We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
Real Estate Wisdom with Scott Bailey
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Scott Bailey from Bailey's Real Estate in Singleton shares traditional real estate techniques that have sustained his family business for 27 years by focusing on exceptional client service rather than constant prospecting.
• Over-service your current clients and they'll do your marketing for you through referrals
• Focus on your top 20% of clients with regular, value-adding communication
• Send personalised, hand-signed auction invites at three stages: just listed, market update and just sold
• Anniversary letters with local café vouchers maintain connections years after settlement
• Follow-up calls should be direct and purposeful, always aiming to secure face-to-face appointments
• Offer three price brackets when appraising: below market, market value, and premium with improvements
• Begin meetings with "What's important to you?" to demonstrate genuine interest in client needs
• Implement a systematic communication schedule: settlement day, 24-hour check-in, 7-day follow-up, 180-day check-in, and annual contact
• Remember: "Complacency is our biggest enemy. The real estate industry is big, fat and lazy"
• Attention to detail and continuous improvement are essential for long-term success
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, the author of the Complete Salesperson Course, and Claiming Doors. Today's episode is Coachable Moments. Our feature agent is Mr Scott Bailey from Singleton, new South Wales. Agent is Mr Scott Bailey from Singleton, new South Wales.
Speaker 1:Bailey's are a famous stock and agent and rural real estate sales team and residential. Just recently I did the internal audio training system for Bailey's. In doing these assignments I do a complete business framework of the company, interview the leader of the business and capture all the moments of technique and strategy that the business is using. And I just want to share a couple of those moments and I'm going to bring Scott Bailey in to do that. But one thing that really struck me with this business was the traditional coachable moments. That seems to be evaporated in our real estate industry and just recently when I did the Matt Steinway Ultimate Agent 10 Principles program, we saw the same thing again that some of the traditional and professional techniques have evaporated in our industry and this is a great reflection of a real estate great what we do in these coachable moments. Please welcome to the program, mr Scott Bailey.
Speaker 2:Thank you, lee, great to be here.
Speaker 1:How long have you been with the company?
Speaker 2:I started with the company when I was 20 years old, so this year is my 27th year in the business.
Speaker 1:Well, that definitely qualifies you for some of our key questions and coachable moments. And, scott, when I was doing the other work for the company, I just loved some of these traditional things you're doing and, especially with established clients, love the one you're with, as we call it. Give us some insight to what the company's doing in that part of the business.
Speaker 2:This very much is part of our ethos. Going back, say, 25 to 30 years ago, our business was very much livestock-centric. It was a stock and station agency and we built our livestock business not with letterbox drops, not with anything that you see in today's industry. Our logic was very simple and that was over-service our current clients and we won't need to chase any new ones because they'll do the tongue-wagging for us. And what our methodology was was really over-service our top 20%. We used to physically ring our top 20% cattle clients every Monday night.
Speaker 2:So every Wednesday there was a cattle sale. Every Monday night we would ring them and say this is what the market's doing. It's 20 cents dairy this week. How you going? Yep, we're going to send in 65 weaners. Thank you, lee, we'll book the trucks for you and give you a call Wednesday afternoon. A lot of other livestock agents at the time were knocking on doors, cold canvassing, saying look, we'll sell you cattle for a percent less and everything. But we never lost anyone. We just kept growing because that was our logic, if that makes sense. So I think that logic can be embedded into our real estate business as well, and we can even take that further by bolting an additional extra onto it, which is lead generation.
Speaker 1:This is so powerful. What you did there with the livestock just letting you know, that's all phone calls are. A lot of people resist making phone calls because you can ring someone so much. You'll lose the business if you've got nothing to inform them with. They've got to profit from that knowledge. But the just to let you know call. This is what's happened last 12 weeks. These were the sales we had in property just letting you know and you don't have to be selling to get an appraisal done. It's just a nice sequence, but we've got to get through enough of those phone calls each day and for everyone listening to this audio right now. No matter who you are, you've got to make a decision. Are you in the community or are you on the edge of the community? Take us into auction invites. Is that something we are still doing within the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we certainly are. We send out a letter with a brochure and part of our logic of having our beautifully designed brochures is to show people just how well we do things. But it's not like a DL junk mail looking piece of marketing. It's a letter saying just letting you know, as a resident in the area we've listed, bundalier, up the road, 1,000 acres, just letting you know you may have some friends and family interested. It's embarking on an auction campaign starting next week. The price guide is $6 to $6.5 million. If you'd like to know how the market's going and in particular, the campaign itself, happy to talk and then we hand sign that Beautiful.
