context for role play. And the more you role play, the better you get at handling objections. You’ll find great role play partners in the YesMasters Real Estate Success Community Facebook Group ?.

Commit to making it work, and do the work. No matter what happens to the market, you can win!

Full transcript

Oh man, oh man, oh man. You never dreamed that when you got your license, you would be getting your license, coming right into one of the greatest economic shutdowns in the history of America. Did you?

This video is specifically to all of you brand new real estate agents out there, you people who are getting your real estate license or you’ve just got your real estate license, this is your first year, it’s your rookie year, and you’ve got all in, everything seems to be going great, you’re excited, and then about the time you’re getting your license or just getting started, all of a sudden, bam, the pandemic hits.

Nobody saw it coming, it is what they call the Black Swan Effect. That all of a sudden, you can’t even show a house, you can’t even do an open house. When you get started, you’re going to do a lot of open houses. I can’t do open houses. What do you do as a new agent in the coronavirus crisis? So today I’m going to give you three things. This is not the cure-all, my friend. You are in the real estate market. Whether you’re a brand new agent or not, you’re in the real estate market in uncharted territory. There’s not a real estate agent or broker out there alive…

I’ve been in real estate for over 22 years, I’ve been through 9/11, I’ve been through the dot-com bust, I’ve been through the economic collapse in 2008. There is nothing that we’ve ever done that has prepared us for this. I never would have imagined a day when it was illegal, essentially, to do an open house, when it would be illegal to actually show a house in a lot of states. That blows the mind, doesn’t it? What do you do? All right. Here is what you do as a new agent to survive, thrive and win through this crisis and in the aftermath and beyond.

Here is the first three things that you should be doing right now. Number one, decide. I’m telling you, and I did this, do not blow this off and go like, “Well, I already decided.” No, no, I’m serious. You have to decide, are you in or are you out? Are you going to win, or are you going to maybe win? Maybe try to see how this goes? Because I’m going to tell you right now, there is only one group of agents who are going to make it through all this, and that is those who are 100% committed to succeeding.

You’ve got to have the same attitude that Winston Churchill had when he became the brand new prime minister of England. His very first address as prime minister of Britain while being bombed by the Germans, everything’s falling apart, the world is seemingly coming to an end in his country, he’s the brand new prime minister, and on his very first address, he says, “Guys, I’m telling you, I got nothing to offer except my blood, sweat, and toil and to tell you this, we will never, never, never surrender.” Victory at all costs, victory no matter what the consequences, however long it takes, however hard it is, we will win, because without victory, there is no survival. My friends, that is the decision you have to make right now.

If you are in and you are in to win, period, you got to commit. Once you do that, what that does is it protects your head, protects your mind from all the fears and all the uncertainty that you are going to see all around you. Give this a thumbs up if this video is making sense to you right now, because you cannot make it in this industry going forward with being tentative and uncertain, going like, “Well, I don’t know, what do you think?” Do not ask another agent their opinion. Don’t do that. Don’t go on and go like, “Is this a bad time to get in a real estate?” Because you got into real estate.

Look, over the next two years, there are going to be multi-multi millionaires come out of the real estate industry, both as real estate agents, investors, people that are out there doing real estate that understand how real estate is played, but there’s going to be a lot of pain from people that don’t do that. The ones that are going to win are the ones that are committed to winning. Once you commit to winning, like, “I’m all in,” then you start looking at, “Okay, now how do I win?” But first, you got to decide you’re going to win. You figure out the what you’re going to do and the how you’ll figure out. But if you’re unsure and uncommitted to the what, where you’re going, it’s going to be hard to get there.

So number one, decide. Number two, I didn’t say this video is going to be fun, but it’s the truth, prospect like crazy. My friend, right now, more than ever before, this is a time for talking to people and kissing frogs. I talk about kissing frogs, meaning the goal is you want to find the prince, the old fairytale, the girl wanted to find the prince, but he was been turned into a frog by the wicked witch or evil witch or whatever. She’s got to go kiss the frog and it has to be the right frog. Not every frog is going to be a prince, but that’s the only way you’re going to find the prince. Same with finding business today, you got to talk to a lot of people. You want to make it in real estate today? It is not going to happen by waiting for business to come to you. Prospect like crazy.

