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On This Podcast Jeb Blount Discusses Fanatical Prospecting for Real Estate Agents

Estate Agents Podcast hosts Stephen Brown and Andrew Overman discuss the value of prospecting activity for real estate agents with Fanatical Prospecting author, Jeb Blount. On this podcast Jeb touches on:

  • Effective voicemail frameworks to double callbacks
  • How the 30-day rule can help you get over the temporary pain of rejection
  • The 3 P’s that are holding you back from outbound prospecting activity
  • Why message matters. You can set more appointments and guarantee return business just by shifting your mindset and tailoring your language.
  • And, why no matter how good business is, you should never quit prospecting.

Podcast Transcript

The Estate Agents: Hi, thanks for joining me, Andrew, over on The Estate Agents Podcast. Steven is, although you can’t see him, I can see him sat there, patient, but nervously excited to meet one of his heroes.

Now when Steven, Luke, and I began our podcasting journey, we had one common focus and goal, and that was to add value to estate agents up and down the UK. Steven then took that one stage further and had the big, hairy, audacious goal of attracting the best guests from across the globe.

Well, that lineup wouldn’t be complete without bestselling author with titles including People Follow You, People Buy You, Objections: The Art of Getting Past No, and of course Steven’s favorite that he’s forever plugging on all of his courses: Fanatical Prospecting. World-renowned motivational speaker and now guest of The Estate Agents podcast, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr. Jeb Blount.

Steven, how are you feeling?

I’m sweating here. I know it’s hot outside. I know it’s a hundred degrees, but I think I’m sweating even more and my heart’s beating as well. So, I’m incredibly humbled and more importantly, we’re incredibly grateful that Jeb is taking the time out also whilst he’s on holiday as well in the States, to give us this time and share his top tips on prospecting.

So I’m incredibly excited. Um, I love the introduction. I don’t know about Jeb. I’m sure he’s quite excited as well after that introduction. So Jeb, I’ll let you maybe introduce yourself a little bit more, what you do, and why Steven Brown’s got a man crush on you and rates you.

About  Jeb Blount

Jeb: First of all, thank you for having me on your show. I am absolutely and totally grateful. And yes, I need to have you guys follow me around and just do that every time I walk on stage to give a keynote. That’s fantastic.

I run a company called Sales Gravy. We are a fast growing sales training and consulting organization. We work with companies all over the globe. We’re working with companies on every continent except for Antarctica. And our focus is on customer-facing roles. So, obviously sales, account management, customer success, customer experience, and then the people that lead them. And we work with companies big and small.

My client list is a Who’s Who of the most known brand names in the world. And it’s a cool job. I get to travel a lot. So I’m hard to get, you know. We were talking earlier about getting on the podcast, that I’m difficult to get connected with. But it’s a cool job, and my people and I just, we feel really fortunate that we have the opportunity to impact so many people.

On Persistence and Asking for What You Want

EA: That’s awesome. Thank you. Thank you for your time. And I know the first question that I’ve got is actually from one of our listeners, Michael Nettleton, who asked, “How did we manage to get you to appear on this podcast?”

Jeb: Well, it was a really simple thing that you did, and it’s the most important discipline in sales. You asked. That was it. I mean, you know, the thing about being an author is that your podcast adds value to me because you were able to broadcast my message to your audience and introduce me to your audience.

So only a fool would would say, “Oh, I don’t want to, I don’t want to have a conversation with you about my book.” On the other hand, I’m like so many other people that salespeople are reaching out to. I’m busy, I’m running, I’m trying to juggle a million things at one time. I get a thousand emails a day.

I get all of these people asking for my time. There’s a line, every day, of people who want my time. And what you have to do is you have to ask, and then you have to ask again, and you have to ask again, and you have to ask again, and you have to keep on asking until you get the person’s attention. And sometimes, when you ask enough times, you earn the right to have them have a conversation with you.

In my book, Objections, I tell a story about a sales representative from the UK who sold me a software solution. And he called me 71 times. And that didn’t include the emails, that didn’t include the stalking on LinkedIn. That was 71 actual phone calls. He got me on the phone a handful of times. I told him no, that I wasn’t interested.

