The Huddle with Brad Noll: Insights from Melissa Little
In this episode of the Student of the Game podcast, host Brad Noll speaks with Melissa Little, realtor and broker at Noll Team Real Estate, to explore the critical importance of having a specialized listing agent when selling a home. Melissa shares her extensive background in real estate and the skillset that helps realtors produce significantly better outcomes for clients. Brad and Melissa dive into the fundamentals of pricing, condition, and location, and how these elements affect a home's sale. They also discuss the strategies behind effective marketing and the importance of open communication with clients to minimize stress during the selling process.
Noll Team Real Estate
SINCE 2003, Noll Team Real Estate HAS BEEN HELPING PEOPLE IN THE FORT WAYNE AREA FIND THE FREEDOM TO LIVE THE LIFESTYLE THEY WANT.
DESPITE CHANGING MARKETS AND BUSINESS TACTICS, WE HAVE REMAINED TRUE TO THIS BETTER AND IMPROVED BUSINESS MODEL BY FOCUSING ON BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND SERVING OTHERS IN EVERYTHING WE DO.
WHATEVER STAGE OF LIFE YOU ARE IN, OUR GOAL IS TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE WISDOM AND TOOLS NECESSARY WHEN BUYING OR SELLING A HOME. WE PUT YOU FIRST TO ENSURE AN ENJOYABLE AND PROFITABLE EXPERIENCE.
Transcript
Welcome to Student of the Game podcast where we help you master the fundamentals, fall in love with practice, and win at the game of life.
Melissa Little:I'm your host, Brad Knoll.
Melissa Little:Welcome to the classroom.
Melissa Little:Welcome back to another episode.
Melissa Little:This is the huddle.
Melissa Little:This is my take on our last episode.
Melissa Little:Melissa Little, listing specialist for my business.
Melissa Little:I wanted to make that very clear in the last episode.
Melissa Little:She's not the listing specialist for Nolteam.
Melissa Little:Real estate overall for everybody, but for me personally has helped me with close to 100 families listing and selling their home.
Melissa Little:So her background is perfectly aligned for coming up with strategic planning, market analysis, and then a marketing strategy.
Melissa Little:So I'm going to, I'm going to break down a little bit of that podcast, but I want to go deeper a little bit.
Melissa Little:And I don't use that word without intention.
Melissa Little:I've been reading a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport and if you have some time, look up his podcast.
Melissa Little:They're long form episodes but he goes deep says the book title.
Melissa Little:So Cal's an author, but he's actually a professor as well.
Melissa Little:So I love what he talks about deep work because he says that most of us don't spend time thinking about the work that we do.
Melissa Little:We're busy.
Melissa Little:You know, you think about social media and scrolling.
Melissa Little:Well, there's this word that he uses called context switching.
Melissa Little:And context switching is when you switch from to do to do your task to task to distraction to distraction.
Melissa Little:When you keep switching back and forth from all these tasks, there's residue in your brain and that residue actually carries over into that next thing.
Melissa Little:So think about this, think about if I'm scrolling social media and I've got to write this marketing proposal for a new client.
Melissa Little:And so I write the marketing proposal and then I get stuck a little bit and I go back to social media or I get it from my desk and I go have a conversation with one of my coworkers or if I'm working from home that day, I take the dog on a walk and then I'm, you know, listening to music.
Melissa Little:And then that makes me think about a to do that I need.
Melissa Little:That's context switching.
Melissa Little:That's going back and forth with all of these things and that's not getting deep in the work that we do every day.
Melissa Little:He says when we go deep in the work that we do every day, the outcomes are better and the outcomes for our clients and the work that we do is richer.
Melissa Little:And so think about that.
Melissa Little:When's the last time you actually just sat with a Thought, right?
Melissa Little:I mean, think about that.
Melissa Little:You sit with a thought.
Melissa Little:A couple episodes ago, I talked about, you know, my daughter getting rear ended, and then she needed a new car.
Melissa Little:And I decided to sit with that for a little bit.
Melissa Little:You know, my first reaction was based on how I felt.
Melissa Little:It wasn't necessarily what I.
Melissa Little:I thought.
