KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Make Follow Up Fun Again

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Welcome, everyone. I'm Sarah DeLan SIG. I'm super excited to be hosting this agent power huddle today on how to make follow-up fun again. And so, you know, let's just hop into it. This is a, this is a relevant topic. You know, a lot of real estate agents, they aren't very comfortable with follow-up. So, you know, I want to help you guys find ways to make it fun to, you know, not be scared of it and to enjoy it even, hopefully. So, um, so, um, so, we're going to help you guys find ways to make it fun to make it fun to, you know, um, so, so With out further ado, I'm going to hop in. We still have some people coming in. So I might wait a second to let some more people join here. But we will present this. And I want this to be interactive. So, you know, if you can, like, if you're not driving or something, if you can turn on your cameras, I love to see, like,

when I'm saying things that are relevant to you. And it's, you know, making sense and all that stuff. And if you have questions, feel free to raise your hand, type in a chat, come off meet, whatever you got to do. So let's make this fun and interactive. And hopefully something that you guys will get a lot of value out of. So again, it's how to make full of fun again. No political parties.

Like I'm not, it's just, that was just the name that popped into my head. I'm not trying to, you know, you know, represent anybody. but just so you guys understand who I am and why you should listen to me on this topic, I'll give you a little background. So I used to be an ISA team leader and trainer for several years for a real estate coaching and consulting company. Eventually I left and got my license and I was a real estate assistant to the amazing Linnaean Carver who has hosted the agent power huddles on Fridays for a long time.

So learned a lot from her. So you should definitely check her out tomorrow if you can and every Friday on here. And I always put that I have a BA in psychology because I paid for it. And that's what it's good for is telling people that I have it right now. So there you go. Currently, I am the owner and CEO of a little boutique ISA company. You know, we're just a tiny little thing and we like it that way because we're kind of picky about, you know, the agents that we work with. but that is, you know, that is helping people get to where they want to go.

And so if somebody's not ready to, you know, work with us, then we tell them the avenues that they should take to get there. So that's kind of fun. I'm also a realtor with the expe. I don't have any desire to sell real estate. I am like, you know, in awe of the people that can do it, it is not an easy job. So more props to all of you. So I have some really exciting stuff happening with the XP, which is why I'm a little wound up,

so you'll have to excuse me. But I just found out, I'm going to hop ahead here. I found out about 45 minutes ago that I'm officially a speaker at the EXP shareholder's event. And that's what I wanted to share with everyone. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Everybody voted for me. I was in the top 10 for this. And it took them two months to finally tell me.

And I just, just found out. So it's like one of those like, oh my gosh, you know, life changing moments. And I could have done it without all of your support. So thank you, thank you. And especially Agent Power Huddle, which gave me a platform. So I just want to take a minute here. And thank you guys because this is how I figured things out when I became a new agent. I came to these Agent Power Huddles.

And I learned and learned and learned. And I found my niche, you know. And here I am. And now I have a lot of. of other exciting stuff happening, which I'm recording an ISA series and some follow-up series for EXP Realty. That's going to be part of the level-up YouTube channel and their learning pathways. So keep an eye out for that. It's going to be coming on later this year. Okay. So yeah, when I talk about it, my heart starts racing and then I'm like,

come down there. But it's going to be a lot of fun. So if you guys are going to be at the ExP Shareholders event, you should find me, and we should talk about it. So right here, I'm going to pause and I'm going to ask for some audience participation, okay? So if you are brave enough, I hope you'll help me out with this. So what is holding you back from calling your leads? Anybody, if you want to type it in the chat, come up mute Debbie? Your rejection. Do you know what? You nailed it. Okay, that is literally the first one on my list. Let's talk about that. Fear of rejection. Okay. So we have, we have that in our heads a lot of times

when we're going into this. We don't want people to reject us. If you guys would be surprised, I'm going to tell you something. I didn't, this wasn't planned. I didn't plan on telling this, but I came into EXP because of the recruiting opportunities and I thought, man, I will be great at recruiting. I'm a year and a half in. I have no one on my downline, no one. Okay. And it's not because I'm not good at, you know, talking to people or anything like that. I have a fear of rejection by my peers, right? So I have a hard time like talking to people about EXP, even though I am EXP through and through. I'm afraid of them telling me no about that. But I'm not afraid of them telling me know about buying or selling a home. Like, I will call 100 people a day. And if they all

tell me no, no sweat off my back. But it's like when we're all like, you know, when we're agents and you feel like you're being judged because of that, it can have an impact, right? So we need to see the value in what we're doing because if we 100% believe in something that we are the right person for it, then we can overcome that. But we'll get into all this. Any other ideas for why you're not making calls? Well, I think part of it too is like if you're an ISA, you're usually calling on behalf of somebody else, correct? So you're calling for Jane. and the rejection isn't for you in your head, it's for Jane.

I guess that. That fear of rejection is not as pronounced when you're doing it on behalf of somebody else. I get to speak. Yeah, no, no, no. And I did it for myself. I did it for myself when I wanted to be an, or when I was trying to be a real estate agent, too. And I don't know. It wasn't the same as that, but I get what you're saying.

That's true. So, but here's the thing. When you do a listing presentation, do you have a fear of rejection? Absolutely. And how do you overcome it, though? Because you obviously get through it, right? I probably just keep talking longer than I should. Handle this.

Okay, we'll talk about ways to handle it. Don't worry. Okay, anybody have any other ideas? There's eight of them that I have on this list. There's probably 100, though. But any other ideas for a fear of rejection? Anyone? I think my client says whenever we need, we will call you, don't call us again.

Okay, so that's, yeah. So you don't, that's again, you don't want somebody to tell you no. So I think that actually might be my second one, which is negative feedback. Yeah. So negative feedback. Either you don't want them to tell you no so that you can't follow up with them anymore, or you're afraid that they're going to judge you and be like, oh, you know, I didn't click that. You know, don't ever, I have some ladies just do this to me the other day.

All caps. Don't ever call me again. Someone use my name and info. I'm going to call the business bureau if you do this again, blah, blah, blah, and all caps, you know, and sent me that text. And so we definitely, we don't want the negative feedback. We don't want them to leave a bad Google review. We don't want them to, you know, do anything like that. But is that going to stop us?

We can't let it stop us. So any other ideas for another. another reason why we don't call when we should. Okay. Lack of time. Okay, yes. Okay, so that is on here, yeah. So we'll get to that, but lack of confidence is also one.

So lack of confidence, I will just get into this one because it's the next one on my list, but we'll get to the lack of time, which is a huge one. So lack of confidence. I remember, I used to call, okay, look, I've made 100 calls a day or more for 40, years now. And I used to call all kinds of people about real estate coaching and all of this stuff. And when I first started doing it, I overheard all these teenage guys, which was really strange, but that's a whole other story, doing it at a very high level. And they sounded so professional. And they sounded so good. And I've always been good on the phone. But I had this intimidation factor

that I just, I was like, oh my gosh, you know, how am I going to sound like that? So every day when I would go to work. I would practice exactly what I was supposed to say on my 45 minute drive to work. I would say, hi, this is Sarah Witt, and I would go into it. We have a really exciting real estate training event coming up in your area. Would you like more information or whatever I said, which is actually what I said. And eventually, so once they said, yeah, we want info on the training event, then we would go into, all right, would you like a free coaching session, right? And I remember the guys told me, I started setting way more appointments than them for the coaching session. And they told me, people feel sorry for you. I was like, what? I was like really offended by this.

I was like, okay, maybe they do because I heard them. They sounded so professional. But I was just being me. I was being real. And I didn't really have confidence in myself at that time. But because I was being genuine, people could see it through it. And they wanted what I had to offer. And they saw that I wasn't sitting here trying to scam them or something. I hope that resonates with some people. So, okay, so the next one is you're uncomfortable, right? Some people just totally uncomfortable on the phone. They don't know how to, they know how to get into it.

This actually leads to the next one, which is you don't know what to say, right? You don't have a script. You don't know how to go into it. If I was to do a listing presentation, oh, my gosh, like, I want to know where. I don't know where to start. If you guys do some hard stuff, calling somebody to me is not hard, okay? Creating a contract and not messing up hard. Calling someone, not hard, okay?

