Leonard Atlas 0:00
80% is generated by 20%. But how does it relate to the people listening to this call 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your prospects. Now, that’s an eye opening experience when you when you learn that it’s a game changer. And what does it mean practically? It means to move from to disqualification from pre qualification. See right now, Darrin, everybody is trying to pre qualify, oh, you have 10,000 feet, your lease is up in two years, you need to talk to me. When in fact, if they want to disqualify, they would say, Look, I know you have a broker and you’re probably very happy with the broker. Because that’s the number one reason why people don’t get hired. There’s already somebody there. There’s an incumbent, right? Well, I’m not saying that people don’t switch, of course, people switch. But if you don’t have that conversation early on, if you have the conversation of Oh, I know you have a lease expiration, you need something different. It’s a commodity and you’re gonna get you’re gonna lose really fast. So the two things we’re going to talk about is the disqualification process, politely identifying, is there a fit here or not? Is there a big reason why this is not going to work? Because if there is, when do you want to find that out?
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J Darrin Gross 1:31
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Today, my guest is Leonard Atlas. Leonard is with Mission Profitable Inc. Leonard is an author, speaker and sales trainer working with commercial real estate professionals professionals around the world. And in just a minute, we’re gonna speak with Leonard about the 80/20 Pareto principle. And he’s got a presentation “From Brooklyn to Bel Air”. But first a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE PN Radio, there are a couple of things you can do to help us out. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment we love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see how handsome Our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can find us on YouTube at Commercial Real Estate Pro Network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that, I want to welcome my guest, Leonard Atlas. Welcome back to CRE PN Radio.
Leonard Atlas 3:22
Thank you there and it’s great to be back. I appreciate the invite.
J Darrin Gross 3:25
Well, I’m looking forward to our talk today. Before we get started, though, if you could take just a minute and share with listeners a little bit about your background.
Leonard Atlas 3:34
You know, I’d be happy to but I actually have it depicted because as you said, the name of today’s talk is Brooklyn to Bel Air, and Brooklyn to Bel Air is really three things. It physically outlines my journey from Brooklyn to Bel Air, and you could hear the New York accent even though I’m in LA for 30 years. So I have proof that I’m from Brooklyn. But secondarily, it’s also my career transition from blue collar white collar, which you’re gonna see pictorially and more importantly, to the audience, it’s my ability to coach and train people to go from working hard to working smart. Now, not to say that you shouldn’t work hard as well. But you got to work smart first, not hard first. And most of us I know myself included, have not always had the awareness, the consciousness, the tools to work as smart as possible. And you know, what’s really fascinating, I was thinking last night getting ready for our interview. So I think the last time you went to view he was actually when the book came out five or six years ago. And I My first thought was, boy, how much has changed since then in commercial real estate right after, after the pandemic. And then my next thought was, but how much stayed the same? So there are certain principles that have really stayed the same about human interaction and sales and negotiation. But there are things that have just vastly changed in the world due to the pandemic and now the interest rate hikes and things like that. So if you don’t mind, I’ve got some slides. I can share them and show them and my background will come out that way. And more interesting pictorial version if that works for you.
J Darrin Gross 4:57
Yeah, let’s do that. Okay.
Leonard Atlas 5:00
I’m gonna just share my slides. Okay, so are you seeing the slides up on the desktop?
J Darrin Gross 5:08
Yep, Mission Profitable Brooklyn to Bel Air.
Leonard Atlas 5:12
Yeah. And I’m again, happy to be a guest here at your network. So we’ve started our we took a two and a half year hiatus of live workshops, obviously, as the world closed down. So this past October, we were back live doing live workshops. And the fascinating thing just, it was intended to be my first live event, not zoom. And a few days before a number of attendees said, I can’t make it to LA or I have issues going on, can you stream it on zoom as well. And I said, Really, I thought we got away from zoom. So at the last minute, We accommodated, and we had guests all over the country on Zoom. And it turned out to be so effective, the combinate, the hybrid of people in a room and people on Zoom, that we’ve actually arranged our next one, which is January, I’ll tell you about that to be a hybrid. So instead of it being a last minute thing, we’re offering people the opportunity to show up live in Santa Monica, or on Zoom. But the reason I say that is because we do have nearly a 30 year history of talking to care brokers. So we know what’s been the issues. But now we have a new four or five months history since COVID, since the pandemic is over. And what we have found, first and foremost, is how difficult it is and getting more difficult to get in front of decision makers. You know, before the pandemic, you kind of knew they’d be on their phone, somewhere their office phone, their cell phone. But then when the rules changed the people working from home, you didn’t know what hours were appropriate, what days were appropriate, and how to find people. And I just find that more and more. And I’m especially talking about the new junior brokers and mid level brokers in an organization, not that people have been doing it 20 years and have long term relationships. But the new people who are really struggling to make relationships are having an extra difficult time getting in touch with people, because they’re harder to find and harder to reach. Secondarily, is differentiating yourself from the competition. And I wanted to share with you that as soon as a broker calls up and says, you know, I understand you have a lease expiration next year, they’ve now put themselves in a box, they’ve commoditized themselves, and it’s very hard to get out of that box. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. Number three is new from post pandemic, many prospects don’t know the current space needs, with the return to work issues still being very much a topic of discussion with every company and trying to figure out the hybrid and you know, are we going to be all in or partially or working from home and remotely? So many brokers are telling me that their prospects and clients don’t know how much space they need? And are they in the right location, even I understand there’s a service out there. It’s a technology and algorithm that you put in the zip codes of all your employees where they live, and he tells you where your business should be located. So not only we talk about how much how much sighs do I need it’s am I in the wrong place? Right. So these are changes that are occurring. What has not changed ever is number four getting lied to prospects will lie to get free information to validate what they’re doing or to learn something new that they can use with their current broker. Number five is of course wasting time with suspects that don’t become clients. You know, if we don’t have a criteria, how to select who’s who’s worthy of our time and resources, we’ll just give it to everybody. And we’ll spend a few minutes talking about that this morning. Having your intellectual property used against you. So we refer to that as spilling your candy in the lobby. Also known as premature presentation, I cannot tell you how many experiences I’ve shared I’ve had with my clients, my the brokers who have told me they’ve given the secret away, they gave that concept away to the prospect in an attempt to lure them into signing an exclusive or an arrangement with them. And then they went off and implemented it without them. So we have very careful balancing how much of our trade secrets and our proprietary information or thoughts do we give away before we’re hired? And number four is, well, it’s time to prospect daily, because cold calling is such a long shot. But that’s not a time management issue. You know, on the surface, it sounds like time management, I’m really busy. And the reality is we all know, we avoid doing the things that give us dissatisfaction. If we don’t enjoy prospecting, because it’s so unlikely that it’s going to happen, and we’re so uncomfortable with it, we’re not going to do it often. And we’re never going to get to the point where we do it well because we don’t do it enough. So it’s not really a time management issue. Now, but because of these seven issues, one of the first things we work on with our clients is their 8020 sales X ray. So we actually take time and exercises to help the brokers we’re working with, identify their strengths and weaknesses. And one of them is something we call the sales recipe. So Darrin, you’ve heard the sales funnel, you know, you got to put a lot in the top to go to get it to the bottom. Well, we turn it upside down and we start with the end result. So this is based upon 10s of 1000s of people’s input. I asked brokers to close one sale, how many presentations do you have to make? And I’m giving you the number five because we hear numbers as low as two as much as 1520. So let’s just take five to close one sale, I gotta make five presentations. So to get five presentations now this isn’t the old days when we had appointments, not everything was, hey, just let’s meet on Zoom. But to get five presentations, on average, they need to have 15 appointments. Because a lot of people you meet with aren’t ready there aren’t appropriate, it’s not, you know, there are a number of reasons why an appointment does not turn into a proposal or presentation, carrying that forward to get 15 appointments, typically, let’s say you got to talk to 75 prospects, right, so forth, that’s at 20. Actually, that’s one in five. And to get to 75, prospects, how many times you have to dial a phone or email or walk into somebody’s pre COVID, who was 10 to one ratio. When you took all sales statistics across industry and across industry averages, so not anything specific to CRM, but all industries, business to business sales, people are doing a 10 to one ratio, I suspect it’s worse got more like 15 or 20 to one. So let’s just say this is somebody’s ratio. And we’re not judging it. But we’re saying to close a sale, you got to start the funnel with 750 behaviors, we call them emails, dials, LinkedIn ads, I have a real estate guy I’m working with now in Orange County, he’s back to walking buildings. And he said, there’s nobody walking buildings, you do what you want anymore. It’s like pre 911. Okay, so whatever methodology you go with, you got to have a consciousness, how many of them do have to do now what do you do with this information? Well, the first thing I ask people is, What’s your average income per deal. And once you divide that number, by how many behaviors, you now identify what you’re earning per behavior, even though the person slams the phone down on you, even though they don’t answer even though even though the email never gets responded to her bounces back, you did 750 behaviors, and you made $75,000, let’s just say right, you can do the math, it’s alright. So, and again, I’ve worked with people with some of the juniors are making four or five $6 per behavior. And some of the senior people are making three, four or 5000 per behavior because they have a Rolodex, and then I’m making 750 behaviors, you know, a senior person doing this 20 years, existing clients, lots of renewals, their ratio might be two presentations equals one sale, to get to two presentations, I got to talk to five people to talk to five people, I got to do eight behaviors, 10 behaviors, you know, so the more experienced, and that’s actually good news for the younger people, because they now know, oh, I’m not going to struggle forever. At some point I’m going to break through, I’m gonna have a reputation, I’m gonna have a following. So the recipe is a great thing that I work with people from day one. And we use that as a benchmark and say, Okay, now we’re gonna give you some tracking tools. And let’s see how you progress. Most people, I cut the recipe in half within the first year, we take away a lot of inefficiencies within the first year.
