December 14, 2023In this episode, Nick McLean and Preston Guyton interview Keri Shull, a dynamic entrepreneur and founder of the top-selling Keri Shull Team in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area. Keri shares key moments in growing her team, emphasizing strategic decisions based on meticulous cost/life analysis. She discusses her success philosophy, focusing on strengths and outsourcing non-aligned tasks like bookkeeping. Keri unveils her lead generation and conversion strategies, emphasizing “relentless follow-up” and consumer-focused approaches. The trio explores Keri’s concept of responsibility for course corrections and her profound team accountability, revealing motivations, team structure, and unique training methodologies. Don’t miss this episode filled with actionable insights and Keri’s invaluable wisdom in entrepreneurial success.
VIDEO CONTENTS:
00:00 – Introduction
01:30 – Why Keri’s Team is #21 in the Nation
10:35 – Keri’s Winning Lead Generation and Conversation Strategy
22:50 – Holding Up The Mirror
30:86 – Motivation & Training Techniques
Episode breakdown: Keri Shull on lead generation, conversion and training
Keri Shull founded the Keri Shull Team, which sells in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area and was introduced on the show as the number 21 mega team in the nation by volume on RealTrends. She joined Nick McLean and Preston Guyton to explain how she built the team and what she’s changing now. In her view, success in real estate comes down to three things: generating leads, attracting great people and setting them up to win, and building deep relationships with clients.
Hire for your weaknesses early
Keri knew early that she wanted to build a large team, and she made decisions with that in mind. She hired her first right hand when she was doing 21 transactions, then hired three ISAs right after. She was confident she could generate plenty of leads. She just didn’t want to be the one following up on them.
I recognized we all have strengths and weaknesses, and I think how we build our team depends on being really honest with ourselves about what our strengths and weaknesses are.
Keri Shull
She also told team leaders not to wait for the perfect setup before they start. Things in a business break, get fixed and break again. If you’re waiting to get all your ducks in a row, she said, they’ll never all be in a row.
Become the local news, not another listing video
Instead of the traditional listing videos she used to make, Keri started acting like the mayor of her town. When rental scooters became a hot topic in her market, she took a video crew out and interviewed people about them. When the local blog’s real estate section was sold out, she wrote about scooters instead of real estate, and her piece drew far more comments than the real estate content.
When news broke that Amazon was moving to the area, she went live on Facebook right away because she knew she had one chance to be first. The team later made a holiday video about Amazon’s arrival and geo-fenced the company’s headquarters, which brought in Amazon employees who were relocating.
Measure return and payback time, not conversion rates
Google Ads are Keri’s best return right now because they’re predictable. For every dollar she puts in, she gets two and a half dollars out in under 120 days. One of the hosts added the question most people skip: how long until the first dollar comes back so it can be reinvested? Preston said he ignores vendor conversion percentages and looks at return on money spent.
Keri then breaks the funnel into phases. Of the leads that come in, how many are you talking to, and how many of those become appointments? Wherever the numbers drop is where the system needs work. Her team also tags leads in the CRM by life event, such as first-time buyer or downsizer, and by the area they’re searching, so the content each lead receives fits.
Look inside your CRM before buying more leads
When Keri brought in consultant Grant Wise to help generate more leads, he insisted on looking at her database first. She has 159,000 opportunities in her CRM. Since moving to Follow Up Boss about two and a half years earlier, some lead searches had sunset or were never set up, including leads from her Google Ads campaigns, and the automated AI texting had been switched off. Her advice is to learn your CRM yourself, even if someone else manages it. Suneet covers how to build that kind of discipline in his guide to real estate lead follow-up systems.
Her team now uses alerts that flag when someone in the database lists with another agent. At a quarterly meeting she showed one: a $3.2 million lead the team had called 41 times, and then not at all in the last 90 days. She keeps those alerts coming to her own inbox on purpose.
Every day it’s going to help to remind me that we’re missing opportunities because we can continue to improve.
Keri Shull
Train in small pieces and make practice harder than the real thing
Keri’s team breaks its buyer process into three steps. In the early days she would take a new agent on an appointment and have them handle only the needs analysis while she did the rest, then they would switch. The agent built confidence and the team never lost business while they practiced. Agents who don’t roleplay well don’t get leads. She credits that kind of repetition for a 22-year-old on her team doing 36 transactions in his first year.
In roleplay, she uses a soft “hot potato.” She plays the buyer, tosses the potato to an agent at random, and that agent picks up the conversation where it left off. Everyone has to track the whole call, so the exercise is harder than a real one-on-one conversation.
I’m trying to teach them how to remain actively focused on listening instead of just focusing on what they’re going to say next.
Keri Shull
Before training starts, she tells the class she’ll often skip the positive-negative-positive sandwich and give direct feedback, and she asks for their permission to do it.
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Hire for the parts of the business you’re weakest at, and don’t wait for everything to be in place.
- Report on what your market is talking about, and move fast when news breaks.
- Judge lead sources by return and payback time, not by quoted conversion rates.
- Audit your CRM, searches and automations before you spend more on leads.
- Put lost-opportunity reports in front of yourself and your team.
- Teach one piece of the process at a time and make practice harder than the real call.