Melissa Little:And so if you think about this pyramid and at the very bottom level, it's do like everybody just do like, just do, do, do like there's action.
Melissa Little:Well, above that is planning, and above that is thinking.
Melissa Little:You got to think.
Melissa Little:You got to take time to think through.
Melissa Little:I just got out of a meeting with my wife with no team interiors.
Melissa Little:And the thing that Lindsey and I talk about is, okay, if we want to go to that next level, there's a lot of doing happening.
Melissa Little:We got to get to the planning level and then the thinking level.
Melissa Little:And that will help you grow your business, right?
Melissa Little:So if you're out there and you want to grow your business or you have a goal that you're trying to set, a lot of that starts at the thinking level.
Melissa Little:You know, you can't have anything if you don't think about it, right?
Melissa Little:I'm not going to change my diet or my eating habits if I don't think about wanting better eating habits.
Melissa Little:You know, I can't.
Melissa Little:I can't have better financial outcomes if I don't think about the things I need to be thinking about.
Melissa Little:So as it relates to Melissa, let me break that down a little bit, and I'll come back to Cal's deep work here in a second.
Melissa Little:But, you know, she really talked about three things on our podcast.
Melissa Little:And, you know, Melissa is my listing agent.
Melissa Little:She helps.
Melissa Little:She helps me with my clients.
Melissa Little:We tag team together.
Melissa Little:We work on strategy and on pricing.
Melissa Little:And I love bouncing ideas off of her.
Melissa Little:As it relates to how can we.
Melissa Little:How can we set our clients up for success?
Melissa Little:You know, our mission is we want to help people save time, reduce their stress, and help them keep as much money in their pocket as we can.
Melissa Little:And there needs to be a plan and we need to think about that.
Melissa Little:And so I'm going to parallel Cal Newport's book Deep Work with why Our Specialist Model is Elite.
Melissa Little:Student of the Game is brought to you by no Team Real Estate.
Melissa Little:Our mission is to eradicate mediocre real estate transactions on your largest financial purchase.
Melissa Little:You shouldn't have to deal with average.
Melissa Little:We do this by helping you save time, reduce your stress, and helping you keep as much money in your pocket as we can.
Melissa Little:You can help Us out by introducing us to your friends or family who want to make confident real estate decisions, whether buying, selling, building, or investing.
Melissa Little:At Nolteam Real Estate, we are connected to a group of realtors who sell one in every eight homes in North America.
Melissa Little:If you know someone moving out of your area, there's a great chance we can connect them to somebody we know like and trust.
Melissa Little:Remember, relationships win.
Melissa Little:Now back to the.
Melissa Little:For a long time, I was a realtor by myself.
Melissa Little:I was helping people buy homes, people helping people sell their homes.
Melissa Little:I was doing the marketing, I was doing the paperwork, I was doing everything and my sales pitch.
Melissa Little:So if you're in that stage right now where you're.
Melissa Little:Where you literally wear every single hat, this is your sales pitch.
Melissa Little:I know because I did it myself.
Melissa Little:Work with me because you get me.
Melissa Little:You don't get passed off to an assistant or to staff or to a team member.
Melissa Little:Work with me because you don't get passed off.
Melissa Little:You actually get me.
Melissa Little:That was the facade that I would sell when I was by myself.
Melissa Little:And it worked, right?
Melissa Little:I mean, if you, if you think about that logically, that sounds like it works.
Melissa Little:That's normal.
Melissa Little:After being on a team and after having a team, I just disagree with that.
Melissa Little:I don't.
Melissa Little:I don't believe the clients can get the best possible service if everything that has to happen in a transaction comes from me.
Melissa Little:I just, I just, I disagree with that.
Melissa Little:So now, 21 years later, we've grown my personal business into a specialist model where I believe in a listing agent, I believe in a buyer's agent, and I get to sit here and I get to do a lot of the deep work.
Melissa Little:I get to do the thinking.
Melissa Little:I get to study the market, I get to study the industry.
Melissa Little:I get to.
Melissa Little:To see what trends are happening, what direction our clients should go.
Melissa Little:Should we list our home now?
Melissa Little:Should we wait?
Melissa Little:Should we do a remodel?
