Commission Sales: 14 Life Balance Mistakes & Best Practices with Realtor VP April Myers

The Video

The Audio/Podcast

The Episode Details

 
 

In this episode, April Myers, a Vice President and Realtor with RLAH @Properties,
joins Brian to talk about Life Balance Mistakes & Best Practices for people that work on Commission. 

Today’s Guest

April Myers
Vice President & Realtor - RLAH @Properties


April is a licensed Realtor with over 15 years of experience in the real estate industry. April has helped clients buy or sell 200+ homes, and has been licensed in three different states. With a strong emphasis on excellent client service including transparency, education, and communication, she delivers an exemplary experience whether clients are buying their first or second homes, downsizing or upsizing, and everything in between. She has served on various committees and leadership positions within RLAH @properties, and the real estate community, and is heavily involved with the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. She is 2023 Chairperson of the NVAR Political Action Committee. 
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LinkedIn
April@rlahre.com

 
 

For Employees

  • Mistake: People let their ego get in the way. You think you know better than the people you’re working with, which can alienate the customer and cost you the sale. “Perfection gets in the way of done”

  • Mistake: “If you love the team you work on, it doesn’t feel like work”. If team becomes your family and all you do is work, that’s not “Life Balance”.

  • Mistake: Loyalty to a fault. You are replaceable and so is your workplace. If you’re work isn’t acceptable to the workplace, they can and will let you go. On the flip side, just because they gave you a shot doesn’t mean “you owe them” anything. If you’ve progressed in your career and the growth you want in your current role isn’t happening, it’s time to move on, you need to make that decision. Don’t stick around because you think you owe them something.

  • Best Practice: Grow and develop relationships outside of work. Sales is often a “people” job. Good relationships with co-workers and prospects can be fulfilling, but over time, you will actually start to feel lonelier, since those relationships are for work purposes, no personal, and don’t feed your soul completely! You need friends and relationships that have NOTHING to do with work.
    New research shows that even a single conversation with a friend per day is enough to boost your happiness and lower stress. the conversation needs to be “quality” to improve your day, that can mean anything from deep discussions to just catching up or joking around. The study determined in-person interactions were better, social media didn’t count.

  • Best Practice: Don’t lose sight of what the end goal is. If you get money hungry, life and “the universe” will catch up to you. If your focus is making a buck, that will cause more highs and lows. If your focus is helping people, that can keep paying dividends and be fulfilling,

  • Mistake: More hours don’t equal more success. Work smarter not harder. In the beginning of any role, you need to hustle to get started, however, working 80 hours/week isn’t sustainable, you need to work on bettering yourself and your career.

  • Best Practice: YOU are in charge of bettering yourself. Bettering and developing yourself will make a night and day difference in your career, but NO ONE will push your learning. Most workplaces are only interested in your sales. YOU have to push and stress your learning and development.
    Metaphor for this: Lebron James didn’t get to be the best just because he played a lot of basketball games.  Coaching? Training?  Practice? 

  • Best Practice: Know yourself and your strengths. Make sure you’re spending your time on the important parts of the process that are the best use of your time. Realtor examples: If graphic design isn’t your strength, don’t design your own fliers.

  • Best Practice: A teammate will allow life balance opportunities, instead of having to do every sale yourself. Perhaps splitting instead of working all the time to handle everything yourself.

For Front Line Supervisors and Middle Managers

April Myers and Brian Nelson-Palmer smiling

  • Mistake: “Good Salesperson” doesn’t mean “Good Manager” - You need to learn and develop as a manager now. Being a good salesperson might have gotten you the promotion, but “what got you here won’t get you there”. Your self development now needs to focus on management skills, not just continuing to be a good salesperson.

  • Best Practice: “Mirroring” employees and customers so they feel heard. This is a game changing skill, whether it’s a problem one of your employees is sharing, or a customer communicating an issue you’re just now hearing about, helping them feel heard is a skill you need to learn and actually practice. Reference the book “never split the difference” linked below in the book section of these episode notes.

  • Best Practice: Support your employee’s deals while they’re off - Trust is an important thing, and the trust an employee has when a customer of theirs interacts with a manager while the employee isn’t there is paramount. This is a “short game” vs “long game” conversation. In the short term, it may be better that you closed that sale or resolved the customer issue with a sale, but in the long term if the employee comes back and finds out that the manager “stole” the sale, or the manager “threw the employee under the bus” by saying the employee was wrong or didn’t know what they were talking about, these will cause a loss of trust which takes years to rebuild. “You haven’t hit your goal yet, so are you coming in this weekend, it’s the last day of the month”

  • Best Practice: In Prospecting, help employees with “value” to offer customers when following up. After the first “are you ready yet” call, the customer will get tired of salespeople calling, managers can help come up with news and ideas for what value add for the customer to share in a prospecting follow up call. Some kind of news or reason for salespeople to call is important, and as a manager, feeding these ideas to your team is valuable help you can provide.

  • Best Practice: Help your teams be involved in communities where the leads are warm instead of cold. Are there places online employees and teams can go to engage with potential clients who are already interested in what you’re selling? These places would be potentially “luke warm” connections instead of straight “cold” emailing/calling. Maybe facebook groups where they’re selling/buying what you have? Instead of waiting for them to come to you, how can you go where your potential customers are. Also, HOT TIP, offer value to these potential customers, don’t just log on and try to sell them something in your first interaction. Offer information and advice, establish yourself as a helpful resource.

Why Subscribe To The Email List: Brian does special zoom events and shares hacks and tips exclusively for his email subscribers. Topics like “12 alternatives to checking social media on your phone” or “2 email rules which will cut your email inbox in half” and more. Sign up to start receiving the tips from these exclusive events!

About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. I teach overworked project managers how to level-up their life balance and pump up their practical productivity through my Productivity Gladiator training system. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.