But he never quit. And when he finally got me to have a conversation with him, it was after I figured that he wasn’t going to go away, so I might as well talk to him and listen to him. He ended up selling me. He closed the business on the phone. I gave him my credit card, set up the initial pilot account with him. And his software changed our company. We’ve doubled the sales of our company for three years in a row just because this guy never gave up and he brought such value.

And it’s the same thing with you guys. You didn’t give up. And you said earlier, I’m a really, really hard person to get on the show. It’s not because I don’t want to, it’s not because I don’t have a desire to have these types of conversations. It’s just because my schedule is so packed, and that’s true for almost everybody today.

The hardest ask in sales, the hardest ask in life, is for someone’s time, because it is the one thing that we can’t make more of. And it is the one thing that we don’t have enough of. So congratulations to you guys for following exactly what we teach in Fanatical Prospecting, which is to be persistent, ask, and don’t take no for an answer. You got to keep on asking.

The Case for Prospecting in Real Estate

EA: Jeb, one thing I’ve got to ask you to satisfy the curiosity of another of our listeners. Steven is renowned for his prospecting training for estate agents up and down the UK. And I’ve been on all of his courses and the one book that he recommends time and time again, in fact, he even sent me another link on Audible, even though I have it in paperback version, and I’ve actually downloaded it again on Audible, is Fanatical Prospecting. The question our listeners have is, “Is he on commission?”

Jeb: Well, there may be some money changing hands, you know, some dollars to pounds conversion. So, you know, it’ll get a little bit less expensive for me. You know, if you guys keep messing around with Brexit, maybe the pounds will drop a little bit lower so I can afford to pay his commissions.

EA: Hey, Jeb, what’s the case for prospecting? You know, I think that there are people in the industry that get to that elevator position, perhaps they’re the number one agent in their town, they’ve got a good local presence. And I think when the office gets busy, the first thing most estate agents do is kill prospecting, which I think is the most damaging to the business in the longterm. So what’s the case for prospecting?

Jeb: Well let me start with that. You’re exactly right. And that doesn’t just happen to estate agents, that happens to everybody, because it’s the one thing that nobody really wants to do. So when we get really, really busy, we go, “Oh, you know, we don’t need to do that right now. We’re busy.”

And the problem with that is that you end up getting on the feast or famine rollercoaster where it’s up and down, up and down, up and down. You get really busy, so you quit prospecting, and then the pipeline gets empty, and then you start prospecting again. And it’s an incredibly miserable place to live, but there’s more to it than that. When you have a full pipeline, you can sell, you can approach buyers.

You can approach people who want to interact with you as if you don’t need to. It gives you deep confidence. And confidence is the most powerful position in sales. So when you have a full pipeline, everything gets better. Your whole communication gets better. Your negotiation gets better. Your ability to present and ask for people to do business with you gets better. It gets better because you don’t need anything. You have abundance in the pipeline.

And when you abandon prospecting and you get on that rollercoaster up and down, up and down, up and down, when you hit the downs, you get bitten by something called the Universal Law of Need. And that is: The more that you need the sale, the less likely it is that you’re going to get it, because you’re desperate. And you exude that emotion of desperation.

There’s something called emotional contagion and that’s the unique ability of human beings to feel and perceive the emotions of other people. And because people have a tendency to respond in kind when you are relaxed, assertive, and confident, which happens when you have a full pipeline, people are much more likely to believe and trust you and comply with your request.

But when you are insecure and desperate and weak, they tend to run over you and they tend to run away from you. So when you allow yourself that luxury of saying, “I’m too busy prospect now,” what you’re saying basically saying is, “I’m willing to wreck my income down the road.”

And by the way, even if you are one of the top agents in your community where you have built a great career, you have to continue to prospect. And we know that prospecting goes across a wide range of channels from getting referrals, to going out and meeting people in the community, to networking, to picking up the phone and calling people.

