Ep013: Connecting With 5 Star Prospects With Rena Smith On The Space Coast

Chris McAllister
Hi all this is Chris McAllister with the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast, where it’s my job to make your real estate business better and your entire life easier. Today I’d like to introduce Rena Smith to the podcast. Rena is a realtor for Roost Real Estate Company in Melbourne, florida, and Rena started with us in Ohio helping her sister-in-law complete broker price opinions way back in 2005. And later she and her family relocated to Florida for her husband’s work and Rena actually earned her real estate license in Florida in 2015. So I guarantee you’ll find inspiration, timely lessons, actionable tips, daily habits and mindsets you can use in your business to generate more leads, book more appointments, write more contracts, close more deals, earn more referrals and make more money. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? And now here’s my interview with Rena Smith. Rena, welcome Good morning, good to see you. Thanks for doing this.

Rena Smith
Good morning, how are you?

Chris McAllister
I’m doing all right. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, if you would, and how you got started in real estate and all that good stuff?

Rena Smith
Well, as Chris already said, I started working with Chris back in 2005. My sister-in-law had worked there at the time. He hired me on to help assist in completing broker price opinions and in 2009, I moved to Florida with my husband for his job. I had three kids. They were aged one, two and three. So it was a tough move but we made it. I’ve been after I got here, got things settled, you know, met some. Once the kids got in school, I met some friends and started hanging out with them. Kids were in sports and they got into elementary school. Once they got into school, I decided that I wanted to get my real estate license here in Florida. I completed that in 2015. And that’s basically how I ended up in Florida.

Chris McAllister
So we’ve been working together for like 18 years. So Angie was working with us, she was licensed at the time and we did a lot of work for banks even back in 2005, before the crash. So you joined us in Einen then, yes, and basically from day one you worked from home. Before, working from home was a thing, right.

Rena Smith
Yeah, I’ve been working from home for 18 years now, which I’m very thankful for, because I had I had three children in that timeframe, so I’ve been very fortunate to be able to stay at home with the kids and work.

Chris McAllister
And it’s kind of a cool story because we started going to the Disney resort in Vero Beach, florida, my wife and I this was back in 2003 or four, and we would go there pretty much every year and I didn’t even realize when you had moved that you had moved to West Melbourne, which was only about I don’t know 20, 25 miles north of Vero Beach. So we were sort of familiar with the area and then we realized you know where you were and that you got licensed and you know and I remember the phone call I think I was driving, I was pulling out of my driveway to go someplace and you called and said I think Kelly was with me, and he called and said, hey, I got my license. And I immediately said, okay, I got to get mine.

So I immediately went to work, to get my broker’s license in Florida and you know, we sort of realized that this was an area that we kind of already knew and we started spending more time out down there and I just loved the area, fell in love with it from day one. You know it was. It’s a it’s not a vacation destination. It’s where people live and work. A lot of aerospace industry is there and you know, long story short, we got licensed as roosterilist, I got my broker’s license and then we ended up buying house in Melbourne and you know, I immediately started letting my clients, my investor clients in particular you know I have no that. You know we had this really cool place in Melbourne and I was super psyched about it. And then, lo and behold, you know, I think you know Jim, as you mentioned. You know I think he bought 10 houses or something you know in Melbourne and we started managing those and my friend Johnny ended up buying a couple of houses and, you know, once we got some traction there, you started picking up some property management clients as well as buyers and sellers there.

So we’re still in Florida. You know I love it. We haven’t gotten, we really haven’t focused on the growth there. As you know, I want to start right now. Basically I’ve been saying that for years, since she’s up a bit. You know we were kind of busy in Ohio and Columbus and everything, but yeah, I’m still super psyched about the whole area, where Kelly and I will be back down there for a month and the end of September and I always look forward to it. So I guess that’s how we ended up in Florida and ended up in Florida with Rena. So so, okay, let’s talk about. So you know, and we always talk about connect, practice, track and grow and great agents connect. Why don’t you tell us a little bit of where your business has come from these last few years?

