Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.
Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have David Hill. He has been a top-producing real estate agent for over 21 years, with over 35 years of experience as a phone sales trainer. David spent 17 years at Keller Williams as a trainer and 3 years at EXP Realty. In his first year at Keller Williams in 2002, David sold 42 homes through phone prospecting, far surpassing the average of only 6 homes per rep. He became 1 of 100 National Sales Trainers for Keller Williams to help train their 140,000 agents. In 2020, David left real estate sales to pursue his dream of training and coaching. So thank you so much for being on the show today. David.
David:
Thank you, man. Appreciate <laugh>, appreciate you having me.
Charles:
Yeah, so it’s awesome that we have some on here that’s a sales professional that really spends their time in the real estate realm. So, before you becoming a, a sales and marketing coach, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, both personally and professionally?
David:
Yeah, I mean personally, I’m, you know, I’m a father. I have three amazing daughters ages 32, 9 and six, if that gives you the <laugh>, the Spread <laugh> amazing wife you know, married for 14 years. And yeah, I’m just blessed, you know, as, as far as that a family man. And then my business, you know, 35 years I’ve been in sales. I started a long time ago at a call center for Kirby, those vacuum cleaners. That, that, and was
Charles:
That door to door, is that started?
David:
No, I, I was, I was the guy in the call center that set up the appointment for you. Yeah. Like you may, I never went door to door for Kirby. Okay. But I set up the appointments for the guys that went door to door. And then from that I ended up working for for Chase or credit card company, you know, 30 years ago or 32 years ago. You could call people and get them to do a credit card application on over the phone. And thank god they changed that. ’cause I didn’t realize, you know, I was just doing my job, but there were probably a lot of people that shouldn’t have been doing credit card applications, you know? And then I went into publishing. We published a magazine. I, I helped to build a local, a regional magazine by cold calling telephone books and, and just door to door. That’s when I went door to door business to business. And then I got into real estate in 2000 and 2002 and ended up working my way all the way to the top up, up Keller Williams to be in Gary Keller’s mastermind group with the top 100. And yeah, just, I’ve been in sales my whole life. I love it. I’ve wrote in a book on it, and yeah, so it’s it’s part of my DNA man.
Charles:
So why did you choose real estate out of everything else? I mean, every industry has selling at some point. Why would you choose real estate?
David:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Que a good question. I mean, I, I chose it. I didn’t necessarily choose real estate. I, my, my, my 10 year back at, you know, my 33-year-old back then was 10. And she came to me and she said, dad, you should get your real estate license. Mom’s friend Sue makes a lot of money selling real estate. And I was thinking like, yeah, do I not make enough money or something <laugh>? But but anyway, I I, I thought about it. I, at the time I said, that doesn’t make sense. But I woke up the next morning and it was on my mind to get my real estate license. So I, I ended up going, doing the, the, the, the schooling for it, the 40 hours or whatever it was back then. And, and, you know, the rest is history, man. I mean, it’s, it’s opened up so many doors for me. You know, focusing on the real estate. It, it, it’s, every, everything that I’ve done over the last 21 years really has, has been an extension of, of me growing my real estate business.
Charles:
Oh, that’s great. That’s great. So, one thing when you said you’re, you know, you’re a sales trainer for real estate investors real estate agents mostly, and so I read a stat on Investopedia that stated that most real estate agents fail in their first year while I read another one that’s saying it was within their first eight months. So, I mean, there’s so many real estate agents out there, not many of them last. What makes I mean, what makes a real estate agent fail or go past that for near and on their, on their route to being successful?
David:
Yeah, I, I, I, it’s, I think it’s expectations, first off, coming into it. I think a lot of times people think it’s easy. And, and if you looked at real estate in, in general, the, the 1.5 million real estate agents out there, I’m sure that number’s gonna go way down based on what’s happening now. But the, the majority of ’em only sell houses a year because they just, you know, they have a license. They, they know people when, when somebody they know, you know, knows them, they’ll reach out to ’em, Hey, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna sell my house. Oh, great. Amazing. They come over and they list it. And, you know, that can typically happen for most people, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 times a year just because of the people. You know, if you’re a good guy, if you’re a good person, good, good, good, good, good lady, right?
