KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How to Deal With A Client Who Says "Keep Us In Mind"

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Welcome to the Real Estate Fight Club, a podcast for agents where you'll witness a battle of opinions about topics affecting your real estate business. There are many ways for agents to achieve success. The secret is to find which approach will work for you. Now, always in your corner. Here are your hosts, Jen Mertland and Monica Weekly. Welcome to another episode of Revenue. Real Estate Fight Club. What's up, Jen, Mark? What's up, Monica? How are you today? I'm great. How are you? I had a snack before I came on just to make sure that I wasn't. Actually, I should make sure I am angry for fighting.

Right. I mean, you're supposed to come into the ring hungry and angry. Er, how are you? I like it when you're sassy and a little bit on edge. It's good. Yeah. Well, that's kind of status quo. I know that's true. I'm good. I'm good. I mowed my lawn yesterday. I've mowed a lawn in 38 years. So that was interesting. You need a referral for a lawn maintenance. No, I know those guys, but you know, we're raising my nephew and Bronson. We want him to know how to mow the lawn. So we bought a lawn mower. And I'm going to try it out. Yeah. Good skill. Awesome. Can't send him off to his future wife without knowing how to mow the lawn. I mean, I know it's not a boy girl. Like, I'm not Don't send me any letters about that. I'm just saying he should have to mow the lawn at my house.

And we had lived on this giant, our backyard was just a giant hill. And so it was so big, you had to mow it like sideways, not up and down. Yeah. And I would like fall. It was terrible. I hated it. So now I like, ever since I've been an adult, like, well, I don't usually live in houses. But anytime I have lived in a house, I'm like, I'm not mowing the lawn.

I'm not mowing the lawn. No, Sharon. We've never mowed the lawn. I mean, it's just not a thing I enjoyed doing really. But I did enjoy it yesterday. And I got an electric mower. I bought an electric mower. So fancy.

It's really like so much easier. You're not pulling that damn cord. And it's just, it's better. So anyway, all right. Let's get down to business here. I feel like that is a topic, though, that we talked about before. As a real estate agent, how, and like as a homeowner, right? Like, how far do you go?

It kind of correlates. Like how far do you go and doing the things? We've fought about this before. But it's not what we're talking about today. No, it's not. We have something else to fight about today. All right. So the question for the day, by the way,

thank you guys, listeners, for coming again and again and again and always tuning in. We appreciate you. Today, Jen and I are going to duke it out over this question. What do you do when a client says, keep me in mind? Prospect.

Prospect. They're not a client. Yes. Right. You're right, right. When a prospect says, yeah, okay, well, yeah, keep me in mind. keep me in mind, it's like a pretty common thing or some version of that.

Right. Like, I'm going to put this back on you and I'm not ready and I'm Lucy Goosey and you can't catch me. I mean, this happens all the time if you're a person who is generating leads in any sort of way, right? Like people will say, if you're cold calling, like people, they'll say, keep me in mind. If you have a buyer, call me back or something like that, right? But we don't really have, I mean, there's not really a way to do that.

To me, it's like, well, if I did bring a buyer, or if I did have a buyer and the offer was acceptable, what are you going to do, man? Right, right. So let's back up here. Are we talking about when a seller says a possible seller, a prospect, keep me in mind for like your future buyers. Are we also talking about when a buyer says something like that? Yeah, like if you see a.

house that you think I would like. Let's do both. Let's do the sellers first and then later on we'll do the buyers. Okay. So they're not even a seller. I would not consider them a seller. Some person that you've talked to. Well, keep me in mind. If you have a buyer that could be interested in my house, just let me know. That's what I do. Just kidding. No, what do you do, Monica? Right, right. I think the most important thing to realize here is what are they saying? So too often, and we just want to answer, we just want to solve the problem. We'll be like, okay, okay, I'll keep you in mind. That's so dumb.

Right, right, right. And this goes back to asking great questions and the power of questions and being a true professional through consultant. I think you've got to figure out what are they saying. So what is a potential seller saying to you when they say, keep me in mind? Well, first of all, they are not 100% motivated at all. There's, in my opinion, no motivation. Well, you haven't gotten there.

