Editors Note: Last month, Coach Daryl White wrote “My Twisted Path to My First Deal”. This month Sarah asked one of her Coaching Clients’ to answer that question for you and share their first deal success story. When you’re done reading this one, there are plenty more to read about in our over 900 pages of client testimonials HERE.
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When Alexis asked me to write about one of my students the first person that popped into my head was Nora Cruz. Like most new investors Nora had a big fear to overcome; PHONE PHOBIA.  I’m really excited to tell her story because it shows how with our help you DO get past the hurdles that new investors face. It also proves my favorite philosophy of “where there’s a will there’s a way”.
Nora works the graveyard shift and has been with the same company for seven years.Â
Nora is also a licensed real estate agent. She came to the Lab in March of 2004, and like some graduates, she got side tracked and did not put what she had learned into practice immediately.Â
Nora found herself stuck and wisely chose to sign up for Coaching. Although Nora was very motivated she desperately needed someone to lay out a game plan of action for her to follow and execute.  Nora also had a serious case of phone phobia! Couple that with her graveyard schedule and you can see that we had our work cut out for us.
My first call to Nora was to find out where she was and where she’d like to be… and then I laid out a plan to get her there. We set clearly defined goals with a timeline for achieving them, set a weekly schedule for maximum productivity, and made sure that her office was set up to help her work smart. During that call I quickly identified Nora’s strengths and weaknesses. I gave her a first assignment that I knew would help propel her toward her first deal!
Nora was seriously stuck when it came to working the phones; I mean she was terrified! She preferred to door knock instead. The problem with that was that she did not have the extra time to be door knocking at all of her leads. This is NOT working smart for the following reasons: it sucks valuable time, and you miss out on calling neighbors and getting the gossip first; and (here’s the heart breaker for a lot of people I know) if you are not good on the phones you will not be good in person either!Â
I gave Nora the task of making 200 phone calls in one week, and told her to write down all the objections she got so that we could go over all of them before we made our second call. What this exercise did was force Nora to get on the phone. We met her biggest challenge head on together. It also showed Nora that objections aren’t scary at all. They are VERY repetitious.Â
She began to see that she was hearing the same stuff over and over again. We worked together on what to say to these objections and role played how to quickly ask another question and take back control of the conversation. She quickly began to start winning the objection game (More Here.) After that, whenever objections came up she was ready for them. Nobody was throwing Nora any objection that she hadn’t all ready heard before and wasn’t ready to handle.
 As our Coaching sessions progressed and the weeks went by Nora was doing better and better! Within no time at all she was working with multiple owners at the same time.  Being able to be help owners save their homes quickly exploded Nora’s confidence. She wasn’t focused on buying their house — now she was just helping these owners figure out solutions.Â
As we went on the funniest thing happened… Nora started to sound like me! I would listen to her voice and what she was saying to owners and it was almost as if I was doing the talking. Nora took what she had learned from me and made it her own. It always sounded sincere because it was coming from her heart.Â
About 45 days into our Coaching BINGO, Nora got her first deal. She stayed persistent and consistent with the owner and he decided that she was the one he trusted to help him out of this situation. He’d listened to all the other sharks out there that were trying to just steal his house. Nora was his white knight and he believed in her!
Since then Nora has completed one other deal and has her third in contract right now! Go Nora! In fact, at one point, Nora hurt her back and was in the hospital all week. She had her husband come get her so she could go and speak to an owner face to face. She told me, on her Coaching call from the hospital that she did that because she did not want to have to tell me that she had talked to ZERO owners that week! Now that’s conviction!
People often wonder what it takes to be successful in this business. Now I’m telling you Nora has it. It’s a burning desire and a can do attitude. She does not settle for anything less than 100% of herself. Once we started our Coaching together Nora left al her excuses behind.
After Nora closed her first deal we quickly moved to the next goal — getting her to the point where she can quit her job. We spoke about it and laid out another plan to make that happen. Nora now plans on quitting her job in January of 2007. I told her we would go out and celebrate when that happened. Coincidentally, while Nora was excelling as an investor, her company was laying off people and announcing cutbacks. All of her coworkers were very nervous and didn’t understand how she could be so calm! Nora has a plan to achieve her goals and that has made all the difference. I recently got an email from Nora and she had this to say:
“I am so thankful for the Lab the Six Step CD’s and especially the Coaching program. My Coach Sarah got me to stop procrastinating and take action. She pushed me to take action and get over my phone phobia. Because of that I was able to do my first deal, my second, and now my third. I am working on quitting my job so I can focus on the rewarding service of helping homeowners in default.  Thanks to God and all the crew of Foreclosures.com; especially Alexis and Sarah.”
Thank you Nora for being such an inspiration to everyone who knows your story!
ForeclosureS.com Client, Coach and your Friend,
Sarah
