YAPClassic: Ryan Serhant, Close More Deals with These Proven Sales Strategies | Sales

22:08Weird. Why do you do that? And it opens up a conversation and now you're talking to somebody about your work ethic and this. And you're like, oh, actually, my son is doing a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do people recognize you now when you go up to them? Now it's slightly easier, but no, not all the time. Sometimes halfway through a conversation, people will be like, you look familiar. I'm like, yeah, maybe. You know, they've seen million dollar listing maybe on like a JetBlue flight five years ago. Like you kind of look like that guy kind of from that real estate show, but you also kind of look a little bit like Tom Brady, but not really.

22:38I don't know. Did we date? I'm like, no, we definitely did not date, dude. That's funny. Well, at least you still are like approachable enough and you, you know, you can still approach people randomly on the street. So from what I remember, you actually were a very shy child, right? You grew up with a little awkwardness, social anxiety, a little overweight. I have some younger listeners who listen to the podcast. What's your advice in terms of getting out of your shell and becoming the confident person that you are today? Like you're super confident now. How did you change that? Yeah, big, big money energy.

23:12I mean, I, I'm a big believer, like I said, in the power of positive energy and like a vision board. So who do you want to be? What is that image of? Even maybe it's somebody you know. Maybe it's that cool kid in school or maybe it's an actor or someone on YouTube. Like print out that person's face and put it by your bed or in your journal or in your locker or in your car. And just imagine like you can be that person or you can be even better than that person. And position yourself out there just that way and know that no one cares. No one cares about the way you feel. And if you are uncomfortable – and so for me, like I was overweight.

23:50I had really, really bad skin. I had premature gray hair from when I was 16 years old and I was super pale. To combat the gray hair because I was really embarrassed about it, I would dye it and then dark brown hair dye from the pharmacy is actually black. So I'd be like super white with really jet black hair, you know, riddled with acne, you know, with my little belly running around. And what I realized later on is all the things that I was nervous about, no one else was paying attention to because all they were caring about was, was I paying attention to their crooked teeth? I'm nervous that they were paying attention to my skin, but they're concerned that I'm paying attention to their really bad haircut that they got yesterday.

24:32And to me, I just met you. Your hair looks great. I don't understand. So, you know, it's remembering that no one cares. And what's the worst that can happen? Something my dad told me that really opened me up when I was growing up because I was too nervous to ask out girls or anything. He's like, are you afraid that any of these girls are going to punch you in the nose? And I was like, I mean, I don't think so. He's like, okay, that's probably the worst thing that can happen is someone punches you in the face because that will physically hurt or try to like harm you. Are you afraid any of these girls carry knives?

25:02Like, no. It's like North Shore of Boston. None of these girls carry knives. He's like, okay, so what's your problem? Just ask. What are they going to do? Say no? At least you know, right? And then move on. There's lots of other people. And that's what the sales business is for me today. I ask everybody, can I sell you a home? No. Okay, great. I'll keep you posted. Next. That's solid advice. Yeah. The worst thing someone can do is punch you in the face or send you to jail, right? Or kill you. Those are the three terrible things that could happen to you. Everything else doesn't matter. No one cares.

25:39Like you carry yourself with the confidence of the person you know you can be. It's inside you. You have it already. Just pull it out there and people are going to be excited about it. Put a smile on your face. Sell enthusiasm for who you are and people will be attracted to it. Okay. So let's move on to your sales methodologies. You wrote a whole book on sales you mentioned before, Sell It Like Sirhunt. and you currently run one of the top sales teams in New York and in the nation, Nest Seekers. Tell us, how do you effectively run that sales team? Like what are your general principles to be so successful with them?

26:13Oh man, just cry all day long. Managing people is really hard. What I would say is, I don't have an exact system. My best system is I talk to every single person who works for me every day. Like that's the simplest piece of advice that I could give. And it's not on the phone. Some of them it's on the phone. Some of it's by text. Some of it's just by social. You know, like an agent of mine posts a listing, a double type of comment. They need to hear from me as a leader every day. Where leaders make mistakes is they don't touch base. Like you have to think about everyone who works with you in some way, shape, or form, like any regular relationship.