Well, you don't know. by that, if they were really interested, there would be a different level of conversation, I think, don't you? Maybe, yes. I say my gut instinct is yes, but then secondary, it could be an automatic response. Yeah, right. Just the knee jerk because they don't want to. Oh, so you're not living in your dream home or something like, like, what could we ask? We could say, oh, yeah, great, no problem, happy to do that. If we did have a buyer that was able to offer you what you want, where would you move and start going down the path of motivation to see, are they, is this just because you brought it up out of nowhere and it hasn't been in their head? Or have they been looking,

thinking, like, you could even ask, well, if that were to happen, have you actually been looking at houses? Because real estate politics and the weather is what people talk about. That's it. I wish they wouldn't. Which one? I guess. Okay. If somebody says that to me, is what I say. Okay, let me clarify and make sure I understand. Are you saying, like you've got to, you've got to. Are you saying that for the right price you would sell tomorrow? Because then it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, gosh, it would be ridiculous to get my wife to agree to sell. Okay, then guess what? I'm gone. Yeah. You know, like I'm not messing around with that.

I'm looking for people who are looking for me. So I'm not going to try to sell a family on the aspect or on the idea of moving. I'm going to serve them when they're ready. But if it's like, yeah, my wife and I, we would sell or my partner and I, we would sell, sure, we would sell in a minute. You get us 500 grand. We'd be out of here tomorrow. Okay, perfect.

Now let's talk about that. Where would you go to your point earlier? But I think you've got to ask the clarifying questions. Don't just take that and run with that. That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean come on a drip campaign. That is not what it means. No.

Right? Don't do that. Yeah, I agree. I like your question about like, let me clarify, does it mean that X, whatever? Because here's the other thing. We all have, well, at EXP, we have like an express offer system, which is we can generate offers and oftentimes two to four offers on a property. So like we can get an offer for somebody in like a day, right?

They might not like it, but we can get an offer. But anybody can do that. Like you have an investor that's willing to buy a house for a price, right? And it's like, okay, if we brought you an offer, is it something that you would consider now? Or are you thinking of moving later? And just try to like dig a little bit deeper into what, like you said, what do they really mean?

Right. And would you be trying to find the exact same house if you moved? Would you, are you doing something? Would you rent? Would you move out of state? Like, where would you come out of the country? where would you go? That's right. I mean, you need to have like 10 questions inside of you for that thing. And that, I think, is the number one reason agents don't convert the Keep Me In Mind client is because they don't go there.

It's just that simple. It's just that simple. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. If our listeners get one thing out of today is anytime you get some sort of neutral, noncommittal, any sort of comment that sounds like, looks like, smells like, feels like what we're talking about today, that is where your consultant hat should go on and you need to dive in with questions. Do not walk away with, keep me in mind, don't walk away. You might be leaving money on the table, or you might be wasting time on them in the future because you didn't get the definitive, we're not ready, we're never moving, right? You're looking for that. You guys, we're always looking for the full on yes or the full on no. And I think too many times agents,

The fence. Right. Get them off the fence. And it's okay. Agents just don't want to hear the no. So they leave them on the fence because that feels better. I want you looking for the no because it frees you up to go find the yes because they're out there. There's somebody that needs you.

And if you, excuse me, dick around with these people. I don't think that's a word we use very often on the real estate fight club. But this is appropriate here, Jen. We're digging around with on the fence people. Get them on. Get them off. Let's go. Right.

Well, there's a question that I always ask newer agents. It's like, how many leads do you think a top agent has? And they always think it's like a million leads, a hundred leads, a thousand leads. No, babe. It's like five. Five solid. Solid leads. And that's your definition and length of time for a lead is a direct proportion.

The tighter your definition is. Like my idea of a lead is somebody who's going to sign a contract with me or somebody else this week. this week. It's happening this week. So I don't mess around with people who are like, well, next year. Next year, bullshit. Because whatever you haven't done already is not going to all of a sudden happen. I know people way too well, right? Right.

So it's to your point, exactly. It's like, are you ready now? What is there something that's going to happen that will cause the readiness, like digging in and getting it? Because if you have a bunch of people that are on a fence, you are not clearing, your fence is full. So you can't have leads that are actually ready hop into your life. That's right. That's right.

I would argue that most people's pipeline is so fluffed up. They have this false sense of money coming in. And over half of your pipeline is not real. I want your pipeline to be real. And then unless some life event happens to that person that changes them, which can happen. You know, this pipeline is buying or selling. That's what the pipeline should be.

Now, you can have that. I have that one that I like have a little question mark and then underline. And then I have probably 10, 15 people there that I'm constantly trying to get the yes or the no. I'm pushing them to be a yes or a no. Sometimes you just sit with it and let it kind of put them on a drip campaign and let it fly. But you're not taking any brain space on those people. Right. Well, if it's not a yes, it's a no.

