Buyer Rep Mastery – Confidence Moving Forward | Jim Remley

Mastering the right skills for Buyer Representation will give you confidence moving forward. This episode walks you through how to gain that mastery. We feature Jim Remley, who opened his first company at 24 and built it into a 17-office network. The last company he owned did 1.4 billion in sales and 3000 transactions a year in volume. He is also the founder of e-Real Estate Coach and is a well-known name on some of the industry’s biggest stages.

Full Transcription

The world of real estate is changing. And those that are prepared, have a very bright future in front of them, while those who don’t, who don’t actually prepare to be a better buyer representative, and be able to master getting that representation, helping your clients. So number one, understand the value that you bring to the table, to the point that they actually enter into a contract with you, the future is bleak. But for again, for those that do for those that master this skill set, the future will be brighter than ever. I’m excited to introduce to you today a guest who is teaching this all over the country on how to master this one skill set that will open up future possibilities for you.

So the big question is this. How do you those of us in the real estate industry, who have crazy amounts of ambition? How do we think bigger than the building of our own empires? How do we create success and significance, income and impact?

My name is Justin Stoddart. This is my co host, Stephanie Peck, and together we bring you the Think bigger real estate podcast.

Alright, welcome back. Everybody thrilled today to bring to you two people who I have the utmost respect for first is my co host, Stephanie pecks. Definitely great to see you again. Hello, thank you. And that we have a third time returning guests and not too many people can say that was so excited to welcome Jim Remley back to the podcast. Jim, such a pleasure to have you here. My pleasure to be here, my friend. We are enamored by what you’ve done in this industry, everything from building

the most productive real estate brokerages in the Northwest on the John L. Scott platform and their franchise system, to now being a coach of real estate brokers all over the country, and also developing the coach the real estate coach platform. The list goes on and on. I’ve just barely scratched the surface there. But if you don’t know who Jim Remley is, you will after this and you’ll have deep respect for him because he’s an incredible man. So Jim, we’re excited to dive into today’s topic. But before I do, would you just maybe give a little more context I shared a couple of the highlights there. Tell us from a standpoint of today’s topic of buyer rep mastery, what of your past career or current career

accomplishments Do you feel like most prepared you for this moment to be able to help agents really gain that buyer rep mastery? Well, I had the good fortune actually to teach for NAR for 10 years. And then the number one thing I taught was the accredited by representation designation. So I taught that nationally, throughout the country, I also help the author, one of the the other courses you can take alongside of him, which at that time was called the ebuyer. Course. So definitely had some experience in getting ahead of this and really started to train agents on this topic of putting buyers under contract a long time before we’ve gotten to this point today.

One thing I’ll mention, as we kind of roll into this is that, you know, for states like ours here in Oregon, but in many other states where I teach California and other one,

you know, by representation where we’ve had to have buyers in the contracts is uncommon, but for 17 states in the nation, it’s been common practice. So it’s like kind of a yawn there. It’s like, yeah, we’ve been doing this for a while now, we’re afraid of it. But it’s nothing to be afraid of, we can embrace this. And that actually, in my opinion, is going to enhance our businesses. But I’m so glad that you said that, because I do know that there’s a lot of agents out there who are very concerned that they won’t be able to secure that I think coupled with the media who’s doing all kinds of damage in in diminishing the value proposition of a real estate agent. I think what you have to share with us will give us again, the best agents, the one that we the ones who we want to carry the banner forward in this industry will see this as a great opportunity to really distinguish themselves from their peers. So Stephanie, what what, as we move into this, what’s kind of the one of the biggest questions on your mind as we move forward, based on today’s topic.

Yeah, I just want to want to reiterate that that the people that have been working this way, the whole time, really aren’t worried and aren’t intimidated. And we actually see this as such a blessing to our business, that now everyone is going to be held to the same standard and expectation that a lot of us have been holding ourselves to already. So thank you for the opportunity to point that out where I’d say, you know, if you’re out there, you’re scared, you’re nervous, you’re unsure. Don’t worry about it, because a lot of us have been doing this the whole time and doing it successfully. So so let’s talk about that, that the people that are saying, What am I going to do? How am I going to even open up that conversation? Let’s just start with that. What’s the first thing that a real estate agent should be doing now to have the opportunity to have