Speaker 2:So that connection piece is there, Sorry? And back to that. So that's just the initial. And then, during the actual auction campaign, another letter goes out just giving you an update. Marketing's traveling really, really well. We expect the property to sell at auction. It's being held at the Quest Apartments at Singleton. You're more than welcome to come down. You might just be curious as to how an auction works or want to get your head around what your property's currently worth.
Speaker 1:Nice. So it's an in-the-heat campaign of its own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then just sold. One goes out, so there's actually three. So just listed market update and just sold when it's transacted.
Speaker 1:But take us into the anniversary letter and what we do with monkey skins.
Speaker 2:So yeah, when an anniversary comes up, we don't just send out a card. What we do is we send a letter to the person, just informing them that, hey, do you realize it's been four years since you've purchased John Street? Thank you so much. Once again, here's a coffee and cake voucher at Monkey Skins. Feel free to go and use that whenever you like. There's no time limit on it and oftentimes that's printed and we hand sign it, but oftentimes there'll be like a handwritten little personal message there saying wow, can't believe it's been four years. Send us a text when you're coming in and I'll try and join you for coffee and cake, and we hand sign those. But they're not printed with our signature, so we take the time to actually physically do them. There's normally probably four or five or half a dozen on my desk every day, and if you do it every day, it's no problem.
Speaker 1:What a great daily ritual that I'm signing this, and when you sign something to Lee and Robin Woodward, it just brings it back to your mind. No computer or AI can ever do that for you and it's still such a powerful, brilliant part of our day. Most businesses I go into need to really dramatically lift the calls, to lift the results, and 100 connects a week should be the base and above that we're doing the extra and you and I were just chatting. A great place for you to make phone calls is when you're driving, because you've got some long drives that you go out to the appointments. What goes through your mind on your follow-on calls?
Speaker 2:With a follow-up call, that there's always a goal. Like it's not just a whimsical little chat that you're going to talk about the weather. They don't want that, nor is it going to add any value to your life or the business. There needs to be something in it for them and they need to know exactly what you're calling for and how long you'll be. So I always make a point of saying good day, it's Scott here, won't keep you long, just wanted to reach out and discuss that property that you inquired on and start off from there and always keep it very, very business-like and succinct and get out of there as quickly as you can.
Speaker 2:But the goal is always to achieve an appointment, like, if you're ringing someone, if it's a buyer callback or a vendor callback, it's always well, how about we catch up, maybe one day late next week and discuss that in more detail? Yeah, that'd be good. Scotty, what day suits you best? Thursday or Friday? Oh, friday, morning or afternoon? Probably the afternoon, cool, what about three o'clock, four o'clock? Always give people two options and they will always lock one in. Don't throw it back to them and ask when would suit them. Always give them two options and take control of your time. But that call always should have the goal of making an appointment because, yes, the more you talk to people, the more things happen. But if you get in front of people face to face, that's where the magic happens.
Speaker 1:What have you noticed has let them down in their phone call work. That could have got them better results.
Speaker 2:Being too wafty, just being too conversational. People don't want to be your friend. They just want to extract out of you what can add value to their world and you need to get over yourself and sort of understand that. You know that's called ego. I think You're in your chosen profession and you're making your phone call to provide a service. You're in your chosen profession and you're making a phone call to provide a service. You're not making a phone call to have small talk and talk about who's going to win the rugby on the weekend. People do that at barbecues with their friends and look one day, maybe if you do your job really really well and impress them, you may become a friend and sit at a barbecue with them one day. But phone calls aren't for fluff, just bang direct, polite, respectful gratitude attitude, direct.
Speaker 1:Get out of there, Scott. On this podcast, we've discussed many times the importance of price improvement programs.
Speaker 2:What's your thoughts on this? In the past we've called that anything we can do to increase sellability. When selling, there's obviously a lot of different moving parts and a lot of things need to be executed well in order to get a great result, and there's many, many different things. But before everything comes presentation, and if something's presented right, there's nothing more powerful than that. If something's presented poorly, everything's just hard and the result is going to reflect the amount of effort the owner's put into preparing their property for sale. So anything we can do to improve the presentation and the condition of the property is going to impact price. So it's about giving recommendations and on the front end, when we give our opinion on price, we don't just give a figure on price. We don't just give a figure. We give three layers and it's normally below market and above, and we communicate with the client that, okay, if you do nothing, you might run the risk of actually being in the below bracket, or you might get lucky and just sell for what the data is saying you're conservatively going to get.