 

Episode Transcript

i'm Brian Nelson Palmer. On this show i talk about life balance and practical productivity it's about leveling you up as a whole not just for work or just for home and in this episode i want to dig into commission sales life balance mistakes and best practices this is on the show with me today i have april myers who is a realtor and vice president for RLAH at properties so april thanks so much for joining me today

april_myers__realtor (01:28.538)

hi thanks for having me brian

brian_nelson_palmer (01:32.22)

talk about now we're going to talk about commission sales talk about your background with commission sales and how you're relevant to this topic today

april_myers__realtor (01:37.058)

right

april_myers__realtor (01:40.258)

sure yeah absolutely so i've actually been in the real estate industry since college i took a little bit of a stint break when i came out to d c and used my actual communications degree for an internship but basically since two thousand and five i have been in the real estate industry serving either as a realtor or be in a leadership role managing agent

april_myers__realtor (02:10.278)

at brokerage so um so i yes yes so quite a long time on to age myself but i think i graduated from college sixteen years ago so quite a long time

brian_nelson_palmer (02:11.8)

wow i love i love that

brian_nelson_palmer (02:21.undefined)

oh you're putting it on the record you're brave you're brave i'm not going to admit it with us here that's now and i do love that it's funny that you said that because i think most people who work in commission probably didn't go to college thinking oh i want to work on commission like that probably didn't happen

april_myers__realtor (02:36.138)

yeah yeah yeah real estate's been in my blood so since i was a teen ager so yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (02:43.36)

yeah so and so we said or la at properties can you where does does that stand for something where does the name come from

april_myers__realtor (02:51.858)

so yeah so we actually jumped on the d c acronym band wagon when jason sherman who started or la started the brokerage he started it as a real living at home franchise so our la stands for real living at home and then at properties is our parent company we are an affiliate of there as there are ginormous brokerage outside of in chicago so

brian_nelson_palmer (03:21.undefined)

oh cool all right real living at home are got it and what makes arla differ i mean you could have joined you've been in this game for a while you could have joined any broker ridge or any real estate company what made you join arla

april_myers__realtor (03:33.138)

absolutely the glory of you know being in real estate is that there are so many different types of companies but i've somewhat divided them into two different categories you have a limited service brokerage and a full service brokerage so agents can go either way you know is the very entrepreneurial business but i selected or la becaus of the services and support that they have and they offer the agents in the background so it's somewhat of

brian_nelson_palmer (04:03.7)

nice like like what they offer in the background that's an appeal what do you mean say a little more on that

april_myers__realtor (04:08.438)

yeah so essentially instead of me having to hire out like a graphic designer or a marketing person to manage some of the pieces in the video and you know everything that comes along with being the sexy side of real estate company does that pairing down for me so they've already that ed the best venders or hired the best designers and they have them here on staff

so i don't have to go out and figure out who to hire for which project so really takes a lot of the overwhelmed off of my plate so yeah absolutely

and that kind of times into what we're goin to talk about today because if we're talking about commission sales the more time you spend on that other stuff is less time you spend selling so that would be a thing that's cool yeah and you know i will say for for me i started my career in commission sales mine was actually at a furniture store city furniture down in south florida was my home for the first five years of my career and so i when i'm i think so in our discussion today i'm going to be coming at it from a person working in a

april_myers__realtor (04:52.678)

exactly yeah we're going to get into that aren't we

brian_nelson_palmer (05:14.62)

furniture store because that's my sort of background as i look at commission sales and life balance stuff and you'll be coming at it from the real perspective so i like this little dynamic are going to have on a little different look at the same idea which is you're working based on commission and i'm assuming folks listening know when i say work on commission what that means is you make a percentage of whatever business you close so it's not a salary this is you know if you whatever the deal is if you make that deal like if i sell a sofa i get a percentage of the money of that sofa sale or in real estate you're probably familiar with this

brian_nelson_palmer (05:44.62)

but in real estate you know if you sell a home you get certain percentage of the sale price of that home so that's what we mean by commission is that your you are responsible for whatever your pay check is is based on your performance so so then april let's kind of jump in today what i wanted to talk about first is so these shows are always from the employes perspective and then i do want to touch on from the manager's perspective or front line supervisor that supervises a team of people that work on commission so let's start for the employes of the people who work on commission let's talk about mistakes and then best practices what are the mistakes that you have made or have seen made when it comes to life balance and commission sales

april_myers__realtor (06:27.378)

so some common mistakes that i have seen over the years i mean i hate criticizing people because i really don't think that there's ever one right way to do something however i do think that there's some commonalities right after coming across hundreds of agents in my career that i do feel like sometimes people at their ego get in the way they want to they feel like that they are want to do it their way and nobody else can do it better so i think sometimes that can be one of the biggest obstacles you know their entrepreneurs for a reason this is the very entrepreneurial business any sort of commission base sales is because you have to have that drive in you m so it somewhat attracts this like driver personalities so you see that a lot uh yeah what so i have some others that i had written down based on you now question yeah sure no i want to know what you yes

brian_nelson_palmer (07:21.46)

well let's go back and forth we can go one for one that's cool i like that don't let your ego get in the way i think getting like what is it's that phrase that that i always it's like a monte i love to live by which is perfection gets in the way of done and i feel like in sales that often is a is like it doesn't have to be perfect but get it done i can see that being a thing that's good i like you know one of the things i heard is that when it comes to life balance i've heard some people say you know they absolutely love the team that they work on and so the phrase that i've heard several times is love the team if you love the team it doesn't feel like work and the thing for me that i struggle with is if well that's really true and i don't wish a bad and i hope everyone loves the team that they work on that's why people stick with jobs that's why people leave their jobs if they don't so it makes perfect sense to say that however i also think if your team becomes your family and all you do is work that doesn't lead to the life balance that i think many people want inevitably they'll get the they'll hit the burn out stage where work is family is all together and then there's one bad day at work and your whole life feels like it came off the wheels because are off the rails not the wheels though the rails because it doesn't like that's that's all you have is this work and work family and so i personally don't think that's good i don't know if any everybody will agree with me on that but i don't think that i think you should love the team that you work with but you should remember that it is yeah yeah i mean i think sometimes when you are in a commission sales role it's very easy for things to become insessdual um you know like it's hard to draw a line because when clients need you you have to respond and so it's really tough create boundaries so um so i would i would agree with that maybe have some sort of space where you can you know have some relief from like work and it's just a part of you so yeah

