Who should I focus on? (When you need closings FAST as a Realtor!)

Who Should Agents Focus On With Limited Resources? Bottom-of-Funnel Strategy to Get Contracts Fast!

Watch the full video replay here:

https://youtube.com/live/k6b4tXHpoHc

Got limited resources and need closings, fast? 

In this episode, Josh Schoenly breaks down exactly how to answer the question every struggling agent asks: who should I focus on? Josh reframes it as what should I do, then walks through his proven 3-step blueprint: find a deal, identify real active buyers using LeadDeck.ai, and connect the dots to contracts. 

Plus, a live example of an off-market seller appointment booked through a simple email sequence, and how to handle the "do you have a buyer?" objection on expired listings using instant offer platforms. 

Packed with actionable strategies for agents ready to stop overthinking and start prospecting.

Timestamps:

00:00 Who To Focus On
01:06 Week Schedule Updates
03:13 Spring Kickoff Special
03:45 Agent Email Breakdown
04:44 Crowdsourced Niche Ideas
07:48 Bottom Of Funnel Focus
09:04 Three Step Blueprint
12:19 Finding Buyers Fast
14:59 Real World Seller Example
18:02 Low Cost Inbound Plays
22:55 Expired Listing Objection
28:52 Pipeline Steps Explained
34:12 Wrap Up And Reminders

Not part of our Skool community yet? (For real estate agents who want to take MORE listings...) 

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https://www.skool.com/leads-listings-leverage-7797/about

