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178 - Mastering Prospecting: 10 Game-Changing Hacks - Danny Grant

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Danny Grant returns to share the top 10 prospecting hacks that can transform a real estate agent's business, revealing essential truths about consistent lead generation and relationship building.

• There is no secret to prospecting – door knocking and phone calls remain the most lucrative lead generation methods
• Repeated exposure helps agents handle rejection better, just like big wave surfers train to handle underwater turbulence
• Narrow your focus to a manageable geographic area rather than spreading yourself too thin
• Use the database formula: start with conversation, grow through nurture, build with trust, and end with client relationships
• Being consistently average beats sporadic bursts – 12 calls daily (60 weekly) builds sustainable momentum
• Prime your environment by removing distractions and preparing call lists and scripts in advance
• Use visual motivation techniques that provide tangible evidence of your prospecting accomplishments
• Five face-to-face appointments daily will change your career through compound referral effects
• Zig when others zag – physical marketing materials now stand out in an oversaturated digital landscape
• Less is more – focus on mastering 8 prospecting pillars rather than attempting too many approaches poorly




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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling by industry request. We are bringing Danny Grant back onto the program to do the top 10 prospecting hacks. Mr Danny Grant, welcome aboard.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure to be here by popular demand. That sounds good yeah.

Speaker 1:

I've been doing a lot of work through yourself with the McGrath agents and then with the McGrath system with Matt. The other week, and everyone was saying you got to listen to Danny's top 10 hacks of prospecting. So I said that's it, we'll do it. So, danny, take us into it. What's number one?

Speaker 2:

So number one is there is no secret. So I think we tend to look at a lot of shortcuts and other things that we can do to avoid traditional lead generation, but what I find with all top agents, what they have in common it's either door knocks or it's phone calls. So, sadly, I know people probably look for other avenues, and I'm not saying that other things don't draw leads. I know people probably look for other avenues, and I'm not saying that other things don't draw leads, but these are the most lucrative ways of generating leads.

Speaker 1:

Danny, I agree with this. My last two interviews and one you wouldn't have heard yet because I did it today new guys come into real estate unknown, had a bit of a marketing background and everyone's thinking, okay, he's going to tick-tock his way to the top and what Jacob did was just door knock every day because he had nothing else to do, say hello to people, get to know them. I also live in the area. I'm from Ronald Street. Whichever it was, in three years he has done absolutely incredibly, but he has a full marketing background. But he was lucky. His marketing background was direct sales, direct marketing, and they were the people that would be in the shopping centers speaking to people, getting brands known. So, coming into real estate and I didn't know that was going to be your first one that there is no secrets, but you got to get connected to the community. You can't be on the edge of it and I think once everyone gets over that and realizes it is a contact sport, everything changes.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think sometimes we hear that it's easy. You know that these people that are door knocking and hitting the phones that they find that easy, and I don't think that is the case. I think they just learn to handle hard. Well, they do it so often that, yeah, because rejection is not easy, right, we don't. I mean. The top five things that I find that people have issues with is number one rejection. Number two they don't have enough time. Number three they hate annoying people. Number four they don't know what to say. And the other is they're distracted by trying to find easy options. But as soon as we get past that, that everyone does find it difficult, they just learn to handle it better, because naturally our brains are wide for two things, lee, it's survival and comfort, and there's nothing to comfort about prospecting and getting rejection. But the more that you do it, I think, the easier it gets.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you got to fall in love with the boring parts. Everyone's so excited about executing the sale, the auction going through, but that's just the last part of the movie. There's this whole other journey that you've got to get to to get to the other part.

Speaker 2:

What's number two? So number two is repeated exposure helps. So what I mean by this is some people may have gone to Eric and seen a fellow called Mark Matthews, who's a big wave surfer, talk and he mentioned repeated exposure. So in his world, repeated exposure was what are the things that I fear most? And for him it was when you're, like a lot of people think, with big wave surfaces surfers, it's when you crash from the wave. That that's a hard thing, you know, you get scared about that. But the hardest part is is when they get dumped into the water and they're underground, because what happens is the waves keep crashing down on top of them and keep pushing them further and further down and you can panic and pass out. So for him to, I guess, get past that is he used to train in deep diving pools. So you know those 10 meter diving platforms have got really deep pools. So what he used to do is he used to train in deep diving pools. So you know those 10 meter diving platforms have got really deep pools. So what he used to do is he would dive into those and he would get somebody at the bottom of the pool to hold him down and they'd move him around and replicate a wave, turning him over and over until to the point that he would almost pass out. So he found that if I did that over and over and over, then when I tackled the wave and I was under the water, then I knew how to actually cope. So in our world of prospecting the main point is, lee, is that nothing we do in prospecting is going to be as hard as that is. So people got it worse off In our world, that is, make sure that you're doing it regularly enough, because I think too often agents will prospect out of need and they do big chunks of prospecting, then they get distracted by other things and they leave it for a few weeks and then they go back to it again and that's just so hard, whereas if you just do it regularly each week, it doesn't have to be a ton of calls, just do it regularly, then that repeated exposure certainly helps. Love it.

