KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Emily Terrell's Proven Strategies for Real Estate Lead Generation & Follow-Up

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Summary:This episode features top team leader and coach Emily Terrell who breaks down the common failures in lead generation and provides her go-to, actionable strategies for success. The core focus is on speed-to-lead, effective long-term follow-up using a CRM, and methods for converting leads from expired listings and past clients. Agents will learn how to inform their sphere of influence without being overly salesy, the importance of consistent effort, and how to build strong systems that allow the business to run without constant personal intervention. This is a highly practical guide to filling and managing the sales pipeline.

Hey, this is Aaron and Mucostaggy and I am back as today's host of the Real Estate Rockstars podcast. You know, if you're a listener and you've only been around for the last six, seven or eight months, then you are used to hearing Shelby's voice on here. But believe it or not, long before Shelby, I was the podcast host for many, many years. I had a lot of things that happened about 18 months ago. And she was one of the people that stepped up to help do interviews for me to keep the show rolling while I had other stuff going on. She has now moved back into kind of full-time agency as an active agent. And so now I am back as the host.

You know, for my first one back, I'm really excited for you guys to hear the interview that I just did with Emily Terrell. She's one of Tom Ferry coaches. She's an agent with EXP. She's from San Antonio, Texas. And we talked about all sorts of things about, you know, best grips when calling expires because that's where they get so much of their business. How they get 99% of their business volume is just from listings alone.

So all those stresses about commission changes and things like that, they are getting around that by just being a listing agent. So I think you guys are going to learn a lot about how to get deals, how to follow up with deals, and how to really improve your overall business. So here you go for today's episode of the real estate rock stars. This is Aaron Amitjusaghi. And here's my interview with Emily Terrell. Emily Terrell, thanks for joining us. Where are you calling in from? Where do I have you?

I'm actually in San Antonio, Texas. down south where it's really hot right now. Yeah, I live in Austin. So it's funny. Do you feel like we survived the summer, though? It's like 90 degrees this week and it's going to be 70 degrees in the morning? Nope. You know, it's the false fall.

It's that like that time where, you know, Texas is like, hey, I'm just going to sprinkle that little bit of fall for you. And just kidding, I'm going to have you wearing shorts at Christmas and Thanksgiving still. So I don't think we're there yet. This is not the survive. This is the tease of a little bit of fall. This is the tease that it's on the edge. How long you've been an agent? So I got my license in 2015.

Cool. What made you get into real estate? So realistically, in 2014, 15, I decided to become a stay-at-home mom. I actually worked in a marketing department before that where I, you know, I made the phone ring for you. So you know when people call and they're like, hey, do you need to talk about your car's extended auto warranty? Yeah, I made the phone ring.

I made it to where you actually called into us. And I did that for a long time. And it was a lot of fun. But I had my first kid and I wanted to spend time with him. I did for about six months. And then I realized that I wasn't actually very good at it. I had that guilt, you know, that mom guilt where even though my husband was 100% okay, we were doing fine financially, I just, I felt guilty that I wasn't contributing.

So I was like, you know what? I'm going to get my license. It was easy. We sold their house that one time. It was so smooth. it was easy. I'm going to go ahead and just get my license and I can do it. If anybody can do it, I can do it. So I kind of jumped into it that way. Little did I know is a lot harder than I thought, but obviously I've been doing it almost a decade now, so I've definitely survived. Yeah. Yeah,

so many people jump into real estate because of that story, right? Because it's easy, because it's like, hey, they see how much an agent gets paid on those closing statements afterward and they go, wow, I can do that. And some people can and there are parts of it. there are parts of it in some transactions that people get to feel like, wow, I didn't do very much and I sure got paid, but the reality is the amount of time that goes into those multiple leads, those multiple people, like this customer, this client might have been great and easy, but it might have taken 50 bad clients to get there. Yep. Oh, yeah.

So what was your first year like? So 2015, you get licensed. In Texas, market is kind of pretty stable at that time. It's not really booming, but stuff is, months of inventory a little bit lower than now. Rates are probably about like they are now. Yeah. Actually, I had a really good first year. I can talk to almost anyone. That was the biggest thing for me.

I just started talking to people. I also, at the time, the broker I was with encouraged me to get with Zillow. Now, I'm going to preface this. Zillow then and Zillow now. Two different things. So what was Zillow then? So Zillow then was $400 a month that I, I then split with a lender.

And I think I got four or five leads a month. Yeah. So those were buyer leads. Like they would call on a listing and say they wanted to get information about it. Actually, they would just call and say, I'm going to go see a house. And you would say, okay, I'll meet you there in 30 minutes. That's how it was. So it was significantly cheaper.

Leads were faster. So it was immediate turnaround. I also did it here outside of in the rural area of Santa. Antonio. So I was really, my focus was speed to lead. So because of that, I was actually able to close 36 transactions in my very first year because I got my license at the end of 2015. So my very first 12 months of 2016, I was able to close 36 transactions. And most of it had to do with speed to lead. I did have some referrals and stuff like that from my sphere of influence. But most of it was that just being available and being the first one to show up and actually show up and talk to people.