Melissa Little:And we get to bounce ideas off of our entire team?
Melissa Little:And it makes for great outcomes.
Melissa Little:So here's my three takeaways from Melissa's specialist model interview we had last week.
Melissa Little:Number one is specialization enhances outcomes.
Melissa Little:I truly believe it.
Melissa Little:You cannot convince me otherwise.
Melissa Little:Specializing enhances outcomes.
Melissa Little:My buyers get better attention.
Melissa Little:Having a buyer's agent who wakes up every morning and says, I'm on the hunt for the new home for this family, my sellers get a better experience and have better outcomes.
Melissa Little:When I have a listing agent waking up every day, getting feedback, having conversations with other agents in the marketplace, paying attention to those listings, Melissa emphasizes the Value of working with specialized professionals.
Melissa Little:And there's really superior results.
Melissa Little:One of the superior results is we found that we help our clients earn an extra 1.3%.
Melissa Little:We added that up over the three years she's been here.
Melissa Little:That's a half a million dollars.
Melissa Little:That's almost a half a million dollars.
Melissa Little:I think it was like 475 or 490.
Melissa Little:Almost a half a million dollars more in their pocket over average.
Melissa Little:Okay, 1.3% over the average sale price to list price ratio in my business equals almost a half a million dollars we put in our clients pockets.
Melissa Little:That's real life stuff.
Melissa Little:And for small business owners, I think this really kind of you can relate the importance of leveraging experts in specific areas, whether it's marketing or finance, whether it's transaction management, whatever your business is, when you have a goal of growing it.
Melissa Little:You should also be looking at your organizational chart, your structure, who's involved.
Melissa Little:I think one of the things people ask me all the time is well, how did you build it?
Melissa Little:Well, the first financial way that we built it is I made sure that I didn't identify myself as the revenue that I was generating.
Melissa Little:You have to understand the difference between revenue and income.
Melissa Little:You know, if you look at everything you make as income, you're going to spend it all on something.
Melissa Little:Maybe you're going to invest it.
Melissa Little:But when you look at it as revenue, every dollar that goes out now becomes an investment.
Melissa Little:I'm going to invest in my team, I'm going to invest in my staff, I'm investing technology, I'm investing.
Melissa Little:Every dollar that goes out the door is an investment.
Melissa Little:And when I specialize now, it puts us in our lanes.
Melissa Little:You know, I have my lane, Melissa has her lane.
Melissa Little:The rest of the team, you know, they have, they have their lanes.
Melissa Little:And so it's important to understand what do you love doing?
Melissa Little:What are you good at?
Melissa Little:What are you, what are what's tasks that you can do that no one else on your team can do?
Melissa Little:And that's really what it's what it's come down to.
Melissa Little:So specializing has enhanced our outcomes for our clients.
Melissa Little:And the fact and the data is there, it just says it.
Melissa Little:We're getting our clients in the last three years almost half a million dollars extra more than what the industry averages.
Melissa Little:The next thing that really stuck out is when we talked about strategic pricing and marketing, what that presentation looks like to a seller.
Melissa Little:It's not just putting a sign in the yard.
Melissa Little:It's not just putting on the MLS doing open house like it's not one size fits all like she's talked about.
Melissa Little:We discussed.
Melissa Little:The fundamentals are price, condition and location.
Melissa Little:You got to have two out of three.
Melissa Little:You always have to have two out of three.
Melissa Little:You know, if, if the price is too high, your condition, your location better be elite.
Melissa Little:If the condition, if the condition's bad, your price and condition better be elite.
Melissa Little:You got to have two out of three.
Melissa Little:And I think any business is like that too.
Melissa Little:You know, whether you are setting the price on the product you sell, you know, there's features and benefits and you have to make sure that those align.
Melissa Little:But having having a strategy on that I think is really important.
Melissa Little:And so recently we've been meeting with people and we said we have a pricing strategy, we have a marketing strategy.
Melissa Little:And depending on the type of home, depending on what they pick for their pricing strategy, that may influence their marketing strategy.
Melissa Little:It's just not a, like I said, a one size fits all.
Melissa Little:So there's actually intention behind that.
Melissa Little:And then, you know, once you get the strategic pricing.