26:50Imagine if I went home and saw my wife every day but didn't talk to her because I was just too busy. Didn't say anything. But deep down, I love her. But she would know something's up, something's weird. How come he's not talking to me? Same thing goes for all your employees. You know, it's a little bit different, but it is actually kind of the same. And it's easy. You know, even just sending an email like that says you in the subject line and in the body of the email says are awesome. Hope you're having a great day. Yeah. People appreciate that. It's like – Totally. And then you're good for like the week with that person.

27:22And then you can touch base the next day. Little things, you know, little comments. It's like it goes a long, long way. And then on top of that, like I have great people who work for me that manage, that help me manage problems and issues. You know, at the end of the day, like your issues as a leader and as a manager are never dealing with good things. No one ever comes to me with good problems. Yeah. Right? Like if someone comes to me, it's because they couldn't figure it out on their own and it's typically something bad. So most of my day is managing 60-plus agents and all their bad issues, right?

27:51and figuring out how to deal with it and keeping them calm and staying calm yourself and trying to manage and then trying to quarterback as much as I possibly can. That's great advice. I think being a manager, like you said, is all about like showing your appreciation and enthusiasm towards them and ensuring that they're feeling great to do their job and feeling appreciated. And knowing too, and not to cut you off, sorry, but knowing too that it is like you're all in it together. Like listen, if you're the boss, right, or you're a manager, even if you have just one person underneath you, They know that you're the boss.

28:22Like you don't have to remind them. Like they get it, right? They know they work for you. They understand what the pecking order is. It's up to you to remind them that they work with you, not for you. You know, no one who's ever worked for me has done a great job because who wants to work for anybody, right? Especially in sales. Yeah, they want to be part of the team. They want to be part of the process. You know, everything that everyone underneath you does for you, you make them feel like they're doing it with you and it's together. they will work 10 times harder. Completely. I know you have a lot of stories.

28:54You have a story that really showcases the value of saying yes with Mr. X. Essentially, you followed this mystery man to Paris to land one of your first and biggest deals. Would you share that story with our listeners? Oh, man, how much time do we have? I'll try to make it as succinct as possible. like one of my first listings I ever got was really, really overpriced. It was a listing on the Upper West Side, 45 West 67th Street. No other agent would take it because it was so overpriced. So that's probably why I got it. It was worth like$6 million and I listed it for eight and a half. So nice, nice and high.

29:34But that's how a lot of agents get business in New York City. You're the one who talks to a seller and you're like, yeah, all those other agents are stupid. Eight and a half for sure. Let's do it. And if you have no listings, you know, like I did at the time. That's what I did. And then you put the listing online, you put it on the internet, you put it out there to the world. And our company has always been really good at marketing internationally so that people could see listings all over the world. And I got an email from somebody that said they wanted to buy that apartment and where could they send the money?

30:00I was like, this seems weird and scammy. But I had no other business at the time. I didn't know what to do. So I wrote back, well, that's not really how we do it here, but happy to talk to you if you want to make an offer. And then he called me and I talked to him on the phone. So He had a real voice who sounded real. I mean, he said he wanted to make an offer, and he can't remember, but he made an offer of like$8 million. And I had no idea who he was or where he was from. He definitely was not from the United States. He said he was going to send me a proof of funds, which showed up the next day as a DHL, a piece of paper with a photo of his accountant on it that just said, I call him Mr.

30:36X because I can't give out his name, but Mr. X does not commit to things that Mr. X will not commit to. And I was like, all right, good enough for me. Sure. I have an$8 million offer. And I presented it to the seller. And, you know, as a real estate agent, you have a fiduciary responsibility to vet all your clients and make sure you're presenting real offers. And kind of went out on a little bit of a limb and the seller was like, well, is this a real buyer? I'm like, yep, yep. How do you know? They sent me a proof of funds. All checks out. All is good. $8 million. We should counter. So we countered.