J Darrin Gross 12:42
Let me ask you that, because I think that’s, that’s critical to any kind of sales position. I mean, you know, you everybody hates the call sheets, and all the record keeping from the boss or whatever the management system is, but the reality is, there’s a, there’s a strategy there, and it’s to get you the reps so that you become more proficient. What do you find that it is? Are you able to identify some of the noise that you’re able to cut through and minimize or reduce and improve the sales?
Leonard Atlas 13:11
Well, interestingly enough, cold calling has not become the most ideal way to create business transactions and commercial real estate. I submit to you that 2030 years ago, when you and I were starting out, it was more available, there was no caller ID, there was no voicemails and technologies, you call the phone, you dial the number and somebody answered, and the almost, you know, I now put many of my clients on a 3060 or 90 day, no cold call challenge. Depending upon their level of seniority in the company, I have them commit to me, they will not make a single cold call, they will only do warmth, and referral. Now we know how powerful referral is. And I’m sure you’ve had tons of guests talk about the powers of referral, you are so much more likely. In fact, there is a statistic that we’ve been using, you’re nine times more likely to get in business out of an existing client than you are from a brand new stranger nine times. So while you’re making nine cold calls, somebody else is calling somebody and say, Hey, Charlie, you know, you know, you were satisfied with that last job we did for you. Anybody come to mind that you think you’d want to see benefit from our work? Right. And by the way, I didn’t actually discuss it in the in the slide deck. But how valuable is LinkedIn these days? LinkedIn is the new cold call. I get very angry at myself and others that make that go to make a cold call with that person typing the person’s name into LinkedIn first, and seeing Oh, I can reach Charlie by calling there and Hey, Darrin, would you do me a favor? Would you introduce us? Why would I choose to go hard and cold as a stranger? And think about it when you make a cold call? They’re not expecting your call, Strike one. Number two, they don’t know who you are. So you got to strikes up before you even open your mouth before they even pick up the phone. And then typically, and then typically what untrained salespeople say in the beginning of that cold call is their third strike, hey, I’m calling you about your lease renewal, call me about this call you about that. So we not we can look at the x ray the sales recipe, and identify people’s strengths and weaknesses, and help them, reduce them and eliminate them many cases. And it’s interesting because some people say too much. Some say too little, some just say the wrong stuff. So once we become caught, and you know, there’s a saying, I think it comes from the sports industry. Anything that can be tracked can be managed. If you don’t track your behaviors, how many you’re doing? How do you know how far how well you get it? You know, I often use a deck of cards as an example down. There are 52 cards in the deck. And you know, there are four aces. So statistically, in Asia come up every 13 cards. However, the worst case scenario is, it could be not until the 48th card, right? So 4950, it could, they could all be at the back at the end. But you know, out of those 52 cards, or let’s call them 52, cold calls, or whatever we’re doing, there’s going to be four aces, and let’s call an ace a deal. In the real world, we don’t know that I take a list of 50 names, I don’t know how many are real and how many are not going to really, you know, but I use 8020, which is 80% of it is probably not real. So but I’m getting my slides. The next question I ask people, and it’s very sad that nobody knows the answer. What’s your time worth an hour? Now? I think Darren, you would agree with me, there’s not a lawyer in this country that does not know what their hourly rate is. There’s not a there’s not a doctor, most professionals know what that time is worth. Now, that may not be how they charge per se, they may charge a flat rate or a project fee or whatever. But they know what their time is worth. Most real commercial real estate brokers have no clue what their time is worth. In fact, I was training a young guy in Atlanta, pre COVID. And he used to tell us, he would call CEOs and say I’m downstairs, I can either pick you up right now. And then there’s a cold call, or I can go for coffee and come back in a half hour. But I’ve got three or four buildings to show you. And I said, No, you’re doing this before you ever talked to them before you’ve looked at least before you know anything about their situation. Yeah. So I nicknamed this guy Uber. I said, you’re helping driver, you’re not a real estate broker. You’re an Uber driver. We did our training, we gave him a lot of stuff came back a few months later for his follow up session. And the manager of the office said we have to acknowledge the most improved person in the organization with sales to show it is the guy that you refer to as Uber. He’s no longer Uber. And I had him come up to the front of room and say, Tell me what happened. He said, I heard you loud and clear. I started valuing my time because I was not I was like you said I was just driving people around. I had no commitment. I had no relationship. There was no criteria. I didn’t know what I was looking for. It was just a gimmick. And it would work because some guys would come down and say okay, drive me. But it was not I was not selling. So you’ve got to start with what’s your time worth an hour. Next, I asked you how many deals you want to close a year because that recipe that we talked about in the previous slide, it’s replicatable. You know, when you know Mrs. Fields, cookies, she started making them at home. So when you make cookies at home, you have a little bit of recipe and the batter and the oven and the thing. But when you go to make them professionally and commercially, it’s called exploding the recipe. So your your home batch makes 20 cookies, but now you have to make 20,000 Well, you have to explode the recipe, the same thing with selling you got to figure out what does it take to make one sale? And then how do I multiply that and replicate that? Now it’s not the same science as cooking or baking clearly, because people are involved here, right? So just five people in the last deal doesn’t mean it’s gonna be 65 