Transcript

 , I want to dig into a question that I got from an agent late last week. I forget if it was sat Friday or Saturday, and the question was effectively who to focus on. I've got limited resources. Who should I focus on? And I wanna reframe the question and I'll provide my thoughts, but I also want to crowdsource thoughts from this great group here in the community. So start thinking about that. The question was, who should I focus on? And then he gave me a number of different, basically niches or audiences. And he wanted some direction limited resources. Also part of the the question there. And so I wanna dig into that in a few minutes. Just start making some notes. Some ideas to share, and then I'll share my 2 cents and what I sent him as my answer as well, some housekeeping items, however, before we get into it. One, one more time. If you're watching on TikTok, the link to come hang out in the community is in the profile. If you're watching on one of the other platforms, the link is in the description. Some housekeeping items. Number one, schedule for the week. We've got, today's closers cafe tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm doing a special, additional session. I'm calling it too many subscriptions how smart agents are simplifying to close more Transactions. And that's at noon Eastern. It's gonna be about a half an hour short and sweet and very transparently how you can save a bunch of money and increase your effectiveness and efficiency by switching to Lead Deck versus maybe some of the other. Crazy tech stack that you have. Tomorrow is also the day for our lead deck AI mastermind, for our founders, club members and our licensees. That's at one eastern normally. Normally I do live prospecting on Wednesdays, however this Wednesday I have to head to Cincinnati. My son has an appointment with a doctor about an injury. He's gonna have to have surgically repaired and I wanna make sure that I'm there for that in person with him, for him. So I'm gonna be out, out of pocket all day. I'll be in the car. So if you guys wanna, if you wanna call I'm gonna be in the it's seven hours one way, or six and a half hours one way. So it's gonna be a lot of driving. So if you want, you can hit me up on that trip. Thursday at noon is our weekly live demo, and that's gonna be pretty cool because Sean has been putting in some serious time to make some wild improvements to the to lead deck with the. Like the big focus being removing friction and simplifying, removing friction and simplifying, making it easier, faster, more effective, more efficient for us to do the thing that we need to do to get the thing that we need. If we want more closings, which is more conversations with the people that want or thinking about transacting, right? So that should be fun. Be sharing some enhancements and improvements and some of that is already live that we'll share tomorrow on the the Mastermind as well. Okay, those are the housekeeping. Oh, one one last housekeeping item. I'll share my screen if you are not currently. Not currently a lead deck user. We have a spring kickoff special that ends tonight at midnight. You can go to lead deck.ai/join. We have three different licensing packages there. You can check 'em out, choose the one that makes the most sense for you. We've got a nice breakdown, et cetera, lead deck.ai/join. Okay, now for the topic. For today. I got this email late last week. Oh, it was Friday. There you go. Friday afternoon. And I blurred out who sent this because I didn't get his permission to share. And it doesn't matter. The question is what is most relevant and important. The subject line was who to focus on question mark. Hey, Josh. Hope you're well. My resources are very low. Closings have been few this year. If you had to decide what to focus on. See he even changed the question to be a better question. That was going to be the first thing I was going to reference. How would you research which market to focus on? Baby boomers, downsizing, divorce, or probate new home construction webinars? Ao I think that means absentee owners. Thanks for replying. And so I've already a answered him with my thoughts. But I thought it would be fun and valuable to everybody watching whether you're watching on the live stream. And if you are, you should come hang out in the school room. Link is in the description or in the bio or you're in the room here. Let's crowdsource some thoughts or ideas to answer this question. Who would you focus on, or what would you focus on if the goal was to fill your pipeline with transactions? With contracts as quickly as possible. And with the caveat that my resources are very low, which I took that to mean like I, I don't have much money to spend. I would assume that if he's not busy, he has a lot of time but doesn't have a lot of financial resources. So with that context. What would you do if you were him? The person that sent me this email, and don't shout at once. Go ahead. Who was that, mark? Go ahead. Tired. Landlords are vacant Owners love it. Okay, love it. Why? Why? Beautiful. Love it. Great share. Great share. Who else? I know we've got some smart people in here. Folks, come on. Don't be shy, don't be bashful. You can open up your line. What would you do if you were this person wondering or contemplating this question, hit the expired? David, why would you do that? I. This is the text that David had sent me last week about the story that he mentioned there with the expired listing that had multiple additional properties. So not only was he still open to selling the one that David was reaching out about. But he had others as