Melissa Little:We talked about effective marketing and communication strategy.
Melissa Little:How often are you going to hear from us, what are we going to do?
Melissa Little:How many times are we reaching out, the heavy lifting, the hard work, that's all behind the scenes, right?
Melissa Little:That's fallen in love with that practice.
Melissa Little:And Melissa shares strategies for marketing homes and really I think stress the importance of clear communication.
Melissa Little:You know, 85% of all homes that are sold are what's considered co brokered, meaning one person's representing the buyer and one person's representing the seller.
Melissa Little:And when that happens, it's really important that we work together with our friendly competitors in this marketplace.
Melissa Little:I think small business owners can benefit from understanding how important it is to, you know, collaborate.
Melissa Little:You don't have to share everything, but you do have to collaborate.
Melissa Little:I heard a great quote this last week and it's from Darren Hardy, so we'll give him the credit.
Melissa Little:In the absence of a community, you become a commodity.
Melissa Little:Let me say that again.
Melissa Little:In the absence of a community, you become a commodity.
Melissa Little:And if you let that sink in for just a little bit, your main job as a small business owner is to build community.
Melissa Little:Your main job is to build community and you build community with your client base.
Melissa Little:You also build community with your competitors.
Melissa Little:You know, there depends on what business you're in.
Melissa Little:And I understand some are different, but in most businesses you kind of have to get along with your competitors.
Melissa Little:You kind of have to understand what they're doing and be a student of their game.
Melissa Little:Be a student of what they offer so that you can continually, you know, compete for business and elevate the standard.
Melissa Little:I think these principles can help small business owners really just refine their strategies, improve overall business success.
Melissa Little:Maybe have a couple ideas here and there.
Melissa Little:If I'm sharing an idea and you like it, go ahead and do me a favor.
Melissa Little:Share this episode with a friend.
Melissa Little:Tag me on social media.
Melissa Little:You know, just be a great human.
Melissa Little:If I see something that I feel like benefited me, I'm gonna share it on this podcast.
Melissa Little:So you guys are getting the information that I find valuable and I'm bringing it to you.
Melissa Little:So do me a favor.
Melissa Little:If you find this helpful, share it with somebody.
Melissa Little:Help others win.
Melissa Little:Right?
Melissa Little:That's my mission here, is to help others win.
Melissa Little:So those three points that Melissa shared I think are vital.
Melissa Little:It's specialization enhances outcomes, understanding strategic pricing and then how to present that, and then building an effective marketing and communication campaign.
Melissa Little:I think those are, those are important and those are, those are fundamentals, no matter what business you're in.
Melissa Little:Go back to Cal Newport for a second.
Melissa Little:So I share this with my team and this was, this is pretty interesting when I.
Melissa Little:I've been doing this 21 years.
Melissa Little:And about five years ago, five, six years ago, I decided I want a production team, meaning I wanted to stay in the relationships.
Melissa Little:But I had an abundance of leads, I had an abundance of people raising their hand, wanting to work with.
Melissa Little:And so I needed to build a production team, a team that helped me with transactions.
Melissa Little:And so my transaction team was built and it's now five, six years later, and my income has gotten back to where it was before I brought them on.
Melissa Little:And the message I shared with them was this.
Melissa Little:Sometimes you set a goal.
Melissa Little:My goal was I wanted to go to my kids practices and their games and be a great dad.
Melissa Little:I was working 80 hours a week before I built the team.
Melissa Little:I was working 80 hours a week.
Melissa Little:I couldn't sustain that.
Melissa Little:You can't sustain that.
Melissa Little:Maybe you can for a week.
Melissa Little:Right.
Melissa Little:But you can't sustain that long term.
Melissa Little:And so what I saw was I need to build a team around me.
Melissa Little:And not everybody talks about the risk, not everybody talks about what you're willing to give up.
Melissa Little:I personally, Lindsey, I personally sacrificed our income knowing we would have to go backwards in order to build that.
Melissa Little:Well, five, six years later, we're kind of back to where our income was prior to building that team.
Melissa Little:And now I have both and I have my time and I have the income back.
Melissa Little:Well, why is that important?
