Best of The Walkthrough™: 2021’s Must-Listen Highlights

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What a rollercoaster ride 2021 was in real estate. Record-low inventory created record-high home prices. Bidding wars became an everyday occurrence. More than ever, you had to be at the top of your game to help your buyers and sellers navigate this unusual market.

Helping you do that on The Walkthrough™ were fantastic guests like Glennda Baker, Brett Jennings, and Kristina Smallhorn among many others.

In our final Walkthrough™ episode of the year, host Matt McGee shares some of his favorite interview clips from this year’s shows, the ones that exemplify the show’s mission to “explore how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable.”

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Links and Show Notes

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Full Transcript

(SPEAKER: Matt McGee, Host)

2021 was a roller coaster.

[sound effect: roller coaster]

It was lucrative.

[sound effect: cash register]

It was wild, bananas, crazy.

[sound effect: phones ringing/buzzing, doorbell ringing]

Those are some of your answers when I asked our Facebook mastermind group for a single word or image to describe the 2021 real estate market.

Competition this year was off the charts. Inventory was at record low levels. Bidding wars were SOP, standard operating procedure. Early this year, there were more real estate agents than homes for sale. Do you remember that? More real estate agents than homes for sale. That’s gotta be the craziest real estate statistic ever.

And here’s the thing: It meant you, more than ever, had to be at the top of your game. You had to find a way to be better and different for the glut of agents in your market.

Jim Remley: There are so many agents that are so alike and they’re just doing exactly the same cookie-cutter things. You gotta find a way to step out from that crowd and be the reason somebody would choose you.

Matt: That’s Jim Remley, talking to me in episode 68 back in August. And whether he knew it or not, Jim hit upon the bedrocks of this podcast: be different, be irreplaceable, that’s how you grow your business. What Jim said is one of my favorite quotes from this year’s shows, but there are a lot more I wanna share with you today.

It’s time for our best of 2021 episode filled with the best advice, the best quotes, the best soundbites from Season 2.

This is “The Walkthrough.”

(INTRO MUSIC)

Hello, hello. I’m Matt McGee, managing editor of HomeLight’s Agent Resource Center. Welcome to “The Walkthrough.” If you’re a new listener, it’s great to have you here. If you’re a regular listener, it’s also great to have you here. Thank you for letting me into your life and into your business for about 30 minutes every week. Well, almost every week, right? We’re in the middle of a break right now. As you know, Season 2 wrapped up at the end of October, and Season 3 will be coming your way in the new year.

You know, it’s not lost on me how fortunate I am to be able to talk every week with some of the smartest and most successful people in the real estate industry — and outside the industry too. In fact, I recently got a firsthand taste of just how smart my guests are. Can I share a quick story?

A few months ago, I started rewriting the entire lead conversion system that my wife’s real estate team uses. The old system we had since 2018, it was okay, but I knew it could be better. So when I sat down to start thinking about what a good lead conversion system looks like, I thought, why not go back to old Walkthrough episodes and borrow what my guests have shared, right? Because we’ve done several shows specifically on lead conversion and follow-up. It’s also a topic that comes up frequently even in other episodes.

Well, long story short, thanks to this show and the super-smart agents who have been on this show, my wife’s team now has a completely new follow-up system. There’s a seven-day blitz for trying to connect with new leads. There are new follow-up plans for after the agents have that first conversation. There are new drip campaigns for people who need to be watched or nurtured. And it’s all thanks to this show.

Now I don’t tell you that story to pat myself on the back, right? It’s not me teaching the ins and outs of lead conversion and all the other stuff we’ve covered, it’s the great guests who’ve been on the show. It’s you being part of the listener mastermind group on Facebook. It’s everyone who’s willing to listen, learn, and help others get better.

You know, I always say that this show is about helping you grow your business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. So let’s use that as our lens as we look back and listen back to some of the best quotes and lessons from the year. Chris, play that music one more time. Let’s dive into the best of “The Walkthrough” in 2021.