Speaker 2:If you're prepared to invest in preparing it right, if you're prepared to do some marketing or staging or something like that, you might actually get up here in the above bracket and get that premium price. That's what the property improvement plan would be all about like painting the front gate, knocking over a fence that's really tattered and replacing it With a property worth $3 or $4 million. It might be spending $50,000 or $60,000. You need to articulate to the owner that if they're going to spend $50,000 or $60,000, getting $50,000 or $60,000 back is stupid. They need to be getting $250,000 back from that investment. So it's actually really, really powerful advice, probably one of the most important things that you can do as a professional, more so than just valuing it or whatever. Giving that good feedback about what they can do to maximize price, based on your knowledge and insight, can make people tens of thousands of dollars, or not giving it can cost them tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:On the topic of the presentation and that was really well articulated what you just said. Take us back to the beginning, when you've got that intro to the property. A lot of people can find this really uneasy and you've got to have a good, solid way in which you do have Take us into that.
Speaker 2:When we actually get to the property, always talk to our team about making a directional statement, because when you get to a property, when you get to the front door, they're standing in their hallway. They're not knowing what's going to happen. They're like, oh Jesus, you end up tripping over each other in the hallway If you just take it by the short and curlies up front and go. Thank you once again for having us here. We're thrilled to be here. Just so as you know how today is going to work, what we'd like to do is, before we and we can't wait to have a look at your property. It's beautiful, but before we do that, we'd like to just sit down and have a quick chat and make sure we're on the same page. Is that okay? Yeah, no worries, we'll sit over here at the dining room table. Cool, we'll only need a couple of minutes and then we'll go for the tour.
Speaker 2:But what we do when we sit down at the table is nothing more than ask this question. Always just exude, not over the top, so you look ridiculous, but just exude gratitude. As you're sitting down, just say look, thank you so much once again for having us here. We don't take the opportunity to represent you lightheartedly, but what's important to us is what's important to you. So the next question I'm going to ask you is really important to us, and what is that? What is important to you?
Speaker 1:So the next question I'm going to ask you is really important to us, and what is that? What is important to you? Beautiful, so you're getting them to create that most important key point. What are you hearing at that point?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, they say some really powerful things. Oftentimes people will say oh look, we've lived here for 30 years and we're really emotional about selling and we're just really private people. We don't want to do the whole public fanfare and is there any way we can do it quietly and privately? So already you're thinking you might need to embark on an off-portal conversation. Or they might say things like look, we've sold three times in our lifespan and auctioned every time and been burnt every time. Magic comes out of that.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they don't say anything and you've got to prompt and probe and like a probing question might be so how many times have you sold before? And they'll say, oh, never. Okay, so education around what's involved is important to you. Yeah, that would be great. Okay, we'll make sure we cover that. What's important to you is a good way to start because it straightaway says to them you don't really care about ego or selling the place or commission or anything. What's important to you as the professional is what's important to you. So it's a really good way to go into a turbo boosting mode to build rapport and show empathy. That's what we've always done anyway.
Speaker 1:What's your thoughts on energy and capable?
Speaker 2:Yeah, very much so. Capability people will make that decision prior to even getting in front of your face. They'll do their research online. They'll talk to their friends. They'll know more about you than you know about yourself. They'll know what you've sold, how much you've got. Normally, a lot of the time, so, when it comes down to actually winning the business and talking to people, all they're doing is buying your energy. If you want to build a house, you'll do your research and you know who built your house. Oh so-and-so. He was amazing. Oh, he was crappy. Never heard from him. He's tough.
Speaker 2:People will do their research and get their shopping list and if you're on it, you haven't got to regurgitate that all again. But if you get a builder, you're not going to sign up with the builder and then follow him around for six months and check every nail that he hammers in with his hammer. All you've done is purchased their energy. They resonated, the plan that they delivered was good, and the way that they're sort of talking resonates with you. It was no different to us.
Speaker 2:So this day and age and it starts before you even get there if they send you a text message, well, people can see whether you've seen a text message, get straight back to them. Don't let them see that you've read it and have the little bubbles there. And get back to them two hours later. Just be responsive. That's energy. But where it really comes to the fore is when you actually get in front of someone. Don't be over the top and become disgustingly sort of over the top, but just be genuine and show honest and sincere appreciation for being there and be positive about the fact that you're there and be positive about their property. If you walk into the house with your arms folded and go oh, it's only three bedrooms, I thought it was four bedrooms. You are done and dusted. You haven't got to be false or fictitious. But just remember they'll purchase your energy and it doesn't matter what sort of property you're in. Don't disrespect it, because that will be disrespecting the owner and then they'll disrespect you by voting with their feet and not choosing you.
