How To Maximize Profits By Partnering With The RIGHT RE Agent

Dan Austin: [0:02] Welcome to the Collecting Keys Friday Focus. Hey there. Welcome back to another episode of the Collecting Keys of Friday Focus. Today, I'll be your host, Dan Austin, and I wanna talk about how you can maximize your profits by partnering with the right real estate agent. I'll say this again, the right real estate agent, and I'll talk about how you pick that partnership, or how you pick that agent. You yourself might be an agent, but nine out of 10 times, I will tell you, it's still better to have a real estate agent. If you're wholesaling, and running a real estate investment business, and you're doing flipping, all that sort of stuff, the amount of time it takes to do the real estate agent work properly, whether that's listing your own properties, tracking down MLS, retail type leads, converting them, doing open houses, all that other crap, the value of that is so much lower than if you can go and chase down another wholesale deal. I'll give you an example, if you get a house, a $300,000 house, you get a listing agreement out of it, or it's a flip and you're selling it, your portion of that commission's $9,000, it's good money, right? But, it's $9,000 after, and you got all your expenses associated with that, so whatever it is after that, you could wholesale a property, $300,000 property for $20,000 all day long, that's a very Our average fee is 20 something thousand dollars, right? And so, the math works out in the favor of chasing down your investment stuff, and referring out this work, because you're still gonna monetize it.

Dan Austin: [1:20] And I will talk about that later as well, like how you monetize it. Anyhow, I'm a real estate agent, I used to do this for our business, and it just became so much time consuming, and that was one of the benefits I found, was like, being able to refer to somebody else, the time freedom you get to focus on higher value tasks in your business, so so much more powerful. Other benefit you get, you know, from these partnerships is lead gen. So I just got a call like two days ago from an agent saying, hey, I had a listing appointment, it's actually a few doors down to a project you guys did last year, sellers need a rent back, the house is kinda crummy, it needs a little bit of work, would you guys be open to potentially putting an offer on this place? Absolutely. That cost me no money, it was an easy conversation, teed up for me, let's go check it out. You also get open up to like investor buyers as well, a lot of agents will have investor buyers, cash buyers, that might not otherwise be on your wholesale, you know, your dispo list or anything like that, so keep that in mind. Also, you're newer in the business, you can help, they can help you do some market analysis, run comps on things. I would be selective on what I send them, It's unfair to send a real estate agent all your leads, and say, can you comp this for me, make give me the ARV. Don't do that, that's a waste of their time, and you need to learn it yourself anyhow.

Dan Austin: [2:30] But, the most important thing I wanna talk about is lead monetization. This partnership can help you convert what you wanted to be cash deals, or off market deals, but you couldn't, into retail listings where you can collect a 25% referral fee, and that's the key right there, we're gonna take some time talking about here in a minute. First, I wanna talk about how do you pick the right agent to maximize the profits, so you can collect all those referral fees. First, I'm gonna tell you right now, everybody's instinct is to go track down that newbie agent, that young agent that's ready to hustle, needs a cold call, and doesn't have a lead source yet. Don't do it. I've tried it. We've tried it many a times, it does not work. First, that newbie agent is not tested. The risk of you're giving them your leads you've paid for, and the risk of them not even being an agent in a few months is high. The risk of them realizing they don't like calling people, they don't know how to do sales, they don't know anything about estate, they hate it, they quit. Way too high for you to be wasting your time and money on. Definitely opportunity there with these newer agents, because some of them do turn in to be young, hungry, awesome people. So I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just unlikely. On the flip side, don't go after the super highly successful agent that's all over all the billboards, and has the biggest brand name, because they will tell you that they want your leads, because they're smart, they're gonna take any lead source they can, but they already have referral clients, repeat clients, they're paying for their own leads, they're they're crushing it, they understand how to do lead gen, and so yours is just going to fit into their system, and it's ours, let's be honest, it's a little bit harder of a lead source to convert, and so they're gonna spend less time on your stuff. We've tried it, it just doesn't work.

Dan Austin: [4:04] Not that you shouldn't have a relationship with them, again, don't waste your don't waste your valuable leads that you paid for on somebody that's not going to give it its full attention. So, you might ask, who is this person? What do they look like? I like to say, around three to five years of experience. They're not new, but they're not seasoned and been around super long, to where they don't really care about your lead source. They're usually pretty hungry, a perfect relationship is somebody that was a real estate agent in another market, maybe they moved across the country, and they have enough confidence in their abilities to basically build a whole new business here in your hometown. They have the track record of understanding how to be an agent, how to do lead gen, all that sort of stuff. So, they're a great person to sign up for, because they're kind of in that new, will take on your lead source and give it all the time it needs, but they're, you know, not newbie figuring it out for the first time. So I would say, that would be a great persona of a person, but you know, anybody that with three to five years of experience, someone that's been proven, somebody that's not out there post on Instagram, how they're always grinding and hustling, taking pictures of themselves with their laptop on their boat, like, let's be honest people, like, the people that are saying that rarely hustle and grind, they rarely like to do the sales that you're gonna need them to do, so don't waste your time there. Get that person who's just killing it, but you know, isn't going over the top with anything crazy, and if they have to tell you that they're hustler or grinders, they're probably not.