(BEGIN CONVERSATION)

Matt: We talk about the need to be irreplaceable on this show. You know why? It’s because some of HomeLight’s competitors are out there trying to get rid of agents. We’re not. We’re trying to help you become invaluable to your clients and your community.

A great way to start is by figuring out your core values. What are the foundational beliefs that you use to run your business? What are the values that will make you irreplaceable?

In September, I had Brett Jennings on the show. He’s a HomeLight Elite Agent whose team started strong about 10 years ago then hit a ceiling. They had no growth for three straight years. They finally broke through that ceiling when Brett learned to create a one-page strategic business plan. He shared the specifics of that in a two-part series, episode 74 and 75. One of the first steps in developing this strategic business plan is deciding your core values. Who are you? What do you believe? And listen here as Brett explains that this is a lot more than a mission statement.

Brett Jennings: Oftentimes like what we see espoused as company core values that you might have seen when you walk into Costco or somewhere else, things like integrity or customer service, these are things that I would refer to what we call platitudes, right? And platitudes are, you could end the sentence and say, “Well, I’d hope so.” Like, for example, integrity shouldn’t be a core value, it’s table stakes. It’s ‘I would hope so that you got integrity because I wouldn’t even wanna consider doing business with you otherwise.'”

Matt: Yeah. Platitudes are not going to make you irreplaceable. How about taking this idea of being irreplaceable and working it into your core values, make it part of how you do this day in and day out? That’s what Josh Anderson is doing in Nashville. When I spoke with Josh this summer, I tell you, it felt to me like his whole business is built around being irreplaceable. Seventy-five percent of his team’s business comes from referrals. That’s because they go above and beyond to be valuable to both clients and the community.

In episode 65, Josh shared a handful of ways that his team has become irreplaceable. One of them is that they’ve created a registered non-profit to help people in need. Josh says the non-profit takes on projects anywhere from say $500 to tens of thousands of dollars. Listen as he describes one project where his team overhauled a home that was in disrepair for a local resident who couldn’t do it herself.

Josh Anderson: We went over as a team, cleaned up all the landscaping, got all the stuff out of the garage, brought it all to habitat store and the goodwill, and threw it away at the trash dump. You know, we had our contractor go in and fix the ceiling, fix the leak, update everything. And that was like a $20,000 deal. And we’ve done things that were small, like, you know, a past client that went into a wheelchair, on fixed income, you know, couldn’t afford really to do a wheelchair ramp. And so we’re just trying to do things in the community. The community’s been good to us. And so for us to be able to give back to the community, it feels really good. And it’s helping people that need help.

Matt: One of my favorite episodes this year, it actually came the previous week right before Josh was on. My guest that week was Glennda Baker. She shared the remarkable story of how she had closed eight deals and earned $141,000 in GCI in less than a year all thanks to TikTok. Yes, TikTok.

Now I’m not saying TikTok is irreplaceable or that it will make you irreplaceable, but the idea, the topic came up when we were talking about the content that Glennda makes, the stories that she tells in her TikTok videos. If you’ve never watched her, she is incredibly transparent. She’ll talk about her own mistakes, about her adventures as an agent. She’ll talk about things her clients have done or said. She shares what happens in the day-to-day grind of real estate because she wants people to learn what it’s really like. And when people see that real estate isn’t easy, they learn how irreplaceable a good agent is.

Glennda Baker: That’s why we get paid because this is very difficult. And I think that a lot of consumers think that we drive up in a Mercedes, we open the door, somebody buys a house, we make $30,000, and we go sit on a yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean and eat bonbons. And that’s not the way that real estate is. And every time that somebody tells me, ‘Glennda, this is so difficult, this happened, that happened.’ I’m like, ‘praise the Lord because if it were easy, they wouldn’t need us.’ So that’s what I want to get across to the consumer. That’s what I wanna get to the other agent is level yourself up, make yourself indispensable because if you are indispensable, you will not become extinct.

