#171 Mail-Right Show With Special Guest Gaurav Gambhir

How To Build Successful Real Estate Agent Team

We really do have a great interview here in our series of discussions with up and coming agents and brokers. In this interview we talk about how it really important to build a power real estate team if you really going to be able to grow your business.

Gaurav Gambhir began his real estate career in 2002 after graduating from Drexel University, where he studied Computer Science, Business and Mathematics.

The analytical skills he gained through his studies provided a solid foundation for his first job in a real estate company as a Network Administrator. His love for learning the real estate business ultimately lead him to manage 3 Million square feet of Commercial / Industrial and Residential real estate for a private property owner in Philadelphia.

His 10+ years of experience now includes almost every aspect of the Real Estate business, including but not limited to: Financing, Negotiating, Tenant Fit-Outs, Property Management, Acquisition, and Sales.

Robert: Welcome back to the male right show. This is episode 171 we are with Gaurav Gambhir this morning. And Mr. Gambhir has established has done a lot inside the real estate space. He’s built up a very large team. I’m going to let him actually a run through his credentials. But we’re excited to have him on the show and one of the topics that he just a said that you wanted to share with how to survive in your first year of real estate, which I think is of interest to a lot of people that actually tune in and listen to our show. So with no further ado, Mr. Gambhir, why don’t you introduce yourself.

Gaurav: Thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. Gaurav Gambhir. I’m from Philadelphia. I have a few organizations that are run. In the brokerage world I have a large team close to about 60 people called the condo shop. We specialize in the condominiums. Our team has a production of close to about $15,000,000 a year. We do spend a lot of energy in rentals and luxury as well. Along with the investments for our investors, and a property management company. And I recently bought a market center in the Keller Williams franchise. And we have about 400 people in center city Philadelphia for our franchise. So that’s what I’ve been keeping myself busy with in the last few years. And I’m more than happy to discuss anything that I can share, value with.

Robert: Okay. And this is a, I’m going to ask you a question to clarify for me and I’m sure our audience already knows, but, but Robert Newman, he doesn’t know. So you said you just bought a franchise for 400 people in market center. I’m assuming when you say that, what I think I understand is that you went to Keller Williams and you purchased a territory from them. And somehow you already have 400 agents to go along with that territory.

Gaurav: Correct! It wasn’t existing brokerage company. The study with about 400 people. The owner wanted a. So last year the corner shop used to be an independent brokerage company. We decided we’re going to merge with the local franchise of Keller Williams in that territory. We will be one of the largest teams in that territory. We were about 15 percent of the production in the company. And when the owner wanted to sell me with a natural transition for us to buy it. So I bought the market center with a title company, with the existing office locations with 400 people and an exclusive territory in center city Philadelphia.

Robert: Okay. I understand. All right, so you’ve got a lot of experience from the high level brokerage side. Building a brokerage from the ground up and then taking it from, it sounds like small to medium size. Is that about?

Gaurav: That is correct. And now we have about $700, million dollars a year production in this market center. Our goal is to close to about a billion next year. There are a lot of growth opportunities that we have. So I feel that I started a brokerage company from scratch. Then I build a medium size and I think this is a time to take a little bit larger. Not as, obviously not as large as a remax franchise or Keller Williams franchise. You know, we’re still pretty big. Probably top three center city Philadelphia at this point.

Robert: Okay. Congratulations. That’s really, that’s really a, that’s a hell of a feat. So, and I know, I know that there’s probably, am going to say that I would love to hear a very brief side to two sides of the story. I would kind of like to hear your thoughts. So I think that a lot of the brokers that I talked to, the ones that, that are fans of my website, which is inboundrem. And I talk about real estate marketing a lot, so I get a lot of small brokers. If there was ever a thing that those brokers talk to me about, it’s what advertising to try to use to get from being small. And when I say small, I mean probably between three and 10 people to something that resembles medium size. And definitely 60 year to 400 is definitely going from small to medium and being generous. Saying that it’s even medium. A lot of people would say large. So, I would love to hear about what you’ve done to grow the advertising there. And then, I would like to hear about what your advice is to first year agents. So take it away.

Gaurav: So, I’ve been doing this for almost 13 years now. And it realized when I started in the industry as an independent new agent getting leads are the most difficult part of our business. And I realized long time ago it’s not one man effort. You need to realize you need to be able to team up with other people, build leverage and add value or what you bring to your clients. We get greedy too fast in our new years of being a real estate agent that I need to eat what I kill and I don’t have enough to kill. So I need to eat everything that comes my way. So that problem and the logic defeat the growth that you can have by leveraging with somebody else. One plus one is not two or three. One plus one can be 11.