Speaker 2:

Number three Number three is narrow your focus. So this is all about BDA size and I'll give you an analogy. Here is when you're going to the Westfield shopping centre and it's got a big car park and it's pre-Christmas and it's difficult to find a park and you tend to want to go from section to section to section, up down, trying to find a car park because you think, well, one will turn up. The reality is your chances of getting a car park increase exponentially if you just stay in the one spot. So if you drive around the one little spot, somebody is going to come and move their car and you'll find a car park. It's the same in BDAs. If we've got too wide a BDA and we've got a listing in the next big section and we're staying over there and prospecting off the back of that and somebody's thinking of selling in the other section and we're not there, we're going to miss that listing. So the fact is, if we saturate and stay in a smaller BDA, we get a better chance of actually getting a listing.

Speaker 1:

Danny, this has been such a great focus in the last couple of podcasts of people saying they didn't go too wide. It seems to be that never really changes that 900 to 1300 homes is about all you can do and getting 900 doors claimed so you can get 46 transactions is the goal. But spreading here, there and everywhere and even when we just recently did the ultimate agent with Matt Jordan, had listed a couple of properties half an hour away which were great properties, but Matt was like no, get back here. We need them here, not there. Why are you over there? Get somebody over there to do it and get back over here.

Speaker 2:

What's number four? Number four is the database formula. So I think there is a formula to reaping enough yields out of your database and I think this is an epidemic across the country is that agents just aren't yielding enough from their databases. So, to use a farming analogy, if anyone's seen Clarkson's Farm, have you seen that Clarkson's Farm is a great way of learning about farming? But they talk about yields. So for farmers, you know they can plant the seeds and just expect a yield at the end of it, but the quality of that yield is going to depend on how much rain they get, how well they fertilize, how well they prepare the soil beforehand, and the better that they do all those things and the better they nurture it, the better the yield that comes out the other end. So with agents databases, yes, we collect the data and we're putting it in there, but are we nurturing it enough to get a good yield? So the formula for this is it starts with the conversation. Number one we need to have that philosophy that we're not prospecting out of need to get instant listings, because it's almost impossible. We're starting a conversation, then we put them into the database. What happens then is it grows through nurture, this relationship that then builds with trust and then it ends with the client.

Speaker 2:

So as an agent myself, I used to dislike immensely getting office leads. Now that sounds odd, but when I got an office lead they didn't know me, I didn't know them. It was always difficult to price. I probably would never get my fee marketing things that I wanted, whereas somebody that came out of the database that I'd nurtured, I'd started a conversation with and they came out two years later, three years later, whatever it is, I have a better chance of listing at number one, getting it for the fee that I want, the marketing that I want, and I'm going to have a much better relationship through the sales process than I ever would from an office lead. And when you have a long career, like I've had Lee, that makes a difference after 20 years, when you've got a lot of clients you like working with. So you've got to think it's a long game like that. But if we think of that formula, it starts with a conversation, grows through nurture, builds with trust and then it ends with a client.

Speaker 1:

So well articulated and I mention this all the time You'll get 80% of the ones who know you. There's a big difference in that. And what also happens is you have the opportunity to fish your own pond, which is very different to what happens when people are just meeting someone one-off, didn't know who they were and they're off again. And that was just so well articulated and I think people prospect to find today's listing. That doesn't exist. It's that nurturing, having that stickability where people are getting good information from you, which is the reason they stick with you, and even podcastings like that. For me, providing information to an industry where they profit from that knowledge, is the reason they'll come back and do the complete salesperson course. It's a nurturing process and I think in that scenario people start to understand. Maybe that's the missing part. It's not you're short of listings. You're not nurturing at all. You're looking for the one-off and beautifully said what's number five?

