We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
We Are Selling is a weekly podcast about real estate, business and tackling life's challenges. Hosted by renowned real estate industry coach, Lee Woodward, learn from experts in their field and maximise your life.
We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
172 – The Unstoppable Rise of Vincent Doran
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Real estate Prodigy Vincent Doran shares his journey from enrolling in a school auctioneering program at age 16 to becoming one of Adelaide's youngest agency directors at 24, with 60 sales in just nine months. His innovative approach combines auctioneering expertise with personalised buyer relationships, creating exceptional results in a competitive market.
• Started in real estate at 16 through a school auctioneering program
• Named one of Australia's top 10 auctioneers by REB
• Won the 2023 Apollo auctioneering competition
• Completed 60 sales in nine months as part of a new business venture
• Uses his auctioneering skills as a competitive advantage with buyers
• Leverages both traditional methods (door knocking, letterbox drops) and modern marketing
• Turns youth into an advantage by emphasising energy and adaptability to modern marketing
• Prioritises having a strong admin team so agents can focus on dollar-productive activities
• Implements "live mode, sell mode" concept from Complete Salesperson training
• Goals include hitting 100 team sales and developing skills in training and team building
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, the author of the Complete Salesperson Course. Today's podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, nexar. Nexar is a dedicated real estate platform specializing in lead generation and database management of the entire real estate company For BDMs and agents. Working as one platform to generate opportunity, nexar seamlessly integrates into your business systems, allowing you to have an extended solution. Let's get started with this week's episode and welcome back to the podcast we Are Selling. Today we're going to cross to Adelaide. Adelaide builds some of our greatest real estate professionals and today's story is an absolute story. Vincent Duran is joining us. Vincent, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2:Hey Lee, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Mate, great to have you on board and seeing socials. Over the last two months You've been winning awards, getting great results, and to have you on the program today is just fantastic, especially for time of recording. For time of recording how old are you today, vincent? I am 24 years old today and you came into real estate at 16. How did that happen? Interesting pathway.
Speaker 2:When I was in school we had a school auction idol, they called it, which was like an auctioneering program for kids, more to promote public speaking and all that sort of stuff. I got paired up with an auctioneer and I did the program for two years and I ended up doing work experience with him at a Harcourt's office. So I did that for a little while and then through the auctioneering scene I ended up at another company, just got my legs or my foot in the door there and loved every minute of it and continued forth.
Speaker 1:Now a passionate auctioneer. You've run some amazing awards. What's been your achievements there? What's?
Speaker 2:been your achievements there In the competitive also the competition auctioneering scene. I was recently named one of the top 10 auctioneers by the REB in Australia, which was very nice. I won the Apollo auctioneering competition in 2023 up in Brisbane. So that's sort of Australia, new Zealand. I had a string of awards as a sort of school kid through the novice programs as well, through Harcourts and the REIs and all those sorts of things. But yeah, I absolutely love the auctions scene and everything to do with it.
Speaker 1:And, interesting enough, the auctioneering side of it and your skills fast on your feet doing what you do. There is not even the reason we've got you on the program. We've brought you on the program because you've done 60 sales in the last nine months as a sales professional in a brand new business. You are now one of the youngest directors that I know of that has gone into business and doing absolutely huge numbers. The office has done, I think, 180 sales. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, Really proud of the team.
Speaker 1:And Thomas Crawford, who's been on many things that I've done in the past and also appeared on stage in Brisbane at the Complete Salesperson Course. How did you two come together to do the business that you're in today?
Speaker 2:So I was working for our director at the previous company. A lot of the properties that we were selling were sort of in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide and on the western suburbs, boyce. I've always loved the west. And one day Tom said Vinny, I've got too many opens on this weekend. I need some help. And I said, well, yeah, no worries, I've got spare time on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. So I helped him do a run of opens as well. And then from there I thought, well, this is the areas I want to work, and I ended up joining Tom's team, or, you know, becoming his first team member. From there we just went from strength to strength and we obviously built a pretty good bond and we did that for five years. And then we came to a point where we thought you know, we've got our ideas on how we want to do things and it blossomed into this what an explosion into the marketplace when you guys were coming out.