All of those things are true. And depending where you are in your career, you may have to change those channels. But you must make time every single day, every day, every day, every day for putting something new in the pipeline, because nothing else matters. It’s the most impactful thing that you can do, and it will impact the entire sales cycle for you and the way that you approach your prospects.

The 30-Day Rule

EA: So in your book, you talk about the 30 day rule.

Jeb: This 30 day rule is a really simple concept and it applies perfectly to almost every industry. And the 30 day rule simply says this: It says the prospecting that you do in any given 30 day period has a tendency to pay off over the next 90 days.

Now, the problem for a lot of salespeople, especially brand new people is that they have this bad habit of thinking that you prospect now you get now. So it’s like a quid pro quo. I prospect, therefore I get. And it just doesn’t work like that. The way that it works is that you prospect and then things happen down the road.

So maybe you make a contact today, and they’re thinking about you down the road, maybe 30 days from now, 60 days from now, maybe you’re just gathering information and qualifying someone. Maybe you’re identifying a buying window or an opening where you can have a conversation with them, but the net result is what you do today has a tendency to pay off at sometime in the future.

And the implication for everyone in sales is that you cannot quit prospecting. You take a day off, it’s going to hurt you. Take a week off, it’s going to bite you. Take a month off and you may not be able to pay your mortgage.

On Dealing With Rejection

EA: I get rejected a lot. So when I make my calls, I get rejected more than when I get to go to night clubs. And that’s tough to take.

EA: That can’t be possible, Stephen. That can’t be possible.

EA: I hope Mrs. Brown’s not listening at the time to this podcast, otherwise I’m going to get into loads of trouble. But joking aside, how do you handle rejection? Because being an estate agent, we do get rejected a lot. And unfortunately in the UK at the moment, agents don’t have to be licensed. I know that’s coming in and that’s something that’s going to be changed.

But I’m making call after call after call and I’m constantly getting “No, no, no, no, no.” I put the phone down. How do I keep on making rejection my best friend, and to be motivated for the next call, and the next call, and the next call, and understanding that every phone call is an opportunity that could lead to somewhere?

Jeb: Well, I love what you said there. Every phone call is an opportunity and this is one of the things I think that you have to start thinking about in terms of strategy. If you call a stranger and ask them to buy from you, or ask them to list a home, or whatever you do, whatever you’re asking for, sometimes that’s not the right approach.

Sometimes the approach is to qualify them, find out what they’re doing, what their situation is. And we do that in our own business. When we identify companies that we can sell training to, we don’t call them up and say, can we sell you training? We call them up and say, tell us how many sales people you have. Tell us your current situation. Tell us how you’re delivering training. Tell us what training you’re delivering.

So what we’re doing is we’re qualifying a group of prospects and we’re trying to identify particular buying windows. For example, one of the things that we ask is “When is your annual sales meeting?” So we know those things. Then we can time our calls to ask them for their time, the meeting, what have you. We can time those calls at the right time. So we first of all, don’t get a lot of no’s. When we’re asking for information, we get a lot of yeses. We get a lot of information. We get a lot of no’s if we’re asking the wrong people to do business with us. So that’s one strategy.

So thinking about what’s the objective of my call? Is my call to set an appointment, to have a conversation? Is my call to sell something right there on the spot? Is my call, just looking for information so I can continue to qualify or even flip that call into a referral of someone else who may need you? That’s one thing. The other thing is, I think, you know, thinking about what you said, making rejection your best friend. I hate to glorify rejection because rejection sucks and, so does prospecting.

Prospecting sucks, too. Nobody really wants to do it, and nobody really wants to get rejected. I think a better course of action is to understand, first of all, what prospecting does for you. So the way that I deal with rejection when I’m prospecting is I begin thinking about “What do I really want?” So I always start with a set of goals. What do I desire? What am I trying to accomplish in my life?

Because if you don’t have something out in the future that you’re calling for, if it’s your family or if it’s a, you know, I’m sitting in my vacation home, which was one of my goals. So I worked really, really hard to get to this goal. I was willing to endure a great deal of rejection and pain and adversity in order to get the income that I needed in order to buy this vacation home that I’m sitting in.

