Realtors: This is the best cold calling training on the internet

all right so we're going to do something a little bit different on today's podcast episode we're actually going to take a real cold call from an agent who is prospecting an expired listing Dominic and we're going to break down that conversation for the audience just like we would do if we were coaching this agent on their call uh so that the audience can say okay wow we can hear a real conversation with a real Prospect and how these questions really get uh asked and then you and I can kind of break this down so I'm

really looking forward to to this with you for sure so um what I'll do is I'm going to play the call I'll stop it then you and I I mean obviously like our game films that we do with our coaching clients every Friday we'll kind of run it like that okay all right let's go let's rock and roll hello hello Joseph yes Joseph this is Alexis a local realtor before you hang up I was calling to see if you can help me out with something did you have a quick second yeah all right so what'

you think of the pattern interrupt yeah I mean it worked it worked he gave her the opportunity I think uh by and large that passes I think I would like to have seen a little bit more modulation in volume and tone but yeah I'm going to give that a passing grade yeah I mean listen it worked right so uh the point of the pattern interrupt is to immediately give the illusion of power and control to the prospect such that they don't feel like they have to become defensive and that's why compliance rates are so high

with a pattern interrupt versus calling somebody to say hey such and such this is this is a you know so and so I'm a real estate agent you know uh how's it going today anything like that doesn't work as well because you start to elicit so much defensiveness or psychological reactant that the pattern interrupt when done well when given the illusion of control to to the prospect that they feel feel as though they have the power and when they have the power they can't help themselves in addition to the Curiosity Loop to give you permission

which is the key thing in an intro give you the permission to have the conversation it's like them opting into a conversation rather than fighting this uphill battle like most agents have to deal with you know what I mean yeah so it worked for her she got compliance and she's open to hearing what she has to say I don't know if my record off I saw the property on stage coach came on the market did you end up selling that private or was it still available it's still avable okay so you and I just talked

about this literally before we hit hit record I like asking that question differently I purposefully instead of asking the question hey did you sell it or is it still available um the the challenge with that often times is that sometimes people say well why do do you have a buyer why do you have an offer and it puts you in a really really tough spot so I prefer asking the question you know uh Mr Prospect I was calling about this property on such and such streets saw that it had left the market this morning I'm

assuming that's because it's sold right yep and people automatically without even thinking about it I purposely get a no there what are your thoughts on on the question she asked or the first question you you'd want to ask yeah so the question that she asked that worked I mean that does work but if you sharpen it up a little bit and you give them a very specific reason to fight back well I assume that's because it's sold or I mean that's because it's sold right those two questions are much sharper and give the prospect the

opportunity to to give you a definitive answer without giving you some potential objections there or opening up the ation to the point where as you said hey well why do you have a buyer do you have an offer they're just going to tell you no it hasn't sold and then often times they'll tell you why yeah and that's the point and it's like if you ask what we would call a positive question there not only does it bring out potential objections but what happens a lot of times with expired is the conversation is over uh

as soon as they oh you're a realtor you're calling me to see if it's still available why because you want to list it right nope not interested take me off your list good goodbye and so if you ask a question in in a negative uh p uh perspective that we teach the person psychologically can't process it that quickly they just defend the truth that's the other psychological hack that's happening so when I say listen I'm assuming it's because it's sold they don't have any processing time all they're doing is fighting for the truth and all

they know in that very moment that Split Second is no it's not sold yeah okay so let's see how he responds okay and gosh I know things typically sell pretty quickly over there so I don't like that either did you hear what she said yep yep things typically sell pretty quickly over there now that oftentimes will just make an expired even more upset and so what I like to do is I like to follow that question up with a follow-up so when someone says no it's not sold I like to first off sometimes you can

kind of just go deaf on that right I'm sorry I'm sorry what was that uh no it's not sold and then I like to follow it up with well interesting is that because you didn't get any offers or the offers you were getting were just too low or or was it something else yeah and now we're looking to get the call from intellectual to emotional we want emotion emotion is good we want the prospect to get a good vomit and get them really emotional get them to to express all their pain because no pain no