Have a conversation from a place of being an advisor more than a place of being a door opener? Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And I think also we have to think backward kind of, what are the conversations start? And at what point do we bring this whole cart topic up. And even before we start talking to buyers, which we definitely will cover today, of course, there’s another element, which is a lot of people are missing is that this conversation actually starts with the seller, not the buyer. Because now that, you know, this, the seller and our conversations with sellers are changing. It’s definitely a starting point there that we have to talk about with them in terms of what are we going to offer? Are we going to offer anything to a buyer Jason representative on that side, so we got to get comfortable with that conversation, in terms of buyers, what I think my friends that are top producers around the country, and look guys, and gals, I’m pulling ideas from their conversations with buyers or something like this, they’ll say, Hey, before we go and start looking at homes, do you mind if we just take 10 minutes, and I can kind of show you the entire buying process, and I liked that idea of we’re going to walk you through a buying process, the buying process has changed pretty dramatically over the last five years. So if you don’t mind, you know, 510 minutes, I can walk you through it really easily. So you know what you’re getting into as you start this this home shopping experience. And you’re gonna make it just like that one of my good friends also uses this strategy or this this comment, he calls it a buyer Strategy Session, hey, can we just take 10 minutes and have a buyer Strategy Session, because I want to help you get the best deal possible in the market. And you know, we’re not buying the market, blind specific house. And there’s definitely a process and how we go about shopping for house to make sure you get the best deal possible. And when you frame it up in benefits to them, and not to you, it’s not about your commission, it’s about your service level, then they’re going to be much more excited about having that conversation and making it light. It’s not going to be a two hour conversation, my opinion. It’s a 20 minute, maybe 30 minute max conversation. And it’s just like a seller presentation, when we’re doing a solid presentation, we always use the 22 Minute Rule, which is, you know, that’s the average sitcom length, you know, when we used to watch sitcoms, if it’s longer than 22 minutes, people are tuned in now. So we got to have it short, sweet. And we got to have a natural progression into the conversation.

One thing that you pointed out there, I do think that it’s it’s our tendency for those of us that are in sales to talk about features and stuff that we’re really excited about. Right? Yeah. What what I heard you say is that we need to go to the benefit. Yeah, talked about the benefit to the clients, right? What are some of those benefits you if you were to point out to say, how does this benefit the consumer, what would you say would be kind of the top of the list of those items? Well, when we’re doing a buyer presentation, we got to treat it just like we do a seller presentation, which is most of us are trained and we shouldn’t be doing this for a high level, do use a visual presentation of some kind, right? We’re gonna say, Hey, here’s the, here’s all the things we need to talk about to get you top dollar for your house. Same thing with a buyer, hey, here’s all the things we need to consider to help you get the best deal for house. And I’m going to frame it up by talking about what they want to talk about. Okay. And when NAR makes it super easy for us, right. And they are studies this every single year, and they give us this beautiful report, then they are profiled on buyers and sellers, it’s updated every single year. So we don’t have to guess we can say this is exactly what the client wants to talk about what they find valuable in a realtor, I’m gonna read them off because I got them right in front of me. I’m gonna give you the top five. Okay, number one, helping find the right home to purchase. So obviously, that should be the number one thing we talk about in our buyer presentation. How are we going to help you find the right home to purchase helping buyer negotiate the terms of the sale, obviously, negotiation, helping with price negotiations, helping with paperwork, helping to arrange financing, that’s the top five things. So I want you to think about in my presentation, my process conversation, and my talking about those five things as the primary starting points, we can get into everything else. But that’s got to be the primary sometimes we get off track and we talk about what we think’s important. It’s not what we think is important. So the client thinks is important. Right? So I think that’s really, really key. It’s just focusing on leading what the client need. Definitely do any of those surprised you. When you hear those top five, I know you’re very in touch with your clients who are in conversation with them all day every day. But do any of those stand out to you? I was like, Oh, that’s interesting, I would have expected that wouldn’t be on the list. You know, the key piece was number one, helped me find the right property. And I think that real estate agents have leaned on technology a little too much and allowed our clients to lean on technology a little too much to where we we often don’t credit ourselves to finding the property. We are letting the client do all the research and finding properties and then they just text them to us late at night and say we want to see this and we say okay, great, what time so it’s very key. I love that you said that, that the client still sees that as the number one responsibility of a real estate agent and the number one resource that we can bring is finding the property. It’s so much more than just you download your favorite

up and shoot me a text with what you want to see.

I will say that like Stephanie, I’ve done a lot of social media posts around the NAR settlement. And I’m gonna tell you something, what happens is everybody piles on the a lot of trolls out there that pile on to this. And what they all say is, why would I pay a realtor 10,000 $20,000 to open a door for me, I can do that myself, where to find me properties. I can do that myself by going to Zillow or realtor.com. I don’t need a realtor. And the problem is that there’s some realtors, that’s getting their psyche and they’re saying, Well, maybe I’m not worth what I’m worth. And we’ve got to unwind that and unpack that and say, Wait a second, we can bring a ton of value to the search process. It’s not just about them going on Zillow, realtor.com, there’s so many more ways we can add value. And I just want to give you this thought process on when we’re building our presentation, I’ve got 12 things you should have in a presentation. When you’re building that out. You need to think about the proprietary Enos of each category. So when we talked about the search process that can be very like commoditized everybody can do it the same way. We’ll talk on Zillow down the list your website, everybody has access to IDX feeds, how are we going to make a proprietary process behind that that’s unique to us. And so my conversation with buyers will be something like this. Hey, Stephanie, one thing that we do when we’re searching for properties is we put your your your property search criteria into a system of course, we search MLS like every other agent, but we’re gonna go much deeper than that, I’m gonna leave no stone unturned to that no stone unturned conversations key. So I’ll say, you know, we’re going to also look at for sale by owners things that are not listed on the open market, but they’re privately listed, expired listings, the properties that have come on the market are now off the market. I’m going to network with the top 10% of agents in the market that are doing 90% of the business, we’re gonna see if they got any coming soon listings. If you got a specific area that you’re interested in like a neighborhood, I’m going to canvass that neighborhood, my team and I will go through that neighborhood and see if there’s anybody that’s thinking about selling that may be on the fence that we can bring the market for you. So we’re gonna leave no stone unturned. Now. I just added a proprietary Enos to this. And right there just by that conversation, I’m beating 99% of competition is never gonna have that conversation.