So what we really, so what I did was when I started the company I right away joined and made a team with another friend of mine. Who was also was little bit more experienced than I was and he was thinking of the same guidelines. So one plus one became 11. We were willing to be in many places during the weekend. Or hire an assistant because the cost was so less. You’re spending the same amount of money for advertising, but it’s being split in half. That have mentioned me as much as spending a full a page in a newspaper. So we went from a, we took advantage of a lot of social media today. You know, going back to a teen years, it wasn’t as prominent, but today it is so easy to use social media to your advantage.

People look at videos more than the look at photographs or text. Blogs and newsletters are not such an important part of our day to day advertising as competitor targeted marketing with Facebook. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a Gary Keller’s top 100 people in this country. So Gary Keller is the founder of Keller Williams, Chennai and I have the luxury of meeting him once in six weeks. And we’ve had the last discussion about the shift and my message to a lot of new agents will be, don’t forget that this is still a combat sport. Door knocking, farming, networking, requesting for leads, cold calling, prospecting is still the name of the game.

And we feel that it’s changed. It hasn’t, it felt like it changed because the market was on the high. But when the shift happens, it will have to go back to the same basics again. And people who are in the industry less than seven, eight years, I’ve never ever experienced a downshift. All they know is year after year, the market just increases the business increases. So I think I’m going on a tangent but. And I’m going to come back. I feel I had so much in my mind.

Jonathon: No, just, you know, just to intervene slightly. I personally totally agree with everything you’ve just said. Everything but I think it’s a combination of these basic mythologies with technology. And if you can blend the personal side of real estate, we have technology that is the best combination. But all the basic techniques that you outlined, I think you’ve got to totally know about still use, but combine them with technology. I’m sorry for that interruption as think about what you were saying.

Gaurav: So there are two kinds of agents today because the market is shifting on how technology can influence our business. There Is more than $12,000,000,000 of money being spent in our industry by technology on how to disrupt the agent’s market. So that much money is being spent just to see if they can get some market share away from us. I don’t think there’s going to be ever a time when there will be no agents that we were. The role of the agent will change, but the agent will always stay. So there are two main components, there are two kind of agents that exist today. There’s a tech enabled agent and an agent enabled tech. So companies like Keller Williams, Berkshire Hathaway remarks, we all tech enabled agent because we want to use the technology and help people achieve faster and better results by using technology. The agent enable tech are companies like open-door, a purple bricks, a Zillow, trulia where they do need somebody to get them inside the doors, but they’re using technology to get to the point of using the agents.

The Company like Zillow will try their best to see how can I get the agent out for us to be able to get some of the market share. And the agent is trying to see how much technology I can use without giving my market share to you. So it’s a constant battle that is going on and the companies like Keller Williams that is spending so much time, energy and technology that will help organizations like these to be to allow the agents will still be in business. And the agents who feel that don’t want to use technology. It’s like here’s a scenario.

People who are about five, 10 years away from retiring, they feel how long I can exist before I need to use the technology because they don’t want to. And technologists thinking how fast can I kick your behind and get you out of the business to get your market share. So that’s a constant battle between technology and agents and I feel the value proposition of an agent needs to be stepped up for us to be able to survive in this business. So just getting into the business and thinking I can be an order taker and go to a property and write an offer. That whole logic is going to be going away. We need to increase the value proposition and go down to the basics and that human impact and personal touch will always win over technology. Sorry I speak a lot.

Robert: No that’s fine. So, but. Alright. So I think that you’ve moved through a lot of different topics really super-fast. So I’m going to break them out. So and see if I understood. So I think that you just had a very large comment on, I think he said technology enabled agents. And there’s lots of services out there that are starting or exist where basically one of the ones, I don’t remember what it’s called. But there’s a service that I know of where they’re leaving keys in a little lock and there’s a voice over a monitor and somebody can just walk into the house.

