Top ISA Series: Jim Renfrow - Hatch Realty

Nate Joens: Hi. Welcome everybody. We're finally going to get this thing started. I was just waiting for a train to pass, so if you happen to hear me ... Hear some loud rumbling it could still be a train. Welcome from the great State of Iowa. My name is Nate, I'm the CoFounder of Structurely - one of your co-host today. I am with Structurely, we're really excited to kick off our conversations with the top ISA series. This is the first episode, starting off right with one of the best in the country. This will be a seven part series with some of the top ISAs in the country. Myself and Robby, with Hatch Coaching will be interviewing them. You can catch all of these on our YouTube channel, we'll be recording them so you'll be able to catch up on them at any point afterwards and also will be available on Real Estate ISA Radio. We're really excited to get this one kicked off today. Robby, tell us who we got here.

Robby T: Awesome. Well, again Robby T. here with Hatch Coaching. I want to start a fight with you real quick Nate, you would said one of the best and I'm going to say we wanted to do this series right by bringing the best to the table. We got the man, the myth, the legend, Jim Rentfrow. I call him Jimmy. I probably make a nickname out for you every other day and I'm sorry for it. I just want to tell you guys a little bit about Jim before we get into the ISA stuff, stack pro. I have the pleasure of being an ISA alongside Jim. Jim isn't just a top producing ISA. He is this guy with a massive heart, too big a heart sometimes and we've had to call you on that.

Robby T: Jim is truly one of the best people I know. I'm so excited for today because you guys get to hear from his mouth, his approach, what he thinks of this ISA role, how he's been successful? We got a great list of questions for all of you and the ones that we've created. Before we get into that, I always like to start with numbers. We're going to start with this, Jim. Tell us a little bit about your numbers. You started as an ISA, how long ago and just give us [crosstalk 00:02:29].

Jim Rentfrow: I started in July 2014 and I think July '17, was my freedom day, as I call it, the day I came over and started over here. Since then, 331,600 dials, about 43,000 emails I've sent, 49,000 texts. The emails and texts have been since we started tracking, which was what, Robby? 2016 I think when we started tracking those numbers.

Robby T: Yeah.

Jim Rentfrow: I think I roughly have spoke to about 18,000 people and have set 1700, 1800 appointments and I have 706 closings as of right now. I popped into CT and checked it out right before this. My volume is about 155 million since I started. Yeah, I've done right.

Robby T: You're scrub. You're terrible.

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah.

Robby T: Jimmy lumped a lot in there, so let's just make sure everybody heard that. I'm just going to ask directly, and I want you to tell me the number.

Jim Rentfrow: 330,000.

Robby T: Roughly, how many calls have you brought in? 333,000.

Jim Rentfrow: 18,000.

Robby T: Right. How many rough contacts, give or take?

Jim Rentfrow: About 700.

Robby T: 18,000. How many appointments?

Jim Rentfrow: Little over. Seven or six.

Robby T: Then 700 some closings, correct?

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah, pretty much.

Robby T: You're like a real estate team and other yourself.

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah.

Robby T: Awesome. Well, I love it. well, thank you for sharing that. I want to start here. I want to start very 10,000 foot view with this today. What do you view your role as? You're an ISA and ISA is just inside sales agent, but what the heck does that mean to you, Jim? What is your role on a team? How do you describe it? What are you doing every day? What does ISA mean to you?

Jim Rentfrow: I struggle with this because the industry looks us ISA as the starting point, the lowliest of the lowly and the way I look at it ISA is I am basically the coal in the steam engine. If I don't put the coal in, this train doesn't go anywhere, nobody's dreams come true. While that's a lot of pressure, it is also really liberating because whatever I do has impact and that's the reason I came to this job is the ISA is the impact person. It is who drives the ship, it is who makes this whole thing work. Eric and I have talked in its description too of, we're the insurance policy on the database, we're the insurance policy on the money spent, but really the way I look at it is we're the coal that makes this whole thing work.

Robby T: I love it, Jim. That's a great analogy. We've talked a lot about insurance policy. What the heck does that mean? I think we all understand that you guys are really the engine, the steam engine, you're putting that colon and making the whole machine work. When you say insurance policy, what the heck is that?

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah. I mean, when I talk about is that most leads that people go after in their system are called twice. That's it. I think our record ... I think Cody actually just broke our record. I think he broke it and I think it was 383 attempts before he got in touch with someone. We're basically there in order to pick up the phone and make sure that these people are talked to. The other thing is, a couple times a year, I'll go through and I'll play what's called the resurrection game in the database. I did this the other day. I think Cody had posted a blog article on it, and we had talked about it. I just go through the database a couple of times a year for people that have said no, and I see, hey, is it still no? I did this the other day, sent out 1900 texts and basically 38 people that had previously told me no, are now ready to buy. Really, what I do is I go through even the crap, shovel it and find the little pieces of gold.

Robby T: I think that 10% number, the resurrection game is a really funny number because you said you reached out to how many people during that, again? Was it three-

Jim Rentfrow: [crosstalk 00:06:57] 371. Out of that 371, I had 38 follow ups that are ready and I also set two appointments right away on that. Just from sending out a mass temp, got a couple appointments on it.

Robby T: The insurance policy really means ... What I'm hearing you say, Jim is, you guys do everything you can to reach out to these leads and have conversations. It's not just you call once, twice, maybe shoot one off text. Even when people tell you no, you're eventually going to follow up and attempt to convert them again, because we all know just because of no now it doesn't mean that they're going to be a no forever. [crosstalk 00:07:36].

Jim Rentfrow: Yeah. I think I can count about 25 times where someone has literally told me no, almost, and someone has told me to F off even, and literally have called me back 10 minutes later and said, "Hey, I was just really upset. You caught me in the moment. I do want to talk here's what's going on." Even when you hear no especially in today's society, no one wants to talk right now. Nobody can talk there. Everybody is busy. You hear no and you think, they're not serious. No just means like, hey, you caught me at a bad time, usually.

Robby T: For you no is often times not just no, it's not yet.

Jim Rentfrow: It's not yet. Exactly.

Robby T: I love it. Awesome. That's great, Jim. Now that we've established that you're a terrible ISA and you've no clue what you're doing. Just kidding. I would love for you to share a little bit about what your conversations actually sound like. We know that you're taking these proactive measures to generate these conversati...