Rena Smith
Most of my business has come from referrals. You know, meeting the kids friends parents. I’ve sold several houses from kids friends, parents that I’ve become friends with. I’ve listed several houses like community involvement and a lot of meeting people through the kids, sports and mainly school. And some of my other clients have come from you know. You talked about Jim and Johnny. I property managed their investment properties here and I have become friends with tenants that when they were ready to purchase a house they would call on me to find them a home. So the investment properties have brought a lot of my business as well.

Chris McAllister
So I feel like you know it’s been kind of amazing because you’ve been able to do. You know you’ve been able to do well with you know raising the kids and all that. But now you know how old are the kids now?

Rena Smith
15, 16 and 18.

Chris McAllister
And Alex is about to go to college, right?

Rena Smith
Yep, she starts nursing school at 28th and the other two are sophomore and junior in high school.

Chris McAllister
So they’re a lot more self-sufficient than they were back in 2015 or 2009.

Rena Smith
Absolutely.

Chris McAllister
So it’s time maybe, to. I think it sounds like you’re kind of excited about, I think, what you and I talked about being able to really dig in and spend some more time developing your practice?

Rena Smith
Yes, I can definitely focus more on my career and business now that the kids are older, in high school, and they are definitely more self-efficient.

Chris McAllister
Yeah, so it’s time to make some money, huh.

Rena Smith
Yes.

Chris McAllister
Well, we’ve got big plans down there, so I’m excited that it seems like their timing for both of us is pretty much perfect.

So one of the things that I wanted to talk about with our audience today is, you know, one of the big things that comes next is an initiative that we’re working on Rhina and I are working on with Dean Jackson, and Dean is a marketing guru who has created the Listing Agent Lifestyle, and there’s a Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast that I urge you all to listen to. But Dean has come up with a plan that, basically, you’re the guinea pig for right when to help promote you and help build your business there? Well, really, what we call it is the Space Coast, right? So, for everybody listening, the Melbourne area, the county, the entire Brevard County is known as the Space Coast because of the far north end is Cape Canaveral, where all the NASA rockets go off and all the SpaceX and all that stuff. So the plan is that we want to set Rhina up as the number one resource for every single oceanfront condo on the Space Coast of Florida, right?

Rena Smith
Right, I’m super excited.

Chris McAllister
Well, it’s a huge project. So we’ve got this. You can actually see. The whole core of the project is Dean’s team has developed something called the Space Coast Condo Guide and you can actually download a copy and take a look at it yourself at wwwspacecoastcom.

That we picked condos on the water is that’s a niche that so many people want, right, but it’s also a niche that we can dominate. If you said that I’m going to sell every single property on the coast or I’m going to sell every single property on satellite beach, that’s not something that is humanly possible to do, right, without breaking it up. But we know that there are a finite number of condominium developments on the coast right. So we’re looking at an Elborn beach. We’re coming up through satellite all the way up through to cocoa. There’s basically, I think, five cities on the coast there on the Elder Banks, on the Space Coast.

So when you look at it in terms of there’s a finite number of condominium developments right on the coast, it’s not unlimited. It’s something that you know. I don’t remember how many there are say that there’s 75 of them but we know which ones those are, we can get the information for each one of those, we can track the sales and we can become experts in that niche. So the reason we chose Space Coast Condo Guide was it’s one target market that we can focus on and eventually dominate, and that’s the reason. So Dean created the guide, spacecostcondoguidecom, and then his team has also run a series of paid Facebook ads targeting the coast, and today and this number may have changed by now, but this is the middle of August in 2023. We’ve had 405 people. Isn’t that about how many?

Rena Smith
Yeah, it’s 405. Yeah, I think we just had a new one, so 406,. But yeah, they just opened up the email as well. Yeah, 405.