Dan Austin: [5:24] So look for that person that also is somewhat investor friendly, their name pops up in the investor community, they may not be an investor themselves, they probably represent some investors, they probably represent some flippers, and those sorts of people. They get the game, they understand it. I would say, some level of experience, three to five years, investor friendly, they pop up in investor communities, they're not new, they're not OG, freaking super successful. Ideally, they're fresh into your market, but have a lot of experience. So that's that agent selection. Now, how do you actually monetize it, once you've found that agent? Like, what is the system we use? So outside of all the other benefits of that, this relationship I talked about, I'm going to specifically talk about monetizing lead conversion. So say you send out 5,000 postcards, you spent $2,503 on these postcards to go out, you got a one percent response rate, 50 leads rolled in, maybe about 10% of those, so five of those leads could be retail leads. That's about on average. And I would say a good agent should be able to convert one of those leads at least into a retail listing for themselves. So the goal is to get those five leads, and to transfer them some way to this agent. We've tried just exporting them into a spreadsheet, and then the agent gets to call them at their leisure, didn't work. Honestly, it's just a cold pick up the phone, random person, why are you calling me, you know. I've got all these people calling me, what the hell is going on?

Dan Austin: [6:44] That doesn't work for that reason. Also, there's no real like, I don't know, accountability for them, you know, sometimes they just, they don't wanna do cold calling, so they don't do it. It just, we never were very successful in doing it that way. The other way is to get them into your CRM, if you have one that you can actually add them and let them call out of your CRM laws, we use already simply so we can call out track calls, track texts, all that sort of stuff, and the leads are already in there, so that's great. One thing I'll say is like, don't just turn them loose on a bunch of leads, so you've got 200 backlogged like dead leads, 500 dead leads, just go cold call those people. Yes, there will be a time and a place for that, but we need to look at monetizing these leads as soon as they come in, as soon as we've looked at them and said, yeah, this is not gonna work for me as a wholesale lead, and then do a warm transfer. We've let them just turn loose on our dead leads before, any leads coming in without like a warm transfer, anything like that, still it didn't work that great. There's definitely money to be made there, depending on the agent's ability to cold call, but it's not the best use yet. So, what you need to do, if you can get them in your CRM, give them a tee up in a warm transfer, you say, hey, you know, Mr. And Mrs.

Dan Austin: [7:50] Seller, we could give you, I don't even wanna offer this to you, we could give you like a $100,000, I know it's way less than you want, cash offer, you're probably not interested in that, right? You know, you kinda go through your sales pitch there, and if you if it pivots, and you know it's not gonna work out, and be like, hey, we have an agent we work with all the time, and clients in your situation, we'd love to set you up an appointment, can they just give you a call, just a quick fifteen minute discussion to see if they're the right person to list your property, because they will get you way more money than we can give you. How how does that sound? Awesome. Okay, Tuesday at 2PM, would that work? You have a Calendly link for this agent, boom, book just a fifteen minute phone call, and then now they've got a tee up, a warm transfer, the sellers know their name, they know they're calling, they're likely to answer the phone, and then the real estate agent from there can do their follow-up sequence, they can do all that sort of stuff, and and now they have such an easier time converting those leads, because you've transferred it. Now, you do have all these other leads backlogged, that are marked dead, or whatever happened, before you even partnered with this real estate agent, absolutely put them on to cold call those, but help them out, like be ready to help manage that, track that, say, okay, looking at call notes and sort of those sorts of things to help them understand that relationship maybe you had with that seller at some point, and definitely help them, and as much as you help them, the more successful they can be. Don't just think throwing them to the wolves, really throwing them to these leads, if they're going to just magically convert something. The more you help them, the better they're going to be in that transition.

Dan Austin: [9:16] So, I'll leave it with that. I think being able to monetize this system is so valuable to you, because like Mike and I said, think in our last podcast, or a podcast coming up anyways, I think it dropped last Wednesday, we have like six figures in our CRM at any given time, in real estate referral commissions, and so, most people have some value, depending on how many leads you have in your system, you're going to be able to minimum pay for your marketing spend, just by converting some of these, and getting those 25% referral fees. So, focus on this, take the time, let me know if you have any questions on how you can do this, if I left any gaps in the systems we use, but really just keep in mind that the closer you are with these leads, and the the warmer the handoffs you can give to these agents, the better. So other than that, yeah, hit me up on Instagram if you have questions, investor man Dan. If you wanna know more about our Instant Investor program, go to collectthekeyspodcast.com, click on the Instant Investor button, and you can look at all three tiers that we have for our clients, it's pretty awesome, some of the stuff that we can provide. So without further ado, have a great weekend, and talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to this Collecting Keys Friday Focus. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.