The next deal, but it’s a marker, it gives you out or because, you know, right? And then my last question on this page is do you believe that you can achieve additional success without new strategies and techniques? Because we know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different result. So what I’ve shown you so far is basically what I asked individuals. The question I asked companies, executives of companies is how much time money and emotion annually do you invest or spend chasing business that never closes? And I want to give you the answer of two clients that have engaged me many years ago, a midsize commercial real estate company that had offices all over the country, but they were not one of the big three said we spend between five and $6 million presenting and proposing and chasing business that does not close. If you helped us just reduce that that’d be a real value. And the next con is a very large mechanical contractor and HVAC company that when they hired me choose me they had 3000 Open Proposals on the street that they knew most were dead because people came to them because of their their engineering prowess. expertise. And they knew that you all you had to do is call them and say, Hey, I need a quote and they’d send an engineer over. And that company was spending 1000s of dollars going through blueprints and drawings and analysis and stuff. And suddenly a proposal never following up. So a lot of companies often bring us in to install a sales culture. And the sales culture is about consciousness, and what are we doing? So when a company acknowledges that spending five or 6 million a year when a company says we got 3000 proposals, when somebody sees that recipe is way out of whack, they often say there’s got to be a better way to do sales than traditional mainstream sales, right? How do you work smarter and not just harder? That’s the eternal question. And that’s really where we get into the meat of this presentation, because that’s what I refer to as Brooklyn to Bel Air. Now, you on the slide on the screen, you see two images, Brooklyn is on the left, that layer is on the right, you can hear from my accent. I’m from New York. I’m from Brooklyn, but I’ve been in LA 30 years just can’t get rid of the Brooklyn accent. So Brooklyn to Bel Air is really, as I said to you, it’s my physical journey Cross Country. It’s also my metaphorical journey from blue collar, white collar, as you’ll hear about now, but it’s also what I teach my clients about going from working hard to work with smart. So real quick, biographically. I was born into a family owned business, Atlas floral decorators, we started in 1945 20 years before I was born. And my father immediately became the Plaza Hotel florist in the Pierre Hotel florist. And you can see on the left, it was a very large floral decorating company. For a couple of decades, it was the biggest one in the country doing over 100 floral decorations a night in the New York tri state area. On the right, that’s me a young 1819 year old on a ladder 100 degree weather on a rooftop of a building, getting ready to do a wedding gazebo. Everything I did was with ladders and tools, everything I did was ladders and tools.
After ripe old age of 23, being the youngest of the second generation, we agreed to part company and I left my family business, which was mainly private parties. And I started my own company, Leonard outsole productions. And the most marquee client I got was Madison Square Garden for Christmas for Christmas. So this photograph shows you 38 birch trees that surrounded the building. Anybody was familiar with Madison Square Garden. They’ve since been removed recently. But that used to be 38 birch trees now why am I telling you this? Because the rules were you can only install the lights from 10pm to 5am. So this is Thanksgiving week. It’s cold as you can imagine windy, and you’re outside on ladders and scaffolds and cherry pickers. You want to wear gloves because It’s damn cold, but you can’t wear gloves because then you can’t turn the lights. It was miserable, miserable work, but it looks amazing. Well finally we got done with the outside and they said do the inside. So on the left is Penn Plaza. That’s a 25 foot Christmas tree now, you know how many times have you walk past the Christmas tree and say, Oh, that’s lovely. That’s beautiful. Did you ever think about the person that had a decorated 25 feet up in the air and a ladder a scaffold? Now the picture on the right is right you never did. The picture on the right was life defining to me that the inside of Madison Square Garden it was the second year I decorated it for Christmas. And we agreed that we were going to hang 18 oversized Christmas ornaments. I was the first person that would do two and three foot ties ornaments. Now you see many decorations, but I suspended them from the ceiling illuminated. Right now you see three balls hung three ornaments hung. When I did the 18th one, it was the end of the day I was exhausted. I was 43 feet up in the cherry picker and I electrocuted myself again. And my guys pulled me down on the ground. I was shivering on the ground. And I said to myself, That’s it. At that time I had recognized my dad had died 10 years earlier. So I was it was 10 years after my dad’s death. And I’m all about efficiency and effectiveness. And I did nothing now. Here’s what I mean. Again, people think about the floral decorating industry. Oh, what a lovely industry flowers and weddings and parties. How beautiful. Well, they don’t realize what that means. The inventory is perishable that only last a few days. The clients are emotional having their daughter’s wedding or a major event happened very emotional. And the staff is autistic. At the time that I electrocuted myself, and I said I gotta do something different. My wife and I, at the time thought maybe I go to law school at nights. Because I have a math I could speak I like to articulate to argue maybe I go to law school. And then a friend of mine was going to school at Cornell, coincidentally, with nowhere with no provocation, asked me if I knew about Pareto principle, the 8020 rule, and I’d never heard of it. This was in the late 80s Parados principles specifically says concentrate on the vital few ignore delegate or delay the trivial many, that was the 1906. Now instantly, it actually developed because real estate, Pareto determined the very first use of 8020 was 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the land owners. And then he went on to find 80% of the crops were grown on 20% of the farms and That’s how 8020 happens. Not Today we use 8020 in every aspects of life. What do I mean? 80% of the time we were 20% of our wardrobe 80% of the stains in your carpet or in 20% of the areas, right? There’s no stain under the couch. Right? So back in the late 80s, after I electrocuted myself, I started asking myself, How does this thing apply to sales. So I took this economics principle and dragged it into the sales world. And I found a few things. 