I think I wrote like five or six offers in the house, the one house that I showed at the table. Like at the dining room table, I busted out my computer and I'm writing an offer that we then get signed and sent right there in the house that we're writing an offer on just because it was a lot quicker. So it was cheaper and it was a lot quicker. But also the thing, and I didn't realize this now, but how many transactions that I miss? I did 36, but could I? Could I? I've done 70 because of the times that I showed people the one time and then I never followed up. Yeah. I was showing so many houses that I didn't ever follow up for anything.

And so that realization, it didn't hit me right away. It hit me a couple of years later. But now that I understand that, that long-term follow-up is a huge deal and something that is really important to me now as an agent. You had a really good first year. I kind of reminds you, I remember we've had some new agents that we've brought on for some of our developments. And, you know, one of the first open houses, one of them held. Someone came in, wrote an offer on the house at the open house, and they got to be the buyer's agent on someone else's listing.

And it gave them almost like this unrealistic expectation of what it takes to get a deal. So then there were hundreds of open house leads after that that could have been really, really good leads. But because they didn't turn over at the beginning, you know, it was like, it was like missed opportunity, missed transactions. So the, so let's talk about how, so you, the ones that you did get. So if you're getting five, six, Zillow leads a year or month, so you're getting like maybe 60, 70 a year, you know, of those 36, you said some of them were referrals, but let's say anywhere between 20 and 30 were from Zillow. So you're answering the call. And the, so for anyone out there that is paying for leads and these leads are coming in, like what advice would you give them? You already started with speed the lead. Like these people are usually shopping for multiple people. And so you want to be sure to reach out to them. What else about your practice? helped you get the most out of those leads. Well, let's, we'll talk about what I did then and what I really recommend you do now,

because those are two different things. Cool. So back then, it was speed to lead. That was important. And actually, an article just came out the other day that said that 40% of online inquiries are never responded to. Yeah. And that's it.

And that's a huge number. Now, I was significantly more than that because every single time the phone rang, I immediately was answering it. I was immediately responding. I was immediately texting. I was reaching out. Now, the thing that I would recommend besides that, because we are in a little bit of a different market,

it's a different time. We've gotten our rules that are in effect that change that. However, now though, the game is a long-term follow-up. So not only do I still focus on, you know, getting in front of them and being that person that's available right at that moment, I also focus on long-term follow-up. So now, every single league,

that comes in, goes into my CRM. And every single lead is immediately put on, we're going to call it a drip campaign, but it's really a task reminder campaign. So it's a, it's just a reminder plan that reminds me to follow up with everyone. Because in reality, I think for Zillow and Realtor.com with the lead time is 18 months.

So I'm looking to follow up with everyone that comes into my CRM for at least two years. And I'm going to follow up with a combination of emails, text messages, phone calls. I also try to push them into my social media. So Instagram, Facebook, because, and the reason I love Instagram and Facebook is because it's the marketing that people give you permission for. Right? Just think about it.

Like, people are going to unsubscribe for your emails. You send them too many emails. They're going to unsubscribe. They're done, right? They don't want that. They think they're being bombarded. but they will go to your Facebook or your Instagram and they will doomscroll on your profile and look back at years.

And you can tell because all of a sudden you'll get a like on something that's like two years old where they accidentally hit it. So they'll dooms scroll, right, where they'll watch you send out videos. Because imagine this. If you sent out five emails a day telling people what you were doing, they would unsubscribe by the second one. But you can put up five stories in a day and people are going to be sitting there watching it. They're going to go rewatch it.

And then they're going to ask you about it. it. So a big part of pushing people is so, you know, when we go to long-term follow-up, back to that, we do emails, text messages, phone calls, and then getting them over to social. Because, like I said, it's the marketing that someone chooses to be a part of. So I make sure that everybody that I come in contact with goes to my Instagram, goes to my Facebook, I follow them to try and create a bigger connection than just the initial, hi, my name is Emily. So what CRM do you use? I use follow up boss and I like follow a boss because I can create smart lists. So for example, if I haven't sent an email to someone in the last 30 days, then I can put

them on a list and I can make sure that I am following up them or like my past clients or sphere of influence. I can go in and I can tell it, hey, if I haven't called or text, these people, these past client tags in the last 90 days, put them on this list. And this way I go. I go. and every day and I'm like, oh, I need to reach out to Susan. So I can do one of two things. I can either connect through follow up boss or I can go over to social media and I can send Susan a DM or I can just text Susan or I can just reach out for whatever reason and then go ahead and mark it that I did that there within follow a boss and so it'll take her off the list. This way I don't forget because anybody, and this is just my belief, but anybody that says that, oh, I remember everybody

that I talk to, I remember, I'm connecting with all my clients. I'm remembering it. appear, they don't. Yeah. Not as those clients grow. You can't want to our business in your head. You know, a lot of new agents, they hear about sphere of influence, right? And they, or, you know, they hear about these sphere of influence. It's like, hey, you have to make sure people know.

And you got a lot of deals your first year from sphere of influence. But what do you think the best way is to tell your sphere of influence? Because so many people become agents, but they also don't want to have like agent breath, right? And so they have this weird balance. There's a gal that's an agent who are like TikTok is blowing up right now. And I told her, hey, you need to tell people more often that you're an agent. Right. And she's like, how?