april_myers__realtor (09:19.958)

being with everybody that you know you're working with would be good

brian_nelson_palmer (09:23.94)

for sure yeah what else do you got

april_myers__realtor (09:27.558)

so i think i've also seen a lot of mistakes and agents you know picking the right place to be um and when i say agents i mean real estate agents because that is basically majority of my experience but a lot of people are afraid to change and afraid to move or afraid to abandon something for maybe their next growth phase of life and so what that does is it keeps them somewhere that may not be the best fit for them so

you know when you were working at a furniture store you obviously learned skills that were necessary for you to potentially go on to a tougher or like maybe an easier sales role um so you know nothing i think loyalty that leads into really like i don't know why people feel like sometimes they need to be loyal because at the end of the day you know you you got you served them and they served you for a specific

purpose right so if you know you need to move on um so just making sure you're selecting the right place to be um whatever point you're at in your career and in your life if it's not serving you in you know three to four out of your five areas then maybe it's time to look elsewhere so i think getting caught in loyalty and caught up in being you know maybe it's not

the right place is a common mistake to hm

brian_nelson_palmer (10:59.3)

so true i think one of the best pieces of advice that i've ever gotten with the career and it wasn't specifically tied to commission sales but it was just the only person who's looking out for your career is you and so if you're if it's not serving you any more make it a change that makes perfect sense or find something that's if you like commission but you're not paying the bills then maybe it's a base plus commission or a different model or a different something that doesn't mean you have to quit your life entirely

april_myers__realtor (11:25.298)

m yeah sometimes it's a matter of just looking at like who you admire and where they are at and if you want to get there maybe you know let's not re invent the wheel let's figure out what they did along the way to get to where they are so yeah yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (11:29.02)

but i like that shifting gears that's a really that's a really good point i like that

brian_nelson_palmer (11:46.08)

right and you know i wanted to tag on one of my next thoughts was you know about it's about relationship sales is about relationships and i think one of the things that you get caught up in is more sales more prospects talk to more people and the thing that sometimes people forget with the life balance department is the relationships those relationships are client relationships and they're not necessarily your friends they might grow to be your friends in the long run but if you take more

brian_nelson_palmer (12:16.12)

sales calls it will start to feel lonelier and lonelier because there's actually new research that came out that shows that even a single conversation with a friend like one of your friends per day is enough to boost your happiness let me read this here is enough to boost your happiness and lower stress so the conversation needs to be quality though to improve your day so that can mean anything from deep discussions to just catching up or joking around but the study determined that in person actions were better social media doesn't count so what i take that to mean is if you're in sales or commissions and you're talking to customers all day i know for some people who might be a little more introverted you might be a little bit burned out at the end of the day but remember that you have friendships too and so talking to one of your friends even maybe even text message or something but a direct connection with someone who knows you and you know them is going o be really helpful for your life so i'm going to drop i actually have linked to that study that just came out it was in february twenty twenty three so i mean it's really recent one but i'll drop the link in the notes for anybody who wants to check it out but i found that was really fascinating just remember that that talking to someone who's a friend is a huge benefit for life balance which is awesome i like that a lot

april_myers__realtor (13:34.818)

yes yeh i believe it i would agree with that i know you said i could disagree with you at any point but i would definitely agree with you

brian_nelson_palmer (13:42.06)

yes april doesn't everybody you know it's funny man like on podcasts sometimes the hosts are just like oh that's great and oh that's great and it's like a big love fest and like no we can disagree but that's but we're also allowed to agree

april_myers__realtor (13:52.798)

yeah but that i would because i just was actually it wasn't crazy i was just talking to one of my girl friends from home a couple of weeks ago and i was like after that conversation actually tested her the next morning and i was like you have no idea like how good that conversation was for my soul you know and i think you know so it's there's proof in the pudding so

brian_nelson_palmer (14:12.44)

absolutely that's amazing yes i love it april what else you got any other mistakes that you've seen

april_myers__realtor (14:20.758)

i mean i see mistakes all the time but those are the you know the two main ones i should have probably had three um you know i think i actually for i do is sometimes losing sight of what the goal is and what the end goal is and falling out of love the reason that you decided to do something anyway like you just said you know being in commission baseslesb

brian_nelson_palmer (14:27.36)

oh you're allowed to have however many i've got i've got one more that i'll share though yeah hit me

april_myers__realtor (14:50.418)

and you know it's about relationships and i've seen a lot of people in this business get very money hungry and you know life at some point will catch up with you at that point you're starting to see it a lot especially with a lot of the anti trust issues that are going on in the real estate industry um and you know you have to truly love relationships and love working with people and love serving your clients and keeping your eye on that prize

day like making a difference you know in people's lives i think is something that i ve definitely seen um you can just see it and you can you can see it reflected in their sales when when there isn't a passion there anymore for doing the right thing

brian_nelson_palmer (15:37.92)

so true at the at the end of my furniture career i was starting to look at okay what's my next move going to be i was thinking about making a change and heat it up to the government and that kind of thing and at the end there my performance at work definitely waned as well and the longer you try to keep it going because it's what you've done the more people will eventually start to notice and it'll just like generally people don't at the end of their careers is not when they're when they're starting to get burned out is not the months where they break the records generally unless it's a fluke you know it comes through in your work i like that and you know the other the one other thought the mistake that i saw made there was one moment that happened in my career which i'll never forget it was my first month there i'm at the store and i was not going a hit my sales goal that first month and so my manager's words to me were well you're a little bit short so are you going to come in on your days off and hit that goal and it was that perception that like okay well you have to now i have to choose well do i want to have days off or because i'm not going to hit this goal and i going to give all of my time off up so that i can work more and that's that that thinking that happens with commission it's like oh gosh well the more i work the more money i make and then you just get in that you spin up and all you do is work all the time and that's not healthy so the thing