It was beautiful. Jim, it’s interesting, Stephanie, because I had the same question about not question but the same one stood out to me that that’s what consumers value the most. Because even though we all know, what Jim does to describe his true consumers don’t necessarily feel that way. At least we don’t think that they do. So it was alarming to me to hear that that’s actually what they value the most. And your points there, Jim is the fact that when people are simply shopping, right shopping per se window shopping on Zillow and these other places, I think Brett Gove said it best when he said, you know, this is like, like shopping for leftovers, right? It’s like, like, this is not the best inventory out there. It’s what’s left over. And in what you just described him as a very tactical way to help people to recognize that when they get us they get access to all the information that they don’t see that they’ll never see. Right. It’s, it’s it’s super interesting.

What What other questions do you have? Stephanie, obviously, you have a very successful real estate team coming into some uncharted territory slightly right. And since you guys have already done this, but at least now you have consumers who have a different perspective on it. Right? What like, what are the questions you have for Jim, that might be interesting for our audience to to kind of hear from him? Yeah, let’s talk about the seller side a little bit more. That’s a conversation that, for me, in my everyday practice in real estate has actually come up more often than on the buyer side. So when we’re working with buyers, we’re, we’re already in the habit of explaining our value, these are the things that we’re going to do for you. And this is how we get paid. So if you’re not already in that habit, get in that habit, it’d be great for you. But sellers, we have traditionally had that conversation with sellers. So when you know, they they call and they say what do you charge? Well, there’s a different conversation around that now about what I charge as a real estate agent, and who gets paid and how they get paid. So let’s unpack that a little bit. Absolutely. So that is, I think you’re right, the number one thing we have to address, right? So in the what I’m seeing with top agents that are top listing agents, so this is what’s coming up the most, because everybody’s kind of saying, well, we don’t have to really deal with this until August 17. Wrong.

You have to deal with it right now. Because what’s happening is sellers are watching the news. They’re getting this on CNN or New York Times Wall Street Journal, it’s everywhere. So when you go to the listing appointment, I’d say at least 50% of time, maybe 70% of the time, the seller is going to say I’ve just heard that I don’t have to pay a buyer’s agent anymore. Is that true? And now now you got to say, Oh, what am I gonna say back to that, to deal with that and address them? So your conversation, your scripting is super important, and you need to practice and just like you practice your listing presentation initially. So I’ll give you a couple of different strategies that that my team is using. One is to say, well, that’s absolutely true. That you know by region commission is definitely something that you can choose

To offer or not offer, but here’s the kind of maybe a surprising thing that that’s always been the case that this is unchanged. Um, the only thing that’s changing is that buyer agent Commission’s will not be showing up in the MLS system. And so agents will need to call us to ask if we’re if we’re actually offering buyer agent commissions. But can I give you my reasons why you might want to consider offering a vibration commission? Because I think it’s important in terms of marketing. And that’s really what this is. It’s a marketing question. And so here’s here’s the reality with it, when we’re, when we’re out showing homes as a buyer’s agent, I’m going to be working with a buyer that may or may not be able to write a check for buyer agent commissions, let’s assume that they can’t. And the estimates are right now that 50% of all buyers cannot do that. That means you’re eliminating paper 50% of the buyers from the buyer pool, I wouldn’t recommend that right out of the gate. So I think that’s a challenge. The other thing is competitively I want you to look at something competitively. I’ve done a survey. And this is really key this is this, this is great language. I’ve done a survey before we got the listing of every property that has sold around your property over the last six months. And I looked at what every seller was offering in those cases to buyer agents, there’s a variance. But here’s one 3%, here’s one, a two and a half percent, here’s one 2%, whatever the numbers are, your call what you want to offer, here’s my recommendation, the ones that sold the fastest were offering this. And inevitably, it’ll be a higher commissions. And you can say, so you can make your choice. But in terms of competitive nature, I would say I would probably be in this range. If it were my house, your all your choice. And you just put it out there and you give them good logical explanation for most of them will come along. So that’s one I call that the Commission survey approach. The other approach is to get back to how they bought the house. So if I was talking to Justin, I’d say, Justin, let me ask you a question. Before I answer your question, when you bought this house, did you write a check for your buyer agent representation costs? Or did the seller pay for it on your behalf? Yes, I paid for it. Yep. At that point, when you bought the house, would you have maybe had the money to write that check? Because most buyers wouldn’t. Yeah, I wouldn’t have. So here’s the way that most real estate transactions occur. And that is that the seller pays the buyer agent representation costs for one key reason, it’s because that allows the buyer to finance those representation costs into the transaction, just like when you bought the house, what happened is you paid the sellers price, which included representation on your side. And that allowed you to finance that cost over 30 years, because you couldn’t afford it as a buyer, most buyers can either. So if we choose not to offer, and that’s your choice, then what’s going to happen is you’re gonna eliminate a big chunk of buyers that just like you couldn’t have bought the house. So I wouldn’t do that I would just, you know, make sure you have in your mind that you know, what it is that we’re going to be spending here, that’s just a part of your transactional costs. And our price covers that cost just like the solid get your case. That’s I think that’s another great way to handle that conversation. There’s a million strategies out around this. Those are just two of them. You know, one thing that stands out to me, I’d love to hear your your thoughts on this as well, Stephanie, is it? You know, it’s if if I’m not mistaken, the buyer always brings all the money. I mean, like the buyer is the only one paying commission. Now you might say, well, I take it out of my equity. But at the end of the day, the buyer is the one bringing the money to the table. And so what although the seller says why don’t have to pay that anymore? Well, it’s like you’ve never really have, right, it’s always been the buyer that’s brought the money to the table 70 What what a has are showing up for you, as you hear Jim talk through these different strategies.