Matt: Think about that. How real, how transparent are you in your videos, your marketing, your social media? Being transparent is helping Glennda show that she and real estate agents, in general, are irreplaceable.

That’s a great transition into being different and standing out from the crowd. Kenny Truong is a HomeLight Elite Agent in the Bay Area. He is using transparency to build his team with like-minded agents. And talk about being different. While many brokerages and team leaders were downsizing and abandoning offices during the pandemic, Kenny added more than 100 agents to his team and opened 9 new offices.

He did it by being an open book. Before an agent joins the team, Kenny gives them access to the team’s Slack. He invites them to attend team meetings. Nothing is sacred. He told me that this unique, open-book approach helps his team stand out as being different. It also helps the agent see his team culture in action so they can decide if it’s a good fit.

Kenny Truong: Our Slack is very exciting. Slack, that’s where every communication is for our company. So rather than me tell someone what the culture is and talk about it, come to our Slack, see every message that goes through it to see how our company operates. And then either before or after signing, we get them on our team meeting and they get a taste of the culture. And then we actually have every single meeting recorded since August so we send them that. So that means like literally, we’re converting people before they even hop on the call with us.

Matt: Speaking of finding like-minded people. Back in March, I had Racole Jackson on the show. It was episode 53. She talked about developing a CEO mindset, about running your business instead of letting the business run you. Great, great episode. There was one part of the conversation that I edited out, didn’t make it into the final cut because we kind of, you know, went down a few rabbit trails, got a bit off-topic. I’m gonna use that bit right now though. Racole shared some great advice about being careful in who you spend time with, who you learn from. Her point was about not blindly following the crowd but making sure you’re following people who are going where you want to go.

Racole Jackson: You can be alone as a solo agent but not work alone. You don’t have to be alone in the business. So my suggestion would be to find a voice that speaks to your need. Find a voice that speaks to an area that you need to grow. Find a group of people that are going in a direction that you’re going. If you hang around five top producers, you’ll become the sixth. If you hang around five that are giving up, you’ll become the sixth. So get around a group that’s going in the direction that you’d like to become.

Matt: If you’re trying to create a different kind of team, one that stands out from the rest of the teams in your market, you’d better start by training your agents well. If you’re not teaching them how you do things differently from other agents and teams, what chance do they have of actually being different for you? One of the final episodes of the year was all about team training and onboarding. Nancy Reynolds of Rainmaker Real Estate made the point that a great training program requires the team leader to put in a lot of time and energy. And a key part of that, she said, is training new agents on your brand, on what makes you unique and different so that they can perform at a level that sets you apart.

Nancy Reynolds: It takes a lot of time and dedication from you as the trainer, and if you’re not committed to doing that for these people that you onboard, then you’re really doing them a disservice. You’re also gonna hurt your brand because they’re not going to, you know, perform at that super high level. And I think when you’re growing a team, I think one of the most important features for the consumer is that it’s consistent. So the business practice is consistent.

Matt: That’s a great point right there. It’s not good enough to say you’re different or think you’re different, your entire team has to understand what makes you different. And they need to bring that into their business practices day in and day out. That’s how you stand out from the crowd.

Out of all 40 or so episodes that we published this year, probably episode 73 is the one that stands out as a poster child for doing things differently. That’s the episode where Las Vegas agent, Joe Herrera, explained how his team is closing 200 transactions a year from Facebook leads.

Now Joe has turned his team’s Facebook business page into a lead gen magnet with one of the most unique, stand-out-from-the-crowd approaches I have ever seen. He’s turned the page into like…it’s like a local Las Vegas version of Zillow or Redfin, Trulia, whatever. They use it to post about homes for sale. But here’s the thing, not just their own listings, they will post homes for sale from other agents all across town. It’s become so big and successful that other agents are asking Joe to promote their listings.