80% of a company’s revenue is generated by 20% of their sales team. I have a number of companies, CEOs and presidents that tell me repeatedly, I could fire half of my people the bottom half of my sales force, and I never feel it bottom to $1. My bottom line wouldn’t matter. 80% is generated by 20%. But how does it relate to the people listening to this call 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your prospects. Now, that’s an eye opening experience when you when you learn that it’s a game changer. And what does it mean practically? It means to move from to disqualification from pre qualification. See right now, Darren, everybody is trying to pre qualified, oh, you have 10,000 feet, your lease is up in two years, you need to talk to me. When in fact, if they want to disqualify, they would say, Look, I know you have a broker, and you’re probably very happy with the broker. Because that’s the number one reason why people don’t get hired. There’s already somebody there. There’s an incumbent, right? Well, I’m not saying that people don’t switch, of course, people switch. But if you don’t have that conversation early on, if you have the conversation of Oh, I know you have a lease expiration, you need something different. It’s a commodity, and you’re gonna get, you’re gonna lose really fast. So the two things we’re going to talk about as the disqualification process, politely identifying, is there a fit here or not? Is there a big reason why this is not going to work? Because if there is, when do you want to find that out? See, everybody says to me, intellectually, or I want to know, early, but in reality, they bury their head in the sand and they say, oh, let’s not do that. Maybe it’ll go away.
J Darrin Gross 27:09
Yeah, I think there’s always the you try and stoke the hope, you know, the hope that you’ll win them over, kind of like ease into it, as opposed to, you know, like you say, disqualify them right away.
Leonard Atlas 27:21
When they tell you they’ve been using somebody eight 910 years. Unless something drastic happens, they screw up or the guy retires or whatever. What motivation, would they have to switch? There’s no problem, why fix it? Right? Right. Okay. So alongside with the disqualification process is also treating these prospects as relationships, not transactions. So again, I said earlier, when you make the cold call and say, I know you have a lease expiring next year, you’re turning it into a transaction. Rather than saying, Look, I know you have a number of properties around the country around the market, whatever. And I know you’re working with a broker or multiple brokers. The question is, are there any inefficiencies? Are there any areas that you wish could be improved? Would it make sense to have a second set of eyes? Would it make sense to have a plan B, when you don’t start at the transaction level, you d commoditize. yourself immediately. And you’re starting at the relationship level. Now, you know, one of the biggest frustrations that clients or tenants have about commercial real estate brokers, they only contact you a few months before the expiration during the five or 10 years, at least you never hear from them. They really want a relationship. They want to hear from you, whether it’s quarterly or monthly or twice a year, whatever. They want to know that you’re looking after me checking into it. So everybody wants a relationship, but it’s up to the broker to initiate it and act that way. So all of this technology, the Pareto principle that I turned into 8020 sales helped me transition to Bel Air. So now you see me now this was not Bellaire, this was actually lax. This was the Hilton Hotel at LAX. It was my first major event in LA and by the way, welcome to Bel Air misses one little piece. I got to La Via Sydney, Australia. So I started doing training. And I was hired to go to Sydney for two weeks. And it turned into six months. And after six months in Australia, I came back to New York, not realizing that it was always that noisy, dirty and crowded. And I wanted to replicate Sydney in America and that was la so I came to LA. And this was a a weekend training I did with 13 125 people paying $85 ahead and I realized and this somebody took this picture of me I you know, back in the day, I realized I made all that money and I didn’t climb a ladder. I didn’t risk my life. I didn’t have any tools on it was just my intellectual property. I was now getting paid to speak and something else really big happened. This was my house in Bel Air. I started doing my coaching calls from the pool on the cell phone on the cordless phone. That was when cordless phones happened that was not cell phones. And from I mean think about from a lifestyle perspective. A year and a half before this, I was hanging Christmas lights outside Madison Square Garden and negative freezing weather with ice storms and raining crazy and my hands were cold and blistered and cut up terrible on ladders and scaffolds electrocuted myself. And I’m in an 85 degree pool making calls and coaching people from my pool. That was my moment of transition when I realized I made it from working hard to working smart. And then you could see over the last 20 years, you know, all over the world lectures, so suits and ties, right, no, no more work clothes and work boots and tools and keys on my waist, all suits and ties and microphones, doing my presentation all over the place. And these are the kinds of clients that have hired us. So if you look down the left, you’ll see mainly the commercial real estate companies we work with. Because there’s a logic to what we’re doing. We’re helping you with a criteria and disqualified because you can’t chase every piece of business. You can’t dedicate all your emotion and your resources to everything. You’ve got to have a criteria, what works and what does not work. So then, as you know, because you interviewed me, then we wrote this book, what’s holding yourselves back, find that face and fix it. Now this was so Peter Farkas is an attorney who focuses on real estate. He’s in New York, his the now he’s