Chris McAllister
Yeah, so 405 people have downloaded the Condo Guide, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. And the investment was definitely time and knowledge and in some costs for the ads. But I think the last time I talked to Dean about it, I think we got those signups for less than $3 per signup on Facebook. And then the really cool part is every week, dean and his team they create and send an email to everyone who has downloaded the guide from Rena, giving them exactly what they asked for, which was information about every condo that hit the market in the last seven days. So it’s not just the one and done that.

People see this ad on Facebook and download the Condo Guide and then print it out for themselves, but then they are immediately enrolled in just an information email about every condo that hit the market and I think, every market and every condo that sold over the last seven days. That’s it. There’s nothing else in the email. It comes from Rena, it’s created by Dean’s team, it shows up every week without fail and it gives basically the information that they asked for. And then here’s the thing it’s not super salesy, it’s not something that people feel like they’re overwhelmed or they’re getting spammed out because they did opt in. And the cool thing is, at the end of these emails there’s a little paragraph that says whenever you’re ready, and then there’s a series of things that they can do to get in touch with Rena or take a tour or whatever they want to do.

But it’s very. There’s nothing that’s high pressure about it. It’s exactly what they wanted. There’s no fluff. It’s business like that. It’s personalized, if that makes sense. So we’re staying in touch with these people every single week after they download it. So, rena, here’s the thing. So that’s how we’re making connections on the Space Coast. That’s how we’re going to supercharge your business and make you the queen of condos. Here we’re practicing real estate. You know, we have all these leads. Now. We have opportunities to connect with people, and these are people who are basically telling us, by virtue of clicking on that Facebook ad, that they want a condo on the beach. So what comes next? What do we do now?

Rena Smith
We make the phone calls. Yeah, we just reach out to the you know the people that are interested and we start the phone call with I’d be like hey, I’m Rena, I’m the one sending you the Space Coast condo reports every week and you wait a second to see what they say. And then you start off with have you got a condo on the beach? And that’s kind of how the conversation starts and you either get really nice people and they’re looking for a condo, but not anytime soon, or we. I have some people that are, you know, trying to sell some investment properties in other states to move forward with purchasing condos here as an investment. Or I have some people that are really mean and they tell me to take them off the call list and where?

Chris McAllister
they say bad words to right.

Rena Smith
Yes, we won’t repeat those here, though, but yeah. So lots of phone calls and you move and just move forward from there, and I try to stay in touch with the people that are interested in purchasing. We keep them on the email list so they continue to get our emails with the condo guide and yeah, it’s pretty much that simple right. Yeah.

Chris McAllister
So, once we get these leads, these 406 people now, like Rena said, then, like you said, we have to qualify these leads and what we’re trying to do is make that bridge between somebody who picked up this condo guide on Facebook and try to bring them into a real world relationship with a real person, which obviously is you. And what we’re trying to do with these phone calls is identify people. Who, as Dean, refers to them as five star prospects, right, so these are people. Here’s what a five star prospect is. Basically, it’s somebody who’s willing to engage in a dialogue, right, they’re willing to talk to you like a human being. They’re not hanging up on us or whatever.

You know they’re friendly, they’re cooperative, they know what they want, which is a condo on the beach. They have a pretty good idea of when they want it. And sometimes people want it, you know, in the next 90 days. Sometimes it may be in the next two to three years, but they know what they want, they have some idea when they want it and it’s pretty clear that you know, based on that phone call, that they’d like you to help them. So you know that’s something that you can kind of figure out in the course of this simple phone call. So you know, once they reach out, they could come back. Rena introduces herself, thanks them for reaching out, signing up. You know, whatever it is, and again it’s hi, I’m Rena. I’m the one sending you the Space Close Condo reports every week, and then you’ll wait and see what they say.

And then the next question, and these are kind of carefully phrased. You know this is scripted to some degree, but the whole idea is to get these folks to talk. So, have you got a condo on the beach? Well, they either do or they don’t, right, so, but they don’t usually answer it that way. They usually answer as to what they’re thinking or what they want. And then the third question is what are you thinking of doing? And then you wait and then here’s my favorite part you know they’ve gotten through those first three questions and they’re still on the phone. Tell me everything and just let these folks talk. And that’s the extent of the conversation. And you know, you take notes as they’re talking and you know you basically get a feel, for you know who they are, what they’re doing.