Like, how do I actually like tell the people that are paying attention without it coming off as salesy? So what advice you have for people that have that they're new? They've got this contact list, but they don't know how to do that first outreach of like, hey, think about me when you're going to sell it when you're going to buy or sell house. I literally just said that. I went on to social media and said, I got my license. I'm an agent now. Think about me when you need to buy or sell. And it got a huge response.

I'm a big fan of being up front. So I did that. I was very specific and I created a post. And I actually remember I was, I did it while I was in the drive-through of a taco cabana, which there are taco places here. I don't know why, but I can remember weird things. Can't remember all my clients, but I can remember that. but I remember posting it and I don't, I think I did it when I went to go order.

And by the time I got my food, I had about 12 comments already of people telling me congratulations and not agent comments like my actual people, my friends, my families, sphere of influence telling me congratulations, tagging other people, telling them to make sure they remember me and different comments like that. It was really people getting behind me and telling me congratulations. The other thing that was pivotal for me in people, changing how people saw me as an agent as I started to show that I'm that I'm knowledgeable. I'm a fun person. I have a bubbly personality, we'll say. So it's really easy to feel me as

being flighty or young. I was younger at the time, not so young now, but I was younger at the time. So it's really easy to kind of pigeonhole someone into that. So what I did is I just became knowledgeable. And I started connecting my content for personal stuff, but also just real estate content. And I started doing, keep in mind, videos were not as big. Back then it was Facebook Live. So I would do Facebook Live and I would tell fun stories of me selling real estate. So this way people were still a little bit entertained, but they were also seeing what I was doing. And they also remember, oh, yeah, she sells real estate. Yeah. So I would combine that. Now, today, how I would do it a little bit differently is I would do more of reels and I would do more of the talking head style videos where I'm providing people with information.

Because what I've learned is this. People don't want to be educated. They want to be informed. So I'll find information to inform them. Like, for example, I live, so I live in San Antonio, but I live in the outskirts in a tiny, tiny little town of like 1,200 people. hence the reason I don't say I'm from this town because there's only 1,200 people here. Nobody's moving here. But I think we have 18 transactions a year in this little town. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's real time.

It's why I go everywhere else. But in this town, they're actually building a brand new subdivision of 50 homes, which is a big, a lot of homes for this town. So they're building 50 homes that are probably going to be 750 plus. So higher price point for San Antonio in the surrounding areas, 50 homes are all going to be on two and a half acres. So of course you've got to bet that I've already scheduled interviews for myself and my team to go and talk to the new construction and the builder, right? The guy that's developing it so we can get his vision for this subdivision. And you can bet that we're already going through and kind of teasing out building plans and stuff like that, things that they're allowing us to to give people so they can be informed of what's,

happening. This way, if there's anybody looking in this area that wants to be in this school district, they want to be more in the country and have acreage, even though, I mean, I'm from the country and I don't consider two and a half acres acreage, but anybody living in this city, that's a lot, right? So anybody that wants that type of life and lifestyle, they're already going to be aware that it's out here. So then we'll have people that reach out and they go, wait, where is that? We want that. Yeah. So we're informing. So the, so right now, what's your team look at look like now? So you've been an agent for 10 years and the, and so you started as like getting leads and like a solo agent learning and now, now you've got a team. How's your, what's your team layout like? Um, so I've, I do a lot of other things. I have investment properties. I love to spend time with my kids. So my team is really small. Um, I have one partner that oversees the rest of the transactions. I actually do lead gen and follow up. That's my role. And then I'm the, come in if there's a problem person.

I'm really great at thinking outside of the box, so I come in if there's a problem. And then we have one buyer's agent and two showing agents. And then we have one admin. Yeah, I think about that. And one admin that does transactions. So where do you guys get your leads now? Or how do they generate deals now?

So I have a couple different things. So I will always be a massive source for us. expires because believe it or not in San Antonio we have a huge amount of expires and cancels that are on the market tons right now and keep mind this one changes though I don't always have expires right now we do but we don't always um then we do investors so I've worked with investors for probably the last eight years so I continue to follow up with investors that I've worked with in the past and also new ones so we got uh SOI investors uh expires and then past clients, which are different than your SOI.

So past clients, those are going to be the four primary things. Now, I do a lot of social media, but notice I didn't mention that one, because my past clients, SOI, investors, and expires, they all get my social media, and I do it for them. I do it for a long-term follow-up. Again, remember I mentioned it's the marketing that they don't choose to be part of. So I actually include that, you know, that social media, concept is part of all of that. It's a supporting part of all of those lead generation sources.

Yeah. So the, so with like I guess with the leads now, it's still, it's, it's similar. So when you're calling expired so, like you said, like back in 2020, there weren't expires, right? There's different game plans. And that's why I did want to get into today and how we're doing deals today. Because business today is much different than a year ago and 10 times different than four years ago. And there's some agents that just got started in the last few years. Right. So the, so if you are going to call. all expired. And so right now it's one of the best opportunities out there because no matter where you are in the U.S., months of inventory is so much higher and an agent has failed before. Or not even

necessarily that agent has failed, but a house has been listed that hasn't sold for a various number of reasons. So what do you do when you call that expired? What's that, what's that conversation like? What do you teach your team? What do you say on the phone? Sure. So I'm a big fan of being up front. So I, we always start with, you know, of course, the hi, this is Emily Terrell and we give that, but we always start with, are you interviewing agents to relist your home? It is the number one, like, best response because people either say yes or no. Most of the time it's yes. And then we can have a conversation about, okay, like, you know, are you interviewing agents? Okay, great. Well, let's talk about it. And a lot of times, people didn't even think about the fact

that they should interview agents. It stops them from going, oh, no, I'm just listing with my same agent again. And then it's also, it's different from the typical, are you accepting offers? I've got a buyer. Can I come preview your house? It's different than those scripts. What I don't like about those is they, in my opinion, they start from a place of dishonesty. Unless you've got a buyer that actually wants to see that house, it's not really.