in New York. But mine is Brooklyn to Bel Air his Budapest to Beverly Hills. That was his journey. We’ve surveyed 10s of 1000s of people in five continents. And we identified the three top things that’s holding back their sales. Number one, they’re not talking to enough people, pure and simple. People avoid the phone because they’re uncomfortable, they’re not getting good results. Number two, they’re often not talking to the right prospects. People would rather present to somebody low down the ladder, because you know, they’re not the boss. But those people also can’t say yes, they can only say no. So it’s really self sabotaging yourself by going too low down the ladder. And number three is they simply don’t know what to say or do. And you know, Dan, I recently been asking people, when did you learn how to sell and from whom? And how did they learn how to sell. Because I admittedly, I learned from my father and uncles and they were not sales guys. They weren’t kids grew up in Brooklyn, we recruited into World War Two came home, and they just started doing their thing. They had no formal sales training. Most of our mentors and coaches didn’t have sales training. So their skills are not necessarily transferable. Everything I teach my clients is 100% transferable. Now, having said that, sales is both an art and a science, the science of the numbers, we could look at the recipe, we could look at your numbers, but the art is your personality, whatever you add to it. Right. So that’s the nontransferable part, but you have to find your personality. What makes you memorable, when your prospect is being called by 20 real estate people a month, what makes you stand out? So that’s kind of stuff we work on. Now. On the screen is a statement, people only take action for a reason. And it’s very reason. That’s their motivation to want to talk to you. Do you think people buy features and benefits. The reality is they don’t buy the features and benefits. They buy the removal of pain or the gathering of pleasure. When you lower their rent immediately, that’s giving them pleasure when you find them a building where they could put their name on the top of the building, and everybody can see from around the world from miles around sanctuary city. That’s pleasure. So people don’t buy features and benefits. And so many salespeople are working too hard selling features and benefits when people want to the emotional response, the gathering of pleasure or the gate or removal of pain. So welcome to Bel Air, the big five. We have interviewed 1000s of people and read tons of biographies and autobiographies. Without a doubt, the number one thing for success is the mindset and we refer to it as abundance versus scarcity. This is the foundation as everybody in real estate knows you can’t build a skyscraper on a sandy foundation, you need a strong concrete rebar foundation. So as true with sales, you’ve got to come from a mindset of abundance. And most people in commercial real estate really do have an abundant marketplace. Or they can go an extra five miles or 10 miles around and make it abundant. But if you come from scarcity, and you have too few people that you call in way too often, you’re not going to succeed. Number two is the behavior of consistency versus intensity. Do you know how many people share with me that they really only prospect when the deals that they’re working on come to a conclusion and now the pipeline is empty, and they have to start it up again. It’s too late because you can have a 1218 24 month lead time to get somebody ready to to take action with you. So I work with people on their daily sales and marketing number. What is that number you’re gonna do every single day, five days a week, it could be two behaviors, five behaviors 10 behaviors, but the intensity thing, Oh, I’m gonna get real jazzed up and make 100 calls on Monday. They don’t make 100 On Monday, and by Tuesday they’re making three again. So consistency over intensity. The techniques that we talked about, and I say it very briefly here is disqualifying, as we talked about a little bit before work and probing. A number of my clients have hired me and said, you know, we’ve had other trainers ask questions, but nobody goes as deep as you you’re like four or five levels deep, they just ask one question, then they get into presenting, we are really probing to identify the pain that the prospect has with the pleasure they’re looking for. And then help them quantify it. When they, you know, because and a lot of these issues are not financial. So what I’ll give you two examples. The temperature is never right, in our building. It’s either too hot or too cold, but it’s never the right temperature. What is that costing a company annually? Well, that may not be costing actual money out of pocket, but the employees are not happy. They’re complaining morale is low, people don’t want to come to work voluntarily, right? Another one. And we’ve had this sadly, happen often, normally, a female employee gets accosted in the parking lot in the building. So now the building is not safe. And now a lot of the population of the company are scared to be in the office, they’re scared to park they’re scared to go to the bathroom. They’re scared to go to the whatever office it is. Is there a financial cost? Or is that an emotional cost? And when you say to somebody, look, I know that’s not financial, it’s emotional. But what do you think that’s costing you financially? And when they put a number on it, and say, You know what, it’s hard to recruit, we can’t get people and they say, it’s worth a couple 100,000 a year, they’ve not quantified their pain, and they verbalize it out loud, which helps them take ownership of it. Okay, number four is rewards. So smart goal setting? You know, yes, goal setting is very cliche, but the reality is, you would never get on a journey to go cross country in you call it on a map. So goal setting is like having a map. And fifth and final is patients. We live in such a situation, a society of instant gratification, that we don’t think beyond the short term, we don’t think midterm and long term. And it is my hope, but it’s also my work. To help people identify what lessons did did they learn about their company and their industry and themselves during the pandemic? That can make them less vulnerable? If God forbid, it happens? Again? If we had excuse me, if we have another societal shutdown for another another pandemic type thing, what would you do differently? Would you still be in the same boat you were last time.
