Top ISA Series: Holli Faulkner - Donna & Team New Bern

Real Estate ISA Radio

Nate Joens: Welcome everybody. We'll get warmed up a little bit slowly here because I can still see people coming in. My name is Nate Joens, I am the CEO and co-founder at Structurely. Structurely is an Artificial Intelligence inside sales agent, we help you qualify, nurture and respond to your leads. This is our interview with Top ISA. Today we have Holli from Donna and Team, New Bern Keller-Williams out of North Carolina as well as the usually Robby T. from Hatch Coaching and Hatch Realty.

Robby T: The usual, that's what I am now. The usual. I love that.

Nate Joens: But, yeah I'll let you guys kind of introduce yourselves, Robby how about we go ahead and start with you.

Robby T: Yeah, good to see you all again. I'm glad that I made it in this time, and know that you can see my face and hear me. We, first off thanks to everyone for switching over to Zoom. We switched publishers, we were just having some other problems so glad we did that and this is a lot smoother, I think and I'm excited about it.

Robby T: Robby T here, what do I do? I'm just a nerd. Total nerd who likes to geek out about lead conversion, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, throw it at me we can talk about it. But, you know I'm excited today because one of the first, you know when I got into coaching, one of the first teams that I actually helped out was Holli and Team New Bern. Holli, that was over two years ago? When was that?

Holli Faulkner: 2017

Robby T: 2017 so awhile back. And I have the privilege of going out there and meeting them, and they run a solid, solid crew up there. Donna's great, you guys have a fearless leader as you well know. I'm really excited for this episode because Holli's not just a rock star, but she's got some cool stories to share with us, and yeah, I'll turn it over to you Holli, tell us a little bit about you.

Holli Faulkner: Okay, so I'm Holli I live in New Bern, North Carolina and I've been in ISA since August of 2017. I think Robby you came in maybe, 30 days after I had started, and I was brand new, I had no clue what I was doing. I was the only ISA not only on my team, but pretty much within like 200 miles of me, I mean, the only other team I think closest to me, was the Harlow Group in Greenville, South Carolina. So I really didn't have anybody to shadow or to really talk to. I didn't know all the things I know now, as far as like the Facebook groups and all the ways to talk to different people. So, I kind of figured this out on my own. And our team was kind of trying me out, as far as, "Do we need an ISA? What is an ISA? What does that look like in New Bern?" We're kind of the last to jump on any bandwagon in the whole world. You know, it feels like we're kind of going around an island sometimes. But, it was pretty cool to become that person and kind of pave the way, in my own way.

Holli Faulkner: So, that was the way I got started. I came from time share sales, actually. I sold time share for four years prior to that, and I think that's really what gave me the grit that I have to be the ISA. Because if you can sell time shares, as far as I'm concerned you can sell anything.

Robby T: Truth.

Holli Faulkner: That is a tough business. When you're 24 you don't really care, you're just like whatever. Give me the role and I'll do it.

Robby T: I love it.

Holli Faulkner: That's where I started and now, almost two years later, I've moved into director of legend position for my team, recently in January. And we have just hired our other ISA so now I'm coaching a little bit and helping him work through that and so, I'm slowly building my own team, within my team.

Nate Joens: Sure. Awesome. So tell us a little bit about the team in general. How many buyer/seller agents? Is it just the one ISA right now? And kind of just a little bit about your STAT's when you were practicing it as a ISA as well.

Holli Faulkner: Okay, so we are a team of 19. We have two buyer agents currently, we are looking for a few more of those. We have four listing agents, we have two ISA's. One of those being new starting in April, and then me has a hybrid. We have one director of sales, we also have one listing manager and she has an assistant. We have three admin, and then we have three field care, who run our signs and do all the day to day, kind of you know that stuff there. Those people are so important. They save us so much time.

Holli Faulkner: And then we have a director of sales as well. So, we have our Rainmaker, so we're a pretty large team for our area for sure. We're the largest team in the area.

Nate Joens: Awesome.

Holli Faulkner: I would say that when I was, let's say last year, as the full-time, that was my role, that's exactly what I did every single day, I had 108 closings. So I count my first three months as a ISA kind of like in 2017, I don't really count those. I roll all of that into 2018, when I was really digging in. And so, I had 108 closings, don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing, or if I was hitting the mark or not. I was just happy with it, just to have a closing.

Holli Faulkner: So that was me. To date, from January to now I've about 8,000 dials and I have about 3,000 contacts [inaudible 00:05:58] 150 [inaudible 00:05:59] so far. That's just being kind of hybrid and part-time, and I've had 42 closings year to date.

Robby T: Cool.

Holli Faulkner: So, pretty proud.

Robby T: Absolutely. So, what's the total number of deals that your team is roughly going to do, give or take, this year Holli? What's your team looking at?

Holli Faulkner: 500 is our goal.

Robby T: 500 is goal. You guys treading pretty close to that, you think?

Holli Faulkner: Yes, definitely. We had 418 closings last year. Closing families that we helped, and I think we're going to exceed our goal. Our fourth quarter is our strongest, and so I think that we are definitely going to exceed our goals this year.

Robby T: I love it. And how many people are in the New Bern area? How many, what's the total population, just so we can get perspective here.

Holli Faulkner: Our population for all of Craven County is roughly about, I'd say 102,000.

Robby T: 102,000. I think that's one of the biggest things I hope people take away when we're talking with you is, if you're in New Bern, like your team is the, you guys have built a cornerstone in real estate. Is that fair to say?

Holli Faulkner: Yes.

Robby T: Do you know, like your market share percentage roughly, by chance?

Holli Faulkner: We're on either side of the transaction or both sides of the transaction of about one out of, I believe, it's one out of two now. So, we're about 40%, 50% we're up there.

Robby T: Sure.

Holli Faulkner: Keller-Williams as a whole is most of the market share, then of course we've got our boutique shops and whatnot, but Keller-Williams is probably the largest in Craven County, along with our surrounding counties as well.

Robby T: I love it. Nate you're up, I asked two questions, your turn.

Nate Joens: Yeah, no that's pretty incredible, and I hope that kind of sets the stage for why we have you on as a TOP ISA. So, can you tell us just a little bit about when you got started, which wasn't too long ago, what was that like for you? What was, you know, what was difficult for a new ISA just getting thrown in the fire? Just kind of set the stage for what you might have done differently, you know now looking back, that you could potentially teach to the new ISA that you're training, and that other people in similar ...