I mean, and a lot of people like to justify it, and they say, well, you know, there are buyers out there. Well, that is true, but you're not telling them that there's a potential buyer. You're saying, I've got one. So I always like to start with, are you interviewing agents to get your home relisted? And like I said, they either tell me yes or no. And even if they tell me no, you know, the name of the game is long term follow up. So we'll get them put into something like HomeBot. Or you can use Real Scout or you can use other tools that are going to do long term follow-up that are going to provide information. And we just ask them if they want to have that information. And nine times out of ten, they say yes. So anybody that's answering the phone

responding to our texts or emails that are either going to get an interview or they're going to get set up on a long-term follow-up. So something you did you started your career with was speed to lead. So how soon after it expires are you calling that owner? As soon as I get the information, which is usually the next day. Yeah. So next day, you guys. get a list of expired. Every MLS out there has one. You can figure out, here's a list of people expired yesterday. You figure out who the owner is, which sometimes takes a couple extra clicks and some extra software to find it. Sometimes you're going to get the wrong number. You're going to call them. Say hi, I'm Emily Terrell. I saw your house expired yesterday. I was curious if you're

interested in interviewing new agents to relist it. They're going to say yes or no. If they say no, you're going to say like, hey, no big deal. Do you have any interest in getting information? I've got this software called HomeBot that can email you every couple weeks and tell you what your house is worth in case you want to resell it in the future. And it's kind of as simple as that. So you either get them into your sphere that way for the long term follow up or they say yes and they say, yeah, they want to interview. Yeah, and then you said an interview. I mean, it really is that simple.

Now, we don't just call if you probably didn't figure that out. We also text, same concept. And then we send them emails. So the first day, they're going to get reached out to three times. Cool. And then after that, usually within the first, because not everybody answers right away. Remember, like the first day, there's probably 100 phone calls that come in. They probably get, they get bombarded.

They'll get a bunch of it, I feel like. They get 100 phone calls that day. So sometimes we can get lost. But crazy thing is, is a lot of times I get calls back about a week or two later. And they're like, oh, my gosh, your text message was just so nice. And all I did was ask him like, hey, are you interviewing agency or home relisted? But they were, I was just so nice. I get that all the time that I was just so nice.

It's probably less aggressive than so many of the things that are out there. You know, it's kind of like writing offers is a number game, numbers game. But in this case, it expires as the same thing. So maybe they got 100 calls, but maybe of those 100 people, 50 of them also sent a text or an email. And maybe only 20 all did a phone call, a text and an email. So when somebody says, yes, we are interviewing. Are you trying to interview right then? Are you doing Zoom?

Are you trying to meet them at their house? Like, what's your best way to close and get that listing? We like to do in person. Myself and I've taught my agents to do really well in person. So, and we focus a lot about, believe it or not, speaking training has helped significantly with building out a really great listing presentation. such as a pleasing tone, but also varying the rate of your speed, the pitch, things like that have really helped.

And also the way you tell stories, right? Instead of saying, I'm the one that made the phone ring when somebody called about it. You know, I changed it. If you noticed, I was like, hey, how's your car's extended auto warranty? Doing some of those techniques has actually helped us be better in person and relate to the client, the potential, the seller significantly more. So because of that, we actually try to get in person. And we like to go there prepared.

Now, one massive things that sets us apart from other agents is the fact that every time we go on a listing appointment, we get a listing, we do a contract, everyone gets the exact same experience. Right. So for example, back in the day, I used to, when I used to drink sweet tea, I loved Raising Cain's Sweet Tea. I loved it because every single Raising Cains that I went to, no matter where I went to it, always tastes the same. the point where if I was thirsty when I was out showing houses or just out, I actually knew where the raising cane, all of them were on this side of town when I would be. I knew where they were because I would drive even 30 minutes out of my way to go and get one before I would like make it a point to go and get

sweet tea from raising canes. And then sometimes my husband's like, why don't you just buy the jug? So sometimes he would just buy me. That's how much I drink. That's how much I loved it. Right. but I did that and I would drive 30 minutes out of my way because I wanted that sweet tea. I wanted that sweet tea that always tasted the same, which anybody that loves sweet tea as much as I used to understands that not all is the same. But so I would go and drive to all of these different locations and I knew where they all are because I had that experience and it was the exact same experience. So that's one big thing that we started doing was we started creating a transaction experience. So as soon as someone like an expired says yes to an appointment,

they are put into our management software and they get text messages reminding of it. They get their client portal set up right away. They start getting that first level of communication. We also prepare everything that we're going to take with us. Like just an example, we're going to make sure we take one of our seller guides and everything that we're going to take. And it's going to be the exact same experience for every single person. This way, all of our reviews stay consistent.