april_myers__realtor (17:04.078)

yeah it's not but at the same time i think in the beginning of people's careers especially in commission base sales you have to somewhat work harder and then that you wil three years from then or two years from then or even a year from then you got to kind of put in the work in the beginning and know that the seeds that you're planting will hopefully grow you know and be cud be able to be cultivated you know vio such a farm girl you know that will be able to you know like you'll you'll reap the benefit of the reward but i do see that too where agents will come in and they'll see you know the real estate industry obviously does not have an image problem i mean million dollar listing all of those things and that they think they're going to walk into this sort of life style and it's a bunch of little actions that combine into you know findlay a close deal and then you know it you have you just you may not it may not look like it does on t v and it certainly is and so i think that's one of the biggest mistakes too is that people don't really understand in the beginning you're going and to have to bust er about to get there so yeah you can't really think about okay yeah you do have to come in on your day off if you care you know

brian_nelson_palmer (18:25.58)

you know and and i wanted to share best practices and i one of the things that comes to mind as you're talking here is like you know actually just kind of feeds into what i just said which is so working more doesn't necessarily mean working better right it's the work smarter not harder thing and so the metaphor that i have and i think this definitely applied to my sales career was certainly the education and developing yourself is important and that kind of feeds into what you're talking about which is work harder in the beginning work harder but also any time you start a new job you're going to need to evolve so my metaphor for this is Lebron James didn't become you know one of the best basketball players and people might be disagreeing with me some of you might not listen to basketball and listen or watch basketball that's fine but la bron james is one of the all star you know considered one of the best n b a players of all times basically to me if you got a space jam movie then that put you up there right Lebron and michael jordan are those two guys so but you don't get to that level because you just played a lot of basketball games right there's education there's coaching there's training there's practice practice practice and so one of the things that i think people get hung up on is working more doesn't necessarily mean working better or working smarter and so you have to work on yourself like what is your practice you know you go to the gym to work out and get stronger well do you go to the gym for your career what do you do for like to make you a better sales person because just working more doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more and more successful and so remember that

april_myers__realtor (19:59.278)

right i think that also right exactly i think that also comes with experience and maturity and confidence that is nothing anybody can give you but that is something that develops over time i mean i look at you know when i met you and when we decided to create that networking group in crystal city which was such a good idea i mean i will tell you i am still closing business off of that networking group years and years later so it works but you know if i knew now

brian_nelson_palmer (20:23.18)

that's amazing

april_myers__realtor (20:29.238)

then what i knew now um you know you can't like turn back you can't take back experience and what it gives you um so you know when when we met each other um there's definitely certain things that i should have been doing had i been coachable had i been trainable had i been mature enough to know that maybe other people know better than me um so you got to be open to also you know knowing that you're not going to know everything right away so

brian_nelson_palmer (20:57.2)

sure so true and it's a learning right you continue to evolve there's that whole thing about what it's ten thousand hours i think or something is the number of hours before you become really good at something or whatever there's a there's an uplift with everything but remember a lot of that is education and training and practice like do you actually practice your craft and that's a that's a thing i was at the fair the other day and i walked by don't know if this has happened to any of you but i walked by t mobile had a display and fair in florida we're selling the home internet for t mobile they've got like five g home inter that you can get now and they just give you a modem take it home and it's like a cell phone sitting in your house that becomes your modem for all your like so this is their five g home internet and they're selling it and this guy credit to him because when you work at a fair his commission or his performance is based on the business he closes at the fair so he only gets paid if you sign up for tea mobile there at the fair and nobody goes to the fair thinking i'm gonna shot for home internet that's gonna be so this guy you know it's funny because after all of the practice and everything i was able to the people that i was with were taking him at his word and oh you know he's he was creating a sense of urgency by oh you know there's not going to be well if you don't do it today there's going to be a sign up fee later and and i was just laughing because in my head i'm like oy he created a sense of urgency that was a test close that was a close that was but it only comes with that practice of going through the exercise of the sales so you can really pick these things out and and know that that's a what what's happening there so it was also fun because i mean i shot him down i didn't sign up for team mobile five g at the fair but i felt for the man on like boy it was an aggressive sale it was very aggressive because he if you didn't buy then he was also never going to see you again so he wasn't worried about the relationship with you either

april_myers__realtor (22:49.018)

yeah exactly and changing people's minds you know in part of my you know management role in real estate was helping recruit agents to a break rage so i'd have to call them on a day any given day most likely it wouldn't be the day they were mad at their current company it would be a day that they're happy with them but i'd have to over a period of time change their mind to even want to potentially come and meet with me so that the most difficult thing to do when you're working a furniture store and people are walking in to buy a couch they're probably moby couch most likely from you or the next furniture store they're walking into an open house my open house most likely they will buy a home they've already made the decision right to buy so that that those commission base roles where you have to convince people to do something that they didn't walk in knowing that they would even do are the most difficult so props to that dude

april_myers__realtor (23:48.838)

fair yeah cheers to that

brian_nelson_palmer (23:49.28)

probably to that guy at the fair for sure absolutely and oh so any other like best practices or hacks or things that you've thought you've got for you know in this for the person working in commission

april_myers__realtor (24:02.918)

uh i mean if we're off the mistake you know train i think the biggest thing is to really know your own strength and to know yourself m come to the realization where you know i do have a marketing background i do know what i think i want to see looks good but i also know that it's not the highest and best use of my time to be you know moving graphic around or images of a home on

