Ten years ago, finishing up his service with the U.S. Marines and marrying his longtime girlfriend, Brian Kurtz was searching for the next phase of his career. He tried selling furniture, selling used cars and got his real estate license to partake in the “wicked stressful” practice of flipping houses in Metro Detroit. Feeling like he had no direction, he later took a few years off to get his bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Michigan – courtesy of the G.I. Bill.
“I was confused and didn’t know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” Kurtz recalls. “What could I do? What could I commit to?”
In 2013, not long after graduation, he relaunched his real estate business and stumbled across prospecting coach Bill Nasby, better known as “Master of the Doors,” for his decades of face-to-face, door-to-door marketing techniques. Kurtz bought Nasby’s audio course and began patiently and systematically knocking through neighborhoods himself. Every evening from 5-7 p.m., he would knock on every door he could and ask one simple question: “Are you thinking about selling your house now or in the near future?”
“I did this for five days. I got rained on. I got sunburned. And as winter was approaching, I realized that there was no way that I could consistently do this,” he says. “As luck would have it, anytime I was the furthest point from my car on my door knocking route, that’s when I would have to go to the bathroom really badly!”
Convinced there must be a better way, Kurtz found himself on an Agents Online real estate community forum Real Estate prospecting thread that astoundingly continued on for 335 pages. The title: “I Make 100 Cold Calls Every Day & Love It!”
The author, a real estate agent in Toronto, Canada, shared his strategy of making cold calls every day until he actually talked to 100 people. Kurtz thought it was a compelling approach and got his hands on the Mojo 3-line Real Estate Dialer to plow through his chosen territory: Canton, Michigan – a fast-growing commuter paradise equidistant between Ann Arbor (University of Michigan) and Detroit.
Canton and nearby Plymouth share a highly regarded school district and are two of the hottest real estate markets in the area. Now affiliated with RE/MAX, Kurtz also chose the community to raise his own three kids because it is within reasonable driving distance to his family church and the Detroit River, which is world famous for its Walleye fishing.
“One of the big goals I’ve set for myself is that I want to devote 52 days of the year exclusively for hunting and fishing,” he says. “We all have to build the life that we want. This area is a fishing mecca. In late April and early May, people come here from all over the country just for the Walleye.”
The Detroit River is teeming with Walleyes, something Realtor Brian Kurtz hopes to become better acquainted with as his business grows.Kurtz maintains that Mojo is one of the Real Estate prospecting tools that will help him make his one-day-a-week fishing dream a reality.
“Mojo helps you get exclusive leads,” he says. “What makes Mojo unique is that you can find the leads in the areas you want to work in, in the price ranges you want to work in. You catch them earlier in the game before the competition even knows about them. And because you find them earlier, you have more time to nurture them.”
Sticking with his 100-contacts-a-day Real Estate prospecting goal that he picked up from the Toronto real estate agent, Kurtz starts his day at 8:15 a.m. and usually reaches 100 conversations by 11:15 a.m. Sometimes he will call from 9-11 a.m. and then start up again around 6:30 p.m. to wrap everything up. Based on his experiences making cold calls, he has the timing down to a science.
“If I start calling at 9 a.m. instead of 8 or 8:15, it will always take me a lot longer to get my 100 contacts,” he says. “The magic hour when everyone’s home is 8-9 a.m. There’s a nightmarish drop-off at 9 a.m. when people go to work and there’s a second drop-off around 11 a.m. when the spouse has left home to do errands. The afternoon is an answering machine desert. You’re much better off waiting till evening.” “Mojo’s Triple Dialer is a miracle to me,” he adds. “One of my favorite features is the Do Not Call Button. If someone is a jerk or is mean or tells me not to call them again, I just press the button. I want to avoid talking to them ever again. I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without Mojo.”
“The real power of Mojo is the ability to make groups and lists. I’ve made contacts with 2,200 people a month and six months out I’ll be able to follow up with nice people who I already know will pick up the phone. Starting in January, I think it will take me two hours a day instead of three to do my prospecting,” he says.
Kurtz says he often hears from a lot of skeptics that phone prospecting is an endangered species because many people are getting rid of their landlines to exclusively rely on mobile phones.
“Nonsense,” he counters. “As long as people have cable TV, they’ll still have their phone lines. The companies practically force them to do so with their bundle deals. As long as that keeps happening, we’ll be able to thrive with our prospecting. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”
(Follow Brian Kurtz’ weekly success with his Mojo Triple Line Dialer at his Elite Real Estate Prospecting blog.)