31:04We got the deal done at 8.3 and I connected him to an attorney the whole while being like, this is the weirdest thing ever. some random dude on the internet from this other country just contacted me because he wanted access to my bank account to send me a million dollars and now maybe he's going to buy an apartment. This is what New York is all about. And he signed a contract and then disappeared. And I had no idea what happened until everyone got really, really upset and really angry. And what happened to this guy? Where's the money? There's no deposit. And people kept telling me, listen, this is what people do.

31:36They take contracts out for properties in New York City. They sign contracts and then they go and they scam people out of money. So they go to people in different countries all around the world and they say, listen, I got a$10 million apartment in New York City. I have a contract for$8.3 million. Give me$10 ,000. Come in on it with me. We're going to make tons of money. And they do that to like 100 people. Oh, wow. Right? And they make a lot of money that way. And fast forward like, I don't know, four or five months or so, I'm on the West Side Highway and his attorney that I introduced him to calls me and says, you're not going a wire for$830 ,000, you are officially in contract on 45 West 67th Street.

32:14It's like, holy moly, we're in contract on the biggest deal of my entire life. This is insane. I called the seller. They couldn't believe it. They thought this guy had totally just disappeared. Yeah. And then he disappeared again. So we had no idea what was going on. Signed a contract and then sent money and then disappeared. And so then we couldn't close. We didn't know what to do. And in New York City, you have to sign applications. You have to do board packages, right? To fill out applications to get approved by the condo board and all that. And he wouldn't do it. He literally wouldn't respond.

32:42And months and months go by. And I'm trying to figure out how to stay on top of them, how to follow up. And I sent him a BBM back in the day when we all had BlackBerrys. It said something like, hey, I know you mentioned you have a home in Paris. I'm actually going to be there tomorrow if you want to meet and go through the application and schedule a closing date. Not thinking you would reply, but just like just trying to find ways, anything, just like, dude, please respond. Like you're my biggest deal ever. I need this closing. Why please don't be a con artist who's stealing money from everybody.

33:10And he wrote back right away. He's like, okay, that sounds good. Tomorrow, 8 PM. And gave me an address. It's like, oh shit. I'm not in Paris. I'm in New York city. I have no plans to go to Paris whatsoever. And I have no money to get there. So I scraped together like some savings and figured out how to get to Paris literally in like 18 hours notice by flying, what was it, like Aer Lingus to Dublin and then Ryanair, I think it was from Dublin to Paris. And I went to the location he told me to go to, which was a bar. And then he didn't show up for hours and hours and hours and like crying into my baguette.

33:47And I didn't know what to do because I was leaving in the morning. And then he walked in the door with like an entourage of people that was just totally crazy. And he didn't want to talk about the apartments. And so at least I knew he was real, but he was a bit scary. And all of his friends were very scary people. And he didn't want to talk about the apartment. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He just wanted to see me drink shot after shot after shot of tequila. And I'm like texting my mom on the side. I'm like, I'm sorry. I didn't tell you. I went to Paris to meet a mystery man I met on the internet.

34:14Now getting drunk. Who's now getting me drunk. I'm going to be sold into slavery or I'm going to be killed. I don't know what's going on. And eventually I got him to like look at the application. He like scribbled some stuff down and then he left. Somehow I got to the airport. That whole evening, it's a total blur. Came back, submitted the application sort of. The board didn't want to accept it because it was like half done kind of, but they had no choice because in a condo, you have to, you just had the first right of refusal. So the condo board then either had to buy the apartment from the sellers or accept it.

34:46But then he disappeared again and we couldn't find him until one day. And this is the end of the story. One day early in the morning, he calls me. this is like a year after that first email and call and says to me i'm in new york i want to close that's not how it happens here but okay sure no problem called all the attorneys got everyone together said he's here i'm sorry this is do this do this and this was 2000 uh i want to say 2011 i want to say so the market was or 2010 the market was awful right we were in the middle of the recession so it's not like anyone else was buying this apartment like today it would be a little bit there, waited, never came down, waited for hours again.

35:26All the attorneys there totally think that this whole thing is still a scam. I'm like, no, you don't understand. I met him. I met him. I met him. Finally, he comes down with a whole entourage of people, a fleet of black, like bulletproof, uh, tinted Escalades, like flies, like literally out of a Michael Bay movie out in front of the Mandarin Oriental. He says, sorry, I'm late. Let's get in. We get in. I'm like 67th street, department you're buying is right over here. Do you want to go check on it? In the United States, we do walkthroughs, maybe a punch list, like let's get to closing. He's like, no, no, no, we go to JFK.