on a bosher lay out my team does that for me and i am totally fine at this point in my life as i have a child i have a life people that need my attention outside of my clients that i realize i'm going to do my job at a hundred and fifty percent hopefully the people that are is employing are going to do their job at a hundred and fifty percent and their love its graphic design so i'm going to let them do what they love because they're better at it than me and

therefore i have that time you know and that that you know on the table for me so just knowing your personality in your tendencies on where you could potentially give some things away and give some things up i think one of the best things somebody can do who's in commission base sales or in you know an independent contractor roll of some sort so i've done a lot of you know i don't know if you read any good books about it and pass it the road back to you it's a great one reading about either the anagram and where you fall

your personality on the anagram who you would work well with where your strength and your weaknesses are and strength finder i mean that's an older book but it's such a great book to to kind of do an introspective look like where you might be able to give some things up or put them away that need to get done but you might not be the best entuting them so might not be the best use of your time to do th so yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (25:58.4)

absolutely that's i like that a lot it is about your strength and knowing your strength and you know there's only a certain number of hours of the day like i mean i've i did a ted talk on the value of your time and that kind of thing and like you only have a certain amount of time and your time is worth something and so think be conscious of the way you're spending it and that applies at work and at home too so if you're if if you could move graphic around and get a decent thing but there's somebody else who could do it in way less time way better than you

april_myers__realtor (26:24.318)

right find a service that can they are the ones that hire the people that have the passion for it so let them live out their passions while you live out yours

brian_nelson_palmer (26:28.42)

then leverage that relationship or that ability and and find out i do it and and you know the one other thing for for life balance one of the best practices that i certainly hope that that people embraces in sales oftentimes it becomes a little more cut throat where like you said you're very money motivated let me close this sale or in the furniture store the the idea was if somebody came in and they asked for a sales person and that sales person wasn't there you could simply say well they're not here today but i'm brian how can i help you and then if i close that sale it's mine and so that's this thing where if you're not there you might miss a prospect that comes in or something like that and so that the thing that i i think is a valuable tool is certainly everybody in the furniture store the big thing was hey man get some money down get a deposit on it follow up with them you can take a deposit over the phone but if they come in and you're not there then you might miss it or if they want you to get credit it's possible to split a deal and so the

it's thing if your partner with somebody at the show room and you're like hey this is me or my partner is such and such and you have a colleague then if you're not there you are still getting half of that sale and it's not a complete loss and so partnering up or tag team team work in sales while it's a real challenge because if you then that's not the whole commission you're missing on money right yeah but right

april_myers__realtor (28:02.618)

you have to accept what the other person could do yeah yeah it's a lot of trust you know in yeah that can they do this i don't know what if they screw it up for me m yeah i have we have i have two business partners you know in my career in my career as an agent and i mean mostly they are there for like if you're out of town if i'm out of town clients need things whenever you know it's like they know you're gone or something but you got to set it up if the ian and getting them what they want is really at the heart and the soul of that transaction and those decisions are made easier but yeah definitely has to be somebody you know you vie with so yeah yeah that's hard it's growth

brian_nelson_palmer (28:44.76)

for sure now um let's switch gears now and talk about so front line supervisors and middle managers who are overseeing commission sales people what are the lens we're looking through is how do you maintain life balance with your folks that are with the team the people that are on your team what are their mistakes and best practices what are your thoughts april on this one

april_myers__realtor (29:12.078)

um as as a manager of of real tors in the past is that what you're kind of getting at there sorry okay

brian_nelson_palmer (29:19.14)

yeah manager in the past or for people who currently are like what are your thoughts on that one now you're supervising the commission sales people

april_myers__realtor (29:27.238)

yeah so i mean i basically only always then at botiquebrokerages brokerages that real estate brokerages that provide a level of service in the back end for agents right so like it's hard to sell something you don't believe in um i probably wouldn't be anywhere else that wouldn't have that when i moved to iowa and i worked at you know a larger skill brokerage with limited service to their agents i saw

you know and i experience the challenges myself that that those situations and limited service agency provide so um so i've seen it at all i mean so i think the biggest mistake would be not yet again picking the right brokerage for your personality or your support because maybe you're worried about the split or like they take a higher cut or their transaction fee is higher and at the end of the day it's like okay if it's a couple of hundred dollars difference or even a thousand dollars difference over time like

if at the end of the day you use that time to dos something else to generate more business for yourself than it was worth it you know so i think like that's the biggest mistake i c people make is just getting stuck on these little the little numbers that add up to the big ones in the end

brian_nelson_palmer (30:47.46)

sure okay that and that makes i mean in total it's it's your life and the deal not just the deal the dollar doesn't is in the end be all that makes sense um what

april_myers__realtor (30:54.858)

m m yeah yeah so i mean managing agents it was you know you they'd come to you you know with a problem or an issue and you know it's most of the time it constituted like clients or a situation that had arisen but um you know tigers really don't change their stripes you see the same people have the same issue over and over so being open to growth and open to making yourself better

um is always the advice i would try to give people you know she books or resources or you know what i've done in the past and stories of what i've done you know and so that that was just the best way i could try to try to help guide people so yeah yeah so there weren't employees so that's where the great area is in the tough thing you know was you can't really say you know

brian_nelson_palmer (31:42.8)

yeah do you I think one of the other mistakes that i've seen to is that they uh there is this idea that just because you're a good sales person means you'll be a great manager and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier which is you know are our it's a skill set it's a learning that you have to do like lebron james didn't become the best without practice and coaching and so if you step into management that is a completely different skill from it's great that you can sell you can sell all day but now that you're in management that is a different set of skills so don't take your same sales approach into management learn the new skills learn the different perspective and really look at it home your craft now as a manager to so that you can help those people you have the perspective of having worked on commission so it's really valuable to be able to really understand where they're coming from but managing those people is going to be a different skill so it's that what got you here won't you're there and that's very very true of being a great manager versus a great commission sales board