So there’s a lot of material here, as you can see, right? We’re working from the emotional to the physical, to the financial to the tactical. And we normally do this in a three day workshop. Now 95% of our workshops are in half. So a company hires us. And we train that 2050 100 200 People in house, but a few times a year, we do one where we fill the room. And the very next one is going to be January 24 25th 26th in Santa Monica, and on Zoom, it’s nine to four each day. Now, I just want to share a couple of highlights what you can expect to to learn at this workshop. First and foremost is to remove the fear of rejection permanently. When that fear of rejection is gone, you will be surprised how people start prospecting consistently, because they’re not afraid of it anymore. Number two, making cold call to strangers be the last resort, not the first option. And again, once I put them on a 3060 90 day, no call challenge, no cold call challenge. They often continue that because they don’t need to make phone calls anymore, because they realize what an asset they have in their Rolodex, their alumni list their clientele list, getting leads and seeing you brokers. Number three is shortening their sales cycle to get to the truth sooner. Because if it’s going to ultimately be we’re not going to get hired on this deal. Why are we going to propose why we’re going to do at least analysis why we’re going to do all this hard work. Number four is D commoditizing. Their product and service now, one would say commercial real estate is not really a commodity, some would argue it is. But I’ve actually worked in the deregulated energy industry where it is absolutely a commodity. When you plug that device in the electric outlet on the wall, it doesn’t matter if you’re getting it from the utility or from some third party company, it’s the exact same service. So why would people pay any more money for that, if they can get it cheaper from somebody else? It’s a commodity. Well, you’d be surprised how many reasons there are beyond price. Next is increasing the effectiveness of their prospecting because nobody wants to be ineffective. And we do that by helping them develop a daily, weekly and monthly sales blueprint. So the published rate that you’ll see is $3,000. For the workshop, we had an early registration discount that ended a month ago, but we’re happy to extend that to your folks of 2500 hours. Now, we’re also willing to make a special offer so this video is gonna be posted next week, we’re giving everybody an extra 24 hours. So by January 6, if you register, and that means sending me an email, you’ll see the price is now 2250. So that that’s the J Darren special price. Either call me or send me an email Allison mission powerful.com and just write guerin’s podcast, and I will send you the event PDF, and you can review it and if you want to register you can register for either in person or on Zoom. So that’s all the prayers, the slides I prepared. Hopefully you now have a sense of Brooklyn to Bel Air. And what makes me excited to wake up every morning and Teach this to people you know, I do want to share one thing with you. Just since October since we started doing live workshops, again, three commercial real estate guys that I’ve trained for the last 20 years, have had new start working with their sons and daughters that are now adults grad graduating or graduated college already knew in their careers. And they said, You got to learn from learn Atlas. And you might as well learn early in your career and not like me, you have to 1520 years, that’s been probably the best acknowledgment of the work I’ve had, when senior successful real estate people have introduced me to their kids and said, teach them the right way from the get go, would you please? So that’s,
J Darrin Gross 40:33
That’s great. Congrats on on that second generation opportunity. That’s great.
Leonard Atlas 40:40
Thank you.
J Darrin Gross 40:40
Hey Leonard, if we could, there’s one question I ask all my guests. And I’d like to ask you as well. By day, I’m an insurance broker. And, you know, as such, I work with my clients to assess risk, and determine what to do with the risk. And there’s three strategies we typically consider, we first look to see if there’s a way we can avoid the risk. When that’s not an option, we’ll see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And when that’s not an option, we’ll see if there’s a way we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. It’s a risk transfer vehicle. As such, I like to ask my guests if they can look at their own situation. Could be clients, investors, tenants, the marketplace interest rates, political however, however you would like to frame the question, but identify what you consider to be the biggest risk. And again, for clarification, while I am an insurance broker, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. And so if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Leonard Atlas, what is the biggest risk?
Leonard Atlas 41:54
Just a clarification, do you mean to me or to my clients,
J Darrin Gross 41:58
You can frame it for your for yourself or your clients, however you however you’d like to frame?
