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
Top Performers Strip It Back And Execute - Blake Stretton
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You can feel it when the market changes: auctions soften, buyers hesitate, and suddenly the “easy” listing strategies stop working. So we tried something different. Blake Stretton jumps into the host seat and puts Lee on the spot about what really separates the top 1% in Australian real estate sales, especially when conditions tighten, and every conversation matters.
We dig into the underrated superpower of elite agents: focus. Not just what they do, but what they refuse to do. We talk prospecting discipline, getting match fit on the phone, and why the best operators keep tech simple while mastering words, connection, and presence. From there, we move into market correction strategy, including fee defence, higher service standards, and the transparency buyers now expect if they’re going to feel safe enough to act.
Vendor management takes centre stage, with practical dialogue and frameworks you can take straight into your next listing presentation. We unpack the shift from the likeable agent to the advising agent, how to use duty-of-care language, why progress meetings should be pre-booked, and the “three prices” technique that keeps pricing conversations factual and calm. We also tackle AI in real estate: where it saves time, where it becomes a distraction, and why the winners will be the agents who balance tech and technique.
If you want stronger scripts, cleaner structure, and better client communication for the months ahead, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a mate in the industry, and leave us a review with the one technique you’re going to try this week.
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Brought to you by The Agency Portal
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Welcome And Sponsor Setup
SPEAKER_01Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Salesperson course. Today's program is brought to you by the Agency Portal, Australia's first listener-to-settled execution platform. This incredible digital platform allows us to use Agency Sign, Agency AML, the sale funding process, commission funder, agency supplier pay, and agency settlements. Agency settlements is the Pixar partner that allows the real estate digital transaction to exist. Let's get started with today's podcast. Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. Today, the cameras are on. We have a completely different podcast for you. As a couple of weeks ago, I added a button that you could click.
Why Lee Becomes The Guest
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me. Very excited. Now I've been chasing your interview for a while. Yep. And then you decided to flip the whole thing on me. I did, yeah. And I'm going to allow you to explain your request.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean look, my thinking behind that is with everything that's going on at the moment, you know, not just legislation, but all the things that are happening out there in Australia globally, I I really feel that a lot of your listeners would love to hear a bit from you in relation to, you know, what's going on out there in the marketplace and what do you see is going to happen in the next few years, even particularly around tech as well, AI being a huge thing at the moment. Also, I mean you've met some of the top 1% in the country and even globally in real estate. You've interviewed, you know, top leaders in, you know, real estate leaders in this space as well. So I really feel that there'd be a lot of knowledge there that I think your listeners would love to get from you and yeah, just change it up a bit today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's an interesting journey, isn't it? When you get to work for big companies, be it onboarding, training, director of sales, y you see a lot. Everything's out there but different to what you think. And then people assume something's one way, and it's very rare that it's that way. And no one thing happens in isolation. I look at all the assignments I've been on, and there's something magical about all of them, but then you can bring it all together and there's your answer.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And I think you would see a lot of patterns in in what are these top performers that they do. And I'm very interested to get a bit of knowledge around those patterns. So I mean, you know, leading into that, of I guess some of the best of the best that you've interviewed and you've met over the years, what would you consider to be a few of their traits that have I guess kept them to be consistent?
SPEAKER_01Well, let's do it. But if we're going to do it, you're gonna have to take it from the uh the top yourself down the camera. You're the host of We Are Selling, and I'll be your guest. Go for it.
SPEAKER_00Lee, welcome to the program. This is uh this is the uh Hot Topics. Uh sorry, what do you want to sell?
SPEAKER_01We are selling. We are selling. Now your original hot topics listener, but uh let me do the Yes. Hey Blake, great to be here. Thanks for having me on the program.
SPEAKER_00All right. Blake Stretton, I'm your host. Lee, welcome to the program. Thank you very much. No worries.
What The Top 1% Avoid
SPEAKER_00What would be your you know, top tips from the one percenters that you've met across the country? What would be some of the the real nuggets of knowledge that you can pass on to some of your listeners today?