And into a tour of the house and there’s cameras enabled in that and there’s basically a service center where an agent is sitting at and they’re talking to somebody walking through a home. That’s a piece of technology that I know about that, that exists today. And you’re basically saying that you believe that that while there will be some space for that, that you still think that the personal touch. The agent who becomes a source of value through however they establish value. You think that there’s never going to be a time in which that person doesn’t have a strong career inside the real estate business. In my

Gaurav: You are right. I think we’ll always have a strong career in the real estate business with an agent, and I’ll give you an example. Technology will always disrupt a portion of the market share. However, that person sitting in Arkansas trying to sell a property in Philadelphia with face time or with the video will not be able to tell you that the school bus stops two blocks away. That John lives across the street has two kids. At the new stand across the street also sells a newspaper who can deliver to your house. And if you wanted to go to the mall, here’s a shortcut and the bag will save you 10 minutes. Till we get to that point. That’s the value proposition that I’m talking about. If an agent goes to a new neighborhood and you don’t understand the details of that neighborhood, you will always lose your technology.

There’s a difference between functionality and fiduciary. If you’re only talking about functionality of I won’t. I will tell you this place as a three bedroom, two bath, x comps in the area. I can do that in excel sheet. You would have functional agent and you’re. You may be easily be replaced by technology. But if you have you asked fiduciary to it with your value proposition and your understanding of the market. It is hard to replace that with technology today. All the technology that I have that exist in today’s world to be able to achieve that. So agent will always stay in my mind. The role of agent will change and we all have to step up our game.

Robert: Okay. Alright.

Jonathon: Sorry to interrupt, but I think we need to go for our break actually. And when we come back obviously Robert`s got a question already followed up that question.

Robert: I would like another recap, but yeah, go ahead.

But I think we had a fantastic conversation so far. Anyway, if you are not listening to this I suggest that you should listen to it. Again we will be back in a few moments.

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Jonathon: We’re coming back folks. We’re going to continue this great discussion. Back over to you Robert.

Robert: So, you know, it’s funny because I got your name right like the first time. And then I, I’m in my head about it. So now I’m not necessarily getting it right which, so anywhere in any way. I’m going to say this. The other thing I was going to say was I just wanted to recap because we do talk a lot about online marketing and you’ve touched on a number of different points. You said, hey, we’ve done targeted ads on Facebook that was a big part of your social efforts. Have you. So I have a number of questions I want to circle back around and just make sure that we offer a little bit of, have good information to our core listeners. Because we always talk about marketing. Can I, can I say what is so targeted Facebook ads, have you used, and let’s say real estate websites with SEO? Have you used any particular vendors that you’ve been pretty, that you’ve been happy with? Or have you used any vendors that, that had good buzz, but when you personally used them, it didn’t turn out all that well?

Gaurav: Sure. We use conversion product, we use that a lot for our campaigns. It has worked very well for us. A component of follow up boss has worked very well for us as well.

Robert: Which component?

Gaurav: From the sales perspective, you can customize some of the integration that they have with your Gmail account. All the text emails into one location. It was very helpful for us. Some agents, the functionality of both of them differ, so some agents were more comfortable using one over the other one. I think we did try to use boomtown as well. It wasn’t well received by my team. So we’re now back to conversion and follow-up boss. And the reason why we have two is because we have close to 60 people in our team. It is hard to convince everybody to use one.

There are different dynamics, but that’s why they used to have them. We have used a lot. We spend a lot of money on SEO, organic from our websites. We have achieved great results with that as well. But at this point, our marketing effort is the money that we’re spending a lot on our targeted Facebook ads. That is where our focus has been. We have in house videographer at this point. We are creating tons of videos. Many of our videos that we’re putting out are getting over 5,000. It’s at this point, we just fantastic. I and my business partner did a couple of cultural videos on our team. We are close to about 25 to 27,000 hits. So that kind of reached that we’ve seen. And our goal is not just a selling real estate. Our goal is also for branding. As long as people see you.

And remember you when they think of real estate, you did your job. It’s like a billboard on a 95, you don’t know how many plus seeing it, but when the time comes in and they think of you, it’s hard to measure, you know, in a how many people looked at that and then they came to your website. But when I want to hear, whenever I hear somebody saying, Oh, I saw your video and I know you’re in real estate and I saw that you are under management. I did my job. That was my marketing. So we targeted on Facebook, people who are in the area at a certain age, at a certain demographic, household income. So our in house videographer helps post those videos to be in front of them.

Robert: Okay. That sir is very helpful. I really appreciate your detailed breakdown of, the tools that you’re used to.

Jonathon: Can I ask a question as well?

Robert: No.