David:
But the challenge is when you try to make a career outta that, now it’s like, okay, I gotta go find other people that don’t know me yet, and I don’t know, and I’ve gotta reach out to them and I’ve gotta get uncomfortable and I’ve gotta be persistent. I have to have follow up. And, and that’s where I think a lot of agents, they, they, they, they don’t have the right expectation going in that this is gonna be a lot, it’s gonna be work. This is not just like, Hey, ’cause people say like, Hey, you know what man, you are, you’re such a nice guy, Charles, you should be a salesperson. Well, being a nice guy is, is fine, but it does not equate to being really great at sales.
Charles:
No, I can say, yeah, you’re starting your own business. So it’s, I don’t think people really understand that. And then you know, maybe they don’t choose a brokerage or something like that, that’s really yeah, that’s part of it helps with them. I mean, that gives ’em support or whatever. But so, you know, years back I became a real estate agent and, you know, usually I use it just for making referrals. But you know, I realized that while getting it, you get on a lot of mailing lists and like recruiting agents is like super competitive. So I imagine you work a lot with brokers building up their agent bases. I mean, how does that work? I mean, how can brokers find good agents? Maybe ones that are already experienced or maybe other ones, I mean, how do they sort through maybe the ones that aren’t gonna be a hundred percent serious and find ones to put on their team that are a little bit more serious?
David:
So during my my, my journey, I was, I dunno if I, this isn’t in my bio, but I, I was a team leader for Keller Williams for two years, and we, we recruited over 200 agents into that office in Hartford, Connecticut. It was me. And I had a small team of administrators and people that helped with like, onboarding and stuff. And, and, and you know, I, I think, you know, if, if you’re looking for, for for, you know, people that are gonna last you know, you, you need to you know, have some, some you know, some, I don’t wanna say filters, but I think, you know, when you’re, when you’re meeting with people, you, you should, as I said earlier, you should be setting the right expectations for people. You should have standards as to who am I gonna hire?
David:
There’s, and I think that’s one of the challenges, Charles, is a lot of times, you know, you, we go out, we get our real estate license, or somebody’s been doing it long enough, they open a brokerage and they just take anybody that shows up. Like anybody’s like, oh, hey, I want, I wanna work with you. Okay, great. Come on in. Instead of having a standard saying, well, hey, I wanna let you know that if you come work for me I want to, I want you to be full-time. You, you can’t have a part-time job. And most that’s gonna eliminate 70% right there. Just say, ’cause, ’cause most people, the reason they’re not successful beyond what I said earlier is that they can’t dedicate enough time because they already have a job. You know, and then saying, Hey, you know what, another, another standard we’re gonna have is I’m, I’m gonna want you to talk to at least 20 people a week.
David:
Like, have conversations. ’cause When you do that, you’re gonna be more successful. Oh yeah. I’m willing to do that. Great. I, I think just setting, setting ’em up for, for success, you know, and I think that one of the challenges is, you know, real estate agents join. Their friend told ’em it was easy. They think it’s easy. They watch the shows on TV million dollar listing and, and they think that’s how it is. And it’s, it’s, it’s not, I mean, some days, yeah, some days you’ll, you’ll get a day like that, but most days it’s not like that. It’s you on phones, it’s, it’s emailing, people texting, going to networking events, reaching out, following up 10 times. But, but that’s not the glamorous part that I think a, a lot of us see. So I don’t even know if I answered your question on, on recruiting, but I, I think it’s just getting out there and get, having conversations and, and talking to agents that are you know, that are, that are you know, looking for something better.
