Top ISA Series: LeaAnne Ledford - Griffin Home Group

Nate Joens: All right. What is up everybody? My name is Nate, I'm with Structurely. We have an exciting webinar today that we're getting started finally on this beautiful spring day out of Iowa.

Robby T: Oh, yeah.

Nate Joens: We are joined by Robby T and LeaAnne today. Robby, would you like to kick us off?

Robby T: Hey, first off we got to celebrate the fact that we have no tech issues today. Sometimes tech is a pain. Funny part is as well, I was just on another webinar right before this about snap offers and we had some little tech issues. So major celebration. Other thing is, we have no snow in Fargo so life is fantastic.

Robby T: Hey, excited as heck to have a bunch of you join us today. We have one of the supreme ISAs, not just in real estate. LeaAnne also served as an ISA, and tell me if I'm wrong LeaAnne, but in the car industry. So I got to hear about that.

LeaAnne Ledford: I did.

Robby T: And now you've transitioned into basically being the lead ISA and overseeing your department, so would love to hear about that, but LeaAnne introduce yourself and tell us a bit about you.

LeaAnne Ledford: Hey, so I'm LeaAnne from Johnson City, Tennessee. I have been, collectively, from the car dealership to real estate, in this whole phone conversion thing, for several years now.

LeaAnne Ledford: Started out at [inaudible 00:01:33] Developments. When you say seven years, it's a long time. I mean, that's older than my kid, but obviously I like it so ...

LeaAnne Ledford: I started out business development internet sales in a car dealership. Very high volume car sales. I'm talking 30/40 car sold a week. Sometimes 300 a month. So I was one of two, and then our department with the help of the two that were there slowly grew to about six to eight at all times back there.

LeaAnne Ledford: I came into real estate in 2016. August, 2016 was my first month, and I'll be honest with you, I started out with these high hopes thinking, "Hey, I'm going to go here, and I'm going to crush it." Not only my teams only ISA. I was the only [inaudible 00:02:26] in our entire market. So I had no one around me. No one in our whole area knew what an ISA was supposed to do.

LeaAnne Ledford: These were big dreams and I sucked. I sucked. I almost left the industry altogether and the only thing that saved me was going to Family Reunion in Vegas in 2017.

LeaAnne Ledford: Since then I've been in it. I did my whole first year and went from having three closes from August to December in 2016 to having 74 the next following year.

LeaAnne Ledford: I'm on my own and kind of self trained, built all of our systems and then the next following year worked part-time. So half the hours, half the dials and got 101 closings.

LeaAnne Ledford: So-

Robby T: I love it. LeaAnne that's a good introduction. Lots to hit on there. You have a fascinating story. If you don't mind, I'd love to go back to the car dealership ISA stuff because-

LeaAnne Ledford: I don't go back there, but yeah we could do the talk.

Robby T: Well, we're going to go back for a minute. What's funny is we started this ISA stuff all about being an ISA in the real estate ball game, and I think you probably agree that the skills that we talk about and the skills that you're going to talk about, it's not just the one industry if I had to guess. So give us some insight. You said you were doing 300 car sales in a month?

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Robby T: What does that mean? I don't understand that. Give me some insight there.

LeaAnne Ledford: So our dealership was the number one volume Toyota dealership in all of the east pretty much. We were doing 300 sales a month. Roughly 65 to 70 percent of those sales at all time were coming out of our internet sales department. We, much like an ISA in real estate, we got the leads.

LeaAnne Ledford: We were the first person speed to lead on that in a matter of seconds and then we would nurture them. Not quite long as we nurtured real estate. I was used to the gratification of setting an appointment today, and it goes under contract, they drive away today. So that was the difference. That was the game changer was coming in here and saying, "I'm going to talk to these people for two years? Two years?"

LeaAnne Ledford: Back there it was two weeks or they've made a decision and they're gone, but when you put it together and you look at the role, and you look at what's important, and you look at what it takes to actually help people to their goals that they reached out to you to get help for, it's the same. You can equate it to restaurant industry, car sales, anywhere. It's the same concept of listening to people, coming up with a solution, and making a pathway to get them there.

Robby T: Gosh. Listen, create solution, create a game plan or a pathway.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah.

Robby T: I love it. Okay. So you did that for how long LeaAnne? How long were you in the car sales?

LeaAnne Ledford: Four years.

Robby T: Four years. Okay, I understand why you don't want to go back.

LeaAnne Ledford: I tried [inaudible 00:05:44] to get out of there if James is listening.

Robby T: Yeah, so tell us about that. We have a little back story. It's really cool to hear that a lot of the stuff translates, albeit different time frames.

Robby T: I think the funny thing is most people calling internet leads have the, "If it ain't going to close in two weeks, I'm not going to do anything with it," and frankly that's why most people convert a pay per click [inaudible 00:06:10] at sub one percent if that, and it's because most internet leads, especially fourth registration pay per click is so long term.

Robby T: When we measured it, it's been ... The conversion cycle is 18 to 24 months, and they're long term, just like you said. Up to two years. So it's kind of cool to get your perspective on that. But tell us, LeaAnne, how the heck do you get out of car sales and how did you get into being an ISA in real estate? Give us that background.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah. So it's much easier to fall in then it is to fall out. So I took the car sale job expecting fully for it to be temporary. Went to school for health, could not find a job, and I was like I have to make some money. So I sold my soul to the devil, as they say, and I went to the wonderful world of car sales.

LeaAnne Ledford: Now when I started, I was an extreme introvert, and I had at my previous job that I had actually gotten fired from for not being able to say hello to people when they walked through the door.

Robby T: Wow. I would not have guessed that at all.

LeaAnne Ledford: Yeah. So extreme introvert. Awkward. Super awkward.

Robby T: Sure.

LeaAnne Ledford: So over the course of the four years in the car industry and just getting beaten down every day, developed a love for talking to people, developed a love for just human interaction and for problem solving, and about two years into that ... A year and a half/two years into it, I had seen an ad for pretty much the same job but just in real estate, and I was like, "Well that sounds more long term. That sounds like a good plan."

LeaAnne Ledford: So I actually applied to work for Jim three times over the course of almost three years, and the first time I was to be considered. The second time they told me that I'm not an ISA, that I'm actually an agent profile and they offered me a job being an agent. I gracefully declined and went back to my cubicle at the car dealer...