And our reviews don't say, oh, she was nice. Our reviews say, wow, that was a great experience. And so we started creating that. And it really set us apart from, you know, what we're doing as far as, you know, how we're treating our agents or how we're treating our clients. And that's gotten us a lot of repeat and referral business just because they know that they're going to get the same great experience every single time. Yeah, I think one of the challenges right now with listings is we're in this like brutal buyer's market. It's not necessarily brutal everywhere, but it's brutal in comparison to, let's say, you know, a few years, three out of the last five years was a pretty big experience.

And so I think a lot of sellers get hung up on one, you know, price wishing they would have sold and, you know, end of 2021, January 2022 instead of now. And then so there's, so there's a couple things that happen. Somebody we get sellers that are like really hung up on a certain price or they're really hung up on this idea of why haven't we gotten anything yet. So how do you combat that? So if you do that listing appointment and you say, hey, I think you should sell your house for 385. And they're like, hey, I really want to sell it for 450 because last year my neighbor sold his for 450. So how do you combat that? And then what else do you maybe do for expectations? So that way, if you have been on

the market 60 days, you've only had two or three showings, that's actually kind of normal right now. And unfortunately. And so do you prep them ahead of time? And so do you prep them ahead of time? I guess what's your strategy with that whole listing? Get the listing and figure it out later. Figure it out now. So when you have the listing, it's a better experience. So we have the plan. It's always the plan up front.

But I always look back at the numbers because the numbers aren't going to lie. So I always prep my clients ahead of time. Because at the end of the day, if somebody wants to list, if I tell them 385 and they want to list at $450, I mean, it is their house. It's not my decision to make. It is their decision to make. But I always come back to them and I say, okay, that's great. And I always tell them, look, I want to sell at that price.

but I can only tell you what the market tells me. Now, if I'm wrong and we sell it 450, fantastic. But all I do is continue to provide them with updates. So part of my follow-up process, part of that experience that they get, one of the things that we do on our listing plan is we do weekly calls. So we do a weekly progress check with every single one of our listings. So let's say we get it on the market and we don't have great showings. Every Thursday, we're going to reach out.

We're going to provide them with any updated or change numbers. anything has come on the market or anything is closed off the market so they see a realistic look of what's happening. If something is now hitting more than 60 days on a days on market, we're going to have that conversation with them to show them, hey, your house has been on the market for three days. This house that's bigger and cheaper is now hit 60 days. Do we want to reevaluate? And we may not necessarily have price reduction talks, you know, three days in or seven days in, but we are setting the tone for when we need to. Now, if they, don't choose to drop the price, again, that's up to them.

But we are going to always provide content. We are always going to provide the numbers to showcase to them. Because the worst thing that I want is I don't want a seller to go, well, you didn't tell me. It's like, oh, hold on. We had this many conversations where I told you every single time, right? Here's where I sent you an email reminding you of what we talked about. because and most of the time I will tell you, it's very rare that I have a seller that is that far off.

Maybe 5 to 10,000, maybe. One other thing I have also learned, and this is just for me, anytime someone asks me for a list price, and let's say I'm going to recommend 400,000, I say 395. Do you know why? Because every seller says, let's do 400. Yeah, they're always going to round up.

They always do. No matter what you tell them, they're going to round up a little bit. They do. They do. Now, on the rare chance that somebody goes, yeah, $3.95 sounds good. And you're sitting there going, well, crap. Crap, I really meant $400. That's okay. You look at it again and say, you know, I was looking at the comps again right before we listed. I think we can do $400. And then they're going to be okay with that. Yeah. But you always, I've just learned that. I always go a little bit lower. Same thing with an offer. If somebody's, if the house is listed at $250,000, and I think they should put in an offer at $250,000. Well, I'll take the back. Let's say it's listed at $2.50. And I think they should go at $2.45.

I'm going to tell them $250 because they're going to come back and say $2.45. Yeah. It's a little bit of client management. It's like this, you know, giving them the info. And so you go to somebody and you go a little bit under because they always want to get a little bit more. Hey, this should be your listing price. And if they go, if you go, hey, you should go $2.95 and they go $300, you're good. If they say yes to $2.95, they're always going to be okay with more.

or if they say, no, I want to list it for 350, you're going to say like, okay, that's a lot more than I was ready for. It's your house and I will absolutely honor it. I'm going to do everything I can to sell it for 350, but I want to make sure that you had the data to know that if we do sell it for 350, it'll be a record or something like that. Yeah. I mean, and that's the biggest thing is what I've learned is, you know, people are, they're going to do what they want to do. They're not, I'm not going to talk someone into buying or selling. I'm not going to talk someone into selling at a lower price. In fact, if you do, if you push too hard with trying to talk someone into doing something they don't want to do, they're going to distrust you, right? They're going to

automatically go, oh, she's like a used car salesman. I don't want to be that. And that guilt comes back. I provide the information, right? I just provide the information. I show that I know my craft. I know the market. I know the numbers. I'm aware and I'm confident in the price we should get with. And then I have a solid marketing plan and we go from there. What's something that you wish you would have known when you first, that you know now, right, that you wish you would have known when you first got started in real estate? Like what's that one thing? You're like, man, I had no idea this was going to be part of the gig. I really, really, really, really wish I would have set my CRM up and used it from day on. Because it makes, I mean, remember we mentioned like, you know, people like people don't have what is it? They don't have a lead problem. They have a follow up problem. Yeah. I was poster child for I didn't have a lead problem.

