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James Tostevin
James has been in real estate for over 35 years. He has achieved many many accolades. One amazing achievement, over the past 5 years he’s been ranked in the top 3 real estate agents in Australia.
Another amazing achievement is that he has 6 children and 2 grandchildren. (If you think you don’t have enough hours in the day…. )
During the complete interview, James answered the following questions –
- What’s the key to success in lead generation? What tips would you give agents on how to find listings?
- What’s the key to success in listing high numbers? What tips would you give agents on how to list well?
- What’s the key to success in vendor management?
- What advice would you give agents with regards to managing buyer enquiry and therefore buyers?
- If you had to relocate to work in real estate in say Vaucluse in Sydney, what would you do for the first 3 months to ENSURE that you were successful?
- What objections do you MAKE SURE you cover in your listing presentation?
- How do you set goals? Do you set HUGE scary goals or goals or goals that you know you can achieve?
James Tostevins complete interview can be found at
www.realestatetrainingcommunity.com.au. or message me for a copy. Lisa@lisab.com.au
We also have interviews with some of the best agents in the world.
James also provides training to real estate agents – Click Here
Interview transcript from YouTube
Welcome to let’s talk about real estate the podcast for real estate agents everywhere. You are now part of a group of real estate agents and entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in their lives. People who are looking for ways to create hacks into the real estate profession in order to make more sales and at the same time have more time off. Agents are realising that the old ways simply aren’t working for them anymore, they are working far too many hours and most don’t enjoy a work-life balance. Get ready to explore ways to hack your real estate life I’m Lisa B
All right James Tostevin, thank you so much for joining me this morning. Pleasure so that’s fine happy to try and provide some wisdom to those that listen to this zoom recording. I can’t wait. Okay so you’ve been in real estate for over 30 years – you’ve achieved many many accolades – one amazing achievement over the last five years, you’ve been ranked number three agent in Australia. Another amazing achievement is you have six children and two grandchildren – you must be really busy.
Yeah it is hectic – my life is – I always say uh yeah it’s pretty much full-on, but I love it I mean it’s good yeah great fun and I have been in real estate for 35 years and I’ve sort of ranged from sort of one two three and four but look there are some amazing operators in Sydney, in particular, I think they’ve stolen the march and a couple of Melbourne agents but like I always say that agents really in the top 20 or 30 or probably even a bit more it’s hard to separate them really I mean they’re all I’d like to think pretty accomplished to what they do lisa yeah professionals yeah so before we go on tour I also want to mention that you provide training to real estate agents so that’s at jamestostevintraining.com correct yeah
So i still enjoy doing that I’ve done it for 25 years and I feel the appeal of my training apart from the message I’d like to think it’s positive and motivating and provides great energy and lots of ideas for people that are prepared to embrace those ideas as I’m doing and certainly talking about what I’m currently doing in the market as opposed to what I did 5 10 15 20 years ago – I’d like to think the training’s relevant because I’m in the market day-to-day and therefore it’s applicable and easy to relate to in terms of all the people that are you know in the industry at the moment that can uh listen in to any of my presentations exactly and you’ve got the benefit of hindsight what worked a long time ago and you can kind of mix things up a bit can’t you and go like I remember I used to do that so many years ago and bring it back and yeah everyone thinks it’s a brand new thing i agree absolutely
All right so if we can launch into it we’ve got half an hour together so um that this this um i guess calls kind of for people that are relatively new to the industry or people who are in a sales slump people who are really looking for answers so um you know kind of put yourself in somebody’s shoes that’s you know kind of not sure what to do you know that they’re looking for the answers of of how to move forward so what’s the key to success in lead generation what tips would you give agents on how to find listings i think the key thing lisa i mean there’s a couple of things obviously i’m known for my uh nurture and prospecting calls that’s probably the number one well there’s probably a few things i’d like to hope and think i’ve thought i thought of highly in the industry but certainly the prospecting uh nurture part of my business has been the core part of my business and the reason i’ve been successful and i appreciate if you haven’t been in real estate for longer than three or six months or 12 months people say have said to me i could ring through my database in a matter of a week so when i keep finding new leads and new opportunities one of the things that baffles me about real estate agents is when someone leaves an organization which happens more than we’d like to think there’s a lot of what we call orphan data there’s a lot of data that’s not picked up by salespeople and there might be good intentions of the senior people in the office but they just don’t get to those people because they’re busy enough with their own databases so to me that’s a huge opportunity for people so it might be either data where someone has left an agency or it’s old data where they’ve had no contact no phone contact no meaningful contact for you know two years three years five years or longer so again those people are really that they should be open slather depending on how the office iss structured and set up there’s no reason why those leads shouldn’t be given to someone who’s enterprising, energetic and wants to create a much bigger database because without a database of about 500 i’m not saying it’s an impossible business but it’s certainly more challenging and then when you get to 500 uh ideally 750 to 1000 should be you know on your radar in melbourne i’m not sure about other states because i haven’t worked yes i’ve done training but i haven’t worked personally in those markets it takes five years as a what what i call a qualifying period to be successful and that can vary a bit of course depending on the person we’ve got we’ve had some agents that have defied that but in a really really competitive market which certainly we’re in i think it’s about about five years so so that’s one critical thing lisa the lead generation part of it just comes through but you know one of the the tricks with real estate as you know is frequency of contact.