Now, who do I prospect? Okay, here’s the groups. Number one is your personal circle. Go to all your relationships. “Hey, I just wanted to let you know I’m very excited. I just started a real estate career. It’s kind of a crazy time, but I am committed to succeeding in helping everybody that I can. Who do you know that I can help?” All right? This is a way more advanced training, and then I’m going to go deeper on here today. But whenever you have people going like, “Well yeah, but you’re new,” and they start… If any pushback, go like, “Look, I am committed, and one thing you can know for sure is I’m going to take great care of you. I’m going to take great care of anybody referred to me. I will not let you down or them down. Period.”

You have to have that kind of confidence, that kind of posture, that kind of certainty, because… And they’ll see it in the commitment. That’s why step number one is so important, is you are all in. When you’re all in, people can tell just by the way you show up. So, number one is your personal circle, all the people you know. Do not wait, do not say, “Well, they’re going to want to wait until I’ve got some success under my belt.” No, you get the success from the people that already know you, like you and trust you.

All of my top coaching members, I’m talking about the ones that are making boocoos of money, when they started new, the best ones were the ones that they started straight in with their personal circle. The agents that don’t, it’s because of a lack of confidence, and typically, a lack of confidence comes from a lack of commitment. So, talk to your personal circle. And then number two, that’s your relationships, the people that you know, and now talk to motivated sellers that you don’t know, primarily right now FSBO’s and Expired listings.

A lot of agents are afraid. I think there’s a couple of markets where they’ve literally… they said you cannot make phone sales calls to people unless you have a specific relationship to. So do whatever your broker tells you or the law says or whatever. In most of your markets, you can talk to prospects. Here’s who you talk to: FSBOs, and Expireds. Now, people go like, “Yeah, but right now, ain’t that kind of weird?” Look, if a for sale by owner has got his house on the market, they’re still interested in selling. If they’ve had it on the market for a while, well, all of a sudden, the market was great, everything’s going good, and they’re like, “I can do this myself.” And now the market turns and they go like, “You know what, maybe I need some help.” So they were waiting for the right agent to come along.

I’ll give you an example. Jessica Cotton in Fort worth, Texas, brand new agent just joined my challenge, one of my coaching programs, and first day prospecting… This was just this last week. First day prospecting, she called two brand new for sale by owners. She goes like, “There were two brand-new for sale by owners that came up on Zillow, I called them,” she said, “I couldn’t get either one of them to set an appointment, but both of them were strong leads for me.” They said, “Well, if we don’t get it sold soon, we’ll call you or we’ll talk to you.” So she’s not going to be following up with them. What’s the point? She called them, she asked, and guess what, they said, “Maybe.”

Now, the key for her is going to be in the Lead Follow-Up. But the point is, prospect like crazy. If they’re motivated and they need help, you can help them. So Expireds, it’s the same way. People go like, “Yeah, but on all the Expireds, aren’t people taking their house off the market and houses aren’t selling?” No, houses are still selling in virtually every market in America. Houses are still selling, there still tends to be a very low inventory and still a pent-up demand of buyers. You get a motivated seller, they can sell their house, and you get to sell an expired listing. If they’ve already moved, as an example, or they’re in distress, they’re motivated. They are waiting for the right agent.

So do not let your story of like, “Yeah, but…” Do not let that stop you. Motivated sellers are still out there, and if they’re not motivated, they’re going to tell you so. Okay? Cool. Totally get it. They can wait. You can make a friend and build a relationship with them over  time, but there are people out there that are still ready to move right now. Notice Of Defaults. That’s going to be coming. That’s probably not right now because most of… or across the country, most people that aren’t making their mortgage payments, they’re not going to get any filings for a while of notice of default or anything, so most people are going to be staying tight if it’s coming to not being able to make payments.

Now, there’re still maybe some people wanting to move, but that’s a different story. But I’m just telling you about the high probability prospecting right now is that. And then the final group is investors. Investors are coming out of the woodworks, they’re getting ready, they’re getting ready to start finding properties. Whenever a market goes into turmoil, to a period of uncertainty, man, investors, they start drooling. What do you want to be doing right now? Filling the pipelines, building those relationships, meeting. You can go to a real estate investor meetup groups on meetup.com, a lot of them are doing virtual meetings right now. Get in there, start learning about real estate investing, what these local real estate investors in your market are doing, what they’re looking for. Meet them, let them know that you’re finding houses for sale. Sometimes they’re ugly houses. “You like ugly houses that look like crap and smell like pee? Talk to me.” They’ll reach out to you. Build those relationships. Prospect like crazy.