Melissa Little:Because without that Time.
Melissa Little:If you're just busy, if you're just doing, if you're.
Melissa Little:If you're.
Melissa Little:If there's chaos in your life, there's no time to plan and there's no time to think.
Melissa Little:And what Cal talks about in that deep work, there's really five main points is, you know, set deep work blocks for creativity.
Melissa Little:Set deep work blocks.
Melissa Little:So maybe that's an hour or two, no distractions.
Melissa Little:Put your phone in your bag.
Melissa Little:You know, if you're working at a coffee shop or at home, the least amount of distractions, the better.
Melissa Little:Number two, define what success looks like for each block.
Melissa Little:What are you trying to accomplish?
Melissa Little:Right?
Melissa Little:I mean, are you writing a new strategic proposal for somebody?
Melissa Little:Are you designing and creating a logo for somebody?
Melissa Little:Do it with no distractions.
Melissa Little:You know, set deep work time blocks and then understand.
Melissa Little:The second thing is understand what success looks like in those time blocks.
Melissa Little:Limit shallow work to enhance the depth.
Melissa Little:The shallow work is all of the things like the social media, the emails, the one or two off phone calls.
Melissa Little:There's a lot of shallow work.
Melissa Little:It doesn't take a lot of thought to do.
Melissa Little:And that context, switching, going back and forth is not good for you.
Melissa Little:Leverage your routine for creativity.
Melissa Little:I think this is really important.
Melissa Little:My routine is this.
Melissa Little:Wake up, get my coffee, drink my water.
Melissa Little:Make sure I drink the water first.
Melissa Little:And then when I get started my day, I read my devotions.
Melissa Little:I've got some other things that I'm reading.
Melissa Little:I look at my affirmations.
Melissa Little:I'm journaling, and this kind of gets my creativity started.
Melissa Little:And then I start looking at my day and I start building out.
Melissa Little:Okay, I've got some meetings.
Melissa Little:I want to make sure I go deep with the work that I need to prepare.
Melissa Little:So my first hour or two of the day is all preparation.
Melissa Little:It's prep, it's preparing me for that day.
Melissa Little:It's understanding I'm about to have a meeting.
Melissa Little:Here's what we're going to say.
Melissa Little:Here's probably their response.
Melissa Little:Here's what my response should be.
Melissa Little:How can I serve this person really well?
Melissa Little:I think it's really important.
Melissa Little:So you leverage routine for creativity.
Melissa Little:So once I'm in that space, the journaling space, right?
Melissa Little:I mean, that journaling creates gratitude in my life.
Melissa Little:Once I get out of that journaling space, now that those juices are okay, now I'm writing, I'm getting creative, I'm flexing my gratitude muscle.
Melissa Little:Now I go into planning my day and preparing.
Melissa Little:My gratitude's already there.
Melissa Little:I'm grateful I got this Meeting with this person today, I'm grateful I get to grab a coffee with somebody.
Melissa Little:I'm grateful that I get to go host this event today, whatever that is for you.
Melissa Little:And then number five, evaluate and reflect for continuous improvement.
Melissa Little:Evaluate and reflect.
Melissa Little:Coach Kaufman, who was on a podcast late last year, he said that the podcast was great for him because it's forced reflection.
Melissa Little:What do you have in your life that is forced reflection?
Melissa Little:Right.
Melissa Little:For continuous improvement.
Melissa Little:If you want to improve continuously, you have to reflect.
Melissa Little:One thing I started to do on Friday mornings, I stole this.
Melissa Little:This is great.
Melissa Little:So Sharon Trivatsa, CEO of Real, does a great job with some short clips, but he had something called the Review Preview.
Melissa Little:And On Fridays at 8:00am the things that I do I put in my calendar.
Melissa Little:It's reviewing the last week and previewing the next two weeks.
Melissa Little:Review the last week, look at my calendar and see if there's any follow up or to dos that have come from the meeting meetings that I've had, the ideas that I've had, things that didn't get done.
Melissa Little:So I review the last one week and I preview the next two weeks and I write that all on one page in my journal and in my notebook and in my daily planner.
Melissa Little:I will take those and I'll now start putting putting the to do's on other dates.