Speaker 1:It wasn't the easiest of times. There's a lot going on. Adelaide is competitive anyway. There's a lot of big, great players that play that field and very large players. You're surrounded by sales teams of 90 plus. Why do you think the marketplace has taken to you two so well? Or when I say two, the new team so well?
Speaker 2:I think it's a combination of.
Speaker 2:We had a pretty I think Tom's been very good at this and I've learned the ways from him on personal branding and making sure you've got those connections and relationships and I think, from that point of view, having those really strong relationships, no matter where you go, they'll follow you right Just having that really, as you say, the base of raving fans, and so that underpinned us in the beginning. And then we did a lot of. There was a lot of work on social media and we've ramped it up recently as well to the next level. But we did a lot of print media, a lot of signboards, a lot of digital media. I guess aim for us was just brand awareness, and in doing that, we made ourselves look bigger than we were. I guess aim for us was just brand awareness and in doing that, we made ourselves look bigger than we were. You know, I think that perception was we're sort of trying to display on the marketplace and people now say, oh my God, I see you guys everywhere, which is exactly what we want people to think.
Speaker 1:Vinny, this is such an interesting time to be interviewing you About six minutes before coming on air. I was just finishing the final edits of the new Matt Steinway system, the Ultimate Agent. As an educator, you get to meet lots of people and Thomas and Matt are very similar, very basic in their approach that it's going to be about connection. It's going to be about looking after the people first and everything else will follow, and then seeing this business relationship spark up and then your skills in the auctioneering. It's exploded into the marketplace, but it's connected to the marketplace. Just for our listener in the UK and the States and also here in Australia, what is the type of real estate that the two of you are focused on?
Speaker 2:We sell predominantly in the Western suburbs. A lot of the homes are in the inner Western suburbs of Adelaide, so we'll have turn-of-the-century character homes that we call them. They'll be stone facades, four basic rooms. They might have an extension on them if they've been renovated. We sell a lot of apartments in some pockets of Adelaide where there's a bit more high density, a lot of townhouses. A lot of our clients it'll be their first home they're selling to go into the second home or it'll be mom and dad's home that's passed away. We seem to deal with your average Joe, I would say.
Speaker 1:Now you've had some record sales and in that record sale quite specialty property as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Take us into why people are selecting you. You're 24 years of age, a director of a company. I would imagine you're popping into these lounge rooms, and age is a powerful thing. What's the attraction? Why are people listening with you?
Speaker 2:Matt goes on about this a lot Energy, right. If you can bring the right energy to the room, then people go. Well, I want to work with that. We want someone that's energized, that's motivated, that wants to do the work. If you show them your passion and your enthusiasm, I think that works in your favor a lot. When you go up against someone that's been doing it for 30 years, it's just another listing to them. But this is I literally say to people guys, this is the be all end all for me. I've got 40 years left of real estate and I've got to prove myself and you should tell them that story. And I think people buy into that and they like to see that energy.
Speaker 2:Also the auctioneering.
Speaker 2:So I guess this is probably a little bit individual to me and can work for those people that have their auctioneering license out there, but having the ability to say, hey, look, I'm going to be your auctioneer on the day.
