Agent Success Stories
Snapshots from Success Faster: On Fire Hot!
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Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks ...
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[Adapted from Success Faster On Fire Hot! ©2020]
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The Minister Guy In Mississippi: One Call Per Day
The Investor in Vegas: Soft Spoken
The High-end in LA: Spending $$ to Make $$
The FSBO Guy: 21 in 3 Months
The Door-Knocker: New Shoes Every 3 Months
The Teacher in SD: Home Every Day at 3
The International In NYC: Power Package
They Had One Car: Walkable Neighborhood
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
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Mark Metcalf, The Minister Guy In Mississippi: One Call Per Day
This first story has a story within the story, a bit of a side story.
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When I first wrote this out in probably 2016 with the first draft of the first version of Success Faster, I had pulled the story from my business journals. I always remembered this guy’s story and told it often in classes, but I never remembered his name and I had failed to write it down in my journal. When I am writing those journals, they are simply notebooks full of notes from conferences, speakers, and classes. They are very quickly written notes meant simply to remember pertinent points that I would be able to take back home to my agents. If you’re like me, you do not always catch the person’s name unless they leave it on the screen for a while. Otherwise, it passes by as you quickly scribble down some of the pertinent points. I did not realize, at the time, that those notebooks would one day morph into book material.
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Fast forward a couple of years after publishing Success Faster, the first edition, and I get an email from Mark Metcalf, a broker in Jackson, Mississippi and he says, “Hey, a friend of mine showed me your book and I think I am your rookie preacher guy. Call me.” I call him, it was a super fun conversation and, yes, I found my rookie preacher guy.
This 30-something’s real passion, his mission, was coaching and training pastors. He helped ministers and churches bring more people in the doors. He started in real estate because he needed a flexible financial solution that would fund his mission. Real estate was not the end, it was the means. And here was his key: he knew everyone.
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Some REALTORS® are phone volume freaks; this guy, seriously, he made one real estate lead gen phone call per day. One. And each daily real estate lead gen phone call typically resulted in an appointment. There are agents that it takes twenty phone calls to garner one appointment; Mark’s ratio was close to one-to-one. His script was something like “In order to continue making an impact on churches and ministers in our area, I have to have three real estate appointments every week with someone who may need my services. Who do you know who is thinking of buying or selling and will you make the introduction, ask them to meet with me?” It worked. Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
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The Door-Knocker in Canada: New Shoes Every Three Months
This 30-something guy used to sell air conditioners door-to-door in Toronto or Vancouver, somewhere cold. AC’s in Canada, take that in for a minute. It’s like selling expensive winter coats in Phoenix, not everyone needs one. His previous sales career was solely door-knocking. He was used to going door-to-door for eight hours a day. He said he wore through a new pair of shoes every 90 days. He was the top AC sales guy in his company. Knocking on doors was all he knew how to do. When he realized how he could take his current activity and seriously increase his paycheck, seriously increase the ROI on a pair of shoes, he jumped industries. When he learned that the lead generation benchmark for a top producer in real estate was three to four hours per day -- in other words, door-knocking for half of the time he was accustomed to, half the shoes, half the doors with a much higher paycheck -- he was all in. Mr. Canadian door-knocker was a National Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
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The Investor in Vegas: Soft Spoken
This 50-something guy was mild and soft-spoken and had been personally investing in real estate for years. On the side from his full-time casino job, he had rentals and flips and his friends and colleagues were regularly asking him for help, help to find the deals, partnering on flips, negotiating with a FSBO, finding financing and investors. He was the go-to helpful guy before he even had his license. He was creating a healthy portfolio and was beginning to help his family and friends do the same. The writing was on the wall. He had a zero marketing budget, was low-tech, definitely not salesy. He was the smart, nice guy who people trusted. All of his clients were people he already knew or that they knew. Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
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The Teacher in South Dakota: Home Every Day at 3
This 40-year old mother of three was tired of teaching and wanted to meet her kids at the school bus. I’ve always said there is a teacher or two or three out there right now in every state who, five years from now, will be a top producing agent in his/her town.
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Teachers make great Realtors. They’re hard-working, know everyone, and negotiate their way through every day. Yes, the skills a teacher learns in managing twelve-year-olds and parents and administrators come in handy in real estate. Most teachers I know, and I’m married to one, have personal fortitude beyond their years.
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So this gal in South Dakota, her price point, the average price of a home in her area, was much lower than Mr. Door-Knocker Canada and Mr. Investor Vegas. She sold twice as many homes as those guys. Her key was really two things … her hustle and she knew everyone.
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And she caught the veterans off-guard. While the veteran Realtors in Sioux Falls or Rapids (or what is the capital of South Dakota? I forget what town she was in ...) were cruising on their reputations, she was steadily gaining market share. She started running circles around them and they were not even aware of that until her sign was showing up more than theirs. She hired an assistant early on because she was innately aware that she needed to spend most of her time face-to-face with buyers and sellers. And it was a non-negotiable that she would be home with her kids at 3pm … her clients understood this. She would not allow herself to get buried in the deets and she was committed to having a schedule that kept her priority on her family. Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
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The High-end in LA: Spending Money to Make Money
Every year it seems there is a Rookie of the Year finalist who is super high-end. A talented rookie who goes after the multi-million dollar market right out of the box. None of the “oh I have to earn my stripes in the middle before I venture into luxury” mindset. Often, these luxury rookie superstars are already in that genre of wealth, a sort of real estate silver spoon.
I already know what you’re thinking. You think these multi-million dollar price point lucky dogs have it easy, that they only need a deal every other month to rank as a top producer, that there is more luck and family tree involved than talent and hard work. You think that by some unnatural chain of events, they got to list Oprah’s estate, end of story. Not this 30-year old success story.
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Mr. High-end in LA knew he wanted this market and knew he had to have top-notch, high-end, expensive marketing and support to make it happen. Mr. High-end in LA spent a lot of money to make a lot of money. Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
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The International In NYC: Power Package
This 40-something female phenomenon in Manhattan was European, drop-dead gorgeous, had some sort of advanced degree in international business. She dressed to kill. She was a power package in high heels and went after one very specific market, international buyers. She was multilingual (so American of me to point that out, like that is actually a resume highlight when most Europeans are multilingual) and did 100% of her marketing attracting international buyers online. Yes, a high price point and a very narrow focus. Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
The FSBO Guy: 21 in 3 Months
This guy had 21 for-sale-by-owner listings within three months of being licensed. FSBO, it’s all he did. Narrow focus. I do not remember anything more about him. I simply remember that FSBO is all he did and he had 21 of them signed up for his services within three months. I seem to recall that he did not want to work any other part of the market besides listing FSBO’s, he referred everything else out. Rookie of the Year finalist.
Agent Success Stories:
Rookies of the year, amazing out-of-the-box successes, momentum grabbers, freshman freaks
They Had One Car: Walkable Neighborhood
There is one other gal I remember where all she serviced was her immediate walkable neighborhood because she did not have a car. And she rocked it because she went all in. I have shelves full of notes from real estate conferences. Stacks of notebooks, blog articles, plus a 145-page running journal of notes and industry insights. In fact, that 145-page running journal was this book in its infancy. Think you have a book in you? Start journaling or blogging on the topic every day and see where you’re at in six months. Fortunately, that journal is searchable and I was able to resurrect the Rookie of the Year gems, advice, and words of note from some very successful first-year agents and insights from endless hours spent on blogs and webinars and observing agents get their start.