I had a follow up problem. And it's just, it's that, it's that process. Like I wish I would have actually set up my follow up like I have it now. I could have, instead of doing, my second year I did like 76 transactions. That could have been 176. Like it could have been insane. Yeah. It could have been so much more if I had just followed up.

Because in the beginning, all I did was work the leads that were literally right in front of me, the people that were just raising their hand going, please me, please me, right? Like, just use me. Like, that was all I focused on instead of everything that I missed and how much better and how much more I could have had by just following up. Yeah. That's like some, that's, that's really, really good advice. I've interviewed, remember interviewing a gal that told me something like 30 or 40% of her sales came from, you know, past clients. And her first few years were Zillow, leads only, right? And then she, but she did a really good job at like putting them into a CRM. And then, you know, five years later, she closes more deals every year than she did her first couple years in Zillow. And I've also met a bunch of people that have, that for years have just bought leads from somewhere, bought Zillow leads, things like that, did tons of

transactions, but the story is a lot like yours, didn't do any follow up. And now in hindsight, if we said, like, hey, get a list of all the people who have ever sold a house to, that's actually daunting. That's actually not really easy. Like, like, or, or all the people, you know, that you showed houses to that first year and things like that. So there is, I think one big difference of today compared to, you know, even just two, three years ago in real estate also, is it used to be, you know, if you got a lead in your CRM, in your follow-up, in your sphere, however, if they started to become a potential, potential client, you were probably going to be, you know, a chance to, I guess, you'll close a deal within like 90 to 180 days. It's pretty

reasonable, like you could meet someone in an open house and actually there's a reasonable expectation within 90 days they could buy a house. And now it's like those open houses you're going to have to, instead of getting 10 leads, you're going to get two or three. Instead of them buying a house in 90 days, it's like they might buy one in the next two years. So there's just so much more follow up needed, so much more effort needed. I've heard it said that like the same tactics work, you just have to, you just have to work harder than you used to. Or they, or they, you know, maybe two people from an open house is good. but like that continuous follow-up is different. So you were just on stage at a big Tom Ferry event.

I was. What was your, what was your stick? What was your thing that you were on stage talking about? Well, I was actually answering questions. So I didn't really have one specific thing. I will tell you my favorite thing, though,

that I got to talk about. So there was, and I don't remember his name, but there was a, and I'm going to call him a kid because he was 18, right? He had just got his license. He had had his license. No, he was 20.

I'm sorry. He was 20 and he'd gotten his license at 19. And he came up and he was like, I've had my license for a year and I've done $2 million in volume. She's pretty good, right? Pretty good. And he said, but I missed a million dollars in volume because of my age. So, you know, the first thing that I gave him as far as advice was, you know, he asked like, how could he not miss? And I said, well, my biggest advice to you is to get confidence to understand that, you.

you're doing really well as an agent and you need to understand the knowledge, understand the process, so that you can go in and be confident. Because like I told them, I was like, look, I'm up here on stage and I told you that I'm the best and you believe me, right? You're listening to my advice. Right. I didn't prove to you any other way than I told you I'm the best to be up here. So, you know, with him, it's gaining confidence, right? Gaining that confidence, which does take a little bit of time, but there are ways to get that. But the last thing I wanted him to do, and I think this was really important for him, is I asked him how he knew that he lost the business because of his age. Did somebody, did all of these people, did this million dollars in volume that he lost,

did they tell him, you're just too young? I'm not using you? Or did he just assume that? And maybe there's something else within his business that's causing him to lose that volume. Yeah. So I think for him, it was, it was kind of eye-opening for him to go, oh, crap, maybe it's maybe it's not me. Maybe it's something else that I'm doing. Yeah. Maybe I messed up the presentation and I assumed that it was my age and it came off as my experience instead. Yeah. Yeah. Because there are young agents that have a great amount of experience that are just, you know, at a younger age that are really great. And then there are agents that started later and just don't really have the experience. And that also comes across. So it's,

you know, for him, it was kind of, I think a little bit eye opening for him going, oh, well, maybe it's maybe it maybe it maybe it's maybe it's maybe it's my confidence maybe I need to make that better it's such a good point too that yeah when you don't when you lose the business it's really important to try to reach out and ask why and ask for that feedback and sometimes people won't tell you sometimes people are afraid to tell you but if you ask for it there's a better chance you know one of the gals that's a part that comes to our mastermind once a year out here in And she recently did something where she lost a client or she had a perspective listing. And she said like, oh, I didn't realize that you went with somebody else.

