Top ISA Series: LeaAnne Ledford - Griffin Home Group

10/28/19 • 47 min

Nate Joens: All right. What is up everybody? My name is Nate, I'm with Structurely. We have an exciting webinar today that we're getting started finally on this beautiful spring day out of Iowa.

Robby T: Oh, yeah.

Nate Joens: We are joined by Robby T and LeaAnne today. Robby, would you like to kick us off?

Robby T: Hey, first off we got to celebrate the fact that we have no tech issues today. Sometimes tech is a pain. Funny part is as well, I was just on another webinar right before this about snap offers and we had some little tech issues. So major celebration. Other thing is, we have no snow in Fargo so life is fantastic.

Robby T: Hey, excited as heck to have a bunch of you join us today. We have one of the supreme ISAs, not just in real estate. LeaAnne also served as an ISA, and tell me if I'm wrong LeaAnne, but in the car industry. So I got to hear about that.

LeaAnne Ledford: I did.

Robby T: And now you've transitioned into basically being the lead ISA and overseeing your department, so would love to hear about that, but LeaAnne introduce yourself and tell us a bit about you.

LeaAnne Ledford: Hey, so I'm LeaAnne from Johnson City, Tennessee. I have been, collectively, from the car dealership to real estate, in this whole phone conversion thing, for several years now.

LeaAnne Ledford: Started out at [inaudible 00:01:33] Developments. When you say seven years, it's a long time. I mean, that's older than my kid, but obviously I like it so ...

LeaAnne Ledford: I started out business development internet sales in a car dealership. Very high volume car sales. I'm talking 30/40 car sold a week. Sometimes 300 a month. So I was one of two, and then our department with the help of the two that were there slowly grew to about six to eight at all times back there.

LeaAnne Ledford: I came into real estate in 2016. August, 2016 was my first month, and I'll be honest with you, I started out with these high hopes thinking, "Hey, I'm going to go here, and I'm going to crush it." Not only my teams only ISA. I was the only [inaudible 00:02:26] in our entire market. So I had no one around me. No one in our whole area knew what an ISA was supposed to do.

LeaAnne Ledford: These were big dreams and I sucked. I sucked. I almost left the industry altogether and the only thing that saved me was going to Family Reunion in Vegas in 2017.

LeaAnne Ledford: Since then I've been in it. I did my whole first year and went from having three closes from August to December in 2016 to having 74 the next following year.

LeaAnne Ledford: I'm on my own and kind of self trained, built all of our systems and then the next following year worked part-time. So half the hours, half the dials and got 101 closings.

LeaAnne Ledford: So-

Robby T: I love it. LeaAnne that's a good introduction. Lots to hit on there. You have a fascinating story. If you don't mind, I'd love to go back to the car dealership ISA stuff because-

LeaAnne Ledford: I don't go back there, but yeah we could do the talk.

Robby T: Well, we're going to go back for a minute. What's funny is we started this ISA stuff all about being an ISA in the real estate ball game, and I think you probably agree that the skills that we talk about and the skills that you're going to talk about, it's not just the one industry if I had to guess. So give us some insight. You said you were doing 300 car sales in a month?

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Robby T: What does that mean? I don't understand that. Give me some insight there.

LeaAnne Ledford: So our dealership was the number one volume Toyota dealership in all of the east pretty much. We were doing 300 sales a month. Roughly 65 to 70 percent of those sales at all time were coming out of our internet sales department. We, much like an ISA in real estate, we got the leads.

LeaAnne Ledford: We were the first person speed to lead on that in a matter of seconds and then we would nurture them. Not quite long as we nurtured real estate. I was used to the gratification of setting an appointment today, and it goes under contract, they drive away today. So that was the difference. That was the game changer was coming in here and saying, "I'm going to talk to these people for two years? Two years?"

LeaAnne Ledford: Back there it was two weeks or they've made a decision and they're gone, but when you put it together and you look at the role, and you look at what's important, and you look at what it takes to actually help people to their goals that they reached out to you to get help for, it's the same. You can equate it to restaurant industry, car sales, anywhere. It's the same concept of listening to people, coming up with a solution, and making a pathway to get them there.

Robby T: Gosh. Listen, create solution, create a game plan or a pathway.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Rob...

Nate Joens: All right. What is up everybody? My name is Nate, I'm with Structurely. We have an exciting webinar today that we're getting started finally on this beautiful spring day out of Iowa.

Robby T: Oh, yeah.

Nate Joens: We are joined by Robby T and LeaAnne today. Robby, would you like to kick us off?

LeaAnne Ledford: I did.

Robby T: And now you've transitioned into basically being the lead ISA and overseeing your department, so would love to hear about that, but LeaAnne introduce yourself and tell us a bit about you.