Charles:
Yeah. I never thought about the full-time. One that’s huge. I was reading a stat years back that was like 60% of agents, you know, you know, that work 60 hours a week or whatever it is. Or the agents that work 60 hours a week are the ones that are making like over $150,000 a year on average, whatever it was. And it’s like a huge difference with people that are just part-time. So you really have to kind of go all in on it. And I think, like, you’re right, most people don’t, and a lot of those marketing emails I would get from brokers, it would all be about price. Right? There wasn’t anything like assisting with it. It was all price. And that’s
David:
One, and when you say price, you’re, you’re referring to like, our percentage is lower, right?
Charles:
The brokerage fees were lower. Yeah, right. Just to get more money. But it wasn’t, I saw a couple that came across that were like, you know, that were much more, that much more making you a business partner in training you, you know what I mean, in their company. And I saw, and they’re like, we have a lot of leads. We have this, we have that we do full time. And you know, obviously he’s, that person’s not getting as many people reaching out to them. There’s not someone that just sends me something, oh, it’s three 50 for every closed thing and good luck. You know what I mean? And you have no idea what you’re doing. And which makes it risky for the broker too, because now they’re actually, you know, their insurance and their name is on the line with this person just going kind of rogue. You know what I mean? But ’cause you don’t learn that much in, I mean, you learn some stuff in the, going through all the exams and all the stuff like that, but not really, you know, a ton of stuff. It’s
David:
Like to be too short not to sell. Yeah, yeah. And you don’t, you don’t, they don’t teach anything in, in selling real estate. It’s just how to get licensed and not, not not go to real estate jail. Right. <laugh>
Charles:
<Laugh>. So there was a, I mean, there, there was a a big thing that happened in the news for real estate agents. It was an NAR lawsuit. And you know, I, I hear different things when I talk. I’ve spoken to a couple real estate agents about it. ’cause This happened about a month ago or so, or a couple weeks ago from this time. But it was you know, some people are in like kind of denial. Some people don’t really know about it in the sense of like where, you know, and I don’t know either. That’s why I’m asking them. But, you know, can you give us a little background about what this is and then you know, what your take is on it for agents?
David:
Yeah. Well, I, I’ll just disclaim first. I’m not an expert on it. I’m not an attorney. I, so I can give you my, my opinion on it, and I, you know, I know it’s been going on. I’ve known about it for years. It’s actually been going on since 2019. There’s been talks of it, I think started around 2017, but the case has actually been bouncing around. It’s turning into something very big right now. That’s gonna definitely my thought is it’s gonna change the industry forever. It’s gonna change the way that we, we sell real estate. And I, and I think that the, the thing that really brought it on in my, and again, in my opinion is real estate agents is not explaining really how the commission works to the seller. So I think most real estate agents would show up and say, Hey, I charge 6% or I charge 5%.
David:
And that was the extent of it. And then they would offer half of that out to another agent, which does not represent the seller. It would almost be like paying an attorney, like saying, Hey, my attorney we charges you a $20,000 to take your case and then brings in another attorney to, to negotiate against you to represent the other party and gives them half your money. I mean, that’s got maybe not the greatest metaphor, but it, it, it, in a way, it helps you understand because essentially what you’re doing is you’re, you’re, you’re compensating somebody else to come in and, and, and, and negotiate against you. Now, one of the things that we started doing a long time ago, somebody, somebody taught me this maybe it was in 2015, was when somebody says, well, how much do you charge? I would say, I charge 3%, and you’re gonna start hearing everybody do this now.
David:
I charge three, or, or whatever you charge, I I, it doesn’t have to be three whatever you charge. And then we’re gonna, let’s figure out how much we wanna pay the other agents. And you know what, I would, I would explain to the seller, Hey, we could, we could offer this, we could offer this. And you know, the, the more you offer, the more incentivized they’re gonna be. But they, they understand it. And now here’s the challenge that I, that brought this lawsuit is, is the, the seller wasn’t able to say, I don’t wanna offer them anything. Or they could say, well, I don’t wanna offer ’em anything. And then we as realtors would say, well, that, you know, you’re probably not gonna get any showings. No one’s gonna cooperate. And so, but I think, now this is my thought, and we’re already seeing it, I think in New York has already implemented it, I believe New Jersey is you’re gonna start to see the MLS that’s gonna be offering zero compensation to buyer’s agents.
David:
And then the buyer agent will either get paid from, from the client themselves, or or they could just come negotiate. Like for me, I would say come negotiate. I, I mean, you know, if you’re gonna give my seller an offer that they’re happy with, I’m, you know, most sellers I know, as long as they understand what’s going on, I don’t think they would have an issue saying, Hey, you know what, to get this deal done. Sure, I’ll give away an extra five grand or, or whatever it is, right? That’s my thought process. But I think the challenge is when you don’t explain it the right way, which is, which is ultimately what’s created this, this lawsuit now, is it, is it, is it gonna, I I don’t know if it’s gonna go anywhere. I, I, I mean, I, I think it is. I think there’s a Chicago I believe just filed New York now. There’s, there’s, they’re filing. So it’s, it’s starting to pop up everywhere. So it’s at the least Charles is, it’s going to change the way we, we sell real estate moving forward when it comes to having, you know, buyer’ss agency and who’s paying the buyer and, and, and, and such. Yeah.
Charles:
Yeah, because it’s a normal thing. When I talk to agents here, I’m like, well, it’s a normal thing, you know, outside the country. For you two, just like you said the attorney’s a great example, I feel is where if you’re in a business transaction, I’m buying a business from you. You’re gonna have your own attorney, I’m gonna have my own attorney, you’re gonna pay your attorney, I’m gonna pay my attorney, and I’m gonna find my own attorney. And then, you know, we put them together. And I think that’s, people don’t like hearing that here, but I’m like, that’s something that like happens in the rest of the, you know, the rest of the world. And the commissions are much smaller too. You know, you go to these other countries and the aging commissions are, are much less than, let’s say two and a half or 3% on each side.
Charles:
But you know, every transaction’s different. I mean, it depends on what people are doing.
Charles:
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Charles:
But with one of the thing further into the kind of disrupting the traditional business model here in, in the United States is that, you know, you have large companies like Zillow, I guess Redfin you know, all these other companies that are out there that are really, you know, they’re, they have MLS listings on their website, but they’re really taking and scraping a lot of web data, and they’re really being an almost an in-between marketplace for agents and, and buyers. You know, where do you see that, I mean, in the future, do you see, I mean, how does that work into disrupting the real estate agency kind of business? That’s traditionally been around.
David:
I think you could go, probably go to my YouTube channel and go back 10 years and hear me talking about this. Because technology is going to disrupt the real estate space. And it’s, it’s, I I like to use the, the travel agent as an example. You know, I, I remember, still remember my first trip overseas well not necessarily overseas, but my first trip to Bahamas where I, I had to I had to, you know, I had to get a, a passport to go, right? I had to travel. And we, you know, this is 25 years ago, or yeah, about 25 years ago. We, we literally had to go downtown Worcester to the travel agent’s office, sit down with the travel agent. She pulled up everything for us, picked out our flights, right, created an itinerary. There was no other way to do it right now.
David:
But now obviously <laugh> to, to go to Bahamas, I can just go to Expedia or Travelocity and I, and now there’s some people that most people are gonna do that. But see, not everybody’s gonna do that, Charles, there’s still, like, I just took a trip to Hawaii and I didn’t know like, where to stay. I didn’t know what I, I didn’t wanna deal with it. So what did I do is I went and I called a travel agent, and honestly, I, I won’t call this travel agent again ’cause they weren’t unfortunately that good. But I still will find a travel agent now that knows the area, knows where to stay, knows what to do, and can guide me through that process. Now, there’s gonna be people that want that Charles, but there’s also gonna be a lot of people that say, Hey, I’m just gonna go do this myself.
David:
And, and I think the, to to your question, the Zillows of the world, whether it’s Zillow or whether somebody creates a national MLSA public facing national MLS I think that that is a, a, a possibility. And then to, just to finish with that, I was on a call last week with a, with a group of people, and one of the gentlemen was a older gentleman, and he was sharing about his, his, his, his elderly mother was lives out in the very affluent. They live outside of Beverly Hills, California. And, and he was sharing how she is selling her house and how it is such an emotional process for her. She’s lived there her whole life. This is a multi multimillion dollar home. And, and how important it was for her to select the right agent. Going back to the travel agent story I shared, right?
David:
And, and so yes, there’s gonna be a, a, a, a good percentage, maybe more than half that will probably, you know move towards technology, but then there’s gonna be the people like that lady and the people that, other people that say, Hey, I want somebody to represent me. I want somebody to hold my hand through this. I, you know, and I, and I, so I think, I don’t, I don’t think it’s going away, just like the travel agent, yes, most travel agents are gone, but there are still travel agents out there, and the ones that are out there typically do really well right now.
Charles:
Yeah, I think that’s true. I don’t, I don’t see the model going away a hundred percent. And I think some people kind of, you know, they get really excited and say, oh, it’s all gonna be gone. No, I think you’re gonna have people that, I mean, selling a house, buying a house, it’s a lot of work. You know what I mean? And if you have someone that’s working alongside you that knows exactly that can, you know, filter through results and potential sellers and buyers I think that is something that is, has a lot of value. But you know, there will be, like you said, there’s people that book their own trips themselves and there’s still travel agents around. It’s just, maybe it’s a little different of what they service. They they offer now. But you said something earlier on about the 1.5 million agents, and I have to say, you know, I went through like oh 7, 0 8 when I was buying properties investment properties.
Charles:
And when I got to oh 9, 0 8, even oh eight, end of oh 8, 0 9, when I was buying properties from, you know, maybe from oh six was the last time I bought. And every like, you know, the whole business had was just, it would’ve been shaken up. There was some, there was I, you know, whole new agents I had to work with. Inspectors weren’t around, like the whole business changed. People were out, you know what I mean? Whole different career path. And I think that’s, you know, and I found when I was dealing with agents like in oh eight and oh nine, really professional agents, I found, you know, the ones that were still in there that really were valuable. They really had clients and books of business that they had built over the years. And I think a lot of that fluff just got to cut, cleaned out, maybe more so than a normal downturn. And maybe more so of what you’re saying it might happen here, but it’s just, it, it’s true that you have a lot of these people that are kind of filtered through. So the good ones stand out
David:
100%. Yeah. Yeah.
Charles:
So working with a lot with sales strategies, with you know, people that are always working on phones, obviously real estate agents, you know, what are some sales strategies that maybe you worked through that were common with some of your agents that you trained at some of the brokerages?
David:
I, you know, I think for us, you know, I’ve been using A-A-A-A-A strategy for a long time, really it’s different, you know, five steps, which, you know, step one is really just like, how do you greet people, introduce yourself to people at the beginning of any sales process, really starts with making a connection, building rapport at a certain level. You know, you gotta know, you gotta know who you’re with too, right? Like, if you meet with me, I’m a high D doesn’t need to be a lot of rapport building. I, I don’t, I just wanna get into it, right? So I think that’s part of it too. Or you meet with other people, there’s gonna be people, like, if you don’t build rapport, this person’s gonna be like, I don’t like this person. They don’t care about me, and you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be done.