It was kind of like asking for feedback. It was already lost, but like, but hey, and the person was really clear. And just said, hey, you know, every time we talked, you mentioned like house hacking instead and the opportunities for that instead. And so you weren't listening to like, even though I couldn't afford what I wanted to, you kept, you're kind of telling me something different. So instead of listening to what I wanted, you kept pushing something down me that I had no, that was a solution in your mind, but it instantly wasn't one in mine. And it was like really, really telling for her

and really helped her on some of her next one. So like, yeah, getting the feedback for, you know, him assuming one thing, being able to figure out, yeah, if you lose a deal, it never hurts like, oh, I don't have the listing anymore. No big deal. Can you tell me, you know what I could have done better? And sometimes, you know, there's nothing. And sometimes it's, you know, you hear all sorts of things. things. Yeah, absolutely. It's that whole asking the question and learning to shut up. Yeah. Yeah. Asking the question and learning. So right now with your team, like, how much do you guys do in listings compared to like representing buyers, representing sellers? We do like 99% listings.

We'll take a buyer if it comes. Like we're not going to turn it away, but we do not focus on marketing towards buyers. We, we focus primarily on listings. And so. because of that, we attract mostly listings. Yeah. What's a way that you can tailor your social media to focus more on listings? So we, you know, we put out a lot of content that's geared towards listings. So, you know, again, remember, we don't do education as much as we just make people aware, right? We provide that awareness.

And so we'll do a lot of market updates, a lot of content, but a lot of tips. Like, for example, if I'm going to do a market updates, a lot of content, like, for example, if I'm going to do a market update. And I'll, I can kind of do one. So if I'm going to do a market update, for one, I focus on one, one thing, right? I don't focus on this many days of market. I don't focus on all these things because a lot of like days on market means things to real estate agents.

I understand what that means. You understand what that means. Nobody else does. Right? Like the person trying to sell their house is like, what does this mean? What is average days on market? I don't understand what this means. So I'll focus on one thing.

typically it's well I'll do my example as days on market so I'll go in and I'll you know prep and we'll do a video and be like hey lavernia did you know that our average days on market right now is 69 days for resell homes I'm not talking about new construction I'm talking about resale so what does that mean that means if you're trying to sell your house before Christmas we need to get a move on you need to call me so we can start getting your house prepared so that we can have 69 days of being on market and then we can get a 30-day contract and you can be moved out just before Christmas. So we'll do that.

I'll take whatever the concept is, and I'll put it into a very specific and easy to manageable and understand example. Yeah. And so we just provide content like that. We provide content that's geared towards sellers. We provide awareness of what's happening on the market in sellers. And then, of course, expires, obviously.

They go right after, you know. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Targeting expires and getting really good with that kind of pitch process, obviously you're going to get listings with that. So as a primary listing agent, I wonder if you've seen much of an impact with this or not yet, but we have the big commission stuff. All the commission talks of, you know, the changes that came out of the NAR lawsuit, you know, the requirements now that before you can even show a house, you have to sign an agreement. You know, Zillow is coming out with this new process now with the Zillow lead that

you can, you get to sign like a one week represent them for free type agreement. where you sign this deal and you go show them the first house, but now you're actually secretly hoping they don't buy the first house, because if they do, you're out, and they're trying to attack that. But what have you, have you seen any changes yet in the way people reach out to you about your listings and the way you market?

Like we're not allowed to say on MLS, this is how much we're paying for a buyer's agent commission anymore. Are sellers saying like, hey, can we pay less now? Do they know or any conversations you're having? I mean, I address that in the listing presentation. What I've done is I always had a section where I talked about commission, but now I've split that. And I have two pages. I have commission for listing fees.

And then I have a recommended buyer's agent commission. And so I'll go in and have a conversation with them that says, like, hey, this is my recommended buyer's agent commission. This is why. Now, of course, obviously 100% they can say no. That is absolutely their choice. It is negotiable, but I do go through and recommend. And it's things like, for example, you know, there's uncertainty. And newer agents may have a harder time going to a buyer saying, hey, this house costs

$400,000, but you got to pay me now $400,000 plus this. So now instead of agents having to come in and have those conversations, they can just go and say, oh, you know, they can reach out to me. I'll tell them how much it pays. then they can go, oh, and they can automatically tell their buyers, hey, this house pays, this house is actually going to pay me so you don't have to, right? So they can already have those conversations. Plus, San Antonio, we're traditionally more of a cash poor city, meaning there are some people, yes, that put a good amount down, but we have a lot of FHA and VA buyers,

which means they don't always have cash, so they don't always have the extra funds. They need closing cost coverage. They need, you know, they need all of that to be paid for. They need that lower down payment. So they don't have the extra funds to on top of that pay their buyer's agent. So it will reduce the amount of houses that are available to them if somebody's not paying. So I go through and explain all of this information to the seller. And then we have that conversation. I will say I have not, as of yet, and we've been having this conversation since the beginning of August, because we wanted to have it a little bit ahead of time. I haven't had anybody that's come back and said, no, they just come in and say, yes, I agree with you. Let's go ahead and

pay it. Yeah, it seems like going out ahead of time is really helpful. We always did that in FHA and VA markets because we would tell people, hey, here's the recommended list price and the, but we would kind of explain at the beginning. We'd say, but, you know, this sale is the same, but I should tell you, like these three, you know, comps I'm using your VA closings, which really means they sold for $200,000, but they gave like a three or four percent credit. And your choice, You could say no to that, and there's a chance you could net more. But these things present more buyers. And so we think the more buyers we have that can look at your house, the better chance the price goes up and offsets that.