So what I do with salespeople is, I sit down with them and say, let’s figure out what it is that you want first. And then let’s figure out how many calls, how many touches, how many people that you need to contact in order to make that happen. Because if you wake up every day and you have that goal and that vision, it’s easy to deal with the temporary pain of rejection, which no one wants and no one likes, and that’s just the fact of life, in order to go get something that you want.

So it’s really about a mindset shift. You understand the 30 day rule. If I quit prospecting, I’m going to fail. You understand that it’s easy as a human being to say, “Oh, I’m really busy today. I’m not going to prospect,” but if you do that, you’re going to get on the desperation rollercoaster. It’s really easy to think, “Well, maybe they’ll call me,” but they’re probably not going to do that.

Especially in the competitive market that you’re in, where no one’s licensed and everybody can make a phone call, and everybody can contact your prospects. But it’s, but it’s easy to do those things. When you have a greater purpose, when you have a greater reason for doing it. So, I use all of that as a way of making myself get up every morning, pick up the phone, make my prospecting calls, work my opportunities.

Even when I’m on vacation, I don’t quit because of the 30 day rule. I’m prospecting every single day. And so are all the salespeople on my team because we have something that is bigger than the temporary hurt of someone telling us no.

On Protecting the Golden Hours

EA: Brilliant. Thank you. What gets scheduled gets done. So you talk about golden hour. When should you start your golden hour?

Jeb: Well, I think that for most people we have to start thinking about, when can you contact your prospects? So when I’m dealing with people that are, for example, they’re calling manufacturing. You be calling at 6:00 AM in the morning. If you were calling into any kind of commercial B2B business, and you’re calling C level people, you should be calling early in the morning. If you’re calling into a bank, probably you’re not going to get people at 6AM you need to call at 9AM.

So I think that what you have to do is you have to make a conscious decision about when the people that you’re calling are most likely to answer the phone or to have a conversation with you and if you call, for example, C level people in the afternoons, it’s very unlikely they’re going to answer the phone. They’re in the middle of their day. They’re in meetings. They’re dealing with all of the issues that have come up during the day. So for me, it always starts in the morning.

Now I’m a B2B salesperson. That’s what my company does. We sell into other businesses and because of that, we begin our prospecting blocks at seven, and we typically run until around 10:00 AM. And then after that, we focus on things like inbound leads. We even do voicemail blocks, where all we do is call for voicemail. We will do our social media hours and then we’ll go in and do email.

But our in-person reaching out, trying to connect with people, always begins in the morning. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is that’s when we’re at our highest level of confidence. That’s when we feel the best. That’s when we have the greatest level of enthusiasm and energy. And because we sell into B2B it’s typically when the people that we’re calling are sitting at a desk and most likely to pick up the phone.

So in your world, the people in your audience, you have to look at your world the same way. Figure out when is the most likely time where the people that I’m calling are going to pick up the phone.

The Three Ps that Hold Real Estate Agents Back from Prospecting Activity

EA: Great. Excellent. You talk, Jeb, in the book, chapter seven is one of my favorites, about the three P’s that are holding you back. You describe as procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis from analysis and how you disrupt the three P’s. As I spoke earlier, it’s certainly in my office.

I’ve been an agent now for 26 years. The first thing agents drop is prospecting. How do you disrupt the three P’s? What’s your best advice there?

Jeb: Well, let’s, let’s start with, perfectionism. So perfection is one of our big problems. We try to get everything right before we make a phone call. So you do a bunch of research, you get everything organized. I mean, I watch salespeople organize their desk. And for some reason or another, when you get your pen facing exactly due North, rejection seems to be sweeter.

You know, I think, I think number one is: set the time to get it done. So instead of trying to get everything perfect, just make the call and stop hanging onto this pacifier of, I need to do research or get everything right before I do that. Just get someone on the phone. And one of the ways that. I do that as I use something called the platinum hours, we talked about the golden hours of platinum hours of the time between say eight and five.