Leonard Atlas 42:03
Well, I’ve spent so much time thinking about my clients. So the biggest risks of my clients is wasting the two commodities that you can never get back. You can only spend, you can never get back. And that’s their time and their reputations. And far too many people have confided in me that they waste so much time with the wrong people. They didn’t know what this qualification looked like they didn’t know how to go about doing it tactfully and politely and not to burn the bridge. And when I say disqualification, it simply means to say to somebody, look, Charlie, this, this particular deal may not be the right one for us, you already got somebody on it. I’m a little late to the game, whatever. But does it make sense for us to stay in touch for future opportunities for future deals, so we’re not talking about disqualifying them forever. We’re just acknowledging if this current transaction, whether it’s a renewal or next, or whatever it is, if this one’s already allocated, and I’m too late, and I’m not getting it, why would I want to invest any more time, money and resources into it? So the time and again, that awareness I have reduced once people realize what the time is worth. Because let’s face it, if you’re making $10 an hour, you’re gonna function one way, if you’re making $100, now you’re gonna function differently. And if you’re 1000 miles now you’re gonna function even more differently, and you’re gonna delegate and more people do other things, and you’re gonna stay focused on what you do to make 1000 miles an hour. So time, but about reputation as well. reputations? Well, and I’ll tell you something in closing, I did a lot of interim things during COVID. Because there were no workshops, there was no trainings that whole this whole industry shut down for two years, two and a half years. And I met many wonderful people. But I met a group of people that I titled as fakes flakes and frauds. You have no idea? No, I avoided the entire PPP industry. And the PPE industry, I avoided those I was asked immediately masks and gloves because people don’t have access to people in real estate. I want nothing to do with that at all at all. But ultimately, I would network and broker and do things and you know, make a living. And you have no idea how many fraudulent bios, fraudulent documents, Photoshop documents, absolute scam artists, people would send me a link and say, look at this person, they would just convicted a fraud from another state from another this from it. And other than that, I had one guy who claimed to buy and sell hospitals. And somebody checked it out to me. And he called me and said, This guy is wanted by the Orange County Sheriff on 89 counts of fraud 89 Counselor fraud. So I say that you because reputation is almost worse than time. Look, you spend time you can’t get it back clearly. But when you burn a reputation, and you can’t call that person back and they tell you never call me back, I never want to hear from you again. You know that kind of stuff. how devastating is that? And the way to reduce and minimize that is by using ad 20 and having a create a set of criteria. Who are the people that are acceptable for me to engage with and work with And I have no tolerance for fakes, flakes or frauds. That’s my own personal thing. So my risk is falsely being associated with the with the wrong people that will waste my time, which equates to money and damage my reputation. So I got injured both for both my clients and myself. Life is too short, there’s too much opportunity out there, there really is too much abundance out there. Once you determine your criteria for what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, all of a sudden, now you’re guarding, guarding protecting your time and your reputation. I hope, I hope that helps answer the question.
J Darrin Gross 45:38
That’s perfect. I appreciate you.
Leonard Atlas 45:40
This end of the year, this new year when we make resolutions, and they want a resolution that says I want to guard and protect and use my time and reputation more positively in the new year than just being unconscious. Like I was less, you know, necessarily in the past and not thinking about it.
J Darrin Gross 45:55
So easy to do. And, you know, to to stay focused. And, you know, I know what you’re going after in which time is worth it’s It’s great stuff. Leonard, where can listeners go? If they’d like to learn more connect with you?
Leonard Atlas 46:10
Great question, mission profitable.com spelled out mission profitable.com, I would encourage them on the front page, we have a little two minute overview video. And then on the top of the nav on the navbar, click on ad 20 selling. And there is another two and a half minute video there. So it’s all live excerpts of me doing workshop stuff, but you’ll you’ll see me instead of like this post and you know, contrived like this. It’s all like footage of workshops and interviews with people and stuff like that, you can go to the testimonial page, you’ll see a video montage of clients that we’ve worked with that have given testimonials. So Mr. profit.com is the place all people that attend the workshop, when they register, we send them a copy of the book, what’s holding yourselves back. If the workshop is not a reality for you, for whatever reason, you may want to just go to Amazon and get the book. It’s a good alternative. It’s not a replacement, but it’s an alternative, you’re not going to get to the workshop at least get some of these principles that we’ve talked about today. So you can work on improving yourself from from reading the book. But the best opportunity is when people read the book, attend the workshop, then read the book again. Now the beginning to have spaced reinforcement, and things become habit.
J Darrin Gross 47:14
By letter and I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. have enjoyed it. Learned a lot. And I look forward to doing it again soon.
Leonard Atlas 47:23
Likewise, thank you for the opportunity. Happy New Year, everybody.
J Darrin Gross 47:26
All right. For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow. That’s all you got this week. Till next time. Thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks. CRE PN Radio.
Announcer 47:45
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