Jonathon: Do you struggle with agents that come into your, into your agency to explain this, that a lot of the people that they’re going to touch going to be selling or buying right now. But they will be in six months. They will be nine months. They will be in 12 months and it’s very important that they keep themselves in front of that audience. Not in a really aggressive way, but to keep them touching that audience. And not to lose heart because if they keep touching those people that sometime in the sales process they will be there for that agent. Is that difficult to explain? Oh, and do you agree with what I’ve just said?

Gaurav: I agree with you, and just to add on top of that. We also tell our agents that don’t forget that you have to tell them for them to like you. They have to like you as a person. The things that you do, the brand that you put out. The message you talk about politics on your Facebook, your friends are looking at. They make this judgment call about you. Do I want to do business with you or not? And can you? Are you responsible enough that you can manage my biggest investment in the light? So I need to first know you,, like you like what you’re doing. And I also explained to our agents, make sure that you show them your success. If they don’t see success, why would I trust you to be able to help me with my biggest investment? And if you not, any people always say, well, I don’t know, post real estate on my website or my Facebook.

I don’t like talking about real estate. You know, I don’t want to take a photograph with my new buyer that’s coming in. You need to. You’re sending your brand. If you don’t want to sell your brand, why would companies all over the world open retail spaces, billboards, advertising TV? You need to market yourself. You decided to be in business for yourself, marketing yourself. And if you don’t market yourself, nobody’s going to know. And as the cheapest way of marketing it, I always wear my company jackets, in on my logo is my backpack, has my logo, my jacket has logos all over the place. And everybody says, well, you always marketing yourself.

And I said, tell me what’s in my back jacket without looking at it. As I can take one of the two guesses because I know your teams. I said exactly. I did my job. By now you know which teams I represented, so when you think of real estate, think of me. And I’m proud of my team. I am proud of my brands and I think everybody needs to be proud of their own branding as well. And social media is so cheap. It’s almost free at this point. You can touch so many people. Take advantage of the technology today and touch as many souls as you can. You never know when your next business is going to be coming from.

Jonathon: That’s great. Over to you, Robert.

Robert: Thank you. Alright, well we promised our listeners a series a little bit of advice. We’re down to about eight minutes just to give you a little bit of insight on the time. But I would love to know what advice that you’d give to an agent who’s the first year in business. So we’re going to step out of the brokers shoes, put you in a. You know you’re brand new, it’s 2018, you’ve got your shiny new real estate license and you’re ready to do some business. What would you do?

Gaurav: So I’m brand new to the industry. The first thing I’m going to do is tell everybody in every place that I know, including social media, repeating myself, telling them, and all your friends, reminding them to help you pass on the message to everybody else. The word of mouth that if anybody’s looking for realistic transactions, rentals or buying to call you. After that the first transaction that you get. Here’s a small, a piece of advice that I can to tell to my, to the listeners. Here’s an example. You rent or you sell, try to host by bringing three or four types of pizza and ask your client, can you help in the house warming party? If you bring three or four pies of pizza cost no more than 20 buck. But everybody who’s in that room at that time, the, your client is going to introduce you as the agent who helped them achieve happiness.

And you are there in front of everybody in that room, in a targeted audience who is either going to be buying or have bought. That’s the easiest and cheapest marketing. Don’t lose on that opportunity of being there. And the last thing I’m going to say all to everybody else as well, don’t get you tied up to sales. Buying and selling doesn’t pay your bills. The donors and the commissions pay your bills. Every rental is also an opportunity to buy and sell in the future. So focus on lead generation by helping people on by renting as well. If you did, it went. If it worked 40 hours a week and you render to rentals, there’s enough money at a fast transaction happening that week as compared to waiting for a transaction to happen. Three months later, they can fall apart. So rental, rental, rental, rental sale, rental, rental sale will give you more money and has seven clients for the next two years to be buyers as well.

Every buyer who’s out there today is a rent. It was a buyer, tomorrow was a renter today or yesterday. Focus. Do not lose your focus from rentals as well. Many companies don’t want you to be rental agents because title and mortgage and they want other access services. But please, you can pay your bills by creating the value by rentals. 80 eight percent of the people will deal with the first agent that dealt in their life before rental or buying. Only 13 percent of the people in this industry actually tap into the clientele. They leave the 73 percent for me. Because I’m touching them after that.