Speaker 2:I've got four weeks to get to meet your market, I get to learn who they are, I get to build a relationship and a rapport with your market so that when I'm streaming at them on auction day to ask for an extra $5,000, it's not a guy that's just rocked up 15 minutes before. It's a person that they've got to know over the last month. That's something that I think people appreciate, and especially now, with the demographic that we're working with. Everybody's on social media, everybody's asking about AI, social and how we're going to promote their property in those spaces and use AI to their advantage. And if you're a young agent, you say, guys, we're dynamic, we can pivot on the turn of a dime, we've got the ability to do all these things that we need to do to make sure we're hitting our straps in those spaces and where the competition might not be. I sort of lean into it and say, guys, it's actually better to be a young agent in this marketplace that's moving so quickly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great answer. And coming across as a modern agent is something we discuss at training a lot, because it is an advantage and the world has changed and the traditional agent is looking back now thinking, wow, I didn't think that was going to happen, although sometimes we get too much tech, not enough touch, and that connection point and learning to balance those is very important. But I think for yourself, vinnie, it's just amazing that you're the way you are and Tom's the way he is, that it's an amazing blend. And correct me if I'm wrong you've just left Tom's team. Now you've got your own team starting up, so these 60 sales are part of the 180, they're actually your own deals.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. And yeah, we'll look to hit the magic 100, got a 10 coming on board, which will be exciting. And yeah, let us scale up and sort of focus on getting some more deals together and doing more auctions. And yeah, it's exciting times and how was the startup?
Speaker 1:From the outside it just looks perfect. It's an explosion into a marketplace, but I would imagine there was a lot of time and effort went into producing what you did, yeah there's a lot of stuff that happened behind the scenes, a lot of stress and worry.
Speaker 2:You never know, I guess, because it's such a big leap, you never know how the market's going to receive it. Are they going to remember who you are? And the uptake has actually been. Yeah, it's blown me away at the uptake we've had from the marketplace, and not just for us personally but for the brand, like the brand recognition.
Speaker 1:I think it's been amazing, and I think your work in video has been absolutely amazing. Like the property, video presentations are world-class. What was the focus on video, and was that always a big focus when you'd be going out on your own?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Tom was a big driver of that in the early days, saying, hey, social media is where we need to be, and he was absolutely right in that. That has been a crucial part of our marketing. I do a couple of segments with a couple of local cafes and we do a daily dad joke and I reckon once a weekend someone would come up to me in open inspection and say, oh hey, you're the guy that does the dad joke, which is just the most random thing. It blossomed out of just us randomly telling jokes to each other at the cafe and then we put it on video and those cafes are in the areas that we work. So it's sort of dovetailed into getting a lot of brand recognition. But on the video point of view, I think people stop and watch that stuff right, so the engagement is huge. So we're just really leaning into it because it's working.
Speaker 1:So, vinny, take us into. There's a structural part of business, as you know from doing the complete salesperson, where you've got lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment. In lead conversion, I can see exactly your business energy bouncing into a room doing really well the client fulfillment side, the record sales, the number of listings that you guys have transacted already. There's a lot going on there. My focus is on lead generation, especially for a brand new business. What's been your best listing streams and for our listener out there many people listening to this I've got to start again. They've got to hit the reset button. What's been best in lead generation for you?
Speaker 2:Lead generation. A lot of it has come from the old school stuff, right, cold calling bit of door knocking here and there. What I've actually found a lot of success with is, if you've got a buyer a lot of what we've got in our marketplace we've got a lot of people that are saying hey look, vincent, we're ready to sell our house, we'll sell it with you, but we're not selling until we find the house that we want to buy. And the house that they want to buy is just not coming on the market. So we'll go all right, give us a list of addresses or give us a really detailed brief of what you want to buy and we'll go door knock those people and we'll go see if they're willing to sell. We've had success in that department For me.
Speaker 2:I don't love door knocking, but when you've got a real purpose like that, I find it very easy to do. And that's my trick to get myself into the zone to do that sort of stuff and then, just going back to the old school, consistent letterbox drop, consistent marketing within your farm area Tom's a master at it and I'm just following his footsteps on that front to build the brand within a certain area. And Frequency builds trust. I live by that Frequency.
Speaker 1:Take us into the buyer management side, because you are the auctioneer on the day. You've got all these people that you've been communicating with. They understand you're the auctioneer, which is quite strange for a buyer who, okay, you'll be the person extracting those funds. I could lose it to somebody else that you're here with versus the auctioneer that just turns up is not connected. You feel that connection is an advantage. How have you been able to best manage that?