I guess it's not. The buyers are the same in my mind. Do you agree? Like, this is question time. Question time. Clarifying question. Tell us your story. Oh, so it's kind of adjacent to this. I had an out-of-town client coming in and I'm going deep on questions and asking them why and this is what they need and why do you need that? And why is that important while doing my buyer's consultation. And he says, full disclosure, we have talked to another agent who, is also helping us find a home. So it's sort of a let me know. Like it's let me know if you find something, right? In essence, that's really what he's saying. And she's going to let me know if there was a right. And I said, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you brought that up. Can we have a conversation around that right now? Have you made a commitment to this person? Have you signed anything? No.

Okay. And then so we went into and I can kind of role play that if if you think that's, that's a good idea. But we went into the idea that first of all, having one person working for you is much more effective for you. And secondly, my standard is only to have clients that are working solely with me. And there's a lot of reasons for that, as you can imagine, from an efficiency standpoint. But I had to explain why it was better for him. And then why I had the standard. And so I said, you don't have to decide now. But the next conversation we have, I need to know if you're hiring me to help you buy the house, basically. And he's like, oh, I can appreciate that. And of course, the next time we talked, he's like, no, that person, you know, I haven't heard from them.

Shocker, because you never hired them. That's right. So I'm not walking away from that business because it's quite possible this agent wasn't going to reply, but I am going to have the hard conversation. I know about you, but I don't think a lot of agents would have had that conversation. They would be like, okay. Yeah. So like if I agree, I think if a buyer's like, well, let me know if you find what I'm looking for. And then it's usually followed by. Then I'll take the steps that are needed. And so you do have like do what you did, which was backup, have the conversation.

It's like, okay, first of all, I always say something like, I understand you've been looking for a while. It's usually because they've been looking and they haven't seen anything or they're kind of laxidic-a-sical looking. But it's like if you found that property today, you would not be ready to buy it. somebody else will get it. And there's a funny thing that happens that when you're ready, a property appears. Yes. And so asking questions around the readiness.

Like, if you found that property today, would you buy it? And they usually are like, well, it's never yes. So that's what you dive in. Like, tell me about the hesitation. What has to happen? Right.

Yep. Exactly. And you should not 100% agree. You should not work for a buyer that has not hired you. And help Monica. I'm not even going to ask you. I'm going to ask myself, what I know. Because I know you don't do buyer agreements, do you? Or have you started?

No. No, I do not. Because I have the really hard conversations. And I find that when I have the honest conversations, I just don't have a problem. I think buyer consult or those agreements are necessary because agents won't say the hard thing. Look, I'm going to go. No, it's a business. Do you get a listing agreement? Are we going to fight about this? Oh my God. No, we just might come back to the episode. We'll fight about it. it later. But that's the thing. Like they have to hire you and how do I know that somebody's hired me? It's because we have come to an agreement, a signed agreement for work. Yeah. Maybe this guy, because we have that conversation, like maybe I would have him sign something just because he was

Lucy Goosey up front. But I'm just not afraid to say to somebody, and I think this is probably pretty rare, look, I'm going to go to work for you. I obviously don't get paid until we close and then the seller will pay my company, which is absolutely fine. But I need some agreement from you that you're only working with me. And if you're not comfortable with that, let's have a conversation now. But if you're not, if you are, let me know that and let's go to work. Yeah, by hiring me. By hiring me. Sign here. Sign here. It's not easy. It's just that easy. Hey, listen, I'm not saying that's right. I would 100% actually agree with you. You should. you don't follow my example.

All right. I think that's going to have to be the end of today. I think that is going to have to be the end of today's battle. If you have had experience with the keep me in mind or I'll be in touch or any version of that and you had a great result from that or you have a good line of questions, let us know. We're always interested. Love it. You can go to our Facebook page, Real Estate Fight Club podcast, or you can reach out to Jen and I

directly. Exactly. And if you're an agent and you want to find out how to partner with Monica and I so we can help you grow your business, level up your life. Give me a caller, text at 513-400-169-1. All right, Monica, thank you. See you next time. All right. I am back with DRAD. Hey, David. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Jan. I am so happy that you came on again because you like me love prospecting, but you're an actual coach. for prospecting, which is good. Not me. I'm just a ranter and raver about it. You're perfect for this objection. So we're getting a lot of like, keep me in mind.

Can you help us address this from like a buyer's perspective and a seller's perspective and help us like reshape that for ourselves? Yeah, for sure. Can we start off maybe talking about the seller perspective when they say, hey, because what they typically say is we're interested in selling our house. We don't necessarily want to be on the market. Just keep me in mind. If you find someone that might be right for my house, keep me in mind.