april_myers__realtor (32:59.578)

one of the things that i had the experience of being able to go to i don't know if you've ever heard of it but black swan group is a huge consulting firm for negotiation skills for agents the pleasure of being invited to an event where they talked about the main points of the book called never split the difference so chris boss f b i negotiator for years wrote this book called never split the difference have you heard of it

brian_nelson_palmer (33:28.74)

i've read it huge supporter yes that's a great book

april_myers__realtor (33:29.918)

yes it's a great book yeah so i've been to some of their events and you know one of the things that one of the instructors went over one day was like mirroring and as a manager of people a manager also of a four year old which sometimes isn't that different than managing full grown full grown adults just and so i started to practice those skills you know that i had learned in that class i'm like well if i practice it on my cobbler is now for almost five year old

brian_nelson_palmer (33:45.54)

yeah definitely manager yet

april_myers__realtor (34:00.158)

maybe it will help me learn to naturally more do it in front of the adults i interact with every day and it really does work i think nearing what people say back to them so you can sort of people are like feel listen to and heard it's one of the best skills they feel like i walked away with after that class and taking it it was just seeing it live and seeing it actually change your interactions with people as a manager um that it's insane how

it works so that's awesome yeah yeah yeah and i actually highly recommend the audio book well you could buy the harder to or the hard copy as well but the audiobook is great because you have the inflection in his voice and so much of it is tonality his like the late of m d j voice or whatever he says he uses um it's really great it's a really great tool like in a man

brian_nelson_palmer (34:29.8)

that's awesome i will i'll drop the i will drop the link i will drop the link of that in the in the notes for this episode too so you can check it out if you're when you're listening

april_myers__realtor (34:59.318)

jan anybody so yes yes yes

brian_nelson_palmer (35:01.14)

that's good mirroring i like that a lot and actually it's funny you said audio book i think it's fair that if you listen to podcasts you probably are hipped to the game of audio books so it wouldn't be a stretch that somebody listens would would do it yeah

april_myers__realtor (35:10.598)

yeah little did i know audible audible actually charges you every month i didn't know i was like sitting around with a group of friends one day and i was like yeah i get free to free audible books every month with my free amazon prime and they're like you get audible for free with amazon prime i'm like yeah i do i went and looked at my credit card and i was like oh yes i know i don't i've been for this the whole time yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (35:32.26)

no definitely been paying for that absolutely i am a two book a month guy and i end up i read a bunch like a book a week is my average and i mean it's just a ton but i also listened to him right well i listen to him on two or three times speed by the way there's a life pack for you if you want to listen get through books faster most when they teach you how to do the the speaking or when you read a book for an audio book you have to enunciate clearly and speak a little

april_myers__realtor (35:40.558)

yeah wow life without kids yeah yeah yes

brian_nelson_palmer (36:01.88)

or so it's like if i go to the south and the people in the south i'm going to try to do a draw and they talk this fast versus you can just talk at a regular speed like this and this you'll totally understand me speaking at this way too that's the difference between the original and the two time speed so don't be scared of two time speed you can do it right one and a half start there or you'll get used to it i slowly crept up to three times speed and i love that now

april_myers__realtor (36:21.658)

i've tried it i can't keep up with it i can't i need like a one and a half i'm like wait what did they say re wind

brian_nelson_palmer (36:32.1)

yeah exactly um let's see so one of the things i wanted to share for front line supervisors and middle managers there's a couple of things but we talked about promoting partnering or being supportive of partnering or your people if they've got a deal coming in you certainly want them to be comfortable saying hey go talk to my manager who can help me get this deal done because i'm not here and by doing that not only do you help the employee in that moment but the impression that the employer gets is also that

brian_nelson_palmer (37:01.74)

you support them not being there on their time off and supporting people's time off is such a valuable thing in today's day an age of like people can work anywhere in the all the things you've heard about people switching jobs and stuff having a manager who if you're on vacation and you you come back and you find out that they they did that for you while you are gone is such a wonderful thing to have that kind of support from your manager so definitely promote the partnering among the staf

brian_nelson_palmer (37:31.92)

or supporting the staff i think that kind of goes without saying sometimes but i wanted to say it because it's the reason i wanted to bring it up is not just because it's what you should do but because the way it feels on the back end is very supported and people will stick around for that which i think is really helpful

brian_nelson_palmer (37:49.04)

and and one of the other ones that i just i'm on a roll here and i was just thinking about you know when it comes to prospecting now for teaching your teams you can't just keep calling and saying are you ready et are you ready yet are you ready et because those calls you're allowed basically one of those and then after that why are you calling me again so having something of value to offer them when you call so as a manager certainly from for the employees

brian_nelson_palmer (38:18.74)

espective you know have a reason besides i want your money i want your money i offer them something what's in it for them right at the witham what's in it for me so that's a thing but also remembering that as a manager now if you find an anecdote or a story or hears some kind of latest news thing on this particular item or there is something of relevance that you can help provide your team that would be a reason to follow up

brian_nelson_palmer (38:48.76)

but obviously everybody has there's a sale coming up so that's an obvious one where there is going to be a discount but besides that like for a real tore it might be hey there was actually an offer that fell through on this one and i heard that this little anecdote they might do it for this amount of money or some kind of story or something that's relevant to the person so that you're offering them some value or some tip some something interest rates just went down by point to five per cent or some reason to call them for them not for you

brian_nelson_palmer (39:18.9)

that's a huge thing on your prospecting so help help employes with that

april_myers__realtor (39:20.518)

yeah yeah absolutely i i think that's yet again another big difference between being at boutique versus a large um like run of the mill you're a number brand is that you know all real estate is local and happens you know in your area i mean you even know this living in pentagon city crystal city um that like it's different you know a mile away over here at my house where i'm in volvedin you know and so