David:
So you gotta know you, you gotta know, first off, who are you dealing with behaviorally? How do they, how do they, you know, are they a DIS or CI think that’s important. Then, you know, you get into your fact finding, you know, asking great questions. We gotta practice asking deeper questions, figure out really like, what are people’s goals, their challenges, what’s keeping ’em up at night? And you think most real estate agents <laugh>, from my experience, Charles, they don’t even know like half the thing. Like, well, my clients moving into Florida, great. Florida’s amazing. Why? Well, they like nice weather, really. Okay, good, nice weather. Why else? They don’t even know most times, you know, it’s, it’s not all the good ones do, but you know, you figure out like why people are doing what they’re doing. And then, you know, third, you have a demo, you gotta, you gotta know how to present.
David:
And, and when you talk about presenting, it’s, it’s presenting to the challenges. It’s not just showing up. Like, I remember when I first got my license, I joined a team, the Steve Clements team, and he had a good guy. He, he taught me a lot. He taught me fizbos. But you know, he had a, a binder and we would sit down at the table and he would go through every page of the binder and we’d do this and he’d flip the page, and then we’d do this. And, and you could see the people, like in the first like two appointments I went on with him, he didn’t get either listing. And I’m like, this is, this is a mess. <Laugh>, you know, ’cause who cares about all that? Give people what they want, right? Demo, closing and handling objections is the next step. Teach people how to be effective with with, with just asking for the close, being confident.
David:
And if somebody says no you know, ask more questions, help them make a decision, handle objections. And then finally follow up. 80% of our business comes from follow up anyway, so having really, really good follow up systems in place. It’s critical. We do a webinar, by the way, if it’s all right, we everywhere every Thursday, Charles, it’s you can just go to david’s free webinar.com and almost every Thursday, not every single Thursday, but you know, three, at least three times a month, we do a sales training on webinar on Thursdays, it’s free. You just go to David’s free webinar dot com. You can jump on tomorrow. We’re talking about follow up, so I just kind of laid out the whole <laugh> sales process. But, but yeah, I mean, and so what, what I can do is I, can, I come in, I work with business owners now, and businesses and, and appointment setters, and I’ll look at their process and I’ll say, okay, here’s some things that we can, we, we can help make better for you.
Charles:
So it’s, it’s really interesting. I’ve, I have a friend that’s a really good wholesaler, and he would tell me that he would stay on the phone with people as long as he could, 45 minutes, and he wouldn’t even talk about the property and he would just like build the rapport with them. He’s like, and like the last five, 10 minutes we talk about the property and what they’re trying to do. But it was like, I mean, but he would, he’s like, I have extremely high closing on that because most people are just like, what’s your, you know, what’s the address? What do you want for it? Blah, blah, blah. And hey, I’ll send you an offer. And you know, it’s, if you actually, for people that have the time they’re gonna spend with you on the phone, I mean, you’re really building that rapport with your, with the person.
David:
Well, it depends on, I it depends on the industry. I mean, what he’s doing is wholesaling. I think it’s, it’s, it’s probably more important you’re getting somebody to sell their house at 50 cents on a dollar. So yeah,
Charles:
That’s in a tough spot.
David:
Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, and I’m, I’m wondering, yeah, anyway, that’s that’s <laugh>.
Charles:
So as we’re kind of following up here or finishing up how can our listeners learn more about you and all your, your businesses, your training programs?
David:
Ye David i hill.com is my is my main website. David I. Hill, I stand for Isaac. And then also we have a, a a a link tree, which is David hill.link. Usually everything that we have going on is, is on the link tree, so it pretty easy to get in touch with me. And on all socials, it’s da, it’s at David I. Hill YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, everything is at David I. Hill. So super, super easy to get in touch. Just remember David, I for you, not me, David, I hill and yeah, you, you can find me.
Charles:
Alright. I’ll put all those links into show notes and also for your webinar. And thank you. So thank you so much for coming on today, David.
David:
Yeah, man, it’s been a pleasure. Appreciate you and thanks for the great questions.
Charles:
Have a great rest of your day.
Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.
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