well. David mentioned that he got lucky. He got lucky because he was doing the work. So yes, that may be the case, but I find that the more work I do, the luckier I get. So that is great. And, that is one of my, the core principles that I'm going to share when I unpack what I sent the agent that emailed me that, which is focus on bottom of funnel if we need closings. We need contracts quickly, we should put more of our energy and effort towards bottom of funnel. And so if I think about se, baby boomers, downsizing senior owners, that is a wonderful niche. That is a niche that is there's a ton of opportunity there. And also that is a niche that can take a while to to actually turn into. Business in pipeline because though they might have motivation, their timing might not be right. And if we've gotta, if we've gotta close deals quickly, if we've gotta be, writing contracts quickly, we have to focus on who's ready, willing, and able to do something today. And David, that was a great answer. Who else may, maybe one or two others before I share how I answered the question. Don't be bashful. Alright, fine. I'm just gonna share what I how I answered the question. I reframed it to what should I do? Not who to focus on, what should I do? And he even pivoted to that language in the question from, who to focus on in the subject line should, what should I do? So specifically what to do if you are a real estate agent. If you are a realtor and you have limited resources and you need to put. Contracts on the board quickly so you can close transactions in the next 30 to 45 to 60 days or less. Maybe, depending on the situation or scenario. I went back to the original three step blueprint that I was hammering in November and December and January, hammering myself in my own market and also sharing this process with many of you on here. In fact, it's the reason why many of you. Came and joined the Founder's Club with with Lead Deck. So number one, we need to find the bait. We need to find the bait, a potential deal. Now, that could be an off market deal. It could be that we go, as David recommended, we go and reach out to expired listings to see which of them are still open to an offer. But the easiest, fastest and I would say most reliable way, is to simply find a deal on the market. And I, in the Loom video that I sent replying to the email that inspired this session, that's exactly what I did and recommended, I went into Redfin, I pulled up his market, and I found three or four fixer upper type properties. Have been listed for, it was either more than 45 or more than 60 days, and use that as a starting point. Once we have a few of those, we call the listing agent to get the story, to get the insider information. What's going on with this property? Why hasn't it sold yet? I had a conversation with an agent in my market following this process on Friday. I called the agent's name is Derek. The property popped up in my, I have my cell phone, MLS search alerts, so every morning I get potential deals and it reminds me to reach out. And so I called the listing agent. This listing has, it's been listed for a long time, like 200 plus days and it's got a lot going on with it. So I wanted the insider, like I said, Derek what's the story on this one besides what I, what I can read in the agent remarks, and I didn't have to ask many other questions. And he told me the whole story. He told me everything going on the property. He told me. The, he told me the best offer that they've said no to, which at this point was several months ago, and he said, I don't know. They might say yes to that now, which was significantly lower than the current ASK price. And he told me what they're trying to accomplish with the transaction. So I have the insider information on that deal. Now I have information that a buyer, whether it's a retail or portfolio or an institutional buyer, won't see. Online about the property. They won't find it in Zillow or realtor.com, et cetera. So I have that insider intel. I then would use lead deck to find the real buyers in the market who are actually buying properties. How do we do that? We log in, we go to buyers. We put in the city, county, or zip code of the property. I'm gonna just put in Carlisle, pa 'cause I think that's where that one was that I was using as example, and now I have 74 cash buyers, 45 active landlord buyers. I have six multifamily buyers and seven vacant land buyers. These are buyers that own at least five properties and have bought at least one of this asset type in the last three years in Carlisle. Those are people that are actively demonstrating to the market that they are, that they're real. It's not, people opting in for information or looky-loo, or Mickey mouse@yahoo.com. Theoretical buyers. These are the actual real world buyers. What do we do next? We reach out to them about the deal. We reach out to them about the deal that we have in hand. We tell the story and we turn those conversations into opportunities, and then in step three maybe we find the right buyer and we're going and making an offer on that property, or we connect and have a conversation with a real, live, active, ready, willing, and able buyer. They're not interested in the deal we brought them, but they are looking for other deals and they give us their buy box and then we go find them. What they're looking for on market, off market doesn't matter. And then when we go and find those off market sellers and it doesn't match up, we pivot to a traditional listing. Either way, in step three, we're finding those contract opportunities and we're connecting the dots. So that was my recommend