I typically am working at night, so I do my planning at six o’clock in the morning. I get my list ready to go, I get everything started. So I don’t have to go through that process of doing research during my prospecting block. And by the way, research and planning and organization is not prospecting. The other process problem we get into is paralysis from analysis. And that is just that worry about rejection.

So I’m so worried about being rejected that I start thinking about all the things that a person might say, and I know you’ve heard this, what if they say this? Or what if they say that? Or what if they say this? And the easiest way to disrupt that is to make the phone call and find out what they’re going to say. And I do this with salespeople all the time.

What I do is I walk into a room and salespeople are like, well, what about, what about, what about, and I go, okay, you got 15 minutes to make 15 dials and set one appointment, go. So I just take away that time to think about it. That worrying. It’s like anything in life that you don’t want to do. The more you think about not wanting to do it, the more you won’t do it. So again, go back to planning, have your list ready, come in. And I like using high intensity prospecting sprints as a way of dealing with that issue of paralysis.

So anybody can be fantastic for 15 minutes. So typically I’ll take an hour long blog, break it into 15 minute chunks and set a goal to make 15 dials during those chunks and set one appointment or have a multiple number of conversations. Sometimes they get 20 dials because nobody answers the phone. Sometimes they get 6 dials in because they get a bunch of people to answer the phone, but those are my goals. So I run that sprint.

Then I stop, load information to my CRM, take a break, get a cup of coffee, whatever the case may be. Then move on to the next call. That’s the easiest way to manage that. And that is also the fastest, easiest way to deal with procrastination. So with procrastination, if we go back to the way we organize our telephone prospecting blocks and set our golden hours, we begin at early in the morning.

Because if we start thinking about something that we don’t want to do. Prospecting sucks and I’m not trying to glorify it. It’s just, it sucks. Nobody wants to do it. It’d be better if everybody called you, but they’re not going to do that. So if you want to make a living, you’re gonna have to prospect, you’ve got to pick up the phone, you got to knock on the door, you got to go out and network. You gotta ask for referrals, you have to do those things.

So if it sucks, do it first, start in the morning. First thing in the morning, knock out a prospecting block and. If you do that, then you’ll know that it gets done. And it’s the same with everything in the world that you don’t want to do. It’s easy to procrastinate. Easy. But if we go back to what we were talking about earlier, and that is understanding what you want, leveraging desire to get past procrastination. That’s where you can really begin to disrupt that.

So when I start my day, I’m looking at my goals, what do I want to accomplish? So I go back to this wonderful, beautiful Lake house that I’m sitting in right now, but it was on my goal list for gosh, 20 years that I worked so hard to get. Uh, there were days when I didn’t want to go prospect. There were days that I didn’t want to sacrifice, but I would start my day by looking at my goals.

And I used that as motivation to get past that natural desire to procrastinate that is human. It’s just normal for us to feel that way with things that are uncomfortable. And when I looked at what I wanted, I was able to get past the procrastination, get it done, and then move on with the rest of my day.

How Real Estate Agents Can Practice Prospecting

EA: Fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you. Professionals practice before they play. How would you get your team to practice before they’re talking to your clients?

Jeb: I love that question. So. One of the things that we do as a team and by the way, with my clients as well. So when we’re running Fanatical Prospecting Bootcamps, we are running live phone blocks in those bootcamps where we’re actually prospecting in. And in some cases where we have field sales reps, we will take a break and go out in the street and we will go knock on business doors.

So we do both those things. And what we do is we simply role play the five step telephone process that you’ll find in the books. We just go through that process. Go through the messaging, we practice it and then we’ll practice some objection turnarounds. So we do a really quick drill. It only takes 10 to 15 minutes to do that before we start.

And just going through that process gets your mind right and ready in order to be excellent on the phone and have the right words to say the right message at the right time to get prospects to comply with your requests. We don’t do it every single day as a team. But at least once a week. So let’s just say we do two 15-minute phone blocks or two 30-minute phone blocks and we’re not getting anything.