Joe Herrera: As it’s progressed now, we have a lot of agents that will reach out to us and say, “Hey, 123 Main Street just went up for sale. Would you mind featuring it on your Facebook page?” And so now we get a lot of agents that will reach out to us. And so our goal with our Facebook page, it is not a pageant of the current inventory we possess, our Facebook page is a presentation of the best homes in the whole city.

Matt: It’s common for one of Joe’s Page posts to get like hundreds of comments, hundreds of likes and shares, but better yet everyone who comments becomes a lead and Joe’s team gets all of those leads. How great is that? You promote other agents’ homes for sale on your Facebook Page, you get the leads, and you do 200-plus deals from Facebook in a single year. That is how you stand out from the crowd.

Let’s wrap up the “be different” theme with one more clip that deals with your marketing, video marketing to be specific. Kristina Smallhorn was on the show way back in February when her YouTube channel had just passed 70,000 subscribers. By the way, she’s now up to more than 153,000 subscribers. Well, one of Kristina’s best tips was to be different in how you begin your video. Namely, she says you need to skip the long introduction, get to the point as quickly as possible.

Kristina Smallhorn: What people had been telling me was the right steps for a YouTube video were literally the wrong steps for YouTube video. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, one of the biggest ones that I see, like, every time somebody says, “I’m doing everything they tell me to do,” and they’ll start off their video with, like, this is the 10 ways to buy a house in Washington, D.C. Then they run a 20-second intro. Then they introduce themselves. Then they talk about themselves for another 15 seconds. Then they get into the topic. By that time, the person watching is like, “Shut up and tell me the 10 ways to buy a house in DC.” And that was a common mistake.

Matt: That’s actually a tip that my wife’s team has started using in their videos. I think it’s really smart. Talk less about yourself and talk more about what the viewer wants to hear.

All right. We have talked about being irreplaceable. We’ve talked about being different and standing out from the crowd. The third thing that I say in every episode and the third reason that HomeLight does a podcast for real estate agents is that we wanna help you grow your business. Now, I really believe one of the keys to growing your business is time management. You can always go out and find more leads, you can always go out and find more agents or hire more staff, but you can never get more time. Never. You have to use those 24 hours a day as effectively as possible. And hopefully, you’re sleeping for at least six to eight of them, right?

Well, one of the most popular episodes that we did this year was episode 45 back on February 1st. That’s when agent Cliff Lewis walked us through his time-blocking system. It’s a system that helped him sell, get this, 57 more homes the first year that he used it. It also let him spend more time at home with his newborn sons, let him go on vacation. The whole nine yards. One of the keys Cliff told me was that you have to be really specific when you’re creating time blocks on your calendar. You can’t just say something like four hours of prospecting.

Cliff Lewis: Prospecting is such a generic term and so generalized. And when you’re in our business and we sell to the general public, anything, oh, I was at the grocery store and, you know, I handed out a business card, so I’m chalking that whole hour off as prospecting. And it’s so easy to not know what to do. So you sit down at, you know, 11:00 in the morning on a Monday and you’re like, “Okay, I’m supposed to prospect for an hour.” And it takes you 30 minutes to figure out what it is you wanna prospect. Well, now I already blew 30 minutes on not actually prospecting. So when I do this and I do my week, I think about ahead of time how it is I wanna prospect each of those different things and this way I’m all kind of set up ready to go so I know what it is I’m doing. So if I know that, you know, I’m gonna do a circle prospect on Thursday or Friday at 11:00, whatever that is, I know ahead of time, okay, who am I gonna focus on, which circle? Is this gonna be my, you know, friends from my kid’s school or parents from my kid’s school, excuse me? Is this just gonna be my sphere of influence that I’ve sold houses to in the past? Is this gonna be people that live in my neighborhood? Who is it I’m trying to actually focus on in this circle and then what activity is best for them?