recommendation to the person that emailed this. And if you do this enough times, if you do it consistently enough, you will find yourself with a big pipeline of opportunity that all your job is, and I haven't said this analogy in a while, but we built this to be effectively your means for playing real estate. Go fish in one hand, I've got buyers. In the other hand, I've got sellers and my job is to match them up and when we've gotta match. That's how we earn our compensation, and we get paid very handsomely when that happens. Now let me give you a real world example of what that looks like for me. At 10 30 this morning, I'm going to meet with an off market seller. I don't even remember he replied to an email. I don't remember where he came from, but maybe if we have time, I'll find where he came from. It doesn't really matter. He replied to an email. And you know what, I like to be an open book here. So let me just, I'm gonna share the email exchange. The email exchange that led to this appointment this morning. So let me see here. Where is he? Lemme I know the address. So let's see here. Here we go. So I asked if he still owned the property at Street Address. That's our, that's the two steps. Script, book process. That's working incredibly well right now. More so with off market sellers. We have a different script that is working incredibly well with expired listings. David had shared and I found it to be very effective as well, which is, are you still accepting offers I on your property at Street Address? And we have full scripts book that I'm happy to share with anyone and everyone. It's one of the bonuses when you come join the school community, which is, if you're not in here with me right now, it's either in the description or the bio, you can come join for free. He said, yes. That's all he said. Yes. Got it. Thanks for confirming. Would you be totally opposed to looking at an offer for it if you're only looking at the 10 vacant acres? I would not sell it without my home on the adjoining 10 acres as well. Ah, makes sense. Any number what you'd be looking at four on both parcels. I'm thinking 1.2. And then very honestly and transparently, I dropped the ball. He replied. He replied on March 27th. I'm thinking 1.2 and I don't know if it got buried in my inbox or what. I didn't reply. I didn't reply for five or six days. Would it be possible for me to pop by next week sometime for a quick tour? It would need to be on Monday with 1230 work. I could also do 10 30. Let's do 10 30. Perfect. See you then. Happy Easter. Sent you a calendar invite as well, which I always do If, if I have their email, I just send it to the email that I have for them, which I already had is email because that's where the email, that's what the conversation was happening. If I don't have a good email or I'm not sure what is a good email, I will confirm, Hey, is this the best email for me to send you a calendar invite to? Why am I bringing that up in relation to this? Because regardless of whether or not he's ready to list his property this week, which is very unlikely, I now have. A card in my hand that I know his number and I'm going to meet him and connect with him and build relationship and rapport with him, and you better believe that his property is gonna be in my deal of the week email, and I'm going to post it using my inbound social strategy, which I didn't mention when going through this three step process, which is once you start to get these cards in your hand. There are other things that you can do that are low or no cost, which is number one, a deal of the week, email to every contact you have in your database. And number two, if you go to lead deck.ai/sprints and you go find the February 4th replay right here, the February 4th replay, I walk you through step by step and inbound. Strategy. In other words, what to do, what you can post on social media, on Facebook and Instagram and your Google business profile and nextdoor and wherever else. You can do it on TikTok, you can do it on LinkedIn, you can do it as a YouTube as a post on your YouTube channel. You can post the same kind of like static images or content as a post, a community post on your YouTube channel. All of you can do any and all of that once you have a card in your hand. The card in your hand may be like, James, who I'm going to meet this morning, or it might be a buyer that's looking for something specifically and you could post exactly what they're looking for and try to generate inbound lead flow that way of people that have a property that might perfectly fit the buy box. Questions, comments. What did I miss? What wasn't clear? What are people not connecting the dots on? And let's, I'm gonna unpin myself 'cause I like to see everybody's smiling faces. There we go. Look at that. This business doesn't have to be hard. Okay? If we focus on just having more conversations, the more conversations we have, the more opportunities reveal themselves. And then we've gotta, we've gotta connect the co, connect the dots in order to earn our compensation. Now, I'm not saying it's easy or that it's simple. It is. It requires hard work. But if you focus on more conversations, and in particular as it relates to this question, conversations with people that are closer to transacting. The luckier you tend to get. And then when you have enough opportunity and deal flow in your pipeline, then you can reallocate more of your time to more top of the funnel opportunities if you so choose I, senior owners, things of that nature. And for me, I'll just give an example for me. I have been reallocating more of my time a, or at least a portion of my