And people are starting to get their head bashed in and we’re getting a lot of no’s, then we’ll stop, we’ll recalibrate, and run through that. And a great example is my son. So one week he was having a really hard time, he only set four appointments, and he was struggling. And he said, “Dad, here’s what’s happening.”

And I said, “Okay, well walk me through what are people telling you.” And he told me what people were telling him on the phone, the objections he was getting on the telephone. I’m like, okay, well let’s just step into their shoes. Like, why would they meet with you? And what had happened is, you know, prospecting skills, dealing with objections, these are perishable the skills that he knew, things that he knew how to do.

He’d gotten told no harshly a couple of times, changed his language changed the way he was approaching people. He just got out of the habit. So we went back through it. We created some different language. He was calling some C level prospects and we went through it, role-played it several times. He slept on it that night, we came back the next day, roleplayed it again.

And one week, he set four appointments using the practice that we went through, the new language, we went through new messaging. He set 18 appointments the next week. And he’s been on a tear ever since then. So sometimes you just gotta stop. Take a look at your message. Be objective about it. Don’t “Woe is me.”

Don’t complain that the world’s against you and all the prospects don’t want to talk to you. And there’s, you know, all these other excuses. Just stop and look in the mirror and maybe your message is wrong. Get someone to work with you and get a coach to work with you. And I promise once you stop and take a break, recalibrate your message, most of the time after that, you start running faster.

Message Matters

EA: Jeb, one of the chapters in Fanatical Prospecting is Message Matters. I think chapter 14 or 15 is Message Matters. And sometimes my team will say to me, when I’m prospecting, um, it’s almost like you’ve assumed you’ve won the business.

You you’re that confident that you’re making the assumption you’ve won the business. And I direct them to a passage in your book, which is “assume you’ll get what you want.” There’s a very fine line between assertive, confident, and arrogance. And I think that we need to play that line when we’re prospecting. What’s your take on that?

Jeb: Well, there is no more powerful position for a salesperson than relaxed, assertive confidence. And you’re exactly right. There is a difference between being arrogant and being assertive. And being relaxed, assertive, and confident, it’s in your tone of voice, it is your demeanor, it is the words that you use. It is your mindset going in.

Being arrogant is simply being an asshole. And no one wants to deal with an asshole. And we know what an asshole is, you know exactly what that is, it’s being combative. It’s being stupid. It’s treating your prospect as if they don’t matter. As if they owe you something. That is not the approach.

But there’s a difference between using weak, passive language: “Would it kind of be okay if maybe we could get together sometime,” and saying, “How about Thursday at two?” That’s the difference. It’s getting your language right. So for example, if the person says they’re not interested, being relaxed, assertive, and confident says, “That’s exactly what I figured you might say.” Because most of the time when I call people, the first thing they say is they’re not interested. And the thing that happens after they talk to me is that they learn that I can do these things for them.

That’s confident, assertive language. So you have to listen to it. Maybe even record yourself, listen to how you’re saying things. Listen to your tone of voice, listen to the words that you’re using, listen to your inflection. And if you’re in person, think about your approach and even the way that you shake someone’s hands. Are you approaching with your hands in your pocket or your shoulder slumped over? Are you sending out the message that you’re insecure?

Focus on being confident. There is nothing in the world that will get people to comply with your requests faster than being confident, and being assertive means getting over this internal feeling that you have, that you don’t want to be too pushy and just ask for what you want.

One of the paradoxes of our desire not to be arrogant or to think that assertive is being arrogant, is that when you are more weak and passive and insecure and have the desire not to be more pushy, you actually create more resistance. People will tell you no more often when you stumble over your words or you use weak words.

So the line is pretty simple for me. Don’t be an asshole. Be confident, be assertive, be there for your client. Richard from the UK called me 71 times. This guy was always professional. He was always kind, he was always nice, but he had complete conviction that what he was offering would change my business. And by the way, he was right.