Right. Yeah. So what I would say to that is first and foremost, we have to get into question mode. We have to learn how to overcome certain objections. But what I have learned to say is, you know, I can so appreciate that you want me to keep you on mind, right? I'm not sure about this house and I'm not sure of you as a seller yet, right? I know that I can your home. I know that I can find a buyer based on my pricing and my marketing strategy,

but I need to make sure if the house is right and I want to make sure that you're right. What I mean by that, that you're motivated, that you're coachable. So what I'm going to do is stop by and we're going to have a conversation. No pressure to list with me. I'm not here to force you into making a bad decision. I'm going to give you all the information you need to make the best decision for you and your family. Whatever that is I'm okay with. So I have found that by saying that, by saying, listen, I'm not sure if this is the right house.

I'm not sure if you're the right seller. It makes me not feel like I have commission breath where I want to do or say everything to get the listing. I'm already telling you, hey, you may not even be right. Right. But I like how you're like setting an appointment with them because I imagine what would happen is you would get them off the fence one way or the other. Is that what happens? That's right.

Because what I'm able to do by setting that appointment is then pre-qualified to find out, is this ready, really a ready, willing, able, coachable seller? half the time they're not. But when they tell us to keep them in mind and we just put them into our database and we spend time calling them week after week and they're not even serious, we're wasting time.

And that causes us to get frustrated because we're following up with people who aren't not serious about selling in the first place. And if we would just take the time to set the appointment and pre-qualified, we would figure out pretty quickly, half of the people are serious, the other half I can just get rid of,

let me focus on the people that I know I can convert. And I don't want to gloss over that because if we spend time on people that are not really wanting our services, like they're not really interested in buying or selling, it's covering up the space for the people that are. Absolutely. There was a saying that said, don't spend your time talking to people who don't want to hear what you have to say.

Spend your time listening to talking to the people who want to hear it. And so, yes, if you get rid of that 50% that aren't interested, you can put your focus on the people who are. Now, in the beginning, you said something. And you said, David, you love prospecting. And I have to correct you on this because here's the thing. I don't say that I love it. I just know that I have to get,

had to get comfortable with the boredom of focus. And I had to make these calls every day in order to hit my goal. So I fell in love with the process of doing this every day, knowing that every no I got got me closer to a yes. So that's what I fell in love with was that game of knowing, hey, I got to talk to 20 people to get the one yes. So let me get through these 19-0s and let me get to that one. Yes, and I got comfortable with the boredom of focus around prospecting.

I guess mine is I love the outcome of it. So it's like I can bypass all that like you write, repetitious boredom, the rejection, like all that stuff. Because I already, because I know the numbers, I know the outcome when it gets me to my goal. So I'm like, whatever about all that stuff. I just want the end. But I know I have to do the work to get to what I want.

Well, here's the thing. You help enough people get what they want. You can always get what you want. So those people that I know are serious. like I love the people, and this is where it became fun for me, the people who started off hanging up on me or maybe even cursing at me. Those are the best. Those are the best because I'm like, game on, baby,

because I know all the other agents are going to run away because they're afraid of that rejection. But when I stick with it and I continue to call you, eventually you're going to need me. It's not a no, it's not yet. And so when you need, I'm going to be angry, then they really do. When they're angry, they had an expectation that wasn't met. And it's likely because they wanted the house sold or they wanted to find a house or whatever it is. And it didn't happen. So they need you.

Right. Like how are they going to find you if you don't reach out? Well, that's the biggest thing. It's our job. And we're talking about this whole objection of keep me in mind. I don't know if you plan to talk about this, but as agents, we always tell sellers and buyers, keep me in mind. It's not their job to keep us in mind.

It's our job to continue to follow up and stay in touch. Exactly. They're not going to cover for us. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I do like that. So what would you say? Like, is there something you could say instead that makes more sense that's not such a, like, I don't know, like a weak position as an agent? If you're like talking to somebody and they're like, no, but they're not ready now.

So they're not really a lead. But they're also, you know what I mean? Like those people kind of in the middle where you're not sure. I do. So my whole concept is you can't motivate anybody. If they're not ready, you can motivate them. Right. However, you can motive aid them. And what I mean by that is you can go in the question mode and you can say, I get it. You're not ready yet. Let me ask you, though, when you are ready, where do you plan on moving to? Oh, I love it. Why would that be important to go there? Yeah. What would that do for you if we were there? And you start painting this picture and then through your questions, they might start thinking like, wow, I really would like to get there sooner than later. Well, if I could show you a way to accomplish that goal now, would you be open to? to it or is that just a condition you're not selling right now? Well, maybe we'd be open to it.