LeaAnne Ledford: Hey, so I'm LeaAnne from Johnson City, Tennessee. I have been, collectively, from the car dealership to real estate, in this whole phone conversion thing, for several years now.

LeaAnne Ledford: Started out at [inaudible 00:01:33] Developments. When you say seven years, it's a long time. I mean, that's older than my kid, but obviously I like it so ...

LeaAnne Ledford: These were big dreams and I sucked. I sucked. I almost left the industry altogether and the only thing that saved me was going to Family Reunion in Vegas in 2017.

LeaAnne Ledford: Since then I've been in it. I did my whole first year and went from having three closes from August to December in 2016 to having 74 the next following year.

LeaAnne Ledford: I'm on my own and kind of self trained, built all of our systems and then the next following year worked part-time. So half the hours, half the dials and got 101 closings.

LeaAnne Ledford: So-

Robby T: I love it. LeaAnne that's a good introduction. Lots to hit on there. You have a fascinating story. If you don't mind, I'd love to go back to the car dealership ISA stuff because-

LeaAnne Ledford: I don't go back there, but yeah we could do the talk.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Robby T: What does that mean? I don't understand that. Give me some insight there.

Robby T: Gosh. Listen, create solution, create a game plan or a pathway.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Rob...

Previous Episode

Top ISA Series: April Martin - Dani Blain Team

April Martin: Awesome. My name is April and I'm with the Dani Blain Real Estate Team. I was a full time ISA for three years. Now I am currently part-time ISA and part-time ISA manager. So, I used to do live ISA-ing from morning until noon, and from noon until the evening, I am managing, training, and overseeing the platform, and our agents, and leads. Currently, my stats are, forgive me they change all the time so I've got to look.

Robby T: That's funny.

April Martin: It's true. I can't keep track of the numbers. Over 113,000 calls made, over 60,000 emails sent, over 47,000 texts. Are you still there?

Nate Joens: I kind of am. Can you see me?

April Martin: No, I don't see you and I see a pan of Robby still.

Nate Joens: I do too. I think Robby has sufficiently broken this.

April Martin: Okay.

Nate Joens: Okay. Well, Robby's just going to be there smiling I guess since I can't seem to get rid of him.

April Martin: Okay.

Nate Joens: So I guess just keep going.

April Martin: I am at roughly 1,300 appointments set, and a little bit over 400 closings year to date.

Nate Joens: Okay. Great. So, can you tell us a little bit about your current role today and maybe how it's changed since you started with your team?

April Martin: Sure, absolutely. I was privileged to come on board with Kevin Blain himself, I was his original ISA, so founder from the beginning. I got the pleasure to go over and travel and see Robby, and Jim, and Eric and train with them personally. They've been a huge blessing in our life.

April Martin: From the beginning, from just not really knowing how to do it, or what to do, or what to expect, to today, I oversee four other ISA and we do currently manage and have managed up to 50 agents and 30-40 taking leads. So, my mornings are pretty busy. I come in at 7:30am, and pretty much do my leads, and my sales as an ISA until around noon. At around noon, I check out and I put on the management hat and making sure our ISA's are accountable. I'm going over current appointments set with them.

April Martin: We're trying to hold a pretty high standard for what the appointments set look like for our agents. I'm taking a look at who's converting. I am also looking at our different agents conversions. So, more of a management role and also providing training for the ISA's, because I've bene in this role three years. And since, the role is pretty ne overall in the industry, I think it's kind of up to ourselves to consistently grow and find new material. We're constantly trying new things and seeing what works. Just constantly providing new ways for our ISA's to get better.

Nate Joens: That's awesome. Could you, first of all, what are come of the tech tools you're using today. You'd mentioned you start the morning with your leads. Where are those leads coming from? Are they different than the ISA leads that they're working come noon? Kind of what's your lead, set the state a little but on your tech scene.

April Martin: Sure, so we have a basic CRM. We use Sync here. I know all ISA's and every team is different, that's one thing I've learned by studying ISA's the way I do. Is that, all teams are different, very unique and I would say some specialize in some things. We specialize in typical online leads such as Zillow, Realtor.com, Facebook, Facebook back at you, Dave Ramsey. Those are some of our traditional lead sources. My day, when I come in, any new leads on the platform, there's typically two of us at all times so, shifts tart from 7:30 until 4:00, and then one comes in from 12:30 until 9:00. All leads are round robin amongst the ISA's so typically everybody is getting a consistent new lead source a day. New leads, fresh leads, if you will.

April Martin: Then we also might have something a little different than a lot of teams. Because of our team size and the amount of conversions we do, we do do a lot of advertising. So, we do have a hotline and that phone does ring. And so typically whomever has that hotline, it's something you usually have to earn because you have to be very quick, because those are coming in live. You've got to be very, I know this is a hard thing to measure, but you've got to be very intuitive, and you've got to be very good with people skills and getting them to talk. Because, that phone can ring up to once every 15 minutes.