SPEAKER_01If you look at anyone who's a top performing agent, it's actually what they don't do and what they don't get distracted by that keeps them focused. Uh quite often in implementation, which people struggle with, anyone can go to a course to get the information, but the actual activation of something is difficult. Now, Blake, you're actually one of my best activators that you can learn the skills, but you've got tech and technique, which is very unusual.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Hence you were on my program when it was going to be on today of how you've implemented. But a lot of people struggle with implementation and they also overcomplicate it. Whereas if you look at our greats, they strip it back, they don't use too much tech at all or no tech, but they are very, very good at words and very, very good at connections. So put them in that moment in the lounge room on the phone. Yeah. They're very present and they make the person feel who they're speaking to. They are the only house on the world they're going to be representing. They don't talk about the 50 others and thousands have done. They they have that connection to the person.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I mean, that's it's very true. I mean, you listen to you know, James Tossdon, for example, talk. I mean, he's very basic. He very much just sips just has a sheet of paper, he just works off that, makes his prospecting calls. He's not distracted by emails and and it's it's very true. I think you're very right in the sense that it is it is just stripping back the basics and not getting distracted. So would you say that would be one of the big things? What what else would be it is.
SPEAKER_01If we look at James Tossman, and I've interviewed James a few times and spoken at conferences with James, James is match fit. And what I mean by that is some people hit the phones and they want to get off and they haven't even got warmed up yet, they haven't got started. James expects and enjoys sitting there for a couple of hours at a time, and you're right, he'll work off, he's got his own little way of marking up the records. Nothing bounces or emails or pops, he's focused. So I think the the ability to concentrate is a good one. A lot of people are so looking forward to any distraction they can versus locking down. I can do this for a couple of hours and enjoy it. But getting match fit on the phone is very important.
SPEAKER_00Staying discipline.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
Working A Market Correction
SPEAKER_00Another question that I had for you was a bit about the market correction, you know, what's been happening a lot lately. Pretty poor clearance rates out there with the auctions. We've had, you know, interest rates going up, the wonderful news that we received recently around capital gains and what's happening there. So there's definitely been a bit of a correction in the market. What do you think would probably be a few of the things that the agent should really be focusing on this marketplace that we're in now where it's a bit slower?
SPEAKER_01The transition had to happen because it was too hot anyway. And for a lot of people that listen, this program, if you've been in real estate a long period of time, it was normal a property would be on the market for six to twelve months. That was normal real estate. Correct. And then we had an explosion, acceleration, uh, amplified marketing came in, and we saw a great change in multimedia acceleration to real estate versus core flu, ads, weeks, paper. So that's all good. This transition is a good time for the good agents. So one thing I do love about the market we're going into, people are gonna say, Blake, I don't care what I have to pay you, just get it sold. And they're gonna have to invest in the agent. Whereas a lot of the agents who cut their fees, they just park it. And you know, when someone cuts their fees so low, they actually think they're being competitive that the other person didn't get it and they did. But that's not what happens. And there's no shortcuts to a great price, as you know. So running the price improvement programs, I know yourself you use the webbooks product, which is an information memorandum. What you do on a house is what someone does on a $200 million shopping center. You're using an information memorandum. So I think standards are gonna be a big part of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you've got to be incredibly good with buyer management now because the purchasing community will only buy from people they feel safe with. Getting the like your information memorandum. I feel safe, I feel better about this house. Right, transparent. So the standards are kicking in, I love it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, I I agree completely. I think transparency is gonna be a big thing in this marketplace. You know, we you know, and I I agree with you completely. Dealing with the purchases and building relationships with them, creating empathy with them is gonna be really important. I also feel vendor management is gonna be quite interesting as well. What tips would you give to agents around this time with trying to keep their clients positive in this space?
From Likeable To Advising Agent
SPEAKER_01This is a big topic. And we covered this on the podcast a few times of late. And it was Christian Bartley actually brought this up, and I really loved it. You've got to move from the likable agent to the advising agent. My advice is, my advice is you've got to know how to be beautifully cold, which is hard for a lot of people. Yeah. And what I mean by that is, you know, an agent can be, oh, but they're thinking this and that. What's the right thing by the property? And then using that beautiful terminology, duty of care. I have a duty of care to let you know this is where it is, this is the facts and evidence. Because in a market like now, it's moving so quick that if you leave it too long, they'll hemorrhage money. Yet you could have got them out earlier. And I think agents have really got to take responsibility for that. If if you didn't give them if if you would have given the right advice earlier, they wouldn't have lost fifty thousand dollars. That's what's just happened.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Like I said earlier to you, I mean, I started in this industry 15 years ago. I started selling in roughly middle of 2012. And so I started in a market where, as you said before, you know, 60, 90 days longer is is just normal. It's just a part of it. I I'm actually again, same as what you said before, I'm actually quite excited for this market because it will really differentiate the the agents that are willing to work that little bit harder and are willing to do those little bit extras for their clients versus the agents that just want to relax and have a bit more of a cushy lifestyle. So it'd be very interesting to see how it goes. But I I um I'm actually quite excited to what's coming next. Next question I had for you around the conversations and you touched on it is just with regards to making sure that you're I guess being you know transparent and not being too um not being too uh you know um too nice to them, I suppose. Would there be any dialogue or scripts or anything that you can pass on to the you know the the listeners here today around what would be some of those conversations?