Well, and isn’t this really consistent with conversations that we’re already having? When we’re at a listing appointment, we’re already having conversations with our sellers, about the things that they can do to appeal to the most amount of buyers possible in the shortest amount of time. So when we’re having that conversation of, you know, you may want to invest in repainting, before we go on the market, you may want to invest in landscaping, or staging or even just a cleaner, we’re already having these conversations with our sellers, about what’s a worthy investment to attract the most amount of buyers possible in the shortest amount of time. So this is just an additional conversation with them about what’s a worthy investment to attract those buyers. So if you’re already used to having those conversations, there’s really not a lot to be intimidated by. I love that this was stuff he’s bringing up and 100, another top producer kind of use a similar analogy, which was incentives. Right. So often with buyers, we’re giving them you know, 3%, back for closing costs, or 2% for interest rate by downs or whatever. This is just a part of our incentive package. we’re incentivizing buyer’s agents to bring their buyers to us, and buyers to make the choice to come here because they don’t have to write the check. It’s just another level of incentive. So I think I think Stephanie’s approach is brilliant.

You know, what I love about this, this whole conversation, you guys mentioned it early, early on, is that this is going to be a great kind of purging for the industry because these conversations are like those agents that are serious that are really have a career in mind, right? Whether they’re successful or not. They’re really setting out to make a career out of this. Yeah, versus just

Get some side money, those agents who, who are just here to, you know, earn a quick paycheck off, some family members aren’t going to be able to articulate in this way, they’re not gonna be learning these things. And there’s going to be a very distinct line drawn in the sand between those who do and those that don’t. And I do believe it’s going to clean up the industry and even improve the reputation overall, which has been marred a little bit I mean, don’t know how many people I’ve talked to that have gotten into real estate because they thought, if my agent can do that, man, I can do a lot better than that. Right? Because they were they saw an experience that was lackluster and and they came in and said, I can improve upon that. And I do you think that we’re going to see the tide rising? Because many won’t be able to won’t be willing to pay the price to learn what YouTube professionals are teaching.

Jim, what else when you look at the overall picture of you know, the this whole buyer rep mastery, of course, we have the conversation with the seller, when when we’re working directly with with the buyer themselves, is there additional conversation that should be had, that gives us the ability to better help them through that process, when maybe they might be concerned and scared and trying to try to figure out? What are you just telling me this? Because Because you’re an agent? And so you’re securing your own paycheck? Right? How would you go about kind of managing that interesting situation now with, you know, with the media over here, telling them a tale that isn’t isn’t the full story? Well, I think that at the end of the day, when you get down to that buyer presentation, you’ve lined out your 12, proprietary services you’re bringing to them that is going to highlight your service level and why they should be working with you at the end of the day, you’re still gonna have to talk about, you know, biracial representation, and getting a buyer representation agreement out, which is the scariest part for agents, agents are fearful of bringing that document out. Now, keep in mind, they shouldn’t be. Because at the end of the presentation, if I’m working with you, Justin, I’ll say this, you know, there’s 12 Things you feel comfortable with that? And do I feel like the kind of agent you want to work with? And you say, Yes, I’ll say great. So the next step for me when I’m working with any buyer, is we use a buyer representation agreement, I can just take it’s a two page document here in Oregon. So just walk you through it real quick. And we’ll just outline our relationship while we’re working together. And now I’m going to begin walking you through that the scariest part of that document, though, is when you get down to the commission, and people like, Oh, I’m so scared of talking about the actual commission element of this, how am I going to have that conversation? So the scripting for us is, is going to be really key to our comfortability, right? And so it comes down to confidence. And how do you have confidence in anything? The way you have confidence is through competence. Competence creates confidence. And how do you build competence competence is practice rehearse, drill, practice, rehearse, drill, so all agents should be in this mode of role playing with their office partners and getting super, super, super comfortable with this. And just getting this dialed in. So you just rolls off your tongue. So you have complete confidence that when you’re sitting with somebody like that,