sale so let's see where she goes with this thing okay kind of curious I guess I mean if you got a great offer now would you still you know sell it now or are you gonna wait okay don't love that question either so I really want to talk about this one this is probably one of the biggest mistakes that I see D okay so we would call this a yes oriented question are you interested in selling that question that framework almost should be deleted completely from a salesperson's repertoire it's the most natural question that a

lot of salese will ask but here's the problem with it is it comes across with this what we call perceived bias if you think about this for a second from the prospect's point of view you're asking me if I would be open to sell it well why would this person be asking me this because you're a realtor and you're looking for a listing and so what ends up happening is you don't get to the truth and so the prospect now you because you've asked that question and it comes across with a bias because you're trying

to get something from them you force them to become defensive even if they have motivation to sell you still Force the prospect to say they're not interested when perhaps they are so what I like to do with everything that we teach in the reverse selling world is to reverse the language and so again we're going to go for the no instead of the yes so instead of saying hey if you got a great offer would you consider selling you could say if you got a great offer I get the feeling it's probably too late you

never consider selling at this point right and again the brain doesn't have time to process that all they do is fight for the truth when you go for the no the negative we call it so when you go for the negative you can use uh Psychological reactants to your advantage because they say no you're wrong I would absolutely be open to an offer because you fought for the no and so this is the difference between fighting for Change and fighting for staying the same you and I go really deep on this so when you fight

for the prospect do something they fight for not doing something so all we've done is we reversed the the the pattern of language and we as the salesperson makes the argument for them not doing something to get the prospect to fight for why they should do something AKA their motivation your thoughts on this language pattern yeah I mean it it's a it's well-known sales psychology and psychology in general tells us that when a prospect feels like they can say no they're a lot more comfortable moving forward with the conversation because they feel empowered it makes

people feel like they're in control if they can say no that's right um yeah I would sell it okay I me she gets lucky right she gets like yeah yeah I would sell it okay good your agent was updating you each week on why it wasn't selling I guess did they give you any feedback I'm I'm really shocked all right so let's just clean that question up a little bit um so the question she asked I hope the audience will be able to hear this is hey when your agent was updating you every week and

this is a question that we used to ask all the time but we've kind of tried some new things and something works better than that we just use what we call a pure presumptive question we say well Dominic when your agent called you to tell you the home was coming off the market today why did they say the home didn't sell yeah yeah I mean that's a very a clean way of getting through that last question yeah because we know that the likelihood of the previous agent doing that is slim to none so we purposefully

do that to get the prospect to say well that's just the thing they they they didn't call me well that's what's so frustrating about this thing I'm just finding out now my house is off the market I haven't even heard from my agent in weeks you are purposefully getting them to get emotional to elicit some pain that you may be able to come in and solve eventually anything you want to add to that nope nope I'm on the same page with you there all right um the only feedback that we really got was a lot

of the people didn't like the cporn ceiling in the house but other than that they said it was the yard was you know very well manicured and more work than they wanted okay I mean yeah that that doesn't seem like anything major um I guess I mean can I make a quick recommendation Before I Let You Go all right so before that before that we still need to build this wedge between the Prospect and the agent we haven't gotten well you tell me I have not heard the prospect give a any type of pain B

we don't know anything around why the person's selling we don't know when the person's selling we don't know where the person wants to move we we don't really have anything to go off of and so we first have to get this information before we know if there's an opportunity here to generate a lead or an appointment I think well we'll see where she's going to go with this but what we want to do instead is to First build some some pain so he says well it's the popcorn ceiling and you know we got some pretty

good feedback I like to follow this up Dominic by asking another presumptive question like well that's interesting I guess let me ask you this based on the feedback when you're agent kind of walked you through what their strategy was going to be to start generating some offers based on the feedback what kind of things did they say they were going to do yeah well that's just the thing they didn't they didn't say they didn't say anything they didn't say anything no no they didn't say anything well I guess what do you think should have been