Melissa Little:So if that helps you.
Melissa Little:Number five is evaluate and reflect for continuous improvement.
Melissa Little:My evaluation and reflection is I'm going to reflect on the last week.
Melissa Little:I'm going to evaluate what's coming up in the next two weeks.
Melissa Little:That's called my review preview and I've been doing that for a couple weeks now.
Melissa Little:It's been really helpful.
Melissa Little:So if you don't get anything out of this call, if you don't want to hear us talk about real estate, whatever role you're in in life, the review preview has been something that's been very instrumental here as of recent.
Melissa Little:So we talked about a couple things today.
Melissa Little:Short episode.
Melissa Little:Just wanted to knock out a few things but the follow up from Melissa, there's really three main bullet points is specialization enhances outcomes.
Melissa Little:If you're at a place right now where you wear too many hats and you need to build your team.
Melissa Little:First of all, don't build a team if you don't have an abundance of leads.
Melissa Little:Once you build enough relationships where the leads and the business and the work is coming in and you just can't keep up, you can't serve everybody at a high level.
Melissa Little:You got to build your team.
Melissa Little:I guarantee if you do it the right way and you serve others, it'll continue to grow.
Melissa Little:And that hiring that first assistant or bringing on a team member that will pay dividends in the long run, I promise, as long as you focus on serving others.
Melissa Little:So specialization enhances outcomes.
Melissa Little:It absolutely does.
Melissa Little:We have the, we have the numbers to prove that strategic pricing and great presentations.
Melissa Little:Understanding that there is a strategy to pricing homes.
Melissa Little:There's a strategy in your business, whatever that pricing model looks like.
Melissa Little:We're working with Lindsey on that a lot, actually.
Melissa Little:Nolteam Interiors is a new business and in our thing is like we want to give away our service.
Melissa Little:Of course we do.
Melissa Little:We want it to be as cheap as possible.
Melissa Little:Of course we do.
Melissa Little:We want it to be affordable.
Melissa Little:Absolutely.
Melissa Little:But when you start doing that and now you have a lot of people that think that you're cheap, you don't have time, and then you start doing sloppy work, you know, so don't get, don't get behind, you know, charge a fair rate, know what that is, but have a strategy around that.
Melissa Little:And then the effective marketing and communication.
Melissa Little:And I think marketing is something that can be defined in so many different ways, but I think communication is the next thing right after marketing.
Melissa Little:So understanding what that looks like with your competitors sometimes too.
Melissa Little:So those are those three points.
Melissa Little:Specialize enhances outcomes, strategic pricing and presentation.
Melissa Little:Effective marketing and communication.
Melissa Little:That's really what we talked about with Melissa Little.
Melissa Little:She's my listing agent.
Melissa Little:She's been with me for three years.
Melissa Little:And I thought it was great to just bring her and let's talk shop a little bit.
Melissa Little:Let's talk about how, how we run our business, how our clients are benefiting, how our clients are winning.
Melissa Little:And if you can learn from Melissa, which I know there's a nugget there because I know people who listen to this are students of the game.
Melissa Little:I appreciate you listening.
Melissa Little:My recommendations go check out.
Melissa Little:If you need a lot of thinking, if you need some deep work done in your life, if you're struggling with something, sometimes it takes a little more thought, a little more time and intentionality around that.
Melissa Little:So create those opportunities for forced reflection.
Melissa Little:Go deep in the work that you're doing and I guarantee it's going to be a competitive advantage for you.
Melissa Little:So thanks for listening.
Melissa Little:I appreciate all of you.
Melissa Little:I've been.
Melissa Little:A couple people have tagged me recently, shared an episode, keeps me going.
Melissa Little:I actually ran into somebody in public a little while ago and they made a comment about an episode they listened to.
Melissa Little:And for me, I just, I do this for free.
Melissa Little:I love it.
Melissa Little:I want to share what what I've learned because I've learned from so many others.
Melissa Little:So appreciate you listening.
Melissa Little:This is Student of the Game make today great.
Melissa Little:Thanks for listening to Student of the Game podcast.
Melissa Little:Whatever game you are playing, I'm cheering for you.
Melissa Little:See you in the next class.
