Blog / Leadership
Amy Kasler, Playing the long game
A few years ago, Amy Kaslar from LJ Hooker Thornleigh, in Sydney’s North West, had a dream - to be the top salesperson for LJ Hooker - globally.
Last year that dream came true. With an outstanding 82 transactions and $1.25m in gross commissions, Amy was named the top salesperson for LJ Hooker – in the world!
Amy says, “I’m extremely driven in what I do and I love what I do, that’s why I work six days a week. I’ve got to keep pushing my goal. I’ve got to keep striving for something, to achieve better results.”
We’re looking at long term relationships with people.
As a fresh faced 32 year old, Amy started in real estate back in 1999. “My father decided to open a real estate office in Thornleigh and I was working for hospitality at the time and he asked me to join him. We started an office from scratch with no rent roll and no experience at all.”
Listings need to be spread across the next six to twelve months, even eighteen months in some cases.
Amy and her father learnt very quickly that, “People weren’t going to call us. We had to get out there and do something about it. It came down to hard work. I went out and started doorknocking my patch. Over a period of about 18 months, I doorknocked 1200 homes twice.”
She eventually found her feet and ten years later, she was writing $500,000 in commissions. But she wanted to go further and once she sat down and worked out a very specific business plan that stated her intention to double her numbers, she did!
You need to have that structure so that you’re maintaining a pipeline of new listings coming in and making sure that you’re following up your clients and staying on track.
“In that business plan, I had my top 15 personal goals and my top 15 business goals that I wanted to achieve in a 12 month period.” At the end of that year, she found herself accepting the award for top global salesperson.
Structuring her week and spelling out goals took her to that next level. She says, “You need to have that structure so that you’re maintaining a pipeline of new listings coming in and making sure that you’re following up your clients and staying on track.”
Some of the strategies that Amy adapted include:
Communicating for conversion
Being able to convert a call is the key to success. She says, “I group my conversions. I’ve got people who are looking at listing in the next 30 days, then I’ve got 30-60, 60-90 and so on.” When calling she makes sure she provides useful information about the market and doesn’t pester. “For someone looking at listing in the next 30 days, I make regular contact. I ring them nearly every day or every second day giving them updates, trying to find out what date we’re working towards and really finding out when we’re going to list.” Some of the questions she asks are: ‘Look, how are your plans progressing?’ or ‘I’m just giving you an update on such and such that sold last week at x amount’ or ‘Just ringing to let you know we had 15 open homes on Saturday; we had about 160 buyers that came through. Three or four properties went under contract. This means we’ve got this many buyers left.’
The Long game
Amy understands that if you want to stay at a certain level and continually perform, you have to have a pipeline of listings and sales. She says, “Listings need to be spread across the next six to twelve months, even eighteen months in some cases. So if I know people are going to be selling in eighteen months, I’m going to be in regular contact with them. We’re looking at long term relationships with people. You don’t want to just work with people who are doing business right now; that’s really important but you need to maintain those long term relationships too.”
Amy explains, “I have a list of around 150 potential sellers for the next twelve to eighteen months; I carry it around with me so I can ring them at any time. If you ask anyone who works with me, I am always on my phone. There’s a big joke in this office that my headphones are permanently attached to my head. So, I will make calls in the car to my top prospects. I am renowned for being at the hairdressers and ringing my list. I just take any opportunity wherever I am and quite often I’ll email them too. I use a hard copy system. I don’t really use the computer a lot and what I do is I write in little notes when I talk to my clients. I mark them off as I list them and it goes back to my assistant and then she updates that in the system for me and prints out the new list.”
It's all about the team
Amy knows the value of having a great team of people around her. She says, “When I started writing about $450,000-$500,000 I put on my first assistant and Elizabeth stayed with me for years. And then, when I got really busy, so up around the $900,000, $1m mark, I needed to put on someone else because our hours were crazy. So, I took the plunge and put on Sue, our Buyers Advocate. We work with what we call a ‘done list’, which is emailed to me at the end of every day, not negotiable. I need to know what they’ve done for the day, the outcomes of any of our properties and clients and so on, so that if I’m then working after hours, and I need to touch base with our clients, I’m up to date with what’s happening.”
Not one for standing still, Amy has a new goal, to be the top salesperson franchise owner. She says, “I’m competing with some pretty big people. I know I’m in the top five currently so we’ll see where I come in. I’ve got a target of getting to $1.5m at the moment. I need to list twelve per month and sell ten.”
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