done well they should have done this they should have done you're starting to build this separation or we call the wedge which is super important between on an expired call we've got to build the wedge between the Prospect and their agent you almost want to get them pissed off to the point where yeah I've got to do something here your thoughts yep no uh exactly I would have asked that question about the agent right away I mean what when this feedback was coming in what were they suggesting that you do differently or that they might

do differently to overcome popcorn ceilings and to overly meticulous landscaping that's right of course the answer well nothing that's right and the thing is if the audience hasn't caught this already the reason why it's so important to ask presumptive questions that we know the answer to is because this is how Dominic I know you know this this is how we get prospects to realize for themselves that we're a potential option without saying we are a potential option so because we're the one asking the question what did your agent do or what did your agent say

they were going to do to start generating some offers based on the feedback a we know their agent didn't and B in the mind of the prospect the prospect thinks wow this person probably would have this agent I'm talking to who's asking the question probably would have had a plan on what to do about it this agent probably and I would didn't have to say it and so that's the key thing with asking those types of questions you know what I mean yep all right the other thing that she doesn't get here and we'll see

if she comes back to this is she doesn't get any motivation so we teach agents that we coach a framework that we call Dart d t desire ability reasons and time frame and she gets none of it and so this is what we call Bridging the Gap this is how we actually Bridge the phone call that we're on to the ability to get the prospect to invite us to their house without it there is no Bridge you're going to fall off the cliff and so we know that he said yeah I would sell it okay

good there's desire that's fine what we don't know is anything about why the dude's selling where the dude's selling when he wants to sell the most important parts would you agree with that I totally agree and she could have jumped straight to that instead of going for what she's going for now uh she could have jumped straight to that and asked about well listen I mean it looks like a nice house I mean why not stay there why not why not just keep it that is again a technique that we teach to fight for the

status quo we make the argument for them doing nothing because a question like that what type of responses do you typically get Don when you ask a question like that yeah well well you're gonna get one of two options they'll say well I mean it is an option to keep it or they'll tell you exactly why they can't keep it no we need the money to buy the next house no the neighbors are terrible here no the house is too small too big don't like the traffic they're going to sell you on why they should

move if you have somebody there if you don't have somebody there they'll tell you yeah we can stay that's right and this goes back to why you wouldn't ask that yes oriented question like well uh why are you moving a question like that gets responses like that's none of your business it's a dangerous question it's a dangerous question and then and then agents have the audacity to say prospects are mean I don't like prospecting because of the rejection when most of the time it's the agent that's getting this person to become defensive it's the agent

on the questions they're asking which are pissing off the prospect because we have a responsibility on how people respond to us the questions we ask Will dictate how they respond ask a bad question you're going to get a bad answer period all right let's see if she can recover yeah I mean I know it just called you out of the blue I mean I guess would you be totally opposed if you invited me over one day this week or maybe next and I can share the strategy we're using right now to get our clients home

sold despite the feedback that the buyers are saying and at that point you can decide if High make sense because I mean you're not going to do anything unless to make sense is that right right no you can't do that because I'm actually not living in California anymore okay so she attempts to go for the appointment she goes for the appointment way too premature and boom it backfires why because we don't know any of the reason she has to ask for the appointment to now get an objection nope I can't do that because I don't

even live in California anymore so we should have already known that this was like a move uh on the chess board that should have already been played and so now she's kind of be like all right where am I going to take this you know could we pick apart how she asked for the appointment probably I mean what feedback would you have for her on on the framework as far as how she positioned that appointment well she did I mean I don't I don't want to totally just chop her to Pieces here she did reference

uh the being able to work through what the buyer's feedback was to show him how they could work through the feedback that they were getting which is definitely something you want to do when you're when you're promising to solve a problem she didn't say exactly how she was going to do it it that's a good thing she mentioned what the problem was that's a good thing but where it went wrong is as you pointed out it's too soon like she hasn't got him to express what all of the pain is we just know we just

