[0:00]So why is it so difficult to make cold calls on any type of consistent basis. It seems like it's something that we know we should be doing. We understand the effectiveness. We've seen other people succeed with it. But yet, at the very same time, we just can't get ourselves to do it on any type of consistent basis. Somedays we are motivated. We go all out on it, and sometimes we even go a couple of weeks, and it's like, all right, now I'm starting to get some traction and then we fall off and we start to get back into this behavior of inconsistency. For me, there's a couple things that I think about when it comes to the difficulty of this activity. And here's what I see. Most are attaching their self worth to the outcome. You know, how will this make me feel when I am making these outbound calls. How does it make me feel when I'm doing the activity? How will I be judged? What are other people going to think of me? What if someone gets mad? What if I don't know what to say? I mean, these are all the questions that start to come up when we start to get in our own head, and start to get in our own way of doing this activity that we know we should be doing, but for some reason, we simply can't get ourselves to do it. And it comes down to ego because we don't want to put ourselves in a position to be exposed to others. And so, we avoid it all the way. So, there's a new way of approaching this activity of prospecting or making cold calls that I find very helpful. I hope anyway, that it will have the same impact on you. Number one is to reset my expectations. You see, what I've learned is that prospecting is a process of sorting. Let me explain. Imagine for a second, a huge gumball machine. And in that gumball machine, there are a bunch of red gumballs, just a bunch. And it says on the outside of this gumball machine, two gumballs inside. And if you get these blue gumballs, you'll get this prize of $10,000. And so, little Johnny starts putting in his little quarters, starts cranking the wheel, one after another, out comes these red gumballs. He says, nope, that's not it. Nope, that's not it. That's not it. And he just keeps cranking this wheel, just crank, crank, crank. And out comes, and out spits all these different red gumballs until after a period of time goes by, he finally gets this blue gumball. And that's the way in which I think about prospecting. Is that the vast majority of the people that we talk to over the phone, are simply red gumballs. And we're looking for the rare, one off, blue gumballs. Now, let me explain, stay with me here for a second. You see, my expectation now doing this for almost 20 years and after tracking numbers for myself and for thousands of real estate agents that I coach, I now know that the average opportunity when doing direct outbound prospecting, is about 10%. So what does that mean? Well, it's very simple that out of a 100 people that we actually talk to over the phone. We're not talking about dial, we're not talking about attempts. We're talking about the actual conversations that we have with people over the phone at the door, through direct message on Instagram, through text message, through email, that only about 10% are real opportunities. And when I shift my expectation and I start to say, okay, wow, that's interesting. When I, I, I hear what you're saying, Brandon, and this is me talking to myself. I hear what you're saying, but when I'm on the phone, I still find myself trying to force red gumballs into being blue gumballs. And it doesn't matter even if I can conceptualize the fact that I am only looking for 10%. So every 10 conversations I have, that means I should only get one blue gumball, after sorting through nine red gumballs, on average. Now, it's not because of the law of large numbers and the whole process of how you get to an average. It isn't that you call 10 people and one of them will be a blue gumball. That's not the expectation, that's not the process of resetting my expectation. Because there has to be this process of taking a large quantity of activities. And in this case, we're talking about prospecting, but let's look at the example of a roulette table at the casino. Well, what is the likelihood that that little white ball falls on either red or black? The answer to that is 37.5% of the time. And it's only 37.5% of the time, regardless if you're in a casino in Las Vegas, or if you're in a casino in another country. It's still 37.5% of the time, that is the likelihood of it falling on either red or black. And it's only that because of the amount of times that roulette table spins. So over time, after having a hundred and a hundred and a hundred and hundreds and hundreds of conversations, do you find that about 10% of the time you get a real good opportunity? You get a great lead, and therefore, I don't have to convince anyone of anything. My job is to then find one to two people a day that need and want my help and my expectation is that almost everyone will be a red gumball. And therefore, I get out of this mindset of forcing everybody into being a blue gumball when they're clearly a red gumball. And all I have to do is sort those aside. If they do not need, or they do not want my help, my job is not to convince them otherwise. My job is to put them aside and crank the wheel yet again to look for a blue gumball. The second thing on my list today is changing my approach. So, not going