Overcoming the Lows of Real Estate | Brad Van De Walle

Justin Stoddart 
Welcome back to The Think Bigger Real Estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart, very excited about today's guest. This man has some accomplishments, I'll tell you about some things that he's going to pour into us. Just in my little bit of time that I've known him. He's somebody who loves to pour into people. Today, we're going to be covering objection handling, and mindset for real estate agents. He's also going to share how he earned just last year alone $250,000 just through zoom with first time homebuyer classes. So if you're trying to get creative on ways that you can be very effective, regardless of the market, regardless of whatever situation we're in, this is your man.

Justin Stoddart 
I'm excited to have him here before I fully introduce him. Let me remind you that inside of the think bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we go deeper on these topics. The reality is you listening to us talk is going to help you a little bit you come in and engaging in the conversation and being part of the conversation is going to help you a lot a bit. So come join us there and Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook.

Justin Stoddart 
Today's guests back to him. His name is Brad Van De Walle. He's out of Calgary, Alberta. He runs the largest REMAX office in the world. The man knows a few things about success. As I mentioned, his passion is coaching. But he's a high producer as well, Brad, thanks for coming on the show today.

Brad Van De Walle 
Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. Looking forward to this.

Justin Stoddart 
Yeah, my pleasure. All right, let's dive right in. Because I know people that are big thinkers, they don't have a lot of time to mess around. They're here to get some information and apply it and start thinking big start creating some achievements in their world. So let's talk a little bit about first of all right away, talk to us about this first-time homebuyer strategy via zoom, how many people to attend? What was your strategy, give us some kind of nuts and bolts that we can apply today.

Brad Van De Walle 
This is literally my favorite thing that I've ever come across. You know, I'll tell you, if you don't mind. I'll tell you the backstory and kind of how we got to there. So I was doing first-time homebuyer seminars in brick and mortar at the end of 2019. And my mortgage broker came to me, he's like, we got to start doing these. I'm like, man, like, it's Canada, like, there are 10 feet of snow, like, nobody's ever gonna show up to these things, right? So people actually started showing up and we didn't know what we were doing. We just kind of posted something on Facebook. For those of you that know me, technology is my least skill, like next to running marathons and stuff like that. So like, I was just not my jam. But, you know, we found a company that that advertised. And we had people that actually showed up, and we're like, Okay, this is actually pretty cool. Can people maybe 15, but then, you know, was weather dependent. We had not the best part, like for parking, but then people have to drive across the city sometimes. So then COVID head, and then he looked at me and like Canada was locked down. Like I mean, 30 days, like you're not, you're really not going anywhere. It's a little bit different states. And he's like, let's start doing them via zoom. And I'm like, what, zoom? And I'm like, it sounds like it's never gonna work. He's like, No, seriously, he's like, I didn't know what it was like, zoom, you come on to do this. I'm like, Man, I'm not going anywhere. For 30 days, I'm willing to try anything to not go crazy. So we actually did the first one, we actually had about 15 or 20 people on, and we're like, really like, okay, so we kind of fumbled our way through that one. I ended up losing a couple of deals from it. And I'm like, there's definitely something here. Since we learned from that. We adjusted a couple of different companies. At one point we were getting between 20 to 25 people on and about 10 people would sign up for my mortgage broker. So I have it is we do our presentation. They all sign up with the mortgage broker at the end, the mortgage broker does the pre-approval, and then his team ships them off to me. It's beautiful. They do all the follow-up. Thank you, Josh. So you know, we were getting that many, and then now it's evolved. And then and then what's the production started going down? Or the sorry, the attendees started going down, and then our attendance rates, so that I started with this marketing company in Canada. And I'm like, Guys, I need more leads. I need more people there. Well, the first one that they did for me, I couldn't even believe it. We had 100 people registered and 80 people showed up. And I was like, I'm like, Alright, like now we're talking like now this is some severe stuff. And, and they actually for anybody that's interested. You can you know, get-go I'll pass the number off to you. It's a company that does it in Canada, they have secure spots, so they don't over-saturate anyways, it's the best thing you've come across.

Justin Stoddart 
Now. It's read. So it's Facebook ads, I'm assuming that's how they're driving it or that

Brad Van De Walle 
yeah. So and I and I don't know anything about how they set it up. It's, it's super cool. And they do it at an extremely high level so that I know that they get them via Facebook, via Instagram, but it's their follow up system with high-level CRM, that really helps the attendance because our attendance rates were not great, but now we're at about a 75% attend tenants rate, but we're also at about a 90 to 95% retention rate. So our one of our bigger ones that we had, we had 125 people sign up 100 people showed up right on the dot and 94 people stayed to the end 33 people booked an appointment with my mortgage broker to get pre-approved. It's a brilliant strategy, isn't it?

Justin Stoddart 
I mean, you look at whatever situation is out there. There's always a silver lining. I hope if that's one thing that you take away from this is I don't care if it's a tight seller's market. I don't care if there are national lockdowns, the reality is somebody somewhere is figuring out some way to take advantage of that, get a competitive advantage and start winning. And you're like living proof that you had 80 people show up for a first-time homebuyer class. Right when the rest of the world was like, scratching their head thinking like crap, like, how am I gonna? You know,

Brad Van De Walle 
yeah. And then we took it to the next level to as zoom is going to be something people like realtors get hurt, like, Don't fight it. I don't understand it like this stream yard stuff. I don't get it. Whenever I do mine, I have my team. Like, if you don't know it, find somebody that does, because it's super important. Tech is not my thing. It literally gives me anxiety makes me shut down. That's just who I am. But sales amazing ideas. Amazing. I'm just not great with this. But you know, we're even at the point now, where a lot of people don't understand zoom is the way and it's super-efficient is what I love about it. Now what we're doing with our buyer's agreements and meeting buyers, we're doing it via zoom, we go over a buyers presentation over zoom. And then after that, we send them literally our buyers or buyers, our BRS or buyer's rep agreements, we have buyer exclusive via DocuSign. And we get them to sign in right there. So we do a zoom, they sign up with us move on, I don't have to drive half an hour to my office in case they don't show up. If somebody doesn't show up to a buyer's agreement, which is going to happen. Guess what I'm either at my house, or I'm whatever, I haven't wasted much time and I can get back on the phone and do something else. So ...