know that it didn't sell we're gonna yeah yeah the order wrong here that's right the order is wrong and I always like to before I go for an appointment I like to have some type of hook and to see kind of where I stand so I'm going to just like put my toe in the water and I'm going to test this thing and in this case again most problem in in a sales call in a sales conversation are because of what happened Upstream it's not now but since we're here now how would I have done

this differently I want to be really clear about that like we would have done a whole bunch of stuff differently that would have probably got us in in a different spot but if I'm here now and I'm going to ask for an appointment without any motivation I need some type of hook question so the hook question would be something along the lines of well well Dominic um can I just ask you something before I let you go and I'll be real quick um yeah yeah I mean based on this conversation I mean um do do

you have to sell this thing I mean if you if you did get the offer with the price in terms you were looking for at this point would you just throw it away I mean I get the feeling you just you're GNA put this thing on hold am I right no I mean yeah yeah one of two things is going to happen to your point either I'm going to end with where I'm already at which is a no I don't have anything so when I go what we call now a negative presumptive question like hey

I kind of just get the feeling that you're going to tell me you're going to just put this thing on hold it wouldn't matter if you got the offer with the price and terms you're looking for I kind of get the feeling it wouldn't matter right you're just going to tell me you're going to wait see when I go that direction I'm presenting the no so the prospect can either agree and say yep you're right but when they have something they can't help but fight for it that's the key thing and so I think what

you're about to do in that little role play is if you can get a prospect to bite on that hook to say well no that's not true yeah we would absolutely uh entertain that then I can say well can I make a recommendation well sure what are you thinking and then I can get into a better appointment setting framework like like well and I can just do a future Pace well Dominic let let's just pretend for a second that we actually did get together and after you saw my plan you genuinely believed that things would

happen a I'd get the home sold and B I could help you get off to Florida to get closer to your family I mean is there any reason that you can think of on why you would invite me over to explore this a bit more because let's face it I mean you're not going to do anything unless you felt it made sense am I right yeah and so and so that's how we would position getting that person to invite us over she got there a bit too early without the motivation and it's hard to so

let's see how she retracts I out of the house it was It was supposed to have sold back in uh was it supposed to have sold or closed on the 13th of July and so we had moved uh actually left California that day and you see she she should have got all this way before Dom yeah yeah it fell out of es I gave the people a 30-day extension and then they never followed gr see here comes all the pain here comes the nice good vomit and everybody feels better after a nice good vomit and

so she didn't get this earlier on then another guy made an offer and then he couldn't perform so it's just uh been a [ __ ] show there's some pain yeah now when we get some pain right we have to put them through something like some type of uh you know pain grinder is to get them to elaborate on the pain so that we can look for an accurate diagnosis before prescription yeah what were we gonna say now so so just so everybody's following along earlier in the call when we were a we would have

asked the question hey did is that because you weren't getting offers at all or weren't getting offers that you like or was it something else that's when he would have told her all of that in in the first paragraph of the entire script if she would have asked that question this would have come out after that question that's right that's right and so now she's going to go back and try to attempt to convince them to get this appointment but I think it's going to be tough uphill battle from here okay to say the least

I mean I guess is it an option just to keep it and rent it or or is there we go I mean you know what what was happening here she was learning in real time she said [ __ ] where where do I go from here and so she said okay got to change this somehow I'm in bad I'm in trouble here so that a great question let's see how he responds to that oh I I don't want to deal with a rental being out of state there we go I mean had she done this

in the beginning right so she I want the audience to hear this this is in real time what it sounds like to have to for you to uh make the argument for why the person should not do anything and now you've heard a real Prospect respond with their real motivation I'm out of state and I can't manage rental that gives us a lot more to work with yeah yeah I mean I guess what the agents pissed me off so bad that um this and it kind of but I had I've had three different agents one

last year and two this year and it just L such a shitty T by mou I told them I don't even care if the bank takes it back because I wasn't gonna allow them to get a 40 some thousand commission for absolutely doing nothing the 60 days it was an esro they didn't even bother to show it because they said that it was sold regardless so they didn't do anything wow okay so you guys didn't get any backup offers I know that's pretty soon they didn't solicit any didn't show any uh I think they showed