It'll be really interesting to see how it plays out. So with your crystal ball, any predictions for what you think the real estate market's going to be doing over the next year? Honestly, for, well, for the next couple of months, it's going to do. So I lived through the actual last election that we had in November, it's going to freak out. That's not political. It's going to freak out. Everybody is going to hold. After that, I'm hoping that doesn't matter again which office you go into.

I'm hoping that whoever comes in as a new president lowers it a little bit, the interest rates, so that it'll artificially, you know, they'll hope to boost that economy artificially. the problem with lowering it is why are we still what's wrong with our economy still? We still have no inventory. And what's going to happen if we lower interest rates? All these buyers are going to come out,

but we're not going to have any more inventory. So if that does happen, I think we're going to move back to that 22, 23 craziness of the market. We might actually get worse because people might flood the market going, oh my God, what happens if it goes back up? So I'm hoping that that's not what happens,

but I bet that kind of is what happens a little bit. is that we get that little bit of a lower interest rate because, you know, new president, they always want to try to shake things up. They always want to push for, you know, we'll have a new cabin. We'll have everybody and they're new, maybe, depending on which way everybody votes. But, you know, they always want to shake things up. And a new president, a new person in office means they're going to make changes. Whether their political party it is, that's going to happen.

And that will impact how people actually go and how they buy houses. and it will impact how they spend their money. Yeah. So I think we're in for a smidge of a rougher time before we actually get into, you know, back to the smooth sailing waters of what we were. Such a good point of the stagnancy that occurs

kind of right around election time. You know, not only do we have this rate thing that has slowed everybody down to say like, hey, we're just going to sit tight until we know what's going to happen. even though now rates have just stayed where they're at for a long time. People are like, no, I want to wait to see what's going to happen. I want to see if the Fed lowers before I come in.

Now people are waiting for the election. You know, January 2021, we bought so many properties and got phenomenal deals because that was like kind of the last month of people being in this stalemate of unsure about COVID, unsure about new election. It was like this perfect storm. So January 2021 was a time like you could buy houses for such a screaming deal because everybody was worried that maybe they had topped out. And like 10 months later, prices were like 40% more in Texas. It was incredible. Yep. The end of 22 and the beginning of

21, I bought five rental properties. Yeah. So like my, my lender was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, there, it's that time. And so because of that, and then right after that, and San Antonio is a smidge behind always. We're always like a little like, even Austin, right? We're a smidge behind that. Like when that one house, the first one that started at all, the one that went like $200,000 above its list price in Austin back to 21. San Antonio did that, not to that extent,

but we did that like three or four months later. So we do follow up and we, you know, we do follow. We just are always behind, which is, you know, we have a very big military market here. So it's a very level military market, which, you know, when you have people moving in and out every three years on a regular basis, it does help.

But in saying that, like, yeah, that was the last time when it did. And then rate, I mean, just because rates were so great, people just bought.

And our, you know, our values went up hundreds of thousands of dollars immediately. We sold a house in Canyon Lake. We got like 50 or 60,000 over asking on it. And that's like a tiny little market outside San Antonio. It's a nice area, but it's like it's not a flying off the shelves type market.

And that was probably a pretty good sign of where it was. Well, Emily, this has been a lot of fun to talk to you. But I want to hear like, so what's next with you? How can people reach out to you, find out more if they want more advice about, you know, scripts for expired or things like that. What's the best way they can learn more from you? So Instagram. So I do actually coach real estate, hence the reason I was answering questions on stage.

But I do coach real estate. So if you look at Coach Emily Terrell on Instagram, I put up content all of the time for agents. That's going to be, especially for agents that are wanting to follow me, that's going to be the best place to reach out. I answer questions there all the time. I love to. Plus, I love to put all of my content up there. So when I'm going to go do big speeches or be on stage and stuff like that, I will go to Instagram and invite people to just check out and do like smaller webinars, just small ones so that I can test out content. I can get feedback.

But that also means that everybody gets my content a lot sooner. Yeah. Dude, I love that. I already went and followed your Instagram before we got started. She does have a ton of content on there that she's sharing with the journey. Emily, I got to see if maybe I can talk you in and come and join us for our mastermind in March that we do in Austin. So it'll be the closest one to where you're at since you're down in San Antonio. I didn't even realize you were from there as we were getting ready to sign on today. So everybody find out, find Coach Emily Terrell on Instagram. And any last thoughts, any final advice for age. out there of just some parting wisdom they need to hear. I love this.

This is something I do talk to my coaching clients about on a regular basis. The work that you do today, it doesn't affect you tomorrow. It's going to affect you in three months. So make sure you're putting in the work. But that also means that as Christmas is coming up, I'm not sure when this is going to come out, but if it comes out around Christmas, if you take time off to spend with your family, you're going to have a really bad Q1. So make sure that you're doing the work today, even if it's just a little bit,

so that in three, four months from now, you'll see the fruits of that labor. Yeah. Such great advice. Whatever you do today, you're not going to see the results of that for three or four months, whether it's good or bad. You can have a lot of bad habits today and you're still making money from good habits you had three months ago. Or if you have a lot of good habits today, you can do well in the future.

Emily, thank you so much for coming on the show. Real estate rock stars. Well, this is Aaron Mucciisagie. I'm back. I know it's been a while since you guys heard me on the show. I'm excited to be here, as always. Thanks for listening. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network.

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