Like, this is what I want to convey to you because I couldn't do what you do. I mean, I probably could, but I hated it, right? But you guys do it and you hate what I do. So let me help you see what I do is not hard. you just have to be yourself on these calls. You just have to show people who you are. And you don't necessarily need a script, but a script can help you get to the point where you're comfortable, right?

Before I came on this age of power model, find out I'm going to be a speaker at an event that is massive. This is life-changing. And my heart's pounding. So you can hear it in my voice, right? Like you can hear I'm like out of breath and I shouldn't be. And all day I'm just trying to like zen. but I'm practicing this.

I'm practicing what I'm going to tell you guys. And it's never the same. And it doesn't have to be the same. But the information that I'm telling you, I believe in, right? I believe in it. And I know that this is helpful. And I know that it can change the industry. So if you know that you're the best agent to help someone,

then you should be able to convey that. And it doesn't have to be perfect. And as a matter of fact, you do not want to be professional. because all the salesy people around me, they weren't set in appointments. And if they felt sorry for me, fine. I was setting appointments.

I was setting seven appointments a day in four hours. They were setting one. And I don't even know if those were legit, but that's a whole other story. Okay, so the next one, time management. Time management. This one, man, nobody, now this is the thing about time management.

Most of you don't want to do it. So you don't manage your time to do it. Am I right? Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, and then once you finally do decide, okay, I'm going to sit down and do it, maybe then the other problem comes up. You don't have any ability to focus because you're like, now I'm sitting here.

I know that I need to do this. I put it on my calendar. I'm going to sit here. Now I'm going to check my email instead. Now I'm going to look at this instead. But we all know that the ways to get more business, is to prospect. You have to have conversations.

You can't just sit there. Like, look, if I just got my real estate license, paid my MLS dues, paid the Ekey card, the gnar, all the things that you have to pay. And then I just sat down and I kicked back and I was like, yeah, business. Come on down.

I wish it doesn't happen. Even my own family. Sorry, sister. But yeah, they didn't use me. They all know, I passed my real estate exam. You posted on social media, right? Like, I'm over it, by the way, don't mind. But this happens, right?

And our feelings are hurt. But we have to have conversations. We have to convey what we can do for people, especially when we're good at something, right? Which is why, even though a year ago, I never would have thought that I could speak in an event. Never would have thought. I always had this high, high anxiety.

I'm the most outgoing person you'll ever meet. But I volunteered to speak one time in front of 500 people at a leasing event because I was one of their top salespeople for renting apartments. And I stood there and I got the microphone and I thought I was going to pass out because my heart just started pounding. And I volunteered to do it. But my heart starts pounding. I'm freaking out. So anyway, I got off track. But the point is, is that.

that when you have something to say, when you know that what you're doing is something that you need to do, then you can get through it. So the inability to focus leads to the next thing, which is your environment. Okay. Your environment is key to how you prospect. You might be working from home like me and you might have dogs that bark at everything, kids that interrupt everything, you know, maybe a spouse or something like that. Neighbors, who knows? The phone ringing, I have to turn, you know, put it on mute. Do not disturb.

There's certain things that we can do. So we're going to get into all of these things in just a second. So how can you overcome these things that hold you back, right? So I'm going to start with goals. You want to set goals. you can't just say, okay, yeah, I'm going to like, I'm going to do it. And then not track what's happening, okay? If this is important to you and you want to get to the point where you're doing this

consistently, you need to set them goals. And they need to be simple goals. You can't go from zero to 60. You need to think about it. You're not going to be like, okay, some of you might have got on here and heard me say, I make 100 calls a day. And then you're like, well, I'm never doing that. Bye.

Right. Yeah, exactly. I don't expect you to. As a matter of time, I barely expect real estate agents to make one call a day, okay? Unless it's to another real estate agent about seeing a home or their client that they already have. Okay. So this is the thing. Set a small goal.

Nice little baby steps. Okay. Five calls a day. Five calls a day will turn into 10 calls a day. And calls a day will turn into something else. So I'm going to kind of breeze through these because it's supposed to be about fun. and I don't want to get stuck on anything. Visualizing success, oh man, I could do a whole agent power huddle on this.