Speaker 2:I think it's good for people. We get a lot of people that go oh, I don't want to come to auction. Well, they sell prior because they don't want to go to an auction. Well, I'm really scared of auctions. So I think it disarms people in that way to go, oh, hey, well, I'm actually going to be the auctioneer on the day. Did you want to have a 10-minute phone call for me to run through how it works? Or come to my auction next week at XYZ address. You can see exactly how it's going to play out. And if you've got any questions after the auction, come up to me and have a chat. People, I think it sort of relieves people because they get to know who you are.
Speaker 2:I think people get scared of auctions because they think it's going to be really quick, like a cattle auction. They're not going to have chance to bid, they won't know what's going on. I'll tell people if they say, oh, we're just a little bit afraid. I said guys, I'll slow down the auction. I won't go as fast as I normally do for you. We'll slow it down for you. I'll make sure to look at you before we sell it, or just all these little cues to give people confidence that we'll make sure that they're involved. And, yeah, I think it really works in our favor because it makes the buyer feel more comfortable. I think it really works in our favor because it makes the buyer feel more comfortable and if the buyer is comfortable, they'll be more willing to let go of their money.
Speaker 1:This is a very interesting point, vincent. No buyer pays their highest price to an agent they do not like, and that connection the negotiation starts when you first meet the person. It's not on that last 10 minutes of the auction day, and the fact that you are connected to the purchasing community all the way through, I can see that being a huge advantage for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a very important part of my business and it's one of the points of difference. I guess, as an agent, everybody's got their points of difference. It's one of the points of difference that I really hone in on, and there's a lot of agents that are auctioneers but there's a lot of agents that shouldn't be auctioneers also. So actually be a competent auctioneer, I think is a huge thing for myself and the business.
Speaker 1:So for yourself and Thomas, there's been a huge bed down to this brand new business Admins now ticking over. You've recruited all the right people in there and have chosen to go for an admin-strong business versus just a stack of agents within there. What was the thinking behind that?
Speaker 2:I don't want people sitting in the office bogged down in paperwork or having to do this, having to do that behind the scenes. The reason why people build teams in real estate is to alleviate them from doing the non-dollar productive tasks. So we want to bring that concept into the business of. We just want you doing dollar productive work. Obviously there's going to be a portion of administration and compliance that we have to adhere to, but their time is best spent out in the marketplace, building relationships on the phone, knocking on doors, dropping letters, doing the stuff that's going to be visible and it's going to bring in business. Right, we don't want them stuck in the office going oh I have to build a brochure, or you know.
Speaker 1:Very good and couldn't agree more with that. The effective agent is the productive agent, whereas there's red, blue and black in business, red being admin, blue dollar productive and black where we are today strategic thinking. Which brings me to my final questions for you. We saw you at the Complete Salesperson course in Brisbane this year. You guys chose to do it there. You all came down as a team.
Speaker 2:What was the takeaway projects for you from that particular event that you brought into the marketplace? For myself, I've really honed in on just a couple of things. I think if you take too much away from something, you'll never do it right. So I've really implemented live mode, sell mode. I think people really like it.
Speaker 2:It's a very simple concept but actually it's proactively thinking about it and using it, implementing it into your presentation when you're at an appraiser or a listing presentation. That's been really powerful in getting people to commit to doing styling or commit to doing things to make sure the presentation of the property is up to scratch, because it's very easy to say to them oh no, that's fine, don't bother painting, don't leave all your stuff here, because every other agent said We'll get it on the market tomorrow. Because everybody wants to listen, to actually have that conversation and get them on board to do those things and the presentation and it works in their benefit. You get a higher price and for us as well, presentation of the brand is better because we're presenting properties that look good, right and people go right. I want to sell with those people because they're doing the right thing by their owners, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And great to see you working in snacks and Vinny for the future. You've done so well so early, at 24 years of age, to even be doing this interview, being a director of a company doing the sales that you have. This is a world-class case. What's next for you? What's on your focus list? What do you want to do from here?
Speaker 2:There's some awards in the auctioneering space. There's the almighty Ausflasian auctioneering title that everybody chases. That's definitely on the dream list to tackle. From a sales point of view, I think, yeah, I'd love to hit 100 sales as a team and I'll need the team behind me to do that. That's definitely on the list as well. And then building the team. I think one thing that I'm stepping into and learning is management and building people on training and that sort of space, and it's something I want to hone in on, because the old saying you're only as strong as a weakest link in your team. So to be able to build that skill of training, of developing people, I think I'm really excited about that. For me personally, when people put time into you, when they put the effort they train you, they actually genuinely want to help you. The commitment you give back is huge and I want to emulate that within the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a great answer. And for yourself and Thomas, that may be locating the right operations style person as it grows into a bigger business, because I don't think the two of you are not going to slow down. So that thing is going to grow. And actually today's date is the 5th of June and the interview that came out today on we Are Selling was Nicole Kelly, who runs a very, very big business and not dissimilar in its startup from where you guys are now, but obviously grew into a very large business. And that role of operations is underestimated in real estate. When we try and wear too many hats, it doesn't work. You just burn out. And when you've got two incredible sales professionals like yourself, leaving you on the tools becomes the value. So watch this space, we'll see how that goes into the future. But, vincent, absolutely incredible results. Congratulations and thank you for joining us on the program.
Speaker 2:Thanks, lee, it's been great Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:And that concludes another edition of we Are Selling. Vincent mentioned live mode, sell mode, which is a technique from the Complete Salesperson course. During the interview I refer to this as a snack. A snack of information is how we capture the techniques, learn them and deliver that within the field, on the streets, as real estate professionals. As an educator, this has been my biggest breakthrough in real estate training to teach people, one snack at a time, how to become ninja level at real estate sales and learning the snacks of your real estate.
Speaker 1:Career is not just about the scripts and dialogues. Career is not just about the scripts and dialogues. It's about the words, the concepts and the psychology in the thinking of everything I gathered over the last 30 plus years from 2000 interviews of saying to people you'd be better to say it this way. So, for example, lib mode, sell mode sounds like this John and Helen, let's discuss the presentation of your property. Why, what's wrong with it? Nothing. The way you're living here right now is what we refer to as lib mode. You've got everything you need all the children's toys, all the family photos are out. You are living in the property. However, for us to represent you and guide you, we need to shift the property to sell mode. Sell mode is where we depersonalize the property. Put away all the family photos, all the kids, toys or anything you don't need, pack it up, get it in boxes and start the move. This process allows the property to breathe. It depersonalizes it, because one thing we've learned from so many sales is when the right buyer finds your property, they're looking to buy their home, not yours. And by shifting the home from live mode to sell mode, there's a $40,000, $50,000 offer difference. That comes in from that perceptional value and also it's showcased and just doesn't look like a home that fell onto the marketplace. It's been positioned so we can get the very best outcome that we can and that's to generate the profit you deserve. And many times I see competing properties on the market. It was rushed to the market, they didn't style it, they didn't use Libmo sell mode. They've invested in the portals and all the marketing, but it's in Libmo and there is such a difference in that final result and that's what I'd be advising if you engage us.
Speaker 1:Okay, back to Lee Woodward, the announcer. So that's what a snack sounds like, and all the snacks are in the Complete Snack app, which also has all my templates, my visuals, videos, the most famous podcasts I've ever done from the Real Estate Hot Topics program. The most famous podcast I've ever done from the Real Estate Hot Topics program. But learning this stuff one snack at a time is all you have to do. Your investment is just $199. And for those in the UK and the States, this is the best way to access the greatest information I've ever produced. I will put the link in the show notes, but that's it for this week. I look forward to next week when Daniel Lee joins us, which is going to be an amazing interview. Thank you for listening to this program and thank you for being part of LegalDood training.