it once in the 60 days wow okay so I guess you're kind of looking for a situation where you're going to stay in um you know in touch on what exactly is going and then obviously even if you accept an offer still getting a backup offer so you know you can really get your money and I guess where did you guys move out of state uh well she's kind of crab walking now yep tring keep call going here yeah she's like I I just don't know what to ask I mean she's finally asking some motivation

questions but again it should have been sooner what I would have liked to do is again try to offer some type of Hook to and and and the way you have to do this has got to be really strategic I would say you know uh Bob can can I just ask you something can I be blunt sure what's up you know if I were to ask you uh if you'd be open to looking at a completely different I mean a completely different new way to approach the sale of your home um because of what you

just told me I kind of get the feeling you wouldn't even hear me out right you wouldn't even give me the time of day even if you genuinely believe I could do something different correct that's how we have to work back towards being productive you know what I mean like that's where I would have gone with this call to see can I be productive can I move the conversation forward instead of just going side to side yeah let's see what she does okay uh Washington State okay my uh wife and I grew up in Northern

California and she's been up in Bellingham 30 plus years we got married in December she's moved down in January to help me do a bunch of uh little things to house and then when it didn't sell and we finally moved back up there all the stress took her to and she's uh dealing with some PTSD from a a previous marriage uh leading to my divorce so it's just at this point now I'm just kind of Beyond it all just yeah kind of lost and F I can only imagine that I mean I guess you know

I mean would you be open to maybe getting on a zoom call and I can share the strategy that I'm using so now at this point we have to use stronger language would you be would you would you hate me if I were to propose us jumping on a quick Zoom we could talk listen I don't need you to make any decisions right now but would you hate it would you hate the idea of us jumping on a quick Zoom because you got to look at something right like you can't that's the type of language

I'd get into at this point her language right now is a little bit too mother mayi and I think this guy's going to just it doesn't matter at this point he's just going to resist yeah what are your thoughts yeah I mean same thing I think I would probably have I might have pushed back a little bit more and said hey I mean it sounds like you've just absolutely had a gut full of this you're willing to let the bank take the house back or I mean I don't suppose if there was a possibility of

getting it sold and getting you up to Bellingham you you probably wouldn't even you you're over that right you wouldn't even care about that beautiful or just ask this question you know what let me just ask you this have you totally given up on the idea that there's a buyer willing to buy the house yeah that's a that's a banger that's a good one that's the question yeah have you given up on the idea that there is a buyer willing to buy your house well I'd like to not think that and if I were to

help show you how to do that I'm sure you'd probably tell me no I'm not interest right then you can work towards that but that would be another hook question no orientation have you given up no I have not given up all right there's something to work with your man like you said you've already done this three times so you're going to know whether or not you know it makes sense yeah probably probably not um okay only because I've listened to I don't know three or four in the last few weeks and they all say

they're different and the same and they're the exact same so there's been nothing new um no one's you know no one's presented me any anything that's even remotely different from anybody else they're all all the same within a few few sentences pretty much so and at this point you know I I just you know I fit to be tired and I you know if I lose it I lose it at this point yeah I know and Goos I would want you to lose it and I totally hear you I mean I think you know every

agent does technically work I mean the St but yet different see we can't even go there at all yeah I mean a question popped into my head when he started going on about how they all sound the same she should have stopped it right there and said Joe can I ask you a question about that sure and yeah I mean you say probably what what are the sorts of questions that you feel like you'd have to ask an agent to know to feel confident that they could get the job done that's right make him tell

you that's right yeah yeah that's exactly right we always respond to any type of objection by clarifying so it's like can I ask you a question about that sure when you said everyone's about the same you know and then you can even I even like to go deeper sometimes and say you know what types of things are these agents telling you that they would have done different that the other agent uh wasn't doing I'm curious what kind of stuff are they telling you and see what he said yeah and so if I were to tell