Nate Joens: And how may ISA's do you have? I'm sorry if I missed that.

April Martin: That's okay. It's me and four others, so four and a half.

Nate Joens: Okay, and what are their ranges of experience?

April Martin: I have one that's been here two years, and then two that have been here one year, and one that's brand new that we're currently on.

Nate Joens: And so, you know, this is probably a little bit a deeper question that I want to continue to dive into, but you had mentioned that getting access to the hotline is a high priv...

Next Episode

Top ISA Series: Alex Vincent - The Simone Group of Keller Williams Legacy

Nate Joens: All right. Welcome everybody to our third interview with the top ISA. We're really excited about this one today with Alex Vincent. Robby T is, of course, joining us from Hatch Coaching after one of their very successful webinars, it sounded like, of their own. Again, for all of you watching, my name is Nate Joens. I'm with Structurely. We are joined today by another top ISA, like I mentioned, Alex Vincent of the Simone Group.

Nate Joens: This is going to be another detailed discussion about how she's running her ISA team, how her practices might differ from other practices of ISAs that we've had on the prior webinars in this series. And with that, Robby would you like to introduce Alex?

Robby T: I love it. First of, if any of you don't know, I only call Nate, Nate Joens like the rapper Mike Jones. And if you want a funny laugh, just go look up who Mike Jones and it's going to be the worst song you ever heard. Some every time I see Nate I think of-

Nate Joens: Not very good.

Robby T: Not very good. Anyways, Alex, super excited to have you on today.

Alex Vincent: Thank you.

Robby T: I first had the pleasure of meeting you... Was it about a year ago now?

Alex Vincent: Over a year. It was December 2017.

Robby T: December of 2017. It's been far too long. And we were doing in-person league immersion trainings, and Alex came up here with a team member, correct?

Alex Vincent: Courtney. Yeah.

Robby T: Yep. Yep. I remember you... Too many names, faces. You know how it goes. But what I loved is... Alex is, I believe, one of the most talented ISAs I've ever met. And I think, when you were up here, you just naturally showed that you get this role. And I think we have a lot of the same core beliefs. What I was most impressed about is: Alex is not afraid to share her opinion. And we had about 30-some people in the room, and I love it. You were very direct, you gave your thoughts. And more importantly, if you didn't agree, you named something. And that was really cool.

Robby T: So, super excited to bring your perspective to the role. In a moment I kind of just want to have you start off by telling us about you and who you are. I'm disappointed that baby Elliot isn't in the webinar right now. And I was kind of hyping that a baby would be involved. In crisis of leadership. But I get it. I get it.

Robby T: Anyways, Alex, tell us about you. How the heck did you join the Simone Group? And just give us the 101 on Alex Vincent.

Alex Vincent: Yeah, so. Commenting on Elliot not being here, she would've cried. It would've ruined the whole thing. So I definitely want to be [inaudible 00:02:55] of that. But yes, normally she is with me. I bring her to work every day. And... All day long. And it's actually a really great conversation starter. I think it's giving me an edge, not going to lie.

Alex Vincent: So joined the Simone Group back in 2017. And this was with the intention of building an ISA department, helping build up the team in sales. And it's been so rewarding. Our director of operations, Zach, was actually a close, personal friend of mine for years. And when he was kind of talking to me about our brokerage and the team, and the goals and kind of vision, really, it definitely drew me in. The ability to build something and have this kind of start-up feel, but with the support of a team that's been around for years. And the leverage and the money, which is a big part of startups. It's a big sore spot for some people.

Alex Vincent: It just... It really elevated me and brought me into some high level conversations. So I'm really excited to be here. I love Mondays. Not many people can say that. So yeah, we're just... I'm really excited to be a part of the team.

Robby T: I love it, I love it. So, every team in brokerage... We kind of talked about how that drew you in. What are some of those key things, like... There's a buzzword, right? Culture. And culture's just a placeholder in my world. It's a word that has so much more meaning than just culture. Give us some insight, like what drew you in? You said you wanted to build something, the startup feel. But if you were to say, "This is why this culture is really great," what would it be?

Alex Vincent: "Why is this culture really rare?" Well, you know, we are all workaholics, if you will. And we all like to play hard.

Robby T: Sure.

Alex Vincent: And I think that's been really awesome to be a part of over the past couple of years. You know I'm also, like I said, I've known a couple of teammates before I even joined. So, you know. Opening day, baseball season's a huge day for us. We all take off, we all go out, we all cannot remember the next day.

Robby T: Yes.

Alex Vincent: You know, it's things like that. Some of us are very family-oriented. Me, personally, I was just out for the past four months. Had a...