you’re gonna get nervous, right? So what’s the script going to be? Exactly? So for me, I’m just going to say, hey, you know what? My competence and this is what I call the success fee. I say my compensation comes at the end of the transaction, Justin. So just keep this in mind, I don’t get paid a nickel, not a dime, not a penny, unless we have found the perfect home for you. You’ve gotten that financing dialed and the home’s been appraised, we’ve had all the inspections, you have the price that you wanted, and we’re at the closing table, and I’ve handed you the keys. And now you’re a homeowner, that’s when I get paid, okay, I don’t get paid anything. And if at any point, the transaction fails, or you’re unhappy, and you decide to leave the transaction, I don’t get paid. So I’m paid only if you’re successful. Okay. And here’s what I’m paid, I’m paid X percentage at closing, this is my my fee. So you got to decide what’s your fee gonna be, which is a whole conversation that we three should probably have on this call, is what are you gonna get paid? Now we’re gonna, we’re not going to talk about specific numbers, but you need to have a minimum standard for yourself personally. So let’s, let’s assume I said whatever percentage, but that is credited. That number is credited against anything we collect from the seller. So within the offer that we write, we’re probably going to go ahead and ask the seller to pay that fee on your behalf. Some sellers will agree to do it, some sellers will not. But here’s the thing, there’s going to be complete transparency, there’s not going to be any surprises or gotchas within every transaction, we’re going to know before you go all the way forward into it exactly what that number is going to look like. What’s it going to cost you all in for your down payment, your loan costs, your buyer representation fees, you’re going to know going into the transaction, it’s gonna be super clear. And then you can make a decision is this feel comfortable for you or not? But again, you’re never going to write me a check unless we guide you all the way to closing. That’s the conversation right? Now, here’s what I think that all of us should start doing as an industry. With sellers when we receive an offer for you know, a lot of good agents will provide a net sheet to the seller and they’ll say Hey, Mister Mister seller, here’s your offer. I want to have had the title company or you did it through an app, create an estimate and he does an estimate but this is probably pretty close to what you’d expect to close in his app feel comfortable for you

And then we might start doing the same with buyers, right? Hey guys on this specific house, you know, this seller is not offering to pay the buyer rep fee, or the only offering to pay half of it or whatever. So in this particular case, this is what your bottom line won’t be on this house is I feel comfortable for you. And it’s just gonna be a conversation, right. But that was the scary part of it we’re going to remove is this whole idea that they’re gonna have to write us a check when they did my house or something like that. That’s what we got to remove. They’re only writing a check if they’re successful. And that’s the key point.

But that really just makes it just as simple. It’s part of closing costs. And it’s not a we’re signing you up on auto ship that you could never get out of, right. It’s, it’s like, no, I have the ability of full transparency all along the way to say yes or no, yes or no, yes or no, I’m here to guide you through that process. And towards Yeah, you’re not, you’re not auto debiting out of their account, that now it’s like, this is what we’re agreed upon. And you’ll you’ll know, before you like you’ll approve, before we do anything with you know, that’s actually going to charge you that or, you know, it’s gonna cost you that separately, what else would you add to that? Are there some AHA is happening for you, as you hear him walk through that. I just love the idea of showing them that I only get paid when you are successful. And it continues to put it back on this is about you, and what you want and how I am able to help you get there. Because of my my experience and my education and my resources that I have access to that you don’t on your own. So we only win when we both win together. No one wins separately. And I love that that marriage, essentially during the transaction that is showing someone I’m not going to get paid unless I help you be successful in this transaction. I mean, what I wish I could have that with everybody that I hired for every

restaurant, you only eat you only pay for it if you like the meal, right? Right. Yeah, if I’m only fully satisfied, and I walk away full, and I love the meal, then I’m gonna pay for it. And I’m in what what a great way to be offering a service to a consumer. I agree. Well, I feel like that’s part of where the media has gone wrong on their display of how real estate agents get paid. It’s been very much that they’re the villains and they’ve been overcharging, including all this time, when in actuality, you look at the role of a real estate agent, the amount of effort, and then resources they put forward in the hopes of getting paid, right without any promise that they will, because it’s all tied to performance of somebody actually going ahead and purchasing the home which is out of their control, right. It’s in the appraisers, hands, it’s in financing sands, it’s in it ultimately clients hands to say, yes, I want to do it. Like that’s, that’s a, that’s a can be perceived as