time, on bigger deals that take longer, bigger deals that take longer. Now, I'm not real allocating all of my time there because if I do that. That's where I can get back, get myself back on the commission roller coaster, but I'm reallocating more time on, on bigger deals development opportunities, bigger multifamily, et cetera. Because the more of my ideal client that I get in conversation with, the more I uncover the possibility of people looking for those types of transactions. And that's a way for me, in my business with my. Ideal client avatar to increase my average sale price and therefore obviously increase my bottom line as well. What's everybody working on this week and what could we provide some help or clarity around before I wrap? I can get ready to go meet James on this 20 acre parcel out in the out, out in the boonies a little bit. It's still in my school. Here's the wild. Our school district, it's so big. It's still in my school district, and it's 30 minutes from my house. Same school district. Giselle. That script worked for me until they asked me if I had a buyer. Okay. Then what did you do? I hope you told them. No, I have an offer. Why? Hold on. I got the wrong screen up here. One second here. So Giselle wait, so can I unpack it? Hold on. Can I unpack it a little bit? That was you said that script worked for me. Are we talking about an expired listing? Okay, perfect. And then they asked me if you had a buyer and then you didn't know what to do. So what happened then? Okay. When? When was this? What? When was this? Okay. So if you don't already have an account. With fast cash offers, the institute, the the instant offer platform, the institutional offer platform. Go to launchpad under quick start right here. Okay. Okay. If you don't already have an account, go there. The invite code is right here. Okay? So go and create your account and then all you're gonna do. Once you have your account, it will look similar to this, except you won't see all this. This is like my admin dashboard. You are going to see offers, cash offers, okay? It'll say offers, cash, offers, snapshots, buyer networks. You're gonna go to cash offers, and all you're gonna do is pop in the address of the property. You'll hit search. Lemme see who else am I meeting with this week that I could pop in? So this is not wasteful. Invite code? No. No. It gi Okay. But it's right. It regardless of whether you already have an account, it's literally, it's directly under the button. Here, look, it's right here. It's 9 2 6 9 5 3 9 2 6 9 5 3. So all we need is an address. Oh, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put in one that I've been going back and forth with. What was that, Gallion? 62 0 5. There we go. So all we need is an address and it will take a few minutes where it'll build. Out the information. It's verifying values. Now it's fetching the preliminary offers. I. There we go. So now once I save this, I hit save Snapshot. Now it's saved as a snapshot in my account so I can go back to it at any point. Okay. So I can go, it's saved here. Now I can go back at any point I. I'm gonna pull it back up and I have a whole bunch of different offers here now. I typically will look at Zoom, Casa, and Quick Buy first and foremost, specifically the Zoom Casa Cash Flex and the Quick Buy Advantage Plus. And I wanna look and see in your case, you know what they were last listed at, so you have some kind of ballpark of where they were at price wise and. Unless there's something wildly off, which we've had that use case with Janita where we had one where it was like wildly off. Usually they're pretty close. Usually they, they're, it's within, I would say, five to 10 to 15% of what they were asking. Not always, but usually. And then it's just a matter of how am I going to present this preliminary offer and how do I need to pivot off of that? And so I would go back, I would pull this up. I would go back to them today and say, sorry, things got busy last week. I apologize I didn't get back to you sooner. Looks like the best preliminary offer came back at X amount, and this is where it requires some market knowledge and your expertise, because in this case. So this property was last listed, I think at three and a quarter, maybe three 20. The one I personally have up here. And so I've got an offer at three 20 and I've got one at three 16. So I know, I'm like on point. So in that case, I'm just gonna say, Hey, look, I we have a preliminary offer that was right around what you last had it listed at. Would it make any sense or would you be totally opposed? To taking a closer look at that and what that would look like or how that works or whatever. You may have to position it differently. Hey, it looks like the best preliminary offer came back at X amount. However, I took a closer look at the property and I think we can probably get you significantly more than that. When would you have a few minutes? To have a quick chat, or you may be able to pivot to an in-person tour like this doesn't always happen, but like I literally just said, I didn't even go for the quick conversation. I just went, I just said, possible for me to pop by. Now, this wasn't an expired, but it doesn't matter. The bigger picture here is this, think about it this way. I need to illustrate this. Wish I had a, actually I did illustrate this last week and it's terrible, but I'm gonna bring it back up just because so I was doing this on a coaching call. I think let me find it here. Okay? Okay. Yeah. This is terrible. But you'll get the point. Okay. So what we're trying to do, whether it's an expired listing or whatever, whoever it is, we're