Speaker 2:

Number five is there is another option to all or nothing. So with prospecting, what I find is I get agents that will come to me and they say how many prospecting calls should I be doing, danny? And I say to them how many do you think you should be doing? And they go oh, I'd love to be able to do 100 a day. And then my next follow-up question is well, what are you doing now? And it's always none or five, or you know it's very sporadic. So my answer to them is well, you're not going to do a hundred a day, don't do a hundred a day. So the other option between all or nothing, lee and it doesn't sound sexy, I'm going to warn you it's been consistently average, yeah, so what I mean by that is you're better off doing something regularly than nothing. So like an inch of movement is better than a mile of intentions.

Speaker 2:

If you wanted to lose weight, or let's just say, well, let's use weights as an analogy. So if you wanted to lift 80 kilos, you want to bench press 80 kilos, you might get sort of three or four pushes out of that, and then you're going to be sore for two weeks, whereas if you actually have started off doing. Well, let's start with 30 kilos and let's work our way up. Prospecting is the same way. You can actually damage your muscles and that is the rejection you get that you feel in our industry. And then you don't do it for three weeks and you go back to it and you don't do it for three weeks again.

Speaker 2:

You're not going to see any difference, whereas I like the number 12 a day, right? So it's the same as in doing exercises, you could do 10 sets or you could do 12 in the set. So you do 12 a day, and if you did that every day for five days, then that's going to give you 60 a week. It's not bad. That could give you two and a half thousand a year. Then you can work your way up to that. You're actually, you know, doing 60 a day instead of 60 a week, right, and that's going to be 12,000 contacts, you know, for the year. So it's just start, do 12 a day, do what you can actually do and work up to something bigger, couldn't agree more and get through those.

Speaker 1:

So if you've done your 10 connects and you go okay, I've got that nailed, I'm going to take it to 20. I've got that nailed, I'm going to take it to 20. Now, at 30, you're world-class. But between 10 and 30, if it becomes a daily habit that this is what we need to do, to do that and this is that consistent behavior. Unfortunately, when it comes to this particular topic, there's a lot of jargon but not the behavior, and I have a lot of people that want this and I want to be like that person. I want to do those things. But you've got to be prepared to do the boring stuff that you consider boring. But if you could fall in love with that part and get your rhythm right, you find your groove. Everything changes. What's number six?

Speaker 2:

Number six is prime your environment. So this is all about starving your distractions and feeding your focus. So, using a sporting analogy again, if you wanted to lose some weight or you wanted to get fit and your intention was to go jogging every morning at 6am or 5am, they say that the best thing for you to do is prime your environment. So that is, put your joggers out, your jogging gear out, you know, try and all those distractions that can come up. Maybe have the heating in the room come on early so you can get out of bed if it's in the middle of winter.

Speaker 2:

So priming your environment in our world is that I think agents go into the office with an intention I'm going to prospect and then what happens is they start going through their database and think who am I going to call? What list am I going to print off? Then they go through that. Then somebody will say do you want to come and grab a coffee? Okay, we'll go and grab a coffee. Oh, I need some water. My throat's going. We find all these reasons to distract us from what we're doing.

Speaker 2:

So what I'm saying is the day before print off lists, have your script ready. You know exactly what you're going to say and be ready for it and know yourself that, okay. Well, if you're going to get distracted by going and get a drink of water, have a bottle on your desk, you know. Reward yourself that. No, I'm not going to go and get a coffee until I've gone for about 40 minutes and I'm doing 40-minute call sessions. So know yourself, know how you're going to get distracted. Now, for some people, this could be don't go into the office, do it from home, lee Do. For some people, this could be don't go into the office, do it from home, lee, do it in the car. So think about where are the distractions that happen to me and how can I avoid that.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely love this one. Danny, I've done three big productions today, but before the start time I got in early this morning and I vacuumed the studio. Now, people don't think I would vacuum the studio, but I do. But it's exactly not the vacuuming, it's what you're saying. I want it right, I want to be ready. So when I do hit the airwaves, there is no distractions and I feel right. Absolutely love it. What's our next one?

Speaker 2:

Number seven is use visual motivation. So I think most agents are pretty visual people, Lee. So this is have your call lists, and it might be so. We spoke about doing 12 calls a day, so 60 a week, having those numbers on there and you cross them off as you go. One of the things that I used to do is have marbles in a jar, so I'd have the amount of calls. So let's just say it's 100 for the week, so I'd have 100 marbles in the jar and then I'd empty them into the empty jar, so I know how many calls I've actually got left to do. Now don't lose those marbles, because that's another problem that you're going to have. But it might sound a little bit odd, but that worked for me, because every day I'm coming in and I can actually see that those marbles, I still haven't gotten rid of them and it's just a little habit that helps. So whatever it is for you, if it's just a little habit that helps, so whatever it is for you, if it's a call list I think for most people it is cross off the numbers. So you've got that sheet in front of you and great, that's that week done. You know, I'm proud of myself.