a risky initiative, unless you’re really good at it, right? Unless you’re really good at helping people to get that, that happy ending that could be concerning. And I look at it, like an investment. And I explain that to my clients, whether it’s the buy side or the listing side, I’m making an investment in you. And this is how I get a return on my investment. So they feel like they really know that I have to make sure that you are successful, just the same way that I’m investing in anything else. I’m going to be investing in your your photos and your staging and a house cleaner, and a lot of time and I’m going to be investing in mailers to the neighborhood that you want to be purchasing in and I’m investing in you by being an advisor to you for years before you are ready to make a move. I we are making investments in people. And that’s how we get the return. Jim, I have a question for you. And how would you handle or respond to someone that says, I don’t want to sign that and I don’t want to pay that. I mean, we know now that there will need to be some sort of signed agreement just for them to see properties. But when they say, I don’t want to pay that because I feel like I’m I’m going to do it on my own. I’m going to visit open houses. You know, this was just a formality for you to get me in the door. Yeah, how should we be responding to that? Well, I would say you know what you certainly don’t have to, and you can go out there and find another agent and shop for other services out there. Some buyers like yourself with my say they want to go directly to the seller, and just deal directly with the seller. And if that’s the route you want to go totally understand and more power to you. The only thing I would just encourage you to think about is that if you’re going to deal directly with the seller, what’s going to happen in that case is you got somebody that’s a train negotiator. That’s number one job is to get the seller, the highest price in the best terms possible. They’re not working in your best interest or working completely against you. In fact, they’re legally obligated to do so. So you know if that’s where you want to be and only have no representation, I totally get it. I wouldn’t do that with the largest investment of most people’s lives. You know, it’s usually the biggest investment I’d run out of one

In an advisor next to me, but if you don’t see value in my services, and we probably shouldn’t work together, so I’m not going to chase virus islands after I’ve gone through a presentation of value, and they don’t see the value. I’m certainly I’m not chasing the buyer. And I think it’s the same thing with the beauty of this, this new kind of evolution in our industry, is that at the end of the day, you know, a year from now, we’re only going to be working with sellers that are signed, committed sellers. And we’re going to work on the buyers that are signed, committed buyers, we’ve always sort of treated buyers like secondary citizens because they’ve never fully committed to us. And it kind of becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Everybody says buyers are liars buyers are untrustworthy buyers who are flaky? Well, maybe not. Maybe it’s that we have not given them the same level of service we give to sellers, because they weren’t under a sign written agreement. Now we’re under a signed written agreement. And then we’ve elevated the professionals like Justin was saying, I think it’s going to change the game. I think it’s gonna be absolutely game changing. I think there’ll be a short blip word where Stephen, you’ll see a lot more people try to go directly to the seller. And then again, we’ll get there’s going to be a lot of people that that burn and be like, Oh, my gosh, this is a huge mistake. But that’s part of the training process as well. Can I just give you two more things on that really quickly, too. When you’re talking with the seller, and you were talking about unrepresented buyers, and we’re talking about our listing fee, whatever that fee may be, I need to also have the unrepresented buyer conversation because there’s going to be a surge of them, right, right, right in the beginning of this thing. So what I’m going to say to them as a lesson, one thing that’s going to come up is we’re going to have some buyers knocking on our door, literally, they’re gonna say they’re not represented by a buyer. And they just want to write an offer directly in the house. Now I’m legally obligated to present all offers to you. But you’re needing to make a decision as a seller, do you want to accept unrepresented buyer offers? Number one, do you even want to accept them? Or are you going to require buyers have representation either through an agent or an attorney, I’ll give you my feedback on that. If you decide that you want to accept an unrepresented buyer’s offers, then my work is going to rise dramatically, okay, because I’m going to be doing basically twice the work, I’m going to have to handhold them through escrow, I’m gonna have to handle them through the financing process, the appraisal process, the inspection process, all that process, somebody’s gonna have to talk them, talk to them, walk them through. So if we are going to accept offers from an unrepresented buyers, my fee will have to be a little bit more in that case, doesn’t have to be a full fee. But it’s got to be something I was charging two, maybe it’s three foot structure three, maybe it’s four, I’m not price fixing. But there’s got to be some number there that you’re attaching to these unrepresented buyers. Flipside, I was just coaching working with one of my coaching students who’s tracking on represented buyers right now, because there’s a rise with him 70% of the deals that have come in on representative failed, and so he can speak to that and say, 70% of the deals that come in on represented are failing, are you sure you want to accept that because we’re gonna be basically taking the home off the market, and there’s a 70% chance these things are gonna fail? I wouldn’t do that I’d require representation. This is what his conversations with his sellers. But I think anybody that’s listening out there that doesn’t have those numbers yet, say, you could say there’s a, you know, maybe you can give us specifics as to what part of the country that was in Jim, if you’re open to that East Coast, East Coast, but I think anytime you can, you can pull real data like that, that doesn’t sound overly it couldn’t be like, you know, 71% of like, if you can get to a real number, the more believable it sounds to the consumer, to where they realize the fact that as a fiduciary responsibility is to protect them protect their interests. Yeah. And if you’re not having that conversation, in my opinion, you’re not doing that because you’re telling them that everything’s gonna be the same as if they were represented as if they were not and it’s, that’s not true. I think we all know that.