35:58So I started texting my mom again. I'm like, I'm an idiot again. Now I'm with that same mystery man in one of his cars heading to JFK. We go to the back of JFK where I've never even been before. And there's this massive airplane. I don't know what it was, like a 737 or something. He gets out, signs papers, buys it, gets back in the car, says, now we go close, goes to the closing, pays in cash, gets a photo of me and him for his BBM. And turns out that he makes like a billion dollars a month. Wow. Right? And he's in the energy business. I'll leave it at that. And he was drunk one night somewhere in the world and thought it would be fun to buy an apartment in New York City because one of his friends had and found the pretty photos and saw my picture and sent me an email and then called me.

36:46and then he wasn't really taking it seriously until I followed up with him over and over and over and then he felt bad for me and so he bought it. And since then, he has, we've done like 300 million together. Every deal is painful. It's all awful, but he's very, very real and it's worth it every time. But that deal taught me the power of follow-up. The power of follow-up and the power of valuable persistence because I never harassed him, right? Like I wasn't annoying. I was always just checking in, sending him information. Hey, this thing closed over here. You're getting a great deal. Hey, this is what's happening.

37:18This is what's happening. And he also said later on, he's like, and I knew you weren't, you didn't have plans to come to Paris. Oh, he knew. But you actually, I cannot believe you actually did that. I was so surprised when you said you were there. That's why I bought that apartment. That's amazing. And so many other people would have initially just ignored the email. Today? I would probably ignore it. Oh, yeah. I had nothing to lose. Yeah, you had nothing to lose and you just, you know. Other than my life. He just decided to say yes, and that's super important. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.

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42:40So let's stick on follow-up. I know that there's three different kinds of follow-up, follow back, follow through, and follow-up. Could you explain that to our listeners? Yeah, it is basically like my secret sauce because when I came to New York City, I didn't know anybody. I'm not from here. I grew up outside Boston, so I knew some people there, but like my parents aren't helping me. You know, I didn't go to school here and have all my school friends. I knew like Midtown. I knew where all the hand modeling castings were. That was it. So I had to meet new people every day, like I told you. And then I had to follow up with them to one day get their business.

43:13And that's what the system is. So it's called follow up, follow through, follow back. It's my three Fs and I do it every single day. And it's in my calendar. In the morning, first thing, I follow up with everybody from either yesterday or the week or everybody that I need to follow up with. Hey, you said you were gonna do this. Hey, this is happening. hey, just wanted to touch base, hey, here's this listing, whatever it might be. Follow through is doing what you say you're going to do. So if I tell someone I'm going to send them something by noon, you actually do it. Something my dad taught me really well, like you're only as good as your word.

43:41And if you say you're going to do something and you don't do it, you are forever banned in people's minds. If you say you're going to be there on time, be there on time. If you say you're going to be late, then okay. Just be honest, be upfront and follow through with what you say you're going to do. And then follow back, which is really important, is every day I follow back with past clients. Clients I sold things to 10 years ago. People I met last week who aren't even interested, you know, just touching base saying, hey, what's up? Following back with deals that died. Maybe I could put it back together.

44:09And that it is the lifeblood of my career and the way that my team does our deals, right? Nonstop, important, valuable follow-up. Do you think the time investment that you put into follow-up is worth it? Oh my God, yes. Follow-up, it's free. That's the thing. We're in a service business. Everybody's in a service industry. So it's all free. It's just, I'm going to have a phone, email, and a calendar anyway. So it's just putting things in my calendar and then actually doing it and sending an email, especially in 2020, like sending an email, a text, a quick phone call, or a DM is all free. You're going to do it anyway.