What do you have in mind? Like, you can open up this conversation where they start really plugging into why that move in the future might be important. And one thing we know is that tomorrow's not promised. So a lot of times people are putting things off. Like, I'll do that in five years. Well, five years, you may not be here. Right. Right. If you can get closer to your grandkids now and start spending time with them now versus waiting, what would that do? How would that make you feel? Right. Right. I go on the question mode. I love that. Let's talk about from a buyer's perspective. So they've called on a sign call or whatever. They're a lead and they're like, well, this is what I'm looking for. Let me know if you see something like that. Yeah. So like, tough work with a seller. Right. So a buyer is always going to say, well, keep me in mind. If you see this perfect house, keep me in mind. And a lot of times agents do that. They don't have them come in. They don't do a buyer consultation. They don't have them sign the buyer rep agreement.

Oh, my God. What did you say? What? The buyer rep. Why are they so afraid of having that sign? I don't get it. I don't get it. Stupid. Anyway, carry on. Well, yeah. And so just side note everybody who's watching, do not work with the buyer if they have not committed to working with you. It does have to be for six months. It could be for one day, for one particular house, for one weekend. If you're taking them out and you keep the sign. Period. It can be anything. What we're talking about this, do you either have like a buyer agreement or this script written down that we can share with the audience? I'm sure that I have one written down. Yes, I can get it to you and we can share it with

them. But the biggest thing, though, is just getting to understand why they don't want to sign. Maybe they had a bad experience. They always side. Right. They do. Don't sign because we don't ask. If we said, hey, we need to get the signed in order for me to show you, they're going to sign. Even if it's for that one house, they will sign. We just are afraid of running them off by asking them to sign that we don't put the paperwork out. But if we do, they will. Yeah. You want them to run off. Yeah. You want them to run off. You want them to run off. If they're going to run off, run off now before I invests three weekends showing you property. I want to know that you're flighty right now because I'm not going to take time away from my family to go show you property if you can't commit to working with me exclusively.

So I'm going to take a time from Happy Hour if you can't show me. Cheers to that. Okay, so how do you motivate buyers that say that? What are the questions you're asking? Same thing with the seller. Like, hey, I understand you want me to keep you in mind. Let me ask you this. if I went out tomorrow and I found the perfect house for you,

are you ready to write up an offer? Boom. Silence. Right. And so they may or may not be, but most of them aren't. And so it's our job to really educate them on why they want to work with us up front. So we have to do that education part first. I'm going to sit down to a need analysis, figure out what you need.

And I also want to make sure that you're qualified so that when I find you the property, we can run because the market we're in right now, they're still bidding wars. There's still multiple offers coming in. And if we're not ready to go, the minute I find you, the property, we're wasting time. So it's educating them on the market, first and foremost, right? And then there's also, why are you interested in that property? What's important to you? Why?

Why? Why? Why? What will that do for you? How will that make you feel when you're in that home? And when you get them talking about it, you know, the logical reason they want to buy and the emotional reason behind it, then you can come in and say, I'm going to do more than keep you in mind.

I'm going to find that property. However, I have to be ready and you have to be ready because when we find it, we have to be ready to write up an offer. So I need you to sign this agreement so that I can start working in your best interests. Yeah. And if they have a red flag, red flag.

Exactly. And it doesn't make sense, have the confidence as an agent to not work for somebody who has not hired you. It literally makes no sense. I just did a video on TikTok. My grandfather always said, people aren't going to buy the cow if you give the milk away for free. You've heard that.

Same thing here. This is why we have such a bad reputation and people don't want to pay our commission because they don't see our value because we are glorified door openers a lot of times. They call us. We drop everything to go open the door. We never ask for a commitment, right? We jump through all these hoops and they're not even committed to working with us. That's why they don't see our value. Yeah, I love it. Oh, my gosh. This has been really helpful. And I mean, you've been in real estate for a long time. You've been coaching for, over four years now. First of all, if people want, if you want that buyer agreement, taxed buyer agreement to me at 513, 400-1691, and I'll send that out to you.

Secondly, if people want to hear more of this objection handling, they want to get better at their sales skills, how can we do that? So two places right now. If you guys aren't on TikTok, first and foremost, get on TikTok as real estate agents, you need to be there until it goes away. It goes away. If it goes away. I'm hoping this days around. But you can find me on TikTok, and it's D. Radney. So my first and this show and my last name, D. Radney on TikTok or on Instagram at David Radney Push, my company here.

You can find me there and I do a lot of videos. I answer a lot of questions. We do scripting. We do objection handling. That's where you can find me. And you can also go to my website, David Radney.com. Awesome. I appreciate you being on again.

It's always valuable. Thanks, David. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Real Estate Fight Club podcast. Make sure to hit the subscribe button so you get updates when new episodes are available. And we truly love feedback and would appreciate all likes, reviews, and suggestions for future topics.