So before we go any further I want to be sure and point out the fact that you have a free offering for the audience, which is a course what let’s get that out real quick before I forget to it, or people pop up. But you know, before we get to it, how can people learn more about you find more Jim Remley? So if you guys want to check my my whole platform out we have a program called E real estate coach.com. You also find that on all of our social handles when a real estate coach focuses on brokerage coaching NH and coaching for brokerages and team leaders is specifically around recruiting and retention and profitability. Right now we’ve got a free webinar that are called Rockstar recruiting. It’s a two hour seminar all about recruiting and pulling the best ideas and scripts and texts and emails and video from around the country from top recruiters. So you can actually tap into that. So you can just hop in there and take that free course there. So it’s a real estate coach.com If they go there, they’ll be able to find it. Yes, they can. Thank you very good. Stephanie. What what? In fact, I want to put we have a comment here we have Catherine Melville’s applauding, probably something that Jim or Stephanie said I’m assuming

anyway, appreciate the feedback. Catherine. Stephanie, as we as we kind of drawn here closer to the end of the episode what what other absolute nuggets of of gold and wisdom can we extract from from Jim’s brain for our for our audience, what else is on your mind? You know, it’s really standing out to me is Jim you say

these things so easily. They just come right out, almost like you’ve practiced it before.

You know where I’m going with this? I mean, what a great offering that you have for our audience that can learn more of these tools to success that you’re offering. But let’s talk about how you how you get to that point, you didn’t just wake up today, or before we got on and said, What the heck will I talk about? If they asked me this question? I have no idea what I’m going to say.

Take us through that a little bit. Because I think that’s really important that we all get really confident in these conversations. Yeah, so we’ve all heard of Malcolm Gladwell, the author of book Outliers, hopefully, and Malcolm has in there that 10,000 Hour Rule, which we’ve all heard of, which is to become a master at anything, you have to practice something 10,000 hours, right. So when I challenge agents that are in our coaching system, I’ll ask them, what’s your listing presentation, and now your buyer presentation? Truly, honestly, how many hours? Have you practiced that? In 2024? Have you practiced? I mean, if you practice in five hours, have you practiced at 10 hours? Have you practiced 50 hours to become a master, we have to level up on practice, right? Practice makes perfect, and that’s absolutely true. Now, the way you practice is important. So I’m gonna give you my tools for practice really quickly. Number one, you should memorize a script. And I people hate that. But it’s memorization that leads to internalization, which leads to personalization. And that’s just muscle memory. If athletes have muscle memory, that’s how they become world class athletes. Musicians have muscle memory, right? So they become world class musicians, salespeople, the greatest salespeople on Earth, have sales memory. And it’s the same thing. They have muscle memory when it comes to sales, because they learn scripts, and they now personalize it and they internalize it. And it sounds like it’s coming off the cuff. It sounds like it’s just like so natural. But it wasn’t in the beginning. Right? It wasn’t day one when they’re Greengrass getting into the industry. So the fastest way to learn something really, really good. Give this script to like write something that resonates. If you don’t like it, make it your own, making your own voice, then take out your phone on my phone and record yourself saying the script and maybe that’s your entire viral presentation, and you’re gonna record it and you’re gonna hate it, you’re gonna hate you’re inside of your own voice. That’s okay. You’re gonna listen to that in your car through your Bluetooth every day for at least once. But hopefully 234 times a day for the next week. At the end of the week, next Monday, come back, rerecord yourself, you’ll be way better the second time, give it up for four weeks straight and you’re going to become so much better, so much faster and just more effective on your on your presentation than any other thing you can do. So that’s my really quick, quick message on memorization.

Super good. I think anybody that’s not doing that, again, you’re choosing to be on the wrong side of the line. As this industry goes through its upgrade, you’re going to be the one of those who sits in front of a buyer, and they aren’t gonna be able to see the value and they’re not going to want to right, actually partnering with you. Right in their business with you. Jim, obviously, there’s there’s the conversations that are happening individually, with with our clients. There’s also the public persona, right of what we’re putting out there. If you could guide somebody to say what should one be saying to the public sphere, social media, emails, etc. That maybe sets them up to have more successful one on one conversations, when that time comes? What would you what would you craft? Or what would you say would be the most effective things that once you’d be sharing? Well, the number one thing you have to realize is that you know, your sphere of influence the people that you think of the closest people around you the one that should be sending you referrals. The statistically they know 12 other realtors? Okay. So you think they’re so close to you, but they’re not necessarily that close to you think they are? But maybe they’re not. So the question mark is, they’re getting all this information, most of it wrong around that AR settlement from the news media. What have you done since this came out in March? What have you done since March to educate your sphere about this topic specifically? So I would encourage you to get up and talk about this. Don’t be afraid of it, get up there and get in front of it and do a series of videos around this conversation right explained to it. What does it mean to a seller? What does it mean to a buyer? What’s the best practices? What are you going to be how’s your business going to be done differently today? And you know, the other things you can do along that path of doing this, so you’re going to do some videos, and you got to push those out, you’re going to be the expert in the room. Because if you’re not one of those other 11 other realtors will be right I’m gonna be the expert in room but then I’m going to be proactive. How am I going to be productive I’m going to create a buyer presentation. So if you’ve never have one and most agents don’t, right, you don’t have a buyer presentation you’re building one out then when I built it I’m going to send it to my entire database. I’m gonna say guys, I just built a brand new 2024 buyer presentation. I just love to get your feedback and opinion what you guys think of it this is what I might be presenting to all my buyers Turner buyer per strategy sessions. Let me know what you think rip it apart if I got a misspelling something grammar grammatically wrong