Speaker 2:

Number eight. Number eight is five face-to-face appointments will change your career. If you have five face-to-face appointments every day, it will change your career. So you think about if and I don't mean cheat with this and open house numbers, you're counting those. I'm talking about appraisals each day, buyer appointment each day. So if you think that if you're getting in front of 25 people doing these appointments each week, the vibrations that puts out into the marketplace because that age might talk to you about a couple of friends each and you do that throughout the whole year, it makes a huge difference, especially now where it's really easy and tempting to hide behind text messages and emails and social media et cetera, and avoid those appointments. But if you focus your goals and intentions on no, I need to get in front of 25 people a week, it'll change your career.

Speaker 1:

This is such a powerful one because the appointment that you think was nothing becomes everything. So I'd go out and do a buyer appointment. They wouldn't buy the property, that's all good. And then two days later I'd get a phone call saying Lee, you don't know me at all, but a friend of mine was out with you on Tuesday we're putting our house on the market and she said you were the best agent she'd met. Would you have some time to see us? And I'll be like method of introduction. And you're so right, danny, getting eyeball to eyeball with five people a day and not overgrading that, not overqualifying that, but getting out of the office is something you got to do and that face-to-face moment is so powerful. What is number?

Speaker 2:

nine. Number nine is zig, when everyone else is zagging you and I spoke about this a little bit earlier today about Matt Steinway's listing kit. So a lot of people have gone digital and we love things like Realtors digital, sending it out by text message. But statistics are starting to show that people trust agents more that have got physical documentation, like letterbox drops or physical market reports, instead of digital, and that have got a physical presence in the marketplace with these things rather than their social media aspect. Now, nothing wrong with social media I'm not saying that at all. It certainly has a place but I think what's happening is there's so much distrust online now and social media and algorithms and people are understanding how these things work, but if they see a physical market report or pre-list kit or letterbox drop, you're starting to get a bit more credibility. So Zig, when everyone else is zaggingly, is doing something differently.

Speaker 2:

I'll give you another analogy. There's a book called the Blue Ocean Theory and it's blue or red ocean it talks about. So a red ocean is something that's already crowded, so a lead generation method, for instance, that's already crowded. So a lead generation method, for instance, that's already crowded, as opposed to a blue ocean, where there's not many people doing it. So I think, if we look back eight years ago, seven years ago, was digital an overcrowded lead generation method? No, it wasn't. Is it today? Yeah, it's probably gone from blue ocean to red ocean. So what's a blue ocean now is it might be actually doing letterbox drops and things like that.

Speaker 2:

Certainly, there's agents that I'm training and I'm teaching them about the price drive and they're doing it in their marketplace and they're getting a lot more leads than anything else that they were doing because agents have stopped doing it. There's another agent that no one's door knocking in their area and they're getting a lot of success with door knocking because no one else is doing it. So you've got a choice as an agent for your lead generation. I can go into the Red Ocean things that everybody's doing. You've just got to do it much better than they're doing it right and you'll win, or you can go into an uncontested marketplace for lead generation and you'll get great results.

Speaker 1:

Danny, number 10.

Speaker 2:

Number 10 is less is more. So there is so many prospecting methods that you can do and it's easy to get distracted by those methods, but I think you've got to just choose the amount that you can saturate and do well. Now I talk about the eight pillars of prospecting, and that is, choose eight that work and that work for you. Now, whether it's that you prefer door knocking or phone prospecting, I don't care. You've got to do something that works and is delivering the results. Pick eight and don't get distracted by new things. And if you are going to get distracted by a new lead generation, we'll drop one of the eight pillars and introduce something new. But just make sure that you're doing enough that you can get through your calls, you can get through your door knocks, you can get through leveraging your listings properly, rather than introducing a lot of things and just not doing anything very well. So, instead of the scattergun, machine gun approach, you're more of the sniper approach and I've been a specialist in certain areas of lead generation.

Speaker 1:

Danny Grant absolutely wonderful, 10 brilliant hacks. No wonder you were one of our top trainers at the Real Estate Academy when the academy was live and running around, but you're still out there training agents today. Fantastic session. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure.