Kevin Ward shares how Roy and Lou Thomas generated over $100,000 in commissions, then breaks down his three-step method: pursue relationships not deals, deliver great results, and ask for referrals after closing. Focus on lifetime client value instead of one-off transactions.
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Hi there, it's Kevin Ward and I want to talk to you in this video about how to create, how to find $100,000 clients. And no, I'm not talking about you have to go out and find people that want to buy or sell a 4 million dollar or more property. What I'm talking about is something that I learned years ago by total accident. And it happened with a couple named Roy and Lou Thomas. And they were my first $100,000 clients. Now here's how it happened. I met them actually calling their daughter because she and her husband had a vacant lot for sale in Keller, Texas. It was just a little piece of crap $25,000 lot, okay, a $25,000 lot for sale. I was calling for sale by owners because that's what I did. I chased business. And so I started my real estate business. I was calling every day, I was just on the phone, calling for sell by owners, calling expired, calling around, just listed, just sold. I would just call in anybody that I could talk to, I was calling them. And I called this lady and she had a lot her and her husband were selling for sale by owner. And she decided after a while and I talked to her and I actually followed up with her because they were thinking about listing and all that. And finally she said in a conversation after I followed up three or four times, she said, you know what, we decided we're just going to keep the lot. However, my parents have a ranch that they are wanting to sell and you might could help them. And so she referred me to her parents, Roy and Lou Thomas. Sure enough, I met with them. I listed their ranch, sold it, helped them buy their next house in Colleyville, Texas. A year and a half later, Roy called me, said, I just never liked this house. We rent, we completely remodeled it, put $150,000 into it, we're ready to sell it, come list it. I came listed it, sold it, helped them buy another house that was their final home. In the meantime, I took multiple referrals from them. The daughter that had originally had the house, the lot for sale. I ended up from that listing and helping them buy another house, helping them sell their house and help them eventually later buy another house. Roy referred to me, his brother helped him sell a house. So out of all of that, it was like four or five listings and three buyer sales, maybe four buyer sales. And when I added it up, over a three year period, Roy and Lou Thomas were worth over $100,000 to me in commissions. Now you're talking about a kid this was in Dallas, Fort, Texas. My average sales price was less than $175,000. And here was one client worth $100,000. And one day I realized that they were the first ones. I really didn't have others that I was doing that. And here's the reason I was so busy chasing the next deal that I wasn't building relationships and building trust and earning those kind of repeat referral business from countless other clients that I had had that I didn't stay in touch with. And what's crazy is the reason I got all those deals was because of Roy Thomas. Roy always called me. And I realized later, how many deals did I miss from other clients that didn't call me because I wasn't staying in touch with them. And so I just, I wrote down three simple steps for how to get $100,000 clients. This is not rocket science, but it's so Simply obvious that 90% and probably 95% of real estate agents don't do this with passion and consistency. And I'm telling you, if you'll do it, it will change everything for your business. And literally, you do this for a couple of years and you will never again have to worry about a paycheck. So, number one, the number one step is go after clients, not deals with. Stop going after the deal, stop going after the listing, stop going after the sale, and go after the client. Because if you win the client, whether they're listing and selling right now, no matter what they're doing right now, if you win the client, you win the relationship first, you're going to always get their deals, and you're going to also get more deals from the people that they know they're looking to buy or sell. So I was always going after the next deal. In fact, I didn't want to talk to you if you weren't ready to buy or sell house right now. And I learned later, wait a second. The relationship will get the relationship. And when they are ready to buy or sell or know somebody, you're going to get that deal. So go after the client, not the deal. Number two, once you get the client, deliver great results. If you don't deliver, if you're just playing as an amateur and you're not, you're just kind of not doing what you say you're going to do. You're not returning phone calls, you're not really communicating with them well, or they don't feel like you're going to bat for them. You, you're not going to get the loyalty so number two is deliver great results and then number three is simply stay in touch after the transaction or even before if they're not ready yet, stay in touch and ask for referrals. Stay in touch and ask for the business. When you'll do that. What I have discovered is over the time I develop more $100,000 clients but how many clients did I have that were worth $8,000 that that could have been worth 30 or 50 or $100,000 or more if I had built the relationship after the sale and gone for the client and understood that the client's lifetime value was more than any single commission you'll ever make in your career. And if you'll do that, if you'll go after these $100,000 clients, not going after the deal but going after the relationship, you're going to find that you have a lot more opportunities to embrace. You'll be able to add value to a lot more people and you'll always be able to expect yes.