Number three, role play relentlessly. Role play like you were a pro. So do it this way, role play like a professional athlete trains for a championship. Okay? Role play like an Olympic athlete trains for a gold medal. How do they do that? They actually spend more hours every day training and practicing than they do playing. Think about that. So here’s what I mean by that. This right now, my friends, if you’re new as a new agent, this is baptism by fire. You’re coming right into a storm. If you make it, when you survive and win through this, your career is set, because you’re coming in when it’s tough. So you don’t take anything for granted, you don’t see a lot of the lazy soft age just laying around going like, “This is easy.” You’ve got people going like, “Oh man, dude, you really timed this one, didn’t you?” And you go like, “I know. Ain’t that awesome?” Because you’re committed.

So now you’ve got to practice that way. So here’s what happens. Prospecting like crazy, number two, prospecting like crazy. It gives you a context for practicing. In other words, now I know in the prospecting, you’re going get the rejection, you’re going to get the questions, you’re going to get the objections, they’re coming at you. Well, now I know what to practice. If you’re trying to practice alone without prospecting… So right now I’m just going to practice and I’m just going to kind of work on some scripts and all that kind of stuff. The problem is, you’re not in the game, so you don’t have any context for how it really goes. So the more you’re prospecting, the more objections you’re going to run into, the faster you’re going to get good, one, because you’re getting used to it, and getting used to the conversations, getting used to the objections, the questions, and two, because now I’ve got something I can practice on.

So in a role play, now it’s realistic. Now I’m actually talking about the things that I’m actually hearing, and you get to role play partners, then they’re going to be doing the same thing. So role play then… Prospecting is where I find out what it’s really… I get the real objections the real questions. Role play is where you get comfortable with getting questioned, because now they can… In the role play, the other agent and throw it at you, and you get comfortable being questioned, having objections thrown at you. and you get used to thinking on your feet, you get used to responding where you’re not comfortable and you’re cool, just like a professional athlete trains under pressure and practice. They just do it over and over and over again so when they get in the game, it’s automatic. The response is simple and automatic.

I’m going to tell you right now, if you really want to get serious about this as a new agent, that you should be role playing one to two hours a day. That is insane in the real estate industry. There’s not one out of 20 agents that role plays, really role plays more than one to two hours a week, and I’m suggesting you do it one to two hours every single day. So I was actually talking to Peggy Yee, one of our master coaches, and she… She still sells real estate, she still does a lot of real estate, does a lot of business, and she goes like, “Right now,” she says, “I am role playing more intensely than I’ve done in years.” And she says, “Right now, it is more critical that you’re doing role play every day than it’s ever been.”

Why? Because you’re hearing new objections, and there’s no script for that objection yet because nobody’s ever… I’ve never heard of an objection about, “Well, I don’t want people to come see my house because I don’t want to get coronavirus.” That’s a new objection for me. 22 years in real estate, never heard that one before. So where you got to think on your feet, you’ve got to go, “Okay, how do I deal with that? How do we do that?” That’s another question for another time, but the key is, every single day, that you be practicing.

So commit, prospect like crazy, and role play as if your life depended on it. Because in reality, it kind of does if you’re committed to succeeding in real estate.

Now, if you’re looking for role play partners, join our YesMasters Facebook group. Go to YesMasters Real Estate Success Community on Facebook, ask to join our group. You will be quizzed with the little questions that pop up to make sure you are a real estate agent, because this group is for real estate agents only. We don’t have vendors in there, people selling you crap, just real estate agents, so you can come in there and you can find great role play partners who are committed. Not all of them, but most of them, that are committed, that are skilled and that use the YesMasters scripts from the book of Yes so that you can role play with them.

So you can go… I’m going to put the link down in the description of this video below, so you can click on that, go join our YesMasters Facebook group, find great role play partners there. Commit to winning and do the work, and I don’t care what happens to the market, you can win.