Let me know. But now everybody knows, oh, this guy is taking this seriously, he’s actually got a service level with buyers. And I was unaware of like, this guy is on it right. So those are some things I wouldn’t be doing. And I also might record a video of me delivering my buyer presentation, and I can send that out as well. So there’s a lot of things I can do to get in front of this to really position myself as the expert in that scheme. I will do want to before we wrap this up, and I know we’re getting close, I do want to talk about something that’s going to be critically important for your entire audience. And that is the idea of a minimum standard for your buyer agent commission. So your office might have one, but most offices don’t to be honest with you. But are you personally gonna have a minimum buyer agent standard, in other words, when you go out with the seller, and the seller says, I want you to list it for $1, that’s my commission, you’d say no to that, right, you have a minimum commission, you’re charging, like, this is my set standard, I’m gonna go below it, you’re gonna have to do the same thing with buyers, right. And whatever that number is not price fixing our tendency as agents is I’m just gonna make these people a deal because a friend of mine, or, you know, whatever, they’ve done multiple deals with me and whatever. And our tendency is going to be lower that number, when we’re in the sport, when we’re in the situation, here’s the danger that whatever number you lower to bingo. And let’s say now, the seller over here who’s trying to sell is offering more than the number you’ve agreed to, in your buyer representation agreement, the NAR settlement, the way the NAR rules have been rewritten for us, says that you cannot accept more, you’ve already agreed to the low number, that’s the number you’re getting. So if this number is higher, you just cut your own throat, it’s much much better to start higher. And then if somebody is offering less and you want a discount to that, well, maybe you do, maybe you don’t I don’t recommend you do. But let’s say you do. Now you’re a hero, instead of going the reverse, right? So just keep that in mind don’t charge just willy nilly say I have a standard of practice, because my cost of business is x. And this is what I have to charge. Right. I just want to put out there because it’s such an important point. Yeah, I’m really glad that you brought that up. That’s a conversation that I’ve been having with my team as well, because the Commission on on a team split is different than just one person. So we all had to come in and say what what are my expenses? What are the expenses of the company? What is an individual agents expense? I mean, gas time, what’s the minimum that you would be willing to work for? And and also consider if you’re putting a percentage in, what’s the price point that that buyer is searching in, because we did end up in that situation where they were buying a manufactured home in a park. So we had a percentage there, which was very, very low. So now we’re writing in, you know, percentage or a minimum of X amount of dollars. Because I mean, I’m, I’m in a situation right now, where I think my transaction coordinator is the only one making a profit on that deal.

That’s okay, sometimes you’re gonna end up there. But that was a good reminder to us to have not just a minimum percentage, but a minimum dollar amount, and really go through that exercise of what does it cost the company? What does it cost the agent individually? And what are we all willing to work for for our time? Yeah, thanks. Great point. Great point. So good. One more comment. As we wrap up here, I just want to say, for those of you that like to create partnerships with professionals and other industries, which is obviously authoring the book, the upstream model, and leading the company pro insight, that is my passion, right is helping people scale a warm market business based on that model, I think it would behoove you to do what Jim just described, that you’re doing for your sphere, which is send them your presentation, even for certain of them, sit down and go through the buyer presentation with them, so that they are educated to understand why it’s a good idea to refer you what the value points are that you bring to the table and why the value that you bring so much greater than the price that you charge. And so I think getting an army of people around you professional partners, to understand how different and unique you are, and that you are worth it will only help your your cost to get those high quality referrals, people who are looking for that next level service. So, Jim, it’s been such a pleasure. It’s always so great to spend time with you. I just learned so much. And I just have deep admiration for you both personally and professionally. So thank you for all that you’ve poured in to our episode today. And to our audience today. Stephanie, any final words from you before we wrap up? Jim, that was great. And if we’re looking for some scripts to practice and we want to take your advice, I would probably just replay this show and write it down and rerecord it in my own words, because you gave us some perfect scripts. So thank you for that. Thank you. So good. And again, for those that want to go even deeper, go to E real estate coach.com. You’ll find all kinds of great resources there from Jim. Jim was such a pleasure my friend requests of all of our audiences in here today is to go think bigger and thanks for helping us do that today. Appreciate it so much.

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