Scripts That Become Repeatable Techniques
SPEAKER_01Definitely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There was a great line that came out of a podcast two weeks ago with Tristan Rowland, who took out number one real estate agent in the country last night, which was a massive moment for us. We've worked with Tristan his entire career. But there's an example. He's in a marketplace where everyone's 1.5, 2%, he's above 3%, most times 3.75. And he actually said, Lee, my fee is like a bouncer at a nightclub of the good owners. Uh the bad ones can't get in, the crazies can't get in, they won't invest. But he's a team-based business like yourself. Yep. But the conversations are important that you've got to be neutral. So using our own internal report sometimes is a little bit, we manufactured it versus the REA reports. This is the saves, this is how many people came on it, keeping it facts and evidence. Yep. One thing I did a lot with my owners was the progress meetings were pre-booked. So for example, I'd say, Blake, uh, with the pricing of your property, and you'd be going, I'm not changing it. I'd say this, Blake, with the pricing of your property, I want to leave it where it is. Our next progress meeting is on the 20th, and on that date, our next price would be if we haven't got a result before then. But next, improve the price are the right words and dialogues. And and and then my favorite's this one. It's called the three prices. So, Blake, you can be my vendor and we're in the setup to sell meeting that no one ever did, which has sort of just come back into fashion. And my everything email has got smoke coming out of it at the moment. And I've never seen an email used so much in my life as the everything email. Yeah, I can imagine. In the sell meeting, I'd sit there with you and say, Blake, firstly, I'm glad you've appointed me at this time in a market. And I must ask you, why, knowing everything you know about the marketplace right now, why have you chosen to come onto the market?
SPEAKER_00We didn't discuss this earlier, but you know, we're going through a separation.
SPEAKER_01Sorry to hear that. Happens a lot. We're here to support you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. And uh so, you know, we just we we have to make this sort of now. We can't we can't hold on to it for much longer.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So my job is to get you out of this with as much profit as I can and not break the golden rule of real estate. Now, Blake, the golden rule of real estate is this the longer your property is on the market, the less people expect to pay. And that is why I'm using amplified marketing up front to get that compression that we don't follow a market down, which is what I'm seeing everywhere. I've got three properties I've got to take over this week, all because they broke the golden rule of real estate. We'll do what we can, but it would have been a lot easier to get them out up front. So each week I need to have your consent to be frank with you about the pricing results of the market. And there's three prices we're gonna need to monitor. The first one is the buyer engagement level. For every home in this country, be it 200,000 or 200 million, there's a price where people are interested and not. And I need to find that level. And I'll be asking everyone is there a price you'd pay for the property? I just want to hear that number. The second number is yours. You're gonna have an expectation each week in the marketplace that you're thinking it's this, and then we'll we'll hear the feedback and response from the market, and your own expectations will go through transition. I know mine did when I was on the market with my own property. But the third number is where I need your consent. If you were to say to me, Lee, what do you think it's where what's gonna pull it up? Where do you think it's gonna be sold? I want to be able to tell you where I think the number is each week. And it will move based upon who's inspecting for what reason. And that's not an offer, it's just where what I think's gonna pull it up based on all my years of experience. But are you okay for me to deliver that number to you or not talk to you about it?
SPEAKER_00It'd be hard for them to say no, wouldn't it? I mean it's and it's great dialogue, it's perfect. I mean, again, in this market, you have to have those set-to-sell meetings. And it's I mean, I think if you're a listener now, you'd just want to be playing that on repeat and and listening to that over and over. I know I will be.
SPEAKER_01And you know what's interesting, and I love that you you wanted to take this approach to the interview. It used to be scripts and dialogues, then we learnt words and concepts, whereas now it's a technique. So the three prices is a technique. Uh live mode, sell mode. Yeah. When we're presenting, it's a technique. Fees one, two, three, it's a technique. Today, in be the complete salesperson or anything I'm doing, I just make people become ninjas one snack at a time. And the snacks are what people are okay. That's what I say on that one. But it's a lot easier to do that than remember all these scripts and dialogues.
SPEAKER_00Exactly what to say. I mean, I and I agree with that completely. I think um you probably remember that video that was done many, many years ago with Phil Harris. Yes. And uh, and I mean that was such a great video. Um, I've still got it by the way. I found it. The listing present I found it.