Matt: If you missed that episode, if time management is a struggle, please go back and give it a listen. I promise you won’t regret it.

One of the underlying themes we hit on this year to help grow your business is the idea that your words and stories really matter. You wanna be at the top of your game when you’re talking to new leads, when you’re talking to existing clients, talking to past clients. Well, Andy Henriquez is a brilliant storyteller. And he was on “The Walkthrough” back in June sharing his expertise in strategic storytelling. Stories, Andy said, are how we connect with other people. The human brain is wired for stories. If you want to get and keep someone’s attention, stories are how you do it. One of the great tips that Andy shared was how to choose stories that will move people to take action, to want to do business with you. Listen to this.

Andy Henriquez: First of all, what do I want them to know, what do I want them to feel, and then the final thing it what do I want them to do? What do I want them to do? Now, I know we got a lot of, you know, all-stars here listening in to this particular session. But we know at the end of the day, we’re not talking about telling stories for the sake of telling stories. We’re telling stories because we wanna get more business, right? We are trying to sell more properties. We’re trying to get more listings, you know. And so when we do that, we wanna be telling stories that move people towards a specific action, whether it’s getting them to sign a listing agreement, whether it’s getting them to choose you, whether it’s getting them to understand why they should buy in that neighborhood, whether getting them to understand why this is a great time for them to sell. It doesn’t matter. But when we are telling the story, there needs to be something specifically that we want people to do as a result of us telling the story and we wanna tie the story to the action that we want people to take. So once again, you’re about to go meet up with somebody and you got a bunch of stories. Think about this. What do I want them to know, what do I want them to feel, and what do I want them to do? And if you can think about those things, you’ll choose the perfect story so that you can move them to action.

Matt: And talking about moving people to action, earlier in the year, we went deeper into words and language with Jesse Zagorsky. Episode 48 in February was all about NLP in real estate, neuro-linguistic programming. NLP basically is the science of using communication to build better rapport and influence with your clients. In this episode, Jesse and I went through, I think a handful of NLP exercises together. It was fascinating to me. One of the exercises was about how you can use vocal tones and inflections to be more persuasive.

Jesse Zagorsky: What’s one of the most common questions Realtors ask on the phone? Give me a question a Realtor would ask someone when they’re trying to book an appointment.

Matt: When you’re trying to book appointment you would say, “Are you free on Thursday at 2:00 p.m.?”

Jesse: Are you free on Thursday at 2:00 p.m.? And most people if you ask the question would say, “Are you free on Thursday at 2:00 p.m.?” They kind of toss it out there. And it has that feeling of like, “Free on Thursday 2:00 p.m.?” Whereas if you say, “Are you free Thursday, 2:00 p.m.? Are you free Thursday, 2:00 p.m.?” Now I’m going down at the end, I’m saying it like a statement which has a lot more power and authority behind what I’m saying. And the way to learn this is to take your fists and put it up by your head, right? No one can see you right now, it’s a podcast. Don’t worry. So take your fist, put it up by your head. And as you say whatever question you wanna say, right, I like to use something called an alternative choice question where you give two answers that are equally acceptable, right? “Do you wanna talk at 2:00 or 3:00?” You’re gonna take your fist that’s up by your head and you’re gonna lower it down towards your waist as you say your question. “Do you wanna meet at 2:00 or 3:00? Are evenings or weekends better for you?”

Matt: That was such a great episode. In hindsight, I probably should have replayed that one in its entirety for you sometime this summer or fall. My mistake on that.

Well, in that clip above, Jesse is talking about your follow-up with new leads trying to book an appointment. We did a few episodes completely dedicated to follow-up. In April, I did two shows with Isacc Guzman. He’s part of the Daniel Beer team, they’re HomeLight Elite agents in San Diego. Isacc walked us through their follow-up system in amazing detail. You heard him explain every contact they do on day one, every contact they do on day two, and so forth. He said one of the keys to making their follow-up system work so well is that the agents are sending more video texts to new leads. Listen to the exchange that we had about that.