you know it's so hyper local to the market and so when our brokerage got together and like our leadership got together every week talked about strategies and ways in which we could help support you know our agents we always talked about okay what is the best way what are the easiest things that we can get these real ters in the most specific way you know that we can add value to them which then they can be at bunch on saturday

sunday and and roll it into a conversation you know with with their clients and offer value to them so you know sort of that's the biggest difference between being somewhere you know like here is that i'm empowered with information i'm not taking the time to do those tats to crunch those numbers to know that i get an email every monday that tells me that there were two and a half offers on every listing in the d m v and half of those contracts that were ratified at home inspect

on that as in the past week that isn't stuff that i spent my time doing it's the numbers that my company has crunched and they send those to me which then i can i've literally brought it up in five or six conversations this week brought it up now again seven um and so it allows me to then talk um you know to to offer them something about to help guide them in their decision making when their house should go on the market

april_myers__realtor (41:20.218)

you know we're speeding up a listing now because he heard that he's like okay we need to get rolling we need to get this place on the market you know so if we can offer something of value that then trickles down through then then helping the client um you know i mean they have my loyalty you know until forever because it's helped me have easier conversations out there in the field so yeah yeah yeah i don't know if you saw it

brian_nelson_palmer (41:28.undefined)

wow

brian_nelson_palmer (41:44.46)

for sure offering that value i like that a lot that's a good one april

april_myers__realtor (41:50.478)

i don't know yet again we were joking like mails go to brian's priority box or do they go into the look at that later but if you haven't looked at it yet this week the email that i sent out last week is about you know i'm a real ter i come across contractors i come across home organizers i come across people painters like people all the time that people need to use right and so what i did as i offered you know who do you have who do you need what project

april_myers__realtor (42:20.278)

home is overwhelming you right like let me make it easy for you to make a simple phone call you on't have to go on google and find somebody you can trust i have the role acts of of people that you call a trust so making life easier for your clients when you are in commission base sales is just if you get that key and you can turn it in that lock like and keep you'll have people's loyalty you know for life because i think keeping people coming back is one of those things super and is the best furniture salesman i love my couch

april_myers__realtor (42:50.498)

thanks for coming over and watching the super bow but you should go go to him when you want one you know like think about the long game there not just the short game so yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (42:55.56)

sure

absolutely yeah i dig that a lot and you know one of the other ones that i thought as a supervisor the other thing you could do for for your people might be looking for ways to engage with potential clients and i know sometimes this is hard but as a manager it's like if for example cold calling someone is painful and it's not a high likelihood of success right so for my example here is like you could just call somebody

brian_nelson_palmer (43:28.28)

out of the blue or message like linked in all the time i get people who just email constantly in their email is their message is a straight up ask of hey i have this thing to offer you and i really just want to lie i delete those immediately those are ridiculous however in the in the world of furniture there are facebook groups of people that are trying to sell furniture so that's a place where the leads are warm not cold so if instead of cold emailing or cold calling or trying to

april_myers__realtor (43:31.198)

uh yeah i do too yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (43:58.22)

ok it that way if you could join a facebook group of people that are selling couches and then you can go on and you have a couch that's just like the one for sale and they're saying hey i'm trying to sell or hey i'm brian actually have this one right here here's the link to the website where this thing is listed also happy to share that one too or somebody says they're looking for something you know being available looking for those opportunities for leads that are right exactly and yeah

april_myers__realtor (44:23.278)

ah creating a space for that that's what the facebook group did right

brian_nelson_palmer (44:28.38)

and but create and you could create that group yourself but at the same time you know being a part of those groups joining those groups and engaging with those groups you even if they don't come to you the first time or the second time if you're a realtor or you're selling something that's it's finding the places where your potential clients hanging out and then don't show up and be weird show up and be helpful right don't show up and be like hey i want to sell a house

april_myers__realtor (44:53.838)

yeah exactly don't don't show up ante yeah walking out of her being like i'm gonna i'm gonna get somebody no that's not gonna work like you people will see through that like the clearest diamond they've ever seen you know like it's just like yeah people can sense it when you need something if you come across is like you want to help in a genuine manner yet again as a brokerage employee helping other employees

april_myers__realtor (45:24.058)

or even as a independent contractor helping those around you you have to come at it with a purpose and that purpose cannot be self serving it has to be for the greater good

brian_nelson_palmer (45:36.34)

and you know i'm and in sharing this tip to i'm not sharing this because i'm sharing this from the lens that i want find those communities find those groups and i share that because i i really wish no one ever had to get the i was put on the spot that story i told you where in my first month you're not going a hit your goal are you going to come in on your days off like well actually i don't want to come in on my day off but if i can jump on facebook and

brian_nelson_palmer (46:06.12)

find some leads and do some work or work find a way to do the work that doesn't involve me giving up my life to do it and helping me find opportunities like that or practicing or evolving or that kind of thing that is really helpful for the for the people that you're working with so

april_myers__realtor (46:10.878)

get people in the door

april_myers__realtor (46:14.898)

you just also never know where that will lead you just don't one of the things in another book that i love start with no which is where chris voss got a lot of the basis for never split the difference he talks about clean slating everything clean slate even if yesterday nobody came into the furniture or tomorrow today is a new day i assume nothing i don't assume anybody's going to want to walk in here and by five thousand dollar couch i don't assume they're going to

by a three hundred dollar end table like you literally it is a new day it is a clean slate like i love the clean slating um just attitude you got to have it because you just never know where things will lead so yeah i love that so

brian_nelson_palmer (47:08.18)

true and sometimes and you know it's funny we're saying this and then i know that that also on the flip side can be absolutely exhausting because you hustle and you hustle and you hustle and nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and then i can't afford to pay this you know bill we're going to be a little short this month like that all of that is very real so the ebb and flow of it is very real so support you know finding ways to support your team with the ups and downs is