Robert: I’m going to add something to that because, I’m in California. And you know and I make a reasonably good living actually at this point. And the funny thing is that I, and some of the other people that I know that are equally or is upwardly mobile, we all rent. We still rent. Okay? Because for a wide variety of reasons, but one of the most common reasons which I think would surprise people is that I and everybody else thinks that there’s a market shakeup. And with home values being what they are right now, I need between $775,000, million dollars to buy a piece of property. So since my belief is that the market shakeup is probably going to come, and I think that that’s going to affect home value prices anywhere from 20 to 30 percent. It doesn’t make sense at all for me to buy. Even though I probably have the ability. So I think, and I’m not alone in that I have, I was just hanging out with a couple of my friends and there were five of us at the table. Four of us were capable of buying a home and all four of us, all of us had said, now we’re not going to do it yet.

We’re looking, we’re getting ready, but we’re not doing it yet. Which means that if you used your logic just to, to capitalize on what you just said, I don’t disagree with you? I don’t think none of us are looking for a rental. But if we did have a rental and we encountered a strong real estate agent, somebody who is really boots on the ground. I think they’d have a very good chance of capturing a sale from us in a year or two whenever that market shift happens. So I just wanted to throw my opinion out there on, on your, comments. I liked it. I nobody’s ever said that on our show before and I agree with you.

We have close to like 6 thousand exclusive rentals in the city. We Started about five years ago when nobody else wanted to touch rentals. And they got me started with one building and now we are, we represent about 25 exclusive high rises in the city of Philadelphia. And all those millennial that everyone is jumping around doing the first time home seminars. We have helped majority of them rent before. So I have the phone numbers. I know when the lease is expiring. I know how much they were allowed to pay or willing to pay in rent. I know their credit scores. I just have to do a good job going back to them. And that’s what we’re doing now. That’s good.

Robert: Interesting. Well I love like anytime anybody has ever asked me about, you know, 11 years ago I decided to be an online marketer. And in my experience was in telemarketing and I had no, you know, when everybody was asking me, that’s kind of a crazy shift to try to go from one to the other. And I just said, you know what, I’m going to do the same thing I’ve done and everything in my life. I’m going to outwork the other guy. That’s it. That’s all I’ve ever done. I’m not any better. Not any worse, you know, I’m just, I am willing to work really, really hard though. And I love the concept of, Hey, if you put, like, I think if you’re an agent, I think you’re absolutely right. And you are new and you don’t have a lot of money, but you do have a lot of time.

Take whatever business comes your way. If it’s rental, if somebody’s going to pay you $500. You know, also getting out the door and creating momentum for yourself, which is a principle of sales. And real estate is just sales. I think is really like an amazingly strong concept too. In other words, you wake up in the morning and instead of worrying about where your next dollar is coming, if you could walk into a building, if you’re selling condos for an example, and basically start showing people units. That’s what I would advise myself because getting into the habit of getting out the door, talking about real estate regardless if you sell it or rent it or anything else that would be a great first step in my mind. In terms of being in the real estate business.

Gaurav: You practice your scripts on a rental, a $2000.00 rental. Or on a $800,000 buyer. Your rather practice your script on a renter. Get your scripts better so when you hit that million dollar buyer, you have one chance of making it. So don’t screw it up and if you’re newer in the industry, you to practice your scripts but nobody better than renters.

Robert: I love that. I love it.

Jonathon: That`s such an insight. You must come back to the show. Hopefully you will agree to come back on the show. I think it’s been a fabulous discussion. How can we find out more about you and your team and what you are up to?

Gaurav: Sure. Our website is thecondoshops.com t h e c o n d o s h o p s.com and my email is gaurav@thecondoshops.com

Jonathon: And Robert how can people find out more about you and what you’re up to?

Robert: I was just. I was so excited waiting for you to ask. So you can find me@inboundRam.com and you can check out my YouTube channel. You can find me on Facebook though the, I think the best place for me personally or my website and my YouTube channel.

Jonathon: Oh, that’s great. And if you want to find out more about mail-right. We’ve got. We’ve been built in the product up. We got some new functionality that we’ve just recently I did the product. Go to the website, look what we’ve got to offer, book an appointment with me to have a conversation. A one to one which is easier available on our about us page. I’ll be delighted to show you what mail-right have to offer you the agent. We’ll be back next week where we’ll be talking to somebody who hopefully will have insights to help you get the success for you and your family into 2019. We’ll be back next week folks. Thank you so much. Bye.

 

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