Matt: You’re just doing that right on your iPhone. There’s no production involved. It’s just like you’re doing a FaceTime call. You’re just recording it and sending it via text.

Isacc Guzman: My crappy video will outperform your non-existent one all day long. Because you won’t do one, if the production standard has to be high, you’re not gonna do that. So I’m just gonna do it. And there’s gonna be kids in the background. There’s gonna be dogs barking. I’m gonna have stuff in my teeth. My hair’s gonna be messed up. I’m gonna like stutter and who cares? Like, no one cares.

Matt: They wanna see your face, right? That’s where the connection happens?

Isacc: Well, it’s like a whole thing. There’s like a science to why we do it and why we wanna deliver it within two minutes of an inquiry or within two minutes of actually speaking with somebody on the phone. And it’s because of what we understand as sales psychology, which is, you know, the number one thing you gotta do is overcome sales skepticism. Number two thing is you wanna handle uncertainty about you as a person. And so nothing handles those things better than sending out a video very quickly and a real video.

Matt: I’ll tell you from my conversations this year, it sure sounds like a lot of agents have jumped on that video text train. It is a great way to help clients see that you’re a real person who’s reaching out to them. Now Isacc is part of a big team. I think they were close to 40 agents when we spoke early this year.

In August, Shanan Steere was on “The Walkthrough” to share how her five-person team handles lead follow-up. This was, you know, another great show where we got really specific about what the follow-up emails say, what Shanan says when she sends a video to new leads and so much more. But the real driver of success, my biggest takeaway from that entire episode was when Shanan talked about accountability. Accountability is huge whether you’re a solo agent, whether you’re on a small team or a big team. Listen in as Shanan shared how accountability works for her team, from things like daily meetings to scoreboards and more.

Shanan Steere: This is when accountability started. So scoreboards are important. Having a scoreboard in public is super important for teams. You would never go to an NFL game like the Chiefs and not have a scoreboard up to know exactly what’s happening with everybody. And then we developed a planner, Matt, that basically it’s for our accountability and our coaching for our team members. Once a week, we coach. We go over the planner, what’s happened in the last week. Where are your leads? Where are your deals? Where are you at in your 12-week year goals? How do we get you there? You’ve gotta have a start time. Games start at a time. They’re on national TV, they can’t be late. We have a start time every day at 8:30 a.m., preferably in person. If somebody’s out and about, we call them in. That is our what’s going on, who’s got what, who’s on first, who’s on third, who’s ready to run, you know, steal the bases, and who needs coverage? Go.

(Speaker: Matt McGee, Host)

Oh, I love that accountability stuff so much. Thank you, Shanan. I have a feeling that accountability is probably gonna be a pretty hot topic for us next year in Season 3.

There you go. Some of the best quotes and wisdom from Season 2 of “The Walkthrough.” Don’t go away yet, we’re gonna have a One More Minute segment coming up at the very end with one of my favorite, favorite tips of the whole year. For now, a couple of programming notes. This is the final episode of 2021, the end of Season 2. Season 3 will be coming your way in the new year. I don’t yet have an estimate on when that will happen. One reason why I don’t is that we’re still in the process of hiring what we are calling a podcast producer. This is not someone who’s gonna be all technical and help with the audio editing and stuff like that. We are covered there. We’re looking for someone with extensive real estate experience to help research guests and topics, to help do prep work, help promote each episode after gets published. If that sounds interesting, drop me a note and I will be happy to share more info. You can call or text me, it’s 415-322-3328, or just send an email to walkthrough[at]homelight.com.

Hey, our Facebook mastermind group remains active too. Over the holidays, we have more than 1,800 listeners in there right now and you should be in there too. Just go to Facebook, do a search for HomeLight Walkthrough, the group will come right up. I’d love to see you in there.

One last story before we wrap things up, a new co-worker just asked me a couple of days ago. She said, “Do you ever run into agents who don’t wanna be on the podcast because they don’t wanna give their secrets away?” Well, I told her, “Yeah, that happens.” But really only with about maybe 1 of every 10 guests or so that I invite to be on the show. I thought about that. I thought, how cool is it that so many smart and super-talented real estate agents are willing to let me go deep into how they make money, how they run their business, how they succeed in such a competitive industry.

You know, we don’t do surface on this show. We get down in the weeds. You get the actual blueprints for things like time blocking, follow-up systems, for working with distressed properties and so much more. So for that, I wanna say a sincere thank you to every guest who’s been on this show. You’ve made it very successful. You’ve made it very meaningful to my listeners and I’m incredibly grateful for that.

Even more so, I’m grateful to you for listening. Without you, this show doesn’t exist. Thanks for letting me into your homes, into your cars, into your ears, wherever and however you listen. Thanks from the bottom of my heart. It means everything that you let me spend a half-hour with you every week.

All right. One More Minute is coming up. My name’s Matt McGee, you’ve been listening to “The Walkthrough.” At HomeLight, we believe in real estate agents. We’re on a journey to find out how great agents grow their business, stand out from the crowd, and become irreplaceable. Go out and safely sell some homes. Happy holidays. I’ll talk to you again next year. Bye-bye.

(OUTRO MUSIC)

Matt: Welcome back and welcome to the last edition of One More Minute in 2021. You know, I started One More Minute earlier this year as a way to squeeze in some bonus tips and advice and I wanna end this “best of” episode with one of my favorite tips any guest shared during the year.

If you run a team, you know how tough it is to get your agents to update client notes in your CRM. They have a call or an appointment with a client or a lead, and you need to know how it went, right? But getting them to update the CRM is like drawing blood from a stone sometimes, right? Well, Tony Baroni, a HomeLight Elite Agent in Florida shared this great tip to make it easier.

Tony Baroni: So what we found after 2019, we looked at the year and we’re like, okay, we did an awesome job with set. We did an awesome job with met. And after that, we don’t know what happened, pretty much, right? I mean, just to be honest, like, people weren’t logging notes and people are hoarding 200 leads but maybe they’re not following up. We don’t know. All we know is we did our job, we set the appointment, they met the appointment, which I think is our job as a team more than the agent, right? And then after that, we had no clue what happened. So here’s what we created, which I think has worked out really, really well. We created a hotline, okay, so we did a phone number grab and we used a company I think called CallRail where we took a phone number. And basically after the appointment, the agent calls into this number and it goes to automatic voicemail and they say, “Hey, this is Tony. I just went on a listing appointment at 123 Main Street. I met with Bob and Shirley and we had a great conversation. They’re interviewing five people. They’re leaning towards us. They have one more interview and they wouldn’t sign today, but they said they’re gonna make a decision in two days. And I’m going to follow up in two more days at 2:00 and see what direction they’re going. So I’m gonna handle this and then I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Or it could look like, “Hey, I went on this appointment, the buyer wanted to see this house. They’re not really ready. They’re in a lease for at least another nine months and they don’t wanna break the lease. So hey, thank you for the appointment. I’m gonna send that back to you guys to follow-up on.” We distinguish is the agent following up or is the ISA following up. And we have a hotline, we call it our TBT hotline that we call in and we just basically…there’s about five things we wanna know. And then the ISA logs that into the notes of the CRM so then we’re all kept in the loop on what’s happening. And then they know what the follow-up should be.

Matt: I love that so much. What a smart way to keep your CRM updated after every appointment? That’s One More Minute, actually more than a minute this time, but still so good. I’m Matt McGee. Thanks again for listening to our best of 2021. I’ll talk to you again next year for Season 3 of “The Walkthrough.”