you that um there are things I would share with you that you've never heard before would you believe me yeah and then I would say you know um I would further that to say well can you do me a favor sure what's that let's pretend you took me up on a zoom meeting would you know if I was just like the other agents like you would know right away right well yeah I know right away and would you tell me would you feel comfortable tell yeah I would tell you you okay but if I was

different would you also know it yeah so is there any downside like tell me what what is the worst thing that could happen if you and I jumped on a zoom and in the first five minutes I sounded just like everybody else you would tell me right yes I would but if there was something different I don't know call me crazy you'd want to hear about it would that be fair or am I just you know totally off here and so that might be another angle you know so so they go back and forth she

doesn't end up getting anything but I think that um you have any other thoughts before yeah I mean can you finish out this call and okay cool there's one more thing here okay and I guess like I said you know you're not gonna hurt my feelings I just wanted to provide the information have 15 minutes of your time and hey if it doesn't make sense in the first five minutes I totally understand that but at least you'll have another opinion you know she's trying to work that totally up to yeah yeah I'm not not too

interested I mean it just came off the market yesterday or actually this morning yesterday was the last day of their contract and I think that's kind of what soured me too because a couple weeks ago I had a friend definitely in need but he didn't want to rent it while it was under contract and he was going to give me 10 grand up front to move in and I was going to use that to make up on some payments I've been missing and they refused to take it out of uh off the market or cancel

it so I you know I ended up losing out on that money to help catch up on things it's just just kind of Sid on the whole process yeah I totally get that I'm sorry that you experienced All That I Can Only Imagine especially being out of state um what that's all caused so yeah know totally respect it I mean I guess would it offend you if I at least emailed over my resume and if something changes yeah you can definitely do that i' just like to say if she's going to go to that part

just say you know would it be helpful if I at least sent you my resume you take a look at it you tell me if it's any different or would you just end up deleting it yep get them to chuckle get him to say nope send it on over so she's going to grab the email address and we fast forward through that yep great well then I'll send over my information in my resume and it'll have a brief overview of my marketing plan if you see anything you like in there just shoot me an email

back and it's not I wish you had the absolute best thank you of course you have a good one boom and it's over yeah so she had one last shot there after s he agreed to the resume coming over I mean a after you see my resume you look through it if it seems different from anything you've seen before what do you see yourself doing next there you go love it yeah just just give yourself a chance and he'll say well you know if I like it I'll call you well and then of course again

well what I mean what happens if I don't hear from you what would you want me to do love it like try to you're going Socratic no these are great this is really good this is helping the audience because these types of techniques that we're introducing to the audience are not like see you and I Dominic do this every day we've been doing this for years but to the audience that's new to sales they're new to these conversations are so nervous you see it's not natural to go Socratic it's natural to mother mayi it's natural

to say you know uh are you considering will you sell your house asking bad questions like that yeah what you going to say I was just going to say to wrap it up on my end that there there is potentially opportunity here there's still some things we don't know this guy's in a lot of pain he's had three agents in the last year which is possibly a flag he's talking about letting the bank take it back which is possibly a flag but there was a lot of things that were not uncovered during this call that

possi could have opened up the opportunity uh you know for an appointment and a listing yeah and and and the other thing is and I'll and I'll end with this on my side is this All or Nothing mindset and agents are just guilty of it left and right I see it all the time especially on an expired conversation they they say to themselves you know not literally but how they behave is if I don't get this appointment on this call then I'm not going to get anything and so she fought for the appointment I don't

know two or three times which is awesome but if you're not getting the appointment we still have to look then next to generating a highquality lead for the database you see this guy's just really emotional right now give this guy a couple of days give this guy a week or two and see how different he is you know what I mean it's like so that's the other feedback I'd have for her is like the All or Nothing mindset on this call it's either listing appointment or nothing we got to get rid of that mindset because

now we're not even building a pipeline that's what keeps agents starting from zero every day would you agree with that I totally agree yeah yeah so anyways uh before we let you guys go I would I would love to know if you found episodes like this helpful did you like this type of content uh that you can actually practically take some of this stuff and implement it let us know in the comments one way or another if you hated this you never want to see another call review again that's fine too but either way let

us know