to try and convince or persuade a prospect because that causes the prospect to resist. This is what is being taught today. As an example, the sales person might say something like this, they make an outbound prospecting phone call and they say, Bob, this is Joseph with Remax. We just sold a home over on Smith Street for $350k. It had three bedrooms, two baths, and I was wondering, when do you plan on moving? To which Bob responds with, take me off your list and stop calling me. Well, why did that happen? Well, because the perceived bias from the prospect was that you are a realer. Looking for money, you are a realer looking for a listing, you're looking to persuade me in some way so that you, the realter, can benefit. So what we want to do instead of that approach, coming across from a perspective of, how do I persuade, how do I convince this person? What can I get out of this activity? Let's put that aside and let's shift that into doing what we call in our reverse selling methodology, selling against our own interest. And when you do this right, it will help to remove that sales resistance, it will help to lower the perception of perceived bias. And when you do it right, the message is perceived as an act of service versus it coming across like a sales pitch. Here's an example. We call up a prospect, ring, ring, ring. Bob, Bob, this is Brandon, I'm a realtor and I'm sure this is the last call you wanted to get. It's certainly a call I didn't want to make, but I was hoping to ask you a quick question, Bob, would that be okay? I'm not sure if this would be of any value to you or not, the home that recently sold, you know, the one over on Smith Street with the red garage? Yeah, that property had multiple buyers that wanted the home and now those people have missed out are hoping to find another home just like it and I didn't know if a buyer was willing to offer you a great price on the house, Bob. If that's something you'd even consider? And so we're assuming in that conversation that Bob is a red gumball. And only those that actually push back on us, that actually sell against us, that push back and say, no, no, no.
[8:12]You got it wrong, we are actually interested in that. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Do you know you have a blue gumball? So instead of trying to convince, we try to gently push away. And it comes across as an act of service. It comes across as, hey, I'm making this call for you, not for me. As it is for your benefit. Number three of my list is actions not outcomes. So most of us, myself included for years and years and years, we focus on the outcomes of this activity. How many appointments can I set? How many leads can I generate? Et cetera. The problem with that is this, attaching the success of the activity to one of these outcomes suggests that if we don't get that outcome, that we deem the activity itself unsuccessful and therefore we have wasted our time.
[8:58]Or like a lot of real estate agents that I talk to, I'm feel like I'm spinning my wheels. Well, here's the thing, we can't control those outcomes. The only thing that we can control, which certainly you are already aware of, is our behavior, the actions and the decisions that we make. And so, therefore, we need to focus on a time commitment or a conversation goal that we are indeed in control of. And so when we attach the success to accomplishing one of those activities and we focus on that, and that being the win. The win being, did I have my 27 conversations today, because that is what the business plan suggests that I have based on the goals that I have set. And I attach myself to the activity, the outcomes take care of themselves. When I focus on the activity of prospecting for two and a half hours per day, that as a result of me focusing on, am I being successful today? Based on me doing the two and a half hours of this activity or not, that everything else takes care of itself. That the conversations happen, the leads that need to be generated, they happen automatically. The appointments that need to get set happen automatically because it is, actions over outcomes. And results are simply a by product of focussing on the activity that lead to those outcomes. You've all heard it before, there are leading indicators and there are lagging indicators. We have no control over the lagging and therefore our focus on the lagging indicators does nothing but cause us to feel this sense of overwhelmed or disappointment or let down. And when we can attach these wins to the activity, great things happen. Through that focus, we then can use Parkinson's law, which states that work expands to the time we give it. So, instead of saying, okay, my business plan suggests that I need 27 conversations today, and I'll try to get these done at some point today. We need to limit the amount of time that we give ourselves to do that activity. And when we do that, now we've got to narrow scope of focus, and we know when humans narrow their scope of focus, they can get amazing things done. Just look at how much we get done the day before vacation, that is Parkinson's law at work. So now that you've learned a few different ways to approach the activity of cold calling, the mindset of cold calling, the approach of cold calling, I made another video right here where I share how I built the habit of daily prospecting and how I tricked my brain to actually love cold calling.