Speaker 1:Scott, just a fantastic interview today. We've covered so many things. For me, as an educator, you often get to see people have got all the jargon but not the behavior, and you have the professional behavior that we are looking to showcase on a program like this and I think anyone listening to this today will feel that strip it back simplicity of getting back to your core values as a sales professional. My final question has to be in the area of established clients. Your established clients is your super fund. We've got to have an established client campaign that allows us to have the anniversary cards and calls the Christmas cards the settle-in phone call. I think this sequence is very important. Take us into what you do with the settle in phone call.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So it's really important that we keep the love flowing after they purchase, not so much so as they get sick of you, but the first one, obviously. You ring them on settlement day congratulations, rah, rah, rah. But then 24 hours later another phone call saying, hey, just checking in, how have you settled in? That's when they might go. Oh, it's awesome, thanks so much. Bye, for now, 10 seconds, you're gone.
Speaker 2:Or they might say look, the power point behind the fridge doesn't work and there's not a light bulb in this joint that works. No problem, our handyman's on standby all the time for this sort of stuff. We'll have him around there in the next couple of hours they just go wow, you know, that's that phone call. And then seven days, so settlement day, one, seven. So on the seventh day just ring and say, hey, just checking into those light bulbs. All good, thank you so much. We really appreciate that. Next one's 180 day, so halfway through the year, and the next one's the annual anniversary, which is the letter that we spoke of earlier about the voucher to monkey skins or what have you?
Speaker 1:Absolutely love it, time to invest could be an email if we've got some good opportunities coming up there. The annual price update and just from before we had our just sold, just listed calls that's the hot spotting around the actual property. And, scott, one of my favorite campaigns that all this comes under is love the one you're with. When you're in real estate, chasing strangers is what you do in the beginning. But to have the leakage where you lose good people because we didn't have this love the one you're with campaign, you don't want to be cold calling till you die.
Speaker 1:It's worth getting this right and that's why the price updates, the area reports, client pop-ins you might have one of these beautiful magazines of a property you've just sold and it's not dissimilar to theirs.
Speaker 1:Pop in at 3.30 in the afternoon, if it's convenient, and just say I thought I'd drop this off to you. I've actually got an agent who does drop-offs to my house of all these homes. I've actually got an agent who does drop-offs to my house of all these homes not dissimilar, but they're a big size home because we had six kids in that house and it's like four separate parts of a home but he's always dropping off a booklet that this one just sold and this one just sold and you do appreciate it that they're keeping you up to date, but just the effort and I think the client pop-in shows that effort and allows us to keep up to date with all the surrounding sales that people don't go to the street behind them or in rural, you know, you don't know what's happened a thousand kilometers away from you, yet it's affecting your boundary. What can you fill us in on?
Speaker 2:there. Yeah, they're really good things to sort of add in. You've got your standard calls that are part of our process, but your hotspotting and all that sort of stuff is really good. So that comes into your personal prospecting. So I love the ones you're with. Yeah, you might sell a property that's similar. What a great opportunity to ring them and say, hey, this is just sold, but yeah, that's really good logic and goes back to what we were talking about before with our prospecting component. Logic and goes back to what we're talking about before with our prospecting component. Just over-service, the ones that you already know. Question for you as the business owner.
Speaker 1:What do you want the future team member, the current team member? What's your expectation for them in the business maturity moment of making this part of their world and their system to get better results in their career?
Speaker 2:Attention to detail. Complacency is our biggest enemy. I think the real estate industry is big, fat and lazy, so don't think that it's easy, because if you do, you won't succeed. The rent's due every single day, so no matter how good last week was, or what properties you sold and everything like that, it doesn't matter. You've got to start again, and that's also what's exciting about the industry, but it's also something never to forget. You've got to maintain that attention to detail and hopefully doing this recording with you, lee, instills into our team that you've got to always be working on yourself and just trying to be the very best version of yourself, because your clients deserve that. If they are dealing with the very, very best in the marketplace, well, that can cost them a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Mr Scott Bailey, I want to thank you for appearing on. We Are Selling and just sharing everything that you did today in a beautiful, simplistic way. Thank you for joining us, no worries.