So I'm just going to say it this way. Visualizing your success. If you are going into it thinking, I don't want to do this, nobody's going to answer. They're always going to tell me no. They're going to ask me to take them off their list. That's what you're going to get, nine times out of ten. Now, every once in a while, you'll get somebody that, you know, every once in a while, a scroll, a blind squirrel finds it, or whatever that's saying is, right? But you have to go into it

with the right mindset. And yes, exactly, Debbie. What if they say yes? Okay. Now, that is key. So this next one is positive self-talk. Now, first of all, let me rewind a little bit. So one of the things that you can do is something I learned at a Tony Robbins conference, which I did right before this as a matter of fact because you can tell like my heart is just racing and it won't calm down from all of this news that I had but and I talk really fast but um you take five exaggerated breasts in and out like and you do it five times one two three four five right and at the end of it and close your eyes and at the end of it you want to visualize the outcome of the thing that you're doing so in this case I visualize you know me and my tea

after this age of power huddle and like toasting champagne because I just found out that I'm going to be speaking at this event and that's freaking incredible and you know and saying this went so freaking well and everybody loved it now is that the truth I don't know but in my head nowadays okay so you all are happy and smiling and think this is fabulous information thank you very much all right so positive self-talk is another one um yeah like I said earlier you can't go into it thinking, you know, I'm going to get a no. You're going to get a no if you do that. You'll give up too soon.

Don't give up too soon. Don't give up too soon. Like there are so many times, I even myself, like with landlines, I'm like, oh, landline. I hate landlines. I'm like, nobody's ever going to answer this line. One time I was calling landline for eight months and you know what? They finally picked up the phone.

And they said, yeah, we've been getting your messages. Yeah, we want to list our home now. You know, what? I was so ready to ride off landlines. and then they surprised me. And now I can't. Now forever, I'm going to have to keep calling landlamps, even though I don't want to.

There you have it. Okay. Set the stage, right? Set the stage means there's some things that you can do to help you, do, you know, prepare your environment. Have the right tools. Time block, you know, play music, right? Have fun, stand up, dance, you know,

have a little dance party with yourself. Do it with other people. There's all this other stuff. and we're going to get into the games that you can play while you make calls that will make it fun. So I will share with you one of my favorites. Well, most all of my favorites, really. Accountability partners, that's self-explanatory. Role-playing.

You can do role-playing. Obviously, if you're with EXP, there is a role-playing call. I think it's Thursdays at 9 in ESP World. I have attended one. but there's also coaches that can do it. There's, you know, you post in things. I'm going to create a Facebook group here real soon called the future. Follow up real estate.

And I want to create a role playing group. So I want this to be something because role playing actually helps you. It's terrifying. Just like speaking for me gets my heart racing. It can be terrifying. But it is what helps me so much and help my team. And actually gives them a lot of confidence. because then when they run into that whole, hey, yeah, I'm just waiting for the interest rates

to come down or the market's crash. You know what? We know exactly how to handle that. We know how to pick that apart and figure out exactly what's really going on what their real objection is. So that's my key on that. Remember your why. So I have in front of me a sticky note that I wrote when I got my real estate license. And it says, and I see it every day when I make my calls, says, I got into real estate to give my family a better future, to work on myself and for myself, to help others succeed and because I believed I would be great at it. That's my reminder. That's my why. This industry gives us so much. It's incredible. And for the people that work for it, they can speak at an event when they are no more than a year and a half licensed. Okay? It's crazy.

and never sold a home, by the way. Thank you very much. All right. Crazy stuff. All right. So the next one is have fun. Now, there we go. Now we find like 22 minutes

and we're getting into the actual reason for this call. But hopefully that was all helpful on information. Okay, so having fun. Follow games. The candy jar. This is one. So statistically, you know, only one out of 10 people answer the phone.

Okay? So there's a game that you can play. And also, statistically, you're going to get one out of 10 people tell you yes out of, so 10 knows, one yes kind of thing, right? Or nine knows and one yes. So every time that you call someone, you put a piece of candy into a jar when they tell you no. And then once that jar fills up, or you can do money, right, if you want to raise a ward yourself and take yourself out or something like that. But when it fills up, you know that soon that yes is coming, statistically, right?

It has to be real because it's statistics. Okay. So then you don't have to eat the candy. You don't have to use the money. But it's just a way to show you, okay, I've gotten this many nose in it. And then you look for the nose because you know the yes is coming. And once you get the yes, you can do what you want. What's the candy?

So that's one that's out there. KPI rewards. This is a cool one that I just saw. One of my friends who has a massive brokerage up in Michigan, he is giving away a BMW every year to the person who set the most appointments. He does this. He says it years and years and years. I just found out about it.

Yeah, a fully loaded BMW. He gives to the person that sets the most appointments every year and attends the event that he puts on up in Michigan. So that's a big reward. That's a big incentive. Okay. So if you want to incentivize yourself, you know, maybe there's something you want to buy and you're like, okay, well, I'm not going to buy that thing until I hit this number or something like that. So that's something you could do.

Ring that bell. This is something more for like a team. So if anybody here has an ISA team or an agent team or something like, you're prospecting together, which I would highly recommend, even if you're a solo agent, joining maybe a Zoom and calling in Zoom together in a breakout room or something. And like if you get on a call, share your screen and sound so everybody can hear it, but also have a breakout so they can go somewhere else if they're on. their own call. That's something that my team does. But ring that bell is basically every time

you set an appointment, somebody rings a bell, like metaphorically. So if you were in a Zoom room, you know, you would be like, ah, I got an appointment. And then you see the other success and then you can visualize it because now you're saying that it's possible and people are doing it. And if you hear what they're saying, then you feel more confident that you can take it and make it your own and do it yourself too. So, which is also something I did, by the way. The word game. This is really fun. Um, especially with other people, but you can do it yourself too. Um, we used to do this. And we had like, I don't know, there were like five of us. And we would every call when we got somebody on the phone, we would tell them they had to say a word like Hogwarts. Something just

ridiculous. You're like, how are you going to say Hogwarts on the call? If you didn't say that, then you had to like buy everybody a Starbucks or something like that. But if you said it, you know, then everybody, you know, you keep going, right? You get, you win or whatever. But it's not easy. you know, Ardvart, how are you going to put that in there when you're talking about real estate? You could also just say, you know, hey, like, do you want a home that looks like Hogwarts? I mean, that's probably what I do. But anyway, challenge yourself. Try to try something like tell yourself to try to say something like that.

And that brings me to the next one, which I don't recommend if you're calling for yourself. This is only for ISA who are calling other areas too. you can give yourself an accent to make it fun. Like I used to call it, I called all over the country. And when I called Texas, they were so nice. And they'd always pick up the phone. And they always had an accent. And I would throw in a little twang.

It was nothing serious, but it made it fun because, you know, or you could go really extreme. But anyway, that is something you don't want to do if you're actually calling for yourself. And the next one is prospecting bingo. And soon I will get to your question at the end, just give me a second. Prospecting, Bingo. This is my favorite one, and this is the one that I actually want to share with all of you.

This is what you do. This is going to be anybody, and I will share this with anybody that asked me for it, too. Or you can take a picture of it, or you can make your own in Canva. It doesn't matter. I've also shared this in the workplace group, inside sales agents general and workplace. It doesn't look exactly like this one because I just made this one for this purpose, but I think booked an appointment should be right in the middle. And basically, you can adjust it to whatever's going on.

That's why I have waiting for the market to crash on here, right? Because we hear that every day. These are the things we hear. I'm in a meeting. I'm at work. I'm looking for a friend. That's what just, you know, I'm looking for my yesterday. I'm looking for my granddaughter, something like that, right?

Those are the excuses we hear. So these are fun. and just like with the BMW. So when I led my team, I don't know, there was probably like 15 of us. We had inside and outside sales. We would do the bingo. And if anybody got a bingo,

I would give them like a $25 gift card. It was fun. And it was a way to, you know, engage everyone. And so hopefully you can find a way to do it. You know, you have fun ones in here like, let's see. Like they agree to market updates, right? or they are actually interested, you know, interested buyer, interest a seller. You can do it however you want.

But these are pretty much the things we hear, you know, that person's dead. I already have an agent. I was just looking. They hang up on you. They tell you their life story that's on here. I never showed up an online form. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a really good one.

I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Like that wasn't me. It wasn't me. Actually, I started to write that on here. I don't know why I took it up. But yeah, definitely. So those are some things that you can do. And now I saw your questions too much. So people think that we are begging for business. What do you say? I say, so what? Show them that you're not. Okay. Because here's the thing. When I call people, I am super, super honest. I'm like, hey, if I'm calling it old lead, I have one of my clients, they sent us leads from 2000. 2017 that people that attended a Camp War Eagle event, which is like for Auburn, Alabama, I think is a university. A university. I'm not even exactly sure. But either way, they wanted us to call these leads and ask them if they found housing for their student. 2017, their students already graduated. You know what? Well, they gave us a lead. We're going to call it. So we're like, hey, this is going to sound really, really strange. But like several years ago, you attended a Camp War Eagle event and met our real estate team there. and we just want to check in with you and see if you're thinking about buying or selling a home in the area this year.

You know? And, you know, that's it. A lot of times they say no, but guess what? They say yes too. It's shocking. So does that help? Okay. And then just the more authentic you are.

Don't try to be salesy. I cannot stress this enough. You have to be yourself. You have to be yourself. you cannot don't go in there. Hello, this is Summa with the EXP team over it, you know, whatever, right?

Is that how you talk? Yeah, probably not. No, you don't want to talk like that. You want to talk like, hey, I'm Summa. Like, right? Hopefully I'm saying your name right. Hey, I'm Summa. I'm with EXP Realty.

I don't know if you are. Sorry, if I'm blowing you up right. Okay, all right. You know, and then just be like, I saw that you click this thing online. I know, a lot of people just click things, but just in case you are hoping to buy or sell, I want to make sure that I don't drop the ball on you.

You gave us your contact information. Remember this. They gave you contact information, right? So, yeah, begging for business, what? Well, what about the people that are like, why didn't you call me? Why don't you call me? I called someone yesterday.

I wanted to share this earlier, and I'm sorry, we are almost, we are out of the time, but I'm going to share it anyway. The reason that I do this job is because I call somebody others today and it was like a breath of fresh air it was like the most amazing call she's like oh my gosh yes i'm so happy you call it she clicked a an ad what did she click she clicked on a home it was a street text um custom listing on 27 acres in nevada city that was very specific sorry anyway she's like look i just got a raise i'm making six figures now i'm gonna be i'm gonna buy my

first home and i cannot wait i don't have an agent i've got 15 000 down i mean she was ready. Yeah. Right? And I was so excited for her. I can't have my excitement for her. She's excited. I'm excited. I'm excited for the agent that gets to work with her now. Like those happen, right? And you have to know that. Because if I'm just like, okay, well, she might think I'm begging for her business.

Well, then I don't call her. And then somebody else is going to call her, right? Yeah. And then what? Now this person who's now making six figures and is all ready to go. and she's like, help me out, is going to go with somebody else. Because like nine times out of ten, they go with the first person that makes contact. Okay. Okay. Any other questions, comments, concerns, anything else? Yay. What do you think is it better to hire the ISCA and do it ourselves? Okay, so I'm going to be very honest with you. It's better to do it yourself.

It's better to do yourself. Now, there is every other ISA, company and every other I say in the world will tell you otherwise because they will take your money. Yeah. Just don't let them. Because if you have the time to do it yourself, do it yourself. Because you can represent you the best. And I say can do a pretty good job. And my team is amazing at it. Um, but it, what's that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I eventually maybe bring somebody on your team. There's all different ways to do it, which I will be, like I said, doing this ISA series through EXP and everything like that. It will be on YouTube. So I do talk about the difference between hiring somebody for your team

and hiring an ISA service. But if you can, I'm adamant, like make the calls yourself if you can. It's really, it's really better for you. Save the money. And you're the best person to represent you. That's the way. So I am so glad you guys were here today and interactive. I really appreciate it. And I thank you all for. Thank you. Yeah. I hope it was good info. And if you want the cold call being or the prospecting bingo sheet, let me know.