Why the Telephone is the Most Powerful Tool for Real Estate Agent Prospecting Activity

EA: Fantastic. Telephone. How’d you make your telephone your best friend, because obviously you’ve got so many other channels that you can use now that people may prefer to communicate. Is telephone the best form of communication? Or should I be reliant on email, text messages, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or whatever these kids use these days, what’s the in thing? Facebook messenger.

Jeb: There is no more powerful tool in your sales arsenal, than the telephone. And the reason why is that you can cover more ground in less time with a telephone than any other channel. You can’t direct message faster than you can pick up the phone and dial. You can’t send an email faster, a good email faster than you can pick up the phone and dial.

Now you can bulk email people, but that’s called marketing, not prospecting. So we need to be careful about that. The telephone allows you to reach more people in less time and have real conversations with other human beings.

And by the way, on WhatsApp. Cause I use WhatsApp all the time, even though in America, we don’t use it, but all my global clients do, I use WhatsApp to make phone calls cause I can call people on WhatsApp. So if I have their contact, I’m dialing WhatsApp. I’m not WhatsApping them via text. Now my clients, I will from time to time, but they’re already clients. They’re not prospects. They’re doing business with me.

So if you think about prospecting, start with the phone. Now, does that mean that these other channels don’t matter? Absolutely not. If you want to use Snapchat, my wife calls it snap-a-chat. If you wanna use that, or use WhatsApp, or use Facebook, or use LinkedIn, or what have you, you should absolutely do those things.

Email could be really powerful, done the right way. As is face to face networking, as is going out and meeting people in person at the doorstep. I mean, go knock on the door, field sales reps. If you combine telephone prospecting for setting appointments with going out and meeting the people in businesses that are around the people that you prospect to? Absolutely worthwhile doing.

I work with real estate agents in the United States canvassing neighborhoods, knocking on doors, having those conversations. Maybe we’ll go back to carrier pigeons and smoke signals, but the telephone absolutely stone-cold works.

Pick it up. Don’t be afraid of it, and the way that you make it your best friend, cause it’s not going to do it for you.

Why Should Should Leave Good Voicemail Messages

EA: Brilliant. One thing that I always get with prospecting is this number of core connects, isn’t it Jeb. And you can make, you know, 20, 30 prospecting calls and maybe only get five connects.

I find, and it’s covered off again in your book, it’s the messages that you leave and the power of that message, and you have a section, “Leaving effective voicemail messages that get returned”.

“Hi, it’s Johnny here from estateagents.com. Can you give me a call?” Is not really going to cut it, is it?

Jeb: No. If you think about a voicemail message, most of your calls are going to go to voicemail. That’s just the truth. So I always ask people, “What’s your biggest challenge?” and they go, “All my calls go to voicemail.” I go, that’s what I challenge is the fact. The fact is, is that most calls are going to go there.

So, if your call goes to voicemail and you’re going to leave a voicemail, leave a voicemail that gives you the highest probability of A) getting your call returned and B) getting information to them that allows you to begin to tell your story. So a voicemail should be around 30 seconds. No more than that. And in the book, I give you a framework that will double your callbacks. That’s not going to change your life, because most people are getting a 2 to 4% callback rate. So if you double that, it’s not going to change everything for you.

But you have to recognize that there’s this thing called familiarity. Familiarity is a really powerful part of the prospecting paradigm. In other words, the more people see your phone, the more people see your face, and the more people hear your voice, the more people hear your message, the more likely they’re going to interact with you and engage with you when the time is right. So by leaving a voicemail, you’re able to leave a 30 second commercial.

And when you start thinking about sequencing and pursuit plans, you can create a series of voicemails that you may leave for a high value prospect over the course of say a month that tells your story one little drip at a time. So first of all, think about voicemail as a great tool, rather than something that’s getting in your way.

And think about it as a way to tell your story, leave a message that gets the prospect a little bit of information at a time. Also make sure that you leave a voicemail, just follow the process in the book. I guarantee that it works. I just spell out the process in the book that will give you the highest probability of getting that person to call you back.