trying to get them from a cold. Cold prospect to a contract, and there are multiple steps along this timeline. Number one, we gotta get 'em to respond, then we gotta get 'em into conversation. Then we have to connect on a deeper level. And then this is where the biggest gap is from connection to contract. And the biggest gap is there because that's where your sales skills come in. You have to take information and then provide solutions, provide options. Provide or present to them how you can solve the, that gap, how you can solve that problem. So when I get someone to respond, what I'm trying to get them is to the next little mark. I'm not trying to get them from there to contract. If I try and go from here immediately to here, guaranteed gone. P no chance. I'm just trying to move them to the next step, which is a phone conversation or an in-person tour. That's how we can connect more. Now, if they're out of town and whatever, like a Zoom is fine too, but I'm saying a deeper connection with them so you can gather more information in Intel so that you can figure out how to best solve their problem. So I would use the preliminary offers and I would look for or I would simply ask the question, when would you be available for a quick chat so I can review and gather just a or confirm some more information and details. And this is, lemme just make sure I'm not a I'm, I don't wanna make a liar outta myself, but it happens often. So in the expired script, meaning I think I have something set up in a certain way and then I realize, oh, that was only in my brain that that I did that. I didn't actually do that. But in this Expired Scripts book, which since I'm bringing it up, I'll drop it in the chat. Hold on. There we go. In this expired script book, you have the tabs over here presenting the preliminary offer. Okay. Looks like the preliminary offers came back between X and Y. You can either go that route or you can say the best of them came back at XX amount. This is where it requires your expertise. However, I took a closer look at the property and I think we can very likely get you a significantly better offer than those. Only say that. If that's true, don't say that. If it's not true, 'cause then you're gonna, you're gonna create a situation or a scenario that you know it, it's gonna be hard to then back your way out of. And then just, would you be available for a quick chat? Should only take five or 10 minutes and it's just so I can verify some information and details to get you the best offer possible. And then we probe for more information on phone, on Zoom or in person. Why did I go for the in person with James? I don't know. I don't know. It was April 3rd. When was April 3rd? I don't know. Maybe it was because I was busy, because sometimes I will just go right for the kill shot if I'm busy, because if he's willing. The kill shot. That's a terrible, I don't mean that I go right. For the best case scenario. Ugh. I don't know why I said that. Why is that even an analogy? We're not trying to kill people here. We're trying to help people here anyway. Geez. I went right for the thing that I, look, I know if I get in person with the, if I get, yeah, if I get in person, if I get belly to belly with James, there's a very high likelihood that he is going to do business with me. If or whenever the timing is right. And so I think I was busy and I just was like, I'm just going for it. Just going for it. And also I know that if he objects to that, if he objects to that, I'm pretty good at pivoting back down. Okay, great. Could we just start with a quick chat? I just wanna confirm some details that I can't quite tell when I'm pulling up your property online. And if we're the one that they connect with and share their story with. As long as we don't screw it up, we've got a 75 to 80% chance of being the person that represents them when their timing and motivation hits the tipping point. Does that help Giselle at least somewhat. Beautiful. Beautiful. Alright, I have to I have to roll 'cause I gotta leave soon to meet with to meet with James. Some housekeeping items as I come in for a landing here, I mentioned at the beginning, I'll mention it again. Tomorrow at noon, we're doing a short little info session. I just called it too many subscriptions. How how smart agents are simplifying to close more transactions. The link to that is in the calendar in the school community, and it should only last about 30 minutes. It'll be on Zoom. It's right here in the school community. The calendar tab. We also have our mastermind tomorrow for our founders' club and licensee founders', club members and lead deck licensees. That's at one Eastern, nothing on Wednesday, although, like I said, I'll be driving. So feel free to call your boy if you want to, if you wanna chat, strategize, et cetera. And then noon on Thursday. The live demo, that should be pretty fun because Sean's been iterating very quickly and making this thing removing a lot of the friction and simplifying. So that really, truly all you have to do is log onto your phone and start tapping your way to more conversations, more contracts, and more closings. One last time. If you're watching on TikTok, you should go and find the link in my bio and come join the school community. If you're watching on one of the other platforms, the link is in the description and let's make a, make it a great week, everybody. It is it's, I don't know. It's heating up in my market. I hope it's heating up in your market, and I hope you, you get to work on making those connections so you can write more contracts and close more transactions. Thanks all. Appreciate it.