If they’re five-star prospect, they’re not a five-star prospect and that’s basically the game, right? So that sort of takes us. Well, let me go back for one thing. So if they are a five-star prospect, they’re already in Google Agent with their phone number and an email, right? So if they are somebody that’s whether they’re ready now or not then the challenge is you know if they’re willing to engage.

If there’s somebody that you know wants to do something at some point, then my challenge is and I don’t know how far you’ve gotten with this, because it’s amazing what you’ve been able to do so far but the real trick would be on these five-star prospects is to get their home address and add them to. You know your roost ramblings list, right? So if they get roost ramblings every month on top of that, which is very personal, you know, from you. And then on top of that they’re getting the email every week, which is very businesslike. That’s a pretty cool way to stay in touch and not be, you know, a pushy salesperson. And of course, if they’re not a five-star prospect, that’s fine too. Some people just click on things on Zillow on Facebook and they don’t know what they’re doing. But let me ask you this, because you and I worked on, we did an experiment with Zillow leads. You remember that?

Rena Smith
I do.

Chris McAllister
How are these leads different than the leads that you picked up on Zillow?

Rena Smith
I think the Space Coast Condo Guide leads are more personable and you’re letting those people talk by asking those three or four simple questions. You just let them talk and listen. The Zillow leads were not so much fun because you were basically sharing the Zillow leads with other people. It was like whoever got to them first got to them first, and I would get emails or text messages for Zillow leads at 3, 4, 2 o’clock or AM in the morning, so I’m not going to make phone calls at that time. So with this Space Coast Condo Guide leads I try to get up every morning to see if there’s any new leads, make those phone calls as quickly as possible and I try not to call too early. And I also check the phone number and Google the zip code to see what time zone they’re in, because I don’t want to call somebody on the West Coast at 8 o’clock my time and it’s 5 o’clock their time. So I’ve been trying to check the zip codes as well, yeah.

Chris McAllister
The other thing you could do is use your for warrant account and put the phone number in and get a sense for where they are, and how legit, they are as well, but the Zillow leads.

My God, everything they teach you at Zillow is you have to respond back in five minutes. If you don’t, you’re going to lose them. And yes, you’re meeting other agents and, if I remember right because you, I think we did it for at least six months and you did everything that they asked you to do to the letter. But all I remember is every phone call we talked about was somebody who already had an agent, who couldn’t basically read the Zillow description and wanted to know how many veterans it has. You know, it was just people looking for basic information and the one that always got me was well, I didn’t want to bother my realtor.

Rena Smith
Yeah, I’m like oh wait, you have a realtor.

Chris McAllister
Yeah, I don’t think I got any listings or something we just got signed out.

Rena Smith
We did yes, right.

Chris McAllister
Says we’re still recording.

Rena Smith
Yeah, mine says recording still.

Chris McAllister
Okay, I’m going to just text Gretchen to see if she’s on it they need to use. Okay, obviously we’re going to change the password on this account. All right. So Zillow leads, were you still show recording right?

Rena Smith
Yep.

Chris McAllister
Okay. So those Zillow leads were. One of the biggest frustrations I had with them was that there were people that were calling just for basic information that they could have gotten from the add on Zillow, and when they would say I just didn’t want to bother my agent, that just threw me over the edge.

It was okay to buy a user, not okay to talk to the agent, which and then the other issue is and I don’t want to get too deep in this, but you know we’ve had a couple of situations in Ohio where you know we’ve had cooperating agents bring buyers and you know they go all the way almost to closing and fall through and when you go to talk to the realtor about what the hell happened, they don’t know because they didn’t know who the person was.