SPEAKER_01The listing presentation with Phil Harris.
SPEAKER_00Money's listening right now. Hello, Phil. Hey, Phil. And I I would have had to have played that a hundred times because it was there was such gold in that, you know, and and I think that's that's really I think as an agent now we're moving back in that space of having to learn some of those older techniques that we we did know back in the early phase, but you just hadn't had to know in the last few recent years. So uh I think now more than ever the yeah complete salesperson course you know you should be attending that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree with that.
AI As A Tool Not A Crutch
SPEAKER_01Now it's interesting, you've been using AI very good. Yep. Uh what are you doing with AI?
SPEAKER_00What I'm not doing with AOcean, I mean, it there's so many applications you can use it for. I use it for personal, I use it for business, uh I use it for client communication, I use it for everything. I mean, when I start a listing campaign now with a client, I've actually I've got a folder designated for each client, each property. Pretty well every email, every bit of correspondence goes into that. And so it allows me to track if I've got a property that's yeah, been on the market for a couple of months, it allows me to track some of those early conversations and those, you know, earlier discussions from right from from back then. So I think things like tool uh AI is just an amazing tool. I've been playing around with building code with it and doing some pretty cool things there as well. I I think for anyone that is that hasn't learnt it, I I think it's worth understanding a bit about it. Um I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are on that, because I know it can be a distraction like many other things with technology. Yeah. However, I also feel that it's gonna have a place in a few years. Where do you think it's gonna go in the next couple of years with AI, particularly around real estate?
SPEAKER_01Well, firstly, I started really bad with AI. I was cranky. To me, it was a covers band that you could get it to play a song that you didn't write.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I got over that. Yeah. My breakthrough on AI, because with AI, you can go out to the world or you can come into yourself. So when I loaded the book Claiming Doors, which took me 30 years of my life to consolidate from I've done six books, but claiming doors was the big grand finale moment. But I can load claiming doors and say, give me a checklist for claiming doors, chapter one. Yeah. Because I'm the artist, it's it's my work versus I don't know any of those things, but it looks good. So I think AI Blake becomes really important. I think AI U becomes important. You know, these audios, you can just grab the transcription, throw it into AI and say, give me a checklist what I should do based on what Lee Wood had said about vendor management. And boom, there it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's powerful. Very powerful.
SPEAKER_00Well, like I spoke to you about before starting this today, is the last few podcasts that you did. I grabbed the transcripts and try to get ahead of some of the questions that you might have been asking me today. So try to be a little bit cheeky there. But prepare. Prepare. Just get prepared. Again, it's it there's some really, really incredible things you can do with it. Do you feel that it's going to take over the space of real estate? What are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_01I don't. It's interesting. AI is moving so fast that no one has a technological advantage anymore. I've had some people in the last couple of weeks show me their full software platforms that they built. And I was at RealTech for three years. We had 80 coders. And I'll just see what someone's done in their bedroom and go, look at that. Like it is insane. Amazing. Yeah. And they're ready to launch. I'm now fascinated by that. Yeah. So there's that side to it. When you come down to it, words are so important. And AI is here with us now and people of our age group, but the people we're representing are still here. And they're still going to throw you the Blake, you work in Green Point, Mum and Dad Town, some waterfronts, normal houses, but people trust you to know AI. Yes. And they're still throwing you a set of keys to say, we're going to leave it to you. So I think the consumer wants you up to date with AI, not so much themselves. There's that nice balance between tech and technique. So, and everyone's saying the same thing on this, AI won't take your job. Someone using AI better than you will take your job. But I know in even in the speaking world, I was at a conference and this lady was saying, you don't have to speak to camera anymore, you just type it in, does a video over your face and talks. Or you could speak to camera. There's a skill. And learning to speak to camera is a skill. Absolutely. I know later on this year I've got the complete public speaking course. And the amount of people that are booked in who are terrified of speaking because they want to be a better communicator. So it's a balance. But I absolutely love the time it's saving us in what we do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's definitely a time-saving tool, but you yeah, you don't want to rely on it too much, too heavily.
SPEAKER_01Or be locked in the room, prompting, prompting, and prompting, and you're not communicating to Mavis who wants to put it properly on the market. Correct, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think that's where we're very fortunate in our industry, is that it is very much a people business. Um I started in uh my first jobs were in hospitality, and so I found that to be a really good transition coming into real estate because it's you're dealing with people. Yes, we're selling houses, but we're dealing with people. And I I I I don't I'm not too worried about it, um, but was very curious to hear your your thoughts on it.
