Why Most Agents Fail (And How to Fix Your Sales Process Fast)

Tyler McLay (00:00)
Six deals a year, you’re making 150k. If you’re doing six deals a year, that means on average six days out of 365 days in a year, you’re doing a deal. The question is, what are you doing the other 359 days out of the year? We don’t know.

We don’t know how to create those deals. We’re not willing to put in the work and momentum to get to those deals. So what I do is elongate the sales process.

If agents can redefine that action step as a win, they’re not only going to be a hell of a lot more motivated, they’re not only going to maintain their momentum, but they’re going to give themselves more opportunity to win again.

Michelle Kesil (02:03)
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Tyler McLay of McLay Real Estate, managing a team of real estate agents in Canada. So excited to have you here today, Tyler.

Tyler McLay (02:19)
to be here, thrilled to be in some of the elite company you guys have had on the podcast. I’m a big fan and thrilled to provide any value I can to your listeners. Thank you.

Michelle Kesil (02:27)
Awesome, let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is these days?

Tyler McLay (02:35)
Yeah, absolutely. think my main focus is kind of what it’s been for since I really officially got into this industry.

Admiring the way my mother operated in the space was always with authority and you know when she spoke when she provided advice It held a lot of weight and the clientele would listen right? Hey, you got to reduce by a hundred grand. Okay? I think we should list it at one point two Okay in this day and age with the value proposition of agents adapting and the dilution of our authority in the space We’re losing that oomph. We’re losing that impact So my focus right now from my team of 30 agents and my coaching clients as a whole

is bringing authority back to the business. We do that through deploying systems.

and adopting new systems, always kind of keeping an eye on the big picture and doing our best to operate with that integrity and authority. And I think that what’s best for the industry is best for my bank account because if the perception of realtors as a whole is enhanced and brought back to what it could be and should be, then it’s gonna make my life easier. So my ultimate goal with my team and my coaching company is bringing the authority back to agents. I know it’s a big goal, I know it’s a big thing, it’s a big ask.

but I know that if I can tackle even just a portion of the real estate community, it’s naturally going to allow myself, my team, my coaching clients to make more money. It’s little tweaks here and there, but if we can change the environment, it makes the environment we work in easier. So very big but specific focus and goal.

Michelle Kesil (04:05)
Yeah, amazing. And which market are you specifically in?

Tyler McLay (04:09)
My office is downtown Toronto. We have 11 offices throughout the GTA. But my office, my head office is downtown Toronto and we service all of the GTA from there. We’re in the East End. If anyone’s familiar, St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood. If you’re ever in Toronto, you have to visit. It’s old Toronto. I mean, we’re not as old as some parts of the US and in ⁓ Montreal to the east of us. You know, obviously not Europe, but old Toronto is very, very cool. St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood. If anyone’s in the area, look me up and come say hello.

Michelle Kesil (04:34)
Awesome. And what do you feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to grow and run successfully?

Tyler McLay (04:42)
Hey Michelle, can you hear me? I’m so sorry, it cut out for just a few seconds. You’re back now.

Michelle Kesil (04:43)
Did you catch that?

What do you feel are some of the main keys that have allowed your business to be able to grow and run successfully?

Tyler McLay (05:40)
That’s a great question. think that it is, I think it’s a couple of factors that jump into mind. mean, my leadership ability and the way that I lead my team, my clients, my focus of the year this year is leadership. I always have a focus of the year. And I think that to lead, you kind of have to lead from the front. So everything I’ve done,

in my business is what I encourage my team to do, operate and execute the way that makes sense for them with their profiles and personalities, but I would never tell an agent from a coaching perspective or a leadership perspective to do something I wouldn’t do myself. So I think that a big reason for the buy-in of my team, a buy-in of our leadership group and the culture that we’ve been able to create, maintain and protect has to do with me maintaining what’s important to me from an integrity standpoint, from a delivery

every perspective from a systems perspective, right? We don’t treat a lease any differently than a $7 million custom home sale. We treat every client with the same diligence and respect. And I think that I’ve been very fortunate when I started the team, it was just me and one gentleman, Anthony Spannell, fantastic, still with me since day one. And he’s adopted a lot of what’s important to me in the business. And then naturally that culture is inspired. So I’d say one of the big things is the culture, which was inspired by me doing what I

said I was gonna do and me doing what I tell others to do. We’ve got some pretty core…

rules on my team Number one, I’m not sure if I’m allowed to swear on this podcast, but number one is give a shit Okay, you have to give a shit about yourself your industry your profession You have to give a shit about what you do But number two is do what you say you’re gonna do and I think that you know to put it very simply If you don’t do what you say you’re gonna do you lose automatic trust not only with yourself not only losing momentum in your goals and and you know success momentum But also your clients start to lose faith in the credibility of what you say so do what you say you’re gonna do is

absolutely one of the biggest contributors to our success. I’ll give you one more quick one, I won’t ramble as long. Paying attention to the market. My team, my coaching clients, we read three articles a day, every day. If you pay attention to the market, you’ve got the ammo to execute at a high level. Yes, your clients are gonna read headlines, yes, your clients are gonna read the news, yes, your clients have more access now than they’ve ever had in the history of the real estate industry.

But my job as a leader, educator, advisor, and salesperson is to stay up to date with current events. Stay up to date with what’s impacting my market so that I have more ammo to build authority to share that knowledge to either solve a problem or…

Create an opportunity. That’s what we do as salespeople. And I think a lot of that starts early on. Agents always call me at the end of a deal for help, at the end of the deal, how do I fix this, how do I do this? A lot of those things could be avoided early on if I educate my client better and win that authority and confidence where when I speak again, they listen because I’ve earned that rapport, I’ve earned that confidence. And that’s a lot of what we do. We elongate the sales process, start with rapport building, get into the value, and then the ask. So super simple framework for everyone.

a lot with frameworks. Intro value ask, everyone can adopt it. Introduce yourself for the product, provide a form of value, ask for a follow-up. So easy, every phone call, every touch you have needs to follow that framework. I guess the depth of value you provide is going to be better with the more educated you are in the market. Three articles a day, it’ll change your income.

Michelle Kesil (08:55)
Yeah, that’s super helpful. And do you work with investors as well?

Tyler McLay (08:56)
Hope so.

We do, we do. Yes, we have a pretty ⁓ big network of investors. The investment landscape has changed dramatically in the post-pandemic marketplace. So what they want and what they require is different. Everybody wants a deal, but some of the same cash flowing opportunities are no longer as readily available. And a lot of what we do in terms of profiling and building rapport, I’m going to be a much better salesperson if I can align the value with that prospect.

Right, so I coach sales, if I’m speaking to a car salesman or a hairdresser or a realtor, my examples, my pitch is going to be dramatically different because I know who they are, I know their background, I know what’s important to them. And to your point, all clients, but investors specifically, they’ve all got different reasons for investing. So if I can do a better job instead of jumping right into the investment, but a better job of understanding the why behind…

their investment approach, I’ll be able to provide better opportunities to them, whether it be appreciation, long-term hold, short-term hold, cash flowing. I’ll be able to better understand why. If it’s a tax positioning thing, if it’s a corporate buy, if it’s a private buy, if it’s a stepping stone to a dream home. The more I understand my client, the better I build that rapport. Again, it makes everything else easier. So back to your other question, what’s something we do to make us as successful as we’ve been?

putting a lot of emphasis early on on the relationship and learning as much about our client intentionally as we possibly can. So then we align the opportunity to the investor profile versus here’s all the investments we have, go ahead. I’m removing myself from the process before I’ve ever even had a chance to get my hooks in.

The more I ask questions, the more I build rapport, the more I understand what type of investments beneficial to Michelle, for example, the more tailored my pitch will be, the higher the likelihood it’s relevant to you and your goals, the higher likelihood you convert a lot quicker. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Give some perspective.

Michelle Kesil (10:46)
Definitely. And what are you most excited about opportunity wise right now in your market?

Tyler McLay (11:25)
Right now I’m just really excited for the curiosity that’s returned to the market. I’m really excited to see the questions coming back. I’m really excited at the opportunity to transact at a high level again with intent and curiosity from our clients. think that naturally as the market returns to a better place, a better position, we have the ability to do what we do best.

at a greater scale. I’m really excited for some of my newer agents and my coaching clients to have the opportunity to transact in a better market because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen all kinds of markets. I’ve been around for the worst of the worst and the best of the best. And you know, there’s some agents that have been around for, if you’ve been around for four years or less, you’ve never seen the greatness of this business. And if you’ve been around for four years, anywhere from two to four years and you’re still here, give yourself a pat on the back and just be excited for what’s to come. So I’m really excited for the potential of the

and anyone that’s got in the business recently, I think they’re going to be in for a really fun ride in the latter half of 2026 and throughout the 2020s into 2030, I think will be an absolute blast based on fundamentals, based on fundamental drivers of the real estate market. I’m very confident ⁓ in the outlook.

Michelle Kesil (12:37)
Yeah, absolutely. And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Tyler McLay (12:43)
Right now there’s a lot of emphasis and onus on the coaching company. Anyone that knows me or has heard me speak in the past knows my passion for the industry is unrivaled. Maybe it comes out a little bit in the podcast, maybe when you follow our Instagram pages and you see it, but the passion is unrelenting. So our biggest challenge now is bringing our coaching company and our curriculum, which is…

vastly comprehensive and unique to anything else on the market, but bringing that to a wider audience. Just giving, you know, I feel guilty that more agents don’t know about us at this point in time.

So the focus right now is just bringing Rex coaching to a broader community. We’ve got clients in Alaska, Indiana, Miami, California, all over the US, throughout Canada of course, but also we’re starting to get into the US and the feedback’s been absolutely sensational. So if I can’t do my job of bringing this help and this greatness, this passion and this…

formal curriculum to the masses, I’m going to feel like I let the industry down. So my biggest focus right now is spreading the word and, you know, basically benefiting the realtor community based on what we’ve created. That’s really the big goal here with that passion of dramatically changing the real estate industry for the better, bringing that authority back. It starts with us. It starts with the agents.

Michelle Kesil (14:01)
Yeah, and what does the coaching look like? Is it supporting agents and being better in their roles?

Tyler McLay (14:07)
Absolutely, yes. I mean we coach a lot of things that are have sometimes been deemed to be uncoachable confidence charisma communication Those are I want to almost say like the less sexy elements of coaching and I’m not gonna change my style just to be more Sellable there’s agents that are gonna pitch you on on you know work from your bed social media make six figures a year That’s their schtick. That’s their thing You know, but if you don’t have the fundamental sales knowledge

going to work. We do door knocking, we do social media, we’re the cold calling experts. There’s a lot of coaches that have their thing. My thing is all of the underlying things that make any lead generation vehicle successful. And you know just as an example with my students, I’ve got two students in particular, I often talk about them, they both made $800,000 last year. Okay they both made $800,000. The woman, she

gets about ninety percent of her business from social media. Using all my techniques, my frameworks, all my strategies, ninety percent of her income of her eight hundred thousand dollar GCI last year came from social media. The other guy that made eight hundred thousand doesn’t touch social media. Totally different vehicle, same destination, but totally different vehicle adopting the same strategies and concepts. That’s why I say it’s not the, you know, sexy concepts.

We’re trying to make it sexy, we’re trying to make it fun, I think it’s fun, but those underlying little communication techniques, charisma, delivery, frameworks, how to sell, it’s the confluence of art and science, and then you can apply it to whatever delivery method you like. If your unique value proposition is door knocking and that’s what you love to do, fantastic. If you’re a social media person, fantastic. You like email campaigns, fantastic. You can apply my concepts to any lead generation method if you will.

And we’ve actually just launched something

exciting. We just launched our agent profiling quiz so that agents don’t even have to try to figure it out on their own what type of agent they are. We’ve done a lot of homework, a lot of studying, we’ve interviewed with psychologists and human behavior specialists, scientists to build this quiz. It’s a 12 question quiz. We’ve boiled it down to something super simple and it spits out your agent profile. So one of four profiles based on that profile we can then provide a very

Tailored curriculum to you based on your responses to these questions where you are going to get the most out of our coaching program You’re going to get the most out of it. So it is online delivery We have we have a one-on-one option for the delivery of your curriculum or we have the group coaching option for the delivery of your curriculum We also have a free community on school if everyone’s familiar with school with a K Rex coaching find us. It’s a free community. You can join for free We give you like a taste of what we do and what you’re going to get with the free community is some of our templates some of our

you won’t get the formal curriculum, but you’ll get live training with me every single Tuesday, every Tuesday, 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, live training with me 45 minutes, you have access to that for free. So if you’re serious about changing your business, if you’re serious about changing what it is you want to do, no excuse not to join the free community, we want it to remove.

every barrier possible for agents to do better. And then from there, if you need more, you want more, you like our style, fantastic. There’s options to upgrade your membership. from a free perspective, bringing this coaching, as I mentioned, my goal is to bring it to a wider audience. We figured that having some access to free education should help.

Michelle Kesil (18:03)
Yeah, that’s so powerful to offer that high level support to people.

Tyler McLay (18:07)
Yeah, thanks. We’re having a blast doing it.

Michelle Kesil (18:09)
Yeah, you mentioned people are using your concepts in different ways. Can you share an example of one of those concepts?

Tyler McLay (18:16)
Yes, so we work a lot with frameworks is the first thing that comes to mind. Frameworks, when you have a conversation with a client, there’s got to be a goal, right? There’s got to be a goal. A lot of agents think that the goal is a transaction, selling them a home. So just to take a big step back for a moment, a top agent in my market, average selling price is about a million dollars, Canadian, so maybe that’s like 20 bucks US right now, but a million dollars Canadian.

And your commission checks 25k, right? 2.5 % is what we do here on average, so 25,000. To be in the top upper echelon of agents, you’ve got to do six deals a year.

Six deals a year, you’re making 150k. If you’re doing six deals a year, that means on average six days out of 365 days in a year, you’re doing a deal. The question is, what are you doing the other 359 days out of the year? We don’t know.

We don’t know how to create those deals. We’re not willing to put in the work and momentum to get to those deals. So what I do is elongate the sales process. Every lead, everyone that comes in, I want to give myself the best chance to convert. Way more deals are lost to a lack of nurturing versus a lack of lead generation. And when I generate these leads, one of the best practices is having a beginning, middle, and an end. Very simple framework. So if it’s sharing of information, what, so what, now what? What happened, so what, why it’s relevant, now what are we going to do about it, take action?

questions to build rapport, situational questions where they are, future questions where they want to go, action questions to inspire them to do something. I’ve got a 131 framework if I need to provide advice or handle an objection. I paraphrase their objection to align with them, acknowledge, I respond with three potential options, and then I provide my advice of which of those three options I would pursue. So all this does when I talk about frameworks, there’s a ton in my free community, but

frameworks can be applied to social media, cold calling, nurturing, negotiation, closing process, close out process, lead generation in any capacity. It gives you a reason to have the conversation and it almost gamifies what we do, right? When I, and the big thing here, coming full circle with the frameworks, the big win is that we…

redefine what a win is. As I mentioned, 6 deals a year, 150k, what do we do the other 359 days? We get discouraged because we’re not seeing those wins. When I leverage a framework and I have an ask at the end and that ask is smaller, I am winning more often.

I am winning with the opportunity to follow up. The ask might be, do you want to join my email list? The ask might be, would you be comfortable following me on social media? The ask might be, why don’t you join me at my open house? The ask might be, would you be comfortable if I was to knock on your door again in a month from now with more neighborhood updates, with more community events? That’s a win. If agents can redefine that action step as a win, they’re not only going to be a hell of a lot more motivated, they’re not only going to maintain their momentum, but they’re going to give themselves more opportunity to win again.

And if we give ourselves the opportunity to win again, leveraging frameworks, changing and redefining what a win is, it’s going to make my follow-up a lot more…

religious in nature a lot more easier and systemized I will say. So frameworks will change the game every time you have a conversation whether it be a lead or a nurture or a negotiation whatever the touch is make sure you have a goal and a desired outcome. Introduce yourself the product, introduce the reason for the call, provide a sprinkle of value and then ask for where you want them to go. So so simple in a variety of capacities but give yourself a framework. Intro, value, ask. You can apply that to all of them all of my framework

down from an intro value and ask template. Do that and just watch your conversion amplify. It’s powerful stuff. Sounds so simple. It’s the execution that gets tough, but that in itself should be a massive catalyst to making more money.

Michelle Kesil (21:48)
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that tip.

Tyler McLay (21:51)
Yeah, of course. I’d love to hear feedback. Anyone that listens to this and deploys it, I’d love to hear your feedback. And we’re very engaged as well online in our school community. You can ask us questions in there. On social media, we’re very engaged. If anyone has questions, can absolutely get in touch with me. I’m very easy to find. So, RexCoaching and McLayRealEstate, mcLay.re on Instagram if anybody wants to find us and ask some questions.

Michelle Kesil (22:14)
Yeah, well, perfect. I was just gonna ask where people can connect with you if they wanna learn more.

Tyler McLay (22:19)
Yeah, social media is fantastic. Instagram, so at Rex coaching, R-E-X coaching, like a dinosaur, real estate excellence. Okay, and then McLay real estate, mcLay.re is our Instagram handle, and you can find me there. Otherwise, our school community, absolutely free, Rex coaching school, you can get in there, you can converse with us, you can ask us your questions, and we will respond. But the community’s incredible, the results have been…

mind-boggling just beyond my wildest imagination to be honest with you. So we’re thrilled with what’s happening so far and thrilled with the potential of what we, the impact we want to have in this industry.

Michelle Kesil (22:53)
Perfect, well appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Tyler McLay (22:57)
Thanks, Michelle. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was a blast.

Michelle Kesil (22:59)
And for those tuning in, you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Tyler, who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.