It was somebody that they were dealing with, you know, on the phone. Maybe they showed him a house once, maybe it’s an out of state person buying an investment property. But what’s great to know is this form of lead generation and this form of connecting and building those relationships. This is doable, this is workable, and I’m not saying it’s not stressful, and I know you have to really pump yourself up to do those calls because nobody likes rejection and you know. But I think when I have done it in the past, you know you get one good one and it makes you feel great about dialing five more times.

So you know, and these are definitely people that ask for something and they were very specific about it. And then the other thing is we go forward. You know this formula it’s not just for the space coast leads, this is a formula that you can use for any lead that comes in. You know, whether it’s real geeks leads or even a call off the street. You know, sometimes those happen. You know, walk into the office, whatever. So this form, I think, has a tremendous amount of utility and usefulness.

Rena Smith
I’ve talked to several. I’ve talked to several of the people and they’re like well, we don’t necessarily want to condo on the beach and that’s the whole just to this podcast connect, practice, track and grow.

Chris McAllister
So that’s tracking. And the cool thing about this campaign everything that we do we’re tracking because that’s what professionals do. So here’s some numbers. So Dean has been doing campaigns like this, you know, over and over again for the last 20 years and Dean has tracked every single result for every single campaign he’s ever done and statistically, historically, whatever you want to call it, half of the people who reach out, who download the Space Coast Condo Guide or whatever product it is they’re downloading, they will buy something within the next 18 months, which I think is pretty amazing, right? So they’re going to do something with somebody in the next 18 months. So, basically, if we’ve got 406 downloads over the past, whatever it’s been within 18 months of those downloads, half of the people will have done something. Which just is amazing to me that he’s got statistics to back this up, because it makes me feel like you know we’re on the right track, that you’re doing the right thing, because it’s again, it’s like everything else in real estate it’s not a get rich quick, overnight success. It’s doing the right things over and over, continuously.

Of those half of the people who will do something in 18 months, 15% of those people will do something within 90 days. So that’s 90 days. So obviously we had a lot of these downloads before we started making calls. But if you had 400 downloads and 200 people are going to do something, and then you’ve got 15% of 200, which sounds like 30 when I went to school, 30 of those people likely did something with somebody some agent within the first 90 days of downloading that book, which to me is amazing. That’s 30 people out of 400 did something.

The issue is they didn’t you know they didn’t do it with us. But if you generate 100 leads, the math is that eight of them will do something within the next 90 days, but 42 of them will do something within the next 18 months. I mean, it’s really crazy. So I didn’t look at the email stats for last week, but when I did look, there were 345 emails that were going out each week against the 405 downloads we had, which is pretty amazing that only 50 people opted out of the weekly emails. Right? So 406 people, 405 people at the time I downloaded the Space Coast Condo Guide and 345 people are still receiving the emails. Only 50 people have actually clicked the button to opt out for reasons. But here’s the thing that is still amazing to me and why I have such faith in this process is, of the 345 emails on the last week I looked, 175 of those emails were actually open. That’s a huge number 175 divided by 345.

That’s over 50% 50% of the weekly emails were being opened, and to me, that’s the best indicator yet of who your potential five star prospects are. In fact, I know you’re going through the whole 405, and we currently have 406, whatever it is and you’re making calls now. What we probably should talk about is focus on the people who opened last week.

Yeah, focus on the people in the database that opened last week’s email first. That might be the best bang for your buck there. So this is where tracking keeps us honest and it separates the great ages from the average agent. So how many calls have you made so far? First calls have you made to those 405 people?

Rena Smith
So I think I’m right at around 306.

Chris McAllister
My gosh, you’ve gotten three. Last time we talked it was 160.

Rena Smith
So I think I’m at 306, but I would say maybe 25 of those were really not a call. They had opted out. So when I saw that they opted out, I put the mean face. So I’ve opened up 306. Names to contact.

Chris McAllister
Okay.

Rena Smith
So I’ve left 132 voicemails. I flagged. I flagged on what I do.

Chris McAllister
Let’s go back and talk. Let’s talk about those flags, so what? Do you mean by happy face, sad face?

Rena Smith
So we have flagged setup and there’s happy.