What to say when you ring, how you build the bridge between you and the client how it becomes a and well i guess a natural and easy rapport with someone and not to say that’s not you know it’s going to be created over time with some people but unless you can get that aspect of real estate right then it’s going to be really really tough and you obviously look at areas of your business which are effective and you keep track of where you’re getting listings from uh there’ll be strengths but there’ll be some weaknesses there with any agent and you know what can you work on to generate a lot more opportunities
But in our market obviously, like any market, I think open for inspections provide a huge volume of opportunity especially with people that aren’t necessarily selling straight away I’ll say look we’re not selling for a while or we’re long term and long term for them might be three five years seven or eight years but I’ve got a massive head start if I track those people and you just got to track lots of them and referrals naturally are really important because there’s less pressure to get the business and less pressure on your fee as well so sort of a combination of reasons there but yeah I think that’s just a really really important one yeah awesome.
Okay, so what’s the key to success in listing high numbers? What tips would you give agents on how to list well yeah i think that’s a massive topic obviously but i think listing in big numbers comes around sort of your attitude because a lot of agents do i sort of always talk about the ripple effect a lot of agents don’t have the ripple effect they sort of tend to sort of list and sort of climb up the mountain and then slide down the other side selling them and then think god we need more listings we need to go out and prospect and hunt for opportunities and suddenly there’s a lack of listings and they create more opportunities then again focus on those the ripple effect has been consistent yeah a lot of agents have a bit of a roller coaster so i think the attitude too is that too many people are satisfied with uh either a smaller number of listings and so that’ll do me type attitude uh that’s enough in terms of income that’s enough in terms of listings i’m not sure if i could cope with beyond that because they’ve never had the team structure that allows that if the right team structure is in place, then obviously it means in terms of volume you can list a lot more lisa so that that’s a really critical one listing itself i think is really understanding your points of difference so you go into any listing presentation and say okay what’s going to potentially help me in my case marshall white.. attract this client to our agency what’s going to impress them as michael sheargold always talks about when you’re making a point to a prospective client what’s the benefit to them what’s the benefit to the vendor so that’s important i think the other thing is when people miss listings lisa they always ask what they did wrong in effect um it’s still the way you ask that question but you want to know why you were beaten to the opportunity but equally when you get a listing it’s critical that you ask why you got the listing why they chose you and your company over the other two or three or four they were considering
In our market, it’s normally three sometimes four that they’ll consider, so I want to know what be their major competitors so in terms of listing more properties least I reckon that’s absolutely crucial just to learn those lessons in when you both lose and win opportunities because that will certainly catapult you to much bigger numbers of listings if you listen intently to what they’ve said to you and like anything you learn from it because a lot of agents get on the defensive that agent was the cheaper fee bottom line is you weren’t good enough I wasn’t good enough if i missed the listing i wasn’t good enough and you weren’t good enough so that that’s a really important thing but a lot of agents have got yeah it’s important to have a thick skin but i think a lot of agents just say no it wasn’t my fault so yeah no definitely taking responsibility and learning from each one isn’t it okay so you touched on it briefly uh so the key to success in vendor management………
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