Consistency And Client Communication
SPEAKER_00So tell me, how did you become number one in Green Points? It just really comes down to consistency. I was very big on my training and learning as much as I possibly can. And so there's a lot of a lot of agents that I listen to to grab information from over the years, you know, mostly from your hot topics. From that, I've just built up a client base really um of of you know gold clients, I call them, people that you know will repeat in referrals, and and that's really mostly how I get the business. Um it's it's it's you kind of threw me a question. I wasn't more in interview.
SPEAKER_01So I'm used to doing that. It's like going from open homes to what you've done though, uh just for our listener out there, is you are a multimedia modern agent who happens to sell real estate. You've done a lot of work in video, you've got your digital IEMs going like your digital inspections are international world class. It's from that structure of no stone left unturned, way more than any website's gonna tell you. How have you been able to communicate that through to the to the community?
SPEAKER_00So one of the things that we and I've been doing it for years, uh, and our luckily our CRM system allows us to share essentially the buy feedback with that client. So they can log on at any time and they can see all the people that are coming through the property, all the phone calls, emails, text messages, everything. And I put a lot of notes in there on every single buyer that comes through and what they say about the property. So to me, client communication is is always been a huge thing. The more that they know about what's going on with their property, their campaign, the more the the uh much easier it is for us to be able to, you know, to make adjustments or do things that we need to do because they can see it firsthand what people are saying. So you know I've been very big on that. But you know, to to answer your previous question, I mean, the the biggest thing that I've found that's worked really well for me in the area that I'm working in Green Point, it's just that I've always tried to be honest and upfront with people and give them the right advice. I find that people obviously resonate very well to that. And so over the years I've just built many, many, many goals. Clients that have, you know, again refer me to you know
Team Structure Targets And The Next Level
SPEAKER_00one person to the next.
SPEAKER_01You build a little team around you now. What have you got in in the structure of your team?
SPEAKER_00So it's it's me and Harrison, and you know, we've got some great admin at our office as well. But Harrison and I we work really well. Harrison's been in it for almost a year, and he is he's a very he's a very good operator. He's an absolute sponge, and you know, he just gets it. He's come from a really lovely family, he's he's got a really nice personality, people warm to him straight away as well. And he's got an incredibly good work ethic. So we're we're both working really well together. So it's basically it's just me and Harrison. So, you know, we you know, we obviously have our weekly meetings, we we know what goals it is that we need to achieve. We communicate quite a lot. So we're on the It's a good week of numbers for you.
SPEAKER_01What do you focus on?
SPEAKER_00I try and aim for you know, five for five is is the goal. You know, not for a week, sorry, for a month, I should say. So, you know, one listing, one sale. Yeah, and we we seem to hit our targets quite well. I mean, every year that I've written down the goals and what it is that I want to achieve, it it happens. You know, this year we're I mean, we've been aiming to try and hit for around 50 sales. You know, next year we're gonna we're gonna try and do a bit more than that. Next financial year, I should say.
SPEAKER_01Very good. Yeah. Final questions. My question for you, and then your question for me. Okay, yeah. What are you passionate about for the future that you can see yourself progressing in that's gonna take you to a hundred deals?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that again, the goal is that we'd like to I'd like to build Harrison to obviously be an agent of his own, to go out to do his own thing, working as an EBU. Um, not dissimilar to what you see with Matt Steinway, Trevor Hamilton, and his team, and building a bigger unit around us. That's that's our goal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. And your question of my of me.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that's the last question I have for you. And it's pretty well exactly the same question. So, of all the years in real estate for you, which has been 30 years now, what
What Excites Us About The Future
SPEAKER_00excites you?
SPEAKER_01I'm more excited than ever than the young agents coming through. I'm doing a lot of work, which I call bench to field. I have a lot of 20 to 25 year olds that I'm looking after. I do custom training programs for uh Lisa Novak. I just did hers. It's called Unforgettable, and it is unforgettable. But grabbing Lisa's knowledge, transferring that into my training on demand, Todd Digital Learning, passing that on to them and seeing them grow has just been phenomenal. This year, the first complete salesperson course was in Brisbane, and I was just taken back by how many brilliant young females were in the audience, the most I've ever, ever seen who want to be a career-based agent. I'm really excited about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's very good. Well, Lee, thank you for joining the program.
SPEAKER_01Ladies and gentlemen, that's a very unusual. We are selling Blake Stratton, DJ co host today, asking the questions. Thank you, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks, Lee.