Chris McAllister
And go go agent in the CRM.

Rena Smith
I’m sorry, yeah, and go go, agent. There’s happy faces, sad faces, left of voicemail. We have an option where it was no phone or bad phone number, and then we also made a flag that says maybe someday, because those people were like happy but they weren’t ready to purchase at that time, but maybe someday. So we made those happy faces With the maybe someday.

Chris McAllister
Yeah, so literally there’s an icon and go, go, agent or the CRM we’re using, that is a smiley face. And then there’s an icon that’s a county base. So just to kind of make it easy to visualize the people who are willing to engage, right, the five star prospects, they got coded or they’re tracking them with a happy face, correct. If they weren’t five star prospects for whatever reason, they got coated with a sad face. So it doesn’t mean that everybody’s not going to continue to get the emails. They will and it’s automatic and it just happens. But it does kind of say where you’re going to focus. You know, on your next contact, right. You’re going to be far less likely to double down on another phone call to a sad face If it’s a choice between making a 30 day connection or a 45 today.

You know reconnect with another happy face, right. So you’re basically taking that data and you’re figuring out who’s a five star prospect You’re drilling down to. You know the timeframe that they may want to buy. So you’re you know you have to connect with one another. I mean, when they’re making touch, hopefully you’re adding them to your personal Ten chemical vorbere saying base and then it sort of becomes a pretty comprehensive strategy, if I mean it takes work and you know you got to psych yourself up. I mean I, you know, you know I’m the biggest introvert, you know.

Rena Smith
So for me making those balance hellish and you know, to make contact right within the first 72 hours that a new download happens, or yeah, yes, at first that wasn’t the case, but I still went back through all the calls and even called people that it opted in once ago before we discussed our 72 hour turnaround time. But with new people opting in, I get to them first before I go make calls from people that opted in months and months ago.

Chris McAllister
Well, and the cool thing is, based on what we’ve learned and based on the stats we’ve been tracking, we’re gonna be able to push more money behind those Facebook ads and we’re gonna be able to open the floodgates and I truly believe that this is really gonna. It’s gonna work. It’s worked for Dean all over the country, actually all over the world, in the past, and I think this is a unique setup that speaks directly to your situation, especially in mine as a homeowner there who wants to spend more time there. So I’m super excited about it and it’s a perfect example of a great agent like you that is connecting, you’re enhancing your practice, you’re tracking your business and I can’t wait to watch you continue to grow as you dominate the beachfront condo market on the Space Coast.

Rena Smith
I am super excited.

Chris McAllister
I can’t wait to see you buy one of those condos on the Space Coast. I guess that’s what we’re looking for, right? Anything else we should talk about before we sign off here.

Rena Smith
I don’t think so. Well, actually I was gonna say something. Some of those phone calls that I make, it’s other agents that are opting in and they’re like, oh, we’re just being nosy, we just wanna see what’s going on. So it’s funny when I get an agent, because some of them are like, oh, this is really cool, this is a cool setup so, and they actually wanna stay opted in just to see what’s going on.

Chris McAllister
Nothing’s wrong with that, who knows? If they’re the right agents. Maybe they’ll join us at Roost and Melbourne.

Rena Smith
So yeah, you never know. But the other thing, is ask them.

Chris McAllister
But I tell you what the next time you have a listening, let me know, because I’ve got a ton of people who are opting in and maybe I have a buyer for you.

Rena Smith
Yeah, for sure.

Chris McAllister
All right, well, fantastic. So, rina, thank you for being here for the last 18 years and thank you for getting Kelly and I to Melbourne, and thanks for everything you do with the property management clients and all that great stuff. So, thank you for being a guest on the Connect Practice Track and Grow podcast. See, this wasn’t too hard, was it?

Rena Smith
No.

Chris McAllister
No.

Rena Smith
That was a little smoother than I thought it was gonna be.

Chris McAllister
All right, well, thank you again, Rina. Thank you so much and much better soon, Okay bye-bye.

Rena Smith
All right, thank you, bye.