When It’s Time to Go Home, Make One More Call

EA: Lovely. One final question, cause I’m very grateful that you’re taking your time whilst you’re on holiday. And so last final question, “11 words that changed my life”?

Jeb: My favorite saying, I’ve got it written on everything. It’s even embroidered inside of my suit coat, because it’s been the one thing that’s driven me. And that is: “When it’s time to go home, make one more call.”

Here’s what I mean by that. Like anything in your life that’s uncomfortable. There’s a place where you feel like I’ve had enough of it, I don’t want to do anymore. And, even yesterday I was staining some stairs here because I was waterproofing them and I was in the middle of it, it’s a pretty big job. And I’m like, I’m tired of this. I’m hot. And I’m going to give up. And I said to myself, no, I’m going to do one more. And that one more ends up being the rest of the rails on that particular staircase.

And it’s the same thing with prospecting when I’m at that point where I think I can’t do anymore. And my brain says, it starts to talking to me, I’m going to give up, I’m going to quit. I’d make one more call at always do this, I think “Okay, at this point, I’m going to do one more.” And I’ve generated millions of dollars in revenue for the organizations that I’ve worked for making one more.

I can’t tell you how many people write me on social media or connect with me on email or WhatsApp or our direct messaging and say, you’re not going to believe it. You know, I heard what you said. And today when I was ready to give up and I was about to go home, I made one more call. And that was the call that I needed to make my day. That was the sell that I needed.

So when you are at that point where you’re ready to quit, will yourself to make one more call and I promise you, it will change your life.

EA: Awesome, Jeb. You have added so much value to our listeners lives. You’ve certainly enriched ours. I don’t know whether you’ve been able to see the video, but between myself and Steven while we’ve been recording this, but he’s been honestly like a kid in a sweet shop. He’s met his idol. I think he bases his whole prospecting role around ripping off your book.

Thanks, Jeb, seriously. Your most recent book is out. And guys, if you’d like to know more about Jeb, the web address is jebblount.com. Obviously, is there anything that you’d like to plug just for 30 seconds while you’re on the show? Jeb, what’s your latest book?

On Jeb Blount’s New Book Objections

Jeb Blount Sales Objections BookJeb: Yeah, absolutely. My brand new book is Objections, it’s now on Audible. If you have a problem with rejection, you definitely want to do that. And you can come visit me also at salesgravy.com. And if you’re interested in more tips on prospecting, go to my YouTube channel. I’ve got 400 videos. We’re adding new videos every single day.

It’s a really good place to get some free content that will add to the training that you guys are already delivering. And maybe be the one video that you need to see that day that will help you get the sell that you need to take your career forward.

EA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Really grateful for your time. I’m sure all of our listeners have loved it. I will keep on plugging your book wherever I go and mentioning it, because I think it’s an exceptional book.

It adds value to every salesperson out there. Jeb’s also got a podcast as well called Sales Gravy, which is exceptional as well and well worth it listening to, obviously. Hopefully you’ve loved this podcast today, so please rate it, review it, take a screenshot of it, post it on Instagram, Facebook, and let’s keep on adding value to everybody else out there and getting these positive messages out there.

EA: So, Jeb, thank you. So, so, so much. And Andy, thank you for your time as well. We’re really, really grateful and really humbled and I’m gonna end with the message where we started from Michael, how you managed to come on here. And you talked about being persistent and you’ve talked about asking, and I learned a massive, massive lesson. That if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Having you on the air, bestselling author of nine books., obviously it means a lot. But it shows if you don’t ask, you don’t get. I wasn’t as persistent as the other English gentleman, 71 times, but I did follow the steps in your book with email headers, text messages, voice messages, LinkedIn, until I finally got an offer.

And finally got you on here. And I was incredibly determined that you were going to be a guest. So thank you once again, enjoy the rest of your vacation and, to all our listeners, please rate it and review it.

Jeb: Thank you!


Learn the real secret to growing your real estate business and income in Jeb’s global bestseller Fanatical Prospecting. Get the book here. 

About the author

Jeb Blount

Jeb Blount is one of the most sought-after and transformative speakers in the world…

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