44:44So it's absolutely worth it. Like the amount of money that I have made, the amount of things that I've sold, I'm going to put some in the book too, like just from follow-up that deals that never, ever, ever, ever, ever would have happened otherwise, whether it's the Mr. X story or people that I followed up with for, there's a deal I'm doing today. I was just telling you about before we started the podcast because the closing costs are so high, right? Altogether, it's like a million dollars in taxes. The deal is for$12 million. I have followed back with them ever since I rented their daughter an apartment in 2010, 10 years ago for$2 ,200 a month, just with the parents, just not, just touch base, falling up, happy holidays.

45:23I don't have to. I didn't really deal with them before. But I knew that one day maybe they'd want to buy a place, right? And they'd mentioned it to me. So they dropped the seed. 10 years later, future Ryan is super excited. I'm happy to sell them an apartment for$12 million. Wow. Right? It's amazing. Just that little time investment can go so far if you do it right. Yeah, little bits of time. Like I, you have a thousand minutes every day. You have 1 ,440 minutes every day, actually. But like 440 of those, you're eating, sleeping, go to the bathroom. And so you have a thousand minutes every day in your bank of time.

45:56Like you are the CEO of your own bank of time. What are you going to do with those thousand minutes? How are you going to use them? How are you going to milk them? How are you going to get the most out of them that you possibly can? And how are you going to make sure that you spend them wisely as an investment into tomorrow's thousand minutes, you know? That's what I think about every day. So let's talk about salespeople. Salespeople often get a bad rep, you know, They're known to be very pushy. Before you were saying that you sell enthusiasm, so you obviously don't take that approach. What's your advice to salespeople who are just too pushy?

46:26Don't sell. You don't focus on the sell. Bad salespeople are people who watch a pot boil water. You know how they say a watch pot never boils? Have you heard that? If you sit there and you're waiting for the water to boil, it's like it takes forever, right? Don't focus on the sell, okay? I think that when you are selling, no one likes to be sold. Everybody loves to go shopping with friends. That's why people like internet shopping because they don't want to be sold. They don't want to go into that store and have someone force them to try on shoes. But if they go into a store and someone comes up and says, yo, that jacket's awesome.

46:59You look great. Let me know if you need anything. Also, the huge sale right over there. Those shoes are insane, crazy. They were 200 bucks yesterday. Today they won 25. You'd look sick in them. All of a sudden, you're like, you're kind of selling me, but now I feel good about my jacket choice today. So that was nice of you. and wait, do you have a deal? Yeah, I guess I could try those. And then all of a sudden you're in conversation and then you're finding things in common with people, right? If you literally can be, you both hate the cold or damn, you don't have coronavirus, me neither, dude.

47:29Let's elbow, you know, like literally it's just conversation. It's the power of improv. That's why I tell everyone to take improv classes. You know, if you are gonna live life talking to other human beings, go take an improv class. It'll help you open up. Like that's the biggest advice I have for that other question you asked in terms of like how you go from being a shy, overweight kid with really bad skin who didn't want to talk to anybody. You take an improv class and you learn how to be a dog on fire giving birth to your grandmother on Mars in front of 20 other people. If you can do that, you can talk to a stranger on the street about the weather.

48:07Yeah. And that opens you up, right? Because no other situation is ever more ridiculous than that. Okay. So I want to spend the next couple of minutes just talking about the market in general. How do you typically price a home? What are the factors that you look into? I pull a number out of a hat, really. Listen, you look at, I mean, there's a lot of things. First thing, you look at comparable sales. What else, like this home, has sold recently? That's the first thing we look at. So if your house is similar to the house across the street and that house sold for$500 ,000, Your house, okay, just based on comparable sales, probably worth plus minus$500 ,000, not because it's worth that, but because no buyer wants to ever overpay.

48:52And so your buyer is going to look at that house and say, well, that house sold for$500 ,000. I'm not spending more or only spend a little bit more because you did these value adds to it. The next thing you look at is what is actively on the market. So what else is my buyer going to see? That is like my house. So if the house across the street sold for$500 ,000, that's great for them. But if now the market's a little bit different and now there's eight other houses on the same block that are all on the market at$400 ,000, you're not going to get$500 ,000. You should have sold a year ago. Yeah.

49:20Right? And then we look at condition. Like is this house moving ready? Can someone come in today? That's valuable to people. How much paint costs and, you know, all that stuff? You know, are you selling it fully furnished? Like how much would that cost somebody to fully furnish your house? Maybe that's a great value add. Do you have a bigger lot? Do you have a pool? What are all the different amenities that you get to offer that other houses don't? And then it's lastly, based on how people search for real estate these days, and it all starts on the phone now, right? Or at least on a computer. It's all about the search bracket.

49:52You price in the bracket. You have to. If you price outside the bracket, so if your home is worth, I don't know, it should be simple. If your home is, you think, really worth$550 ,000, right? You don't price it at$650 ,000 to negotiate anymore. That's the way the world used to work, right? With the hope of maybe getting somebody to make a little offer. Because that buyer who can afford that house is not looking up to$650 because the bracket keeps them up to$600. So you're saying like in the app itself. Always. You've got to price within search brackets. And so within the MLS, within the app, within Zillow, Realtor.org, Trulia, all that stuff, price within your bracket.

50:31You want to be a heavyweight fighter in a lightweight fight, right? Not the other way around. If you overprice and if you're at$650 ,000, now you're dealing with somebody who's seen your listing who's forced to look at homes up to$700 ,000 because that's the way the search brackets work. And if your home can't compete with an$800 ,000 home that then reduced to$700 ,000, then you don't want to be in that fight. You're going to lose every time. And yeah, you might get people to come by and come and see it, but they're going to pass on you because they're just using you to shop. You know, agents and buyers are going to say, yeah, that home at$6.50 was nice, probably worth less.

51:07But this house over here that I'm forced to see is much, much better. So that's a good idea. That's a really good perspective. How about location? Does location matter so much anymore? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's part of it with the comparable sales, right? What just sold and what is currently on the market. Take New York City, for example. You know, if you are in Battery Park City, as much as you think your home is amazing, I can't comp it to Tribeca. It's just a different neighborhood. It's close. and if there's no other apartments on the market for some weird reason, then sure. But there's probably other homes on the market and other things that have sold and you have to comp within your own neighborhood.

51:41And if you're in a condo building, you have to comp in your neighborhood, right? And then you have to comp within your own vertical neighborhood, which is your building. Yeah. You know, just because the building across the street got a great deal for their 20th floor apartment and you're on the 20th floor of your building, your building might not be worth as much for the brand of that building. Yeah. So you have to keep all that stuff in mind. But yeah, location, location, location. So another question that I have in terms of financials and buying a home. For first-time homebuyers, a big question people have is like, how much should I put for my down payment, right?

52:14A lot of people say 20%, but then there's some people who say 10 % or even 3%. So what's your advice on that? So somebody who's buying a home like less than a million dollars. I know that's not your ballgame anymore. but yeah no we do listen we we're doing a deal right now for$299 ,000 we do everything I'm balls up right I want to do as many deals as I possibly can you want to put down at least 20 percent okay and if you can you want to put down 30 oh wow 30 percent is is healthy it's not about what you put down it's not about the purchase price it's about your monthly payments you live in your monthly payment that is your budget that's your bills it affects your Netflix budget affects your dinners you live in a monthly payment.

52:56You don't live in a million dollar house. You live in a house that costs you$4 ,500 a month, right? Or a house that costs you$2 ,000 a month. And so whatever way you can skin the cat to get your payments the lowest possible, that's what you want to do. But you want to be smart about it, right? You don't want to over leverage yourself because the payments are small, but then you don't know what to do and you can't sell it. And then you're stuck because you lose your job and what have you, right? That's what happened in 2008. But just you always remember, you live in your monthly payment and you always want to put down at least 30%.

53:28Yeah. So something that we ask all our guests is what is your secret to profiting in life? My secret to profiting? And it doesn't have to be financial. It can be anything. It's the five new people every day. Like that's my, that's my whipped cream. Like that's my profit every day. The deals that I do every day, the time I spend with my family, the workouts I have in the morning, you know, my, my connection to my own wellbeing, like that's all, that's all that I'm going to do it anyway. Like that's all part of my win. Like I know when I wake up what I'm doing that day, I'm doing all that, but going out and meeting those new people, that's what the world's all about.

54:20Thank you.