yes i think ah sharing sharing like you just saying that to me i didn't even know there were facebookgroups for furniture sales although you know um like i'm not in that arena but like now i know and so like i think that that is such a good being open to sharing with others and not gate keeping um you have like like attitude of more like abundance and being like hoo hey i went into that and this helped me because of that ike

april_myers__realtor (48:07.438)

sharing those anecdotes i think is also one hundred percent yeah you got to do it you got to grow and share and don't be scared that enemy is going to take anything from you because they're not

brian_nelson_palmer (48:19.12)

i mean it might happen but the number it's going to pay dividends so much more than it will the short term hurt will be worth the long term gain in my opinion so that that's a good one well those are the things that i had april did you have anything else as far as for managers or supvisors on mistakes or best practices packs tips stuff like that

april_myers__realtor (48:38.478)

i think yet again just being open to sharing and realizing that other people might be able to do something just as well or better than you you know there are definitely some times in my career as as a manager where you know i would want like a fellow in play like i'd want them to take on a project so i would sort of like okay will hear this is my idea for that and like and hoping they would take it you know and run with it because i know that i am not the best person here i don't have the

ground to understand how it would all happen you know and but then trusting that person that if they don't take that idea and run with it there could be a reason you know why so um yet again checking the ego i think that's where a lot of this spoils down to so yeah yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (49:24.88)

absolutely very good and you dropped a lot during this episode you said a lot of great books and stuff and so i'm going to make sure that i share those links in the episode notes here i did have one book that's i mean when i started zig zigler was that was the big name and sales and so secrets of closing the sale by zig zigler was the first book that sort of changed my life on the sales front and i'll share the link of that one too but that's just there's all kinds of great resources we talked about you know labronjane

april_myers__realtor (49:39.538)

oh i love him

brian_nelson_palmer (49:54.8)

didn't do it didn't become what he is today by just by playing basketball games all the time and so that making sure you're learning and educating yourself in this would be a good one do you have any books actually off the top of your head do you have any books for managers of sales people that come to mind if you don't i know i'm putting ou on the spot here but i'm trying to think

april_myers__realtor (50:11.458)

yeah the management part yes actually i do um u the five dis functions of a team is a really great book for managers of any sort of sales company or sales roles it's called the five dis functions of a team the other one is a ble tart with five is the five voices have you heard of that book five dis functions of a team and then yep and then five voices those are two great books for me

brian_nelson_palmer (50:35.44)

five functions of a team and five voices now i'm going to check these five dis functions of a team and five voices okay nice

april_myers__realtor (50:43.578)

and i er um like as i was in my putting myself in my leadership role i've really digested those books and they were very you know helpful um for me so you and then do you want me to get into like you know commission day sales what i think is a good book or not i have one more i have one more i have one more because i am obsessed with it right now it's called nig selling um it's yes it's so

brian_nelson_palmer (50:53.4)

nice cool

brian_nelson_palmer (51:01.56)

yeah if you got any other ones we're on a role with the books bring it on girl let's do it eh

april_myers__realtor (51:13.638)

good it's my favorite book i living breathing gives you the structure to your like everything to a t um so that's a really good one and then there's a really great podcast that i had written down it's about setting boundaries which i think kind of rolls into your whole theme right yes exactly and it's with nedrataa and it's on the pretty smart podcast about setting boundaries with nedratalaso

brian_nelson_palmer (51:27.52)

okay life balance that's exactly what we're talking about yet

april_myers__realtor (51:43.518)

i think getting into specific episodes of podcast is better sometimes than just saying what podcast um but yeah

brian_nelson_palmer (51:43.96)

i will

brian_nelson_palmer (51:50.22)

sure absolutely sometimes there's seven hundred episodes okay well i'll subscribe to this so it's if that's a specific episode that's cool yeah exactly so i'll get i'll get the link to that specific episode i like that that's cool i like that well april we're kind of let's bring it to a close here and so what i want to do is first i want to say here's what i love i love the fact that i appreciate and love that you have this perspective from both as a supervisor and a manager and also as a straight up realtor that works on

april_myers__realtor (51:53.698)

yes yeah and then you can't find anything right right right right

okay thank you okay

brian_nelson_palmer (52:20.02)

commission and that same thing and so i really appreciate that you have the perspectives and stuff you offered today are also i can see them applying both to the employee and the manager and supervisor and this is kind of really helpful across the board and stuff and so i appreciate that you are well thank you for sharing your i mean i talk i did a talk on time so thank you for sharing your time with me and with us with us today with these things and for those folk

april_myers__realtor (52:46.858)

thank you thanks for having me

brian_nelson_palmer (52:50.18)

who don't want to keep in touch with you or reach out to you because they have questions about real terris the stuff we got today what's the best way for them to keep in touch

april_myers__realtor (52:55.058)

yeah sure yeah so i know we kind of touched a little bit on social media i am on linked in um i am also in april myers i'm also on instagram april myers d m v you can get everything there like personal professional it all kind of rolls into one when you're in this business so those two places are the best way to find that you can also drop me in

i love a good cold email april at r l h r e dot com

brian_nelson_palmer (53:31.52)

those links in the episodes episode notes too so thanks april and for and for you tuning in one specific request which is do you have a friend or colleague who works on commission and if so would you april just made a good point which is it's not just sharing the podcast but the actual episode if you want to share that episode with the april nine really just where our goal with this was to share some perspective and possibly help folks in that department with life balance and commission sales so i would love that if you

brian_nelson_palmer (54:01.74)

would share that so thanks for watching thanks for listening and if you're more of a reader you like the short summary of things you can subscribe to my email list i'll send you my three favorite life hacks for time hacks right off the bat and you also get even more content it's not just the podcast i'm doing webinars and other things consistently and so you'll get all of that to so if you want a little more in life balance and practical productivity i would love you to join the email list but right

